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Imprisoned Within The Pages
Danny Estes Author Interview
The Infinite Wisdom follows Braxton into a genetics lab, while looking for his fiancée as he stumbles across the origin of the hairless apes. The mythology of the world is that mankind has vanished. Are you looking to further that mystery or will we see the hairless apes reappear?
Book 3 of “The Snow Adventures”, will reveal more information concerning the hairless apes. In addition, new developments in the reason for the space station will come to light, but not without its costs. For this information will cause a tragedy amongst the animals which will change the characters’ lives. Shaking up the norm for the path of Book 4.
I enjoyed the underlying technological theme throughout the book. Did you conduct any genetics research for this book?
Although science can fascinate and inspire my writing as we continue to stubble into the future, I conducted no research into the making of this book. All genetic hypotheses and advance sciences presented within this book comes from the countless movies and science fiction books I’ve read or watched over the years. I merely laid out the ideals and incorporated what aspects of each I felt would best open imaginative minds to concepts our current technology are already adventuring within.
The cover art for this book is awesome. What was the development like for this cover?
For a writer the cover is the most important beginning for any book. Never mind all the hours, days, months or even years of hard work that goes into a book’s development. If the cover arts not appealing, all the investment an author has made will be for not. For a reader must have their interest peeked to invest their time in simply picking up the book for a curiosity look see. This is why I spend a lot of time considering the cover. It must convey an imagery of events to be found within the pages of the book while not promising any falsehoods. With these concepts I had to considered what would best convey the plight of the characters. Who besides Braxton should or shouldn’t be portrayed. The fact that Joann, his sweetheart is a driving factor in the book told me she had to be included. But how then do I present them? Escaping? Boarding the space shuttle? Talking with the unicorns, Mr. Thelin and his sister Ms. Thelin? All good avenues of presentation. Yet everyone’s desire to be free felt to be the most important aspect for the cover. For a reader will see our heroes’ plight and wonder as to how they got there and what must be done to escape. This then seemed the most obvious choice as it invited the reader to at least explore as to how they were imprisoned within the pages and I hope, would invest the reader to continue reading in order to see our heroes gain their freedom.
Where will we find Braxton in the next book in the Snow Adventures and when will that be available?
Braxton will find himself back into his old job of investigations. Though in truth he’s rather be with his wife, Joann and their growing family. Current circumstances however will lead him on a chase for an escaped murderer who somehow has vanished from a secured holding cell. How and why will leave the animals shaken to the core. This Book 3, of The Snow Adventures, I’ve slated for an appearance on amazon sometime in 2020.
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![The Infinite Wisdom (The Snow Adventures Book 2) by [Estes, Danny C]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51eeC%2BZP-BL.jpg)
Braxton Snow, P.I., big city arctic wolf, is back!
While escaping the glacial clan of his birth, Braxton lands in a sinister genetic laboratory established by the hairless apes long ago. With the help of his new allies, Braxton navigates this alien technology to find his jackrabbit fiancée. But the curious archaeologist red fox has nailed all their coffins by pushing buttons he shouldn’t. They know where the hairless apes went now—somewhere the animals should not have followed! Will they ever return home?
Your Book Launch Timeline —What to Do When to Launch a Book That Sells
What’s your launch strategy?
95% of authors I ask this question to reply “I don’t have one” or say “I’ll post a link to my book on social media and hope for the best”.
Hope is not a strategy and won’t get your book on the bestseller lists.
But you know what will?
A carefully orchestrated book launch.
Here’s what you do:
Assumption: the entire execution time from idea to launch is 5 months.
5 MONTHS BEFORE LAUNCH – POSITIONING
You start with the end in mind. What do you do when you want to launch a successful business? You look for a niche that you can dominate. You look for a blue ocean. It’s the same with books.
The majority of books fail because nobody sat with the author to help them them find a category which they can both fit in (so that librarians know how to categorize their book) and stand out (blue ocean).
Take my book How I Sold 80,000 Books. This is my big business card.
How does it fit in? It answers the question “How do I sell more books?”, just like its competing titles.
How does it stand out? It solves the question “How do I sell more books?” using the 4Ps marketing mix framework.
4,5 MONTHS BEFORE LAUNCH – OUTLINE
Writers often label themselves as planners vs. pantsters. I’m a huge believer of planning.
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
YOU know where you are going — you want to hook your readers, give them an unforgettable reading experience and get them to take action.
To be able to achieve that, you need an outline.
4 MONTHS BEFORE LAUNCH – WRITE
NaNoWriMo gives you one month to write a 50,000-word manuscript. Thousands of writers manage to reach that goal.
If you don’t love to write but still want a book, you can speak it to your phone and then get a ghostwriter to shape it into book material.
3 MONTHS BEFORE LAUNCH – DEVELOPMENTAL EDIT
Wow! You should now be holding a first draft of your professionally written manuscript in your hands. Congratulations!
Do you run and publish it? No, not just yet.
You need to know if there are any gaps or loose ends.
That’s what a developmental editor does.
If they find room for improvement, the manuscript goes back to the ghostwriter. If you get all green lights, you’re off to… no not quite to the races… you’re ready for copy-editing.
2,5 MONTHS BEFORE LAUNCH – COPY-EDITING
This is the fun task of going through your manuscript as many times as necessary to make sure that every comma and period is in place.
This is a must. It shows respect for your reader and it should also completely eliminate any future negative reviews regarding writing style.
2 MONTHS BEFORE LAUNCH – A STUNNING COVER
The first thing people will judge your book by is its cover. The cover consists of two main elements: the title and the artwork.
With the title of a non-fiction book you want to show people what results they will be able to achieve when they read your story.
A great example is Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace. If anybody is in a financial struggle, even just holding the book entitled Financial Peace in their hands will bring a sense of peace to them.
Another great approach is a “How to” title. They’re oldies but goodies. They work. For example, when someone buys How I Sold 80,000 Books what they are really buying is that result.
Next is the artwork. Most of your readers won’t be looking at your book in real size. They will be looking at a thumbnail next to other similar book as they search Amazon.
That’s why your book needs to fit into the other books in its genre but also stand out as being unique.
The most important thing to remember is that the title needs to occupy at least one third of the cover. It needs to be clearly visible as a thumbnail. Then you want one big image.
I recommend you order two or three different covers and then let your target audience choose the one that works.
1,5 MONTHS BEFORE LAUNCH – LAUNCH TEAM AND ENDORSEMENTS
- a) You should now have an ARC – an advanced review copy to build your launch team and get endorsements.
Create a landing page where people sign up and get a free review copy of your upcoming book as soon as they leave their email.
This allows you to build your email list and gives you the ability to mass mail all your team members during launch (crucial for the success of your launch).
Where do you get your launch team members? Anywhere your target audience hangs out. Reach out to Amazon reviewers who reviewed books similar to yours, write relevant articles on blogs (guest posts) and invite people to your launch team, appear on podcasts and tell listeners about your upcoming launch, reach out to existing connections.
Remember that about 30 percent of the people who join your launch team will actually leave a review, so if you want to launch with 50 reviews, you need more than 150 people who committed to do so.
You keep building the launch team until about a week before launch (where the time to read the book becomes too short).
- b) Simultaneously you want to reach out to people who could endorse your book so that you can add their quotes on your cover, inside the book and on your Amazon page.
Reach out to your connections, ask for introductions. It’s easiest to get an endorsement from someone you’ve already got an established relationship with but if you don’t it can be a good reason to start engaging with someone.
1 MONTH BEFORE LAUNCH – FUNNEL IN PLACE
Book royalties are great, but you will almost always generate more revenue on the back end than on the front end.
That’s why you need to have a link inside your book that will take your readers to your landing page so that they can subscribe and you can offer them your other books, products or services.
2 WEEKS BEFORE – OPTIMIZE FOR ONLINE SALES
Amazon looks like a bookstore but in reality it’s a search engine. That’s why your book needs to be optimized for online sales.
What this means is that you need to know what readers are looking for and make sure your book pops up at the top of search results when they are looking for answers your book provides.
That’s why I start with keyword research before I even come up with the titles. The full title and subtitle of How I Sold 80,000 Books is packed with keywords, which I found using dedicated software.
Another aspect is choosing the right category. We already touched upon it in positioning. By choosing the right categories you will be visible to those readers who want to read your book most.
You also need a captivating book description and an outstanding bio.
LAUNCH – IT’S SHOW TIME!
Your Amazon page looks stellar (great cover, title, description, bio, author pic, endorsements). Your book is optimized for online sales (keywords, categories) and it’s a book people will want to buy (and continue their relationship with you via your funnel that’s in place).
The #1 strategy here is successful communication with your launch team that you’ve been building up.
I recommend doing a free launch where you make your book free for a few days and urge your team members to download the book from Amazon (even if they already have the ARC) and leave a review which will be marked as “verified”.
Mail your launch members daily, giving them updates on the progress of the launch and sharing milestones, such as copies downloaded, number of reviews written or bestseller rank reached.
After the free days are over, set your book at $0.99 for a week or two and monitor sales. Increase your price every week or two (be consistent) by a dollar with all other factors unchanged and that will allow you to know (not guess) at which price point you make the most in royalties.
As soon as you’ve got your price point right, move to paid advertising (AMS ads, FB ads) and PR opportunities as well as partnerships to keep sales coming, build your list and increase your world domination!
LAUNCH DONE – NOW WHAT?
For more strategies on selling books by the truckload go to http://www.authorwisdom.com/ and download your free copy of my award-winning guide “How I Sold 80,000 Books” now.
Alinka Rutkowska is a multi-award-winning and #1 international best-selling author.
She’s a coach who transforms struggling writers into profitable authorpreneurs.
She’s the founder and CEO of LibraryBub (http://librarybub.com/authors/), which connects librarians with award-winning and bestselling books from independent publishers.
She’s the founder and host of the 5-Figure Author Challenge (http://www.5figureauthorchallenge.com/ which gives authors winning strategies to get to 5 figures in 5 months.
She’s been featured on Fox Business Network, affiliates of ABC, NBC and CBS, Author Marketing Club, The Author Hangout, Kindlepreneur, Book Marketing Mentors, Examiner, She Knows, She Writes, The Writer’s Life and many more.
She’s a sought-after speaker. She’s been voted top 5 speaker and named most creative book marketer at the Bestseller Summit Online.
Download Alinka’s free award-winning guide “How I Sold 80,000 Books” at http://www.authorwisdom.com/
A Degree of Seductiveness
Michael W. Holman Author Interview
The Nefarious, Noble and Nocturnal is a collection of short stories that follow three ghostly women and a vampire. How did this collection come together for you? Did you write them individually over time, or did you set out to write a compilation?
My short story compilation came together when I was getting my apartment organized one weekend this past summer and found some college ruled notebooks. From notations I had made in side margins, all four of them had been written years ago. Frankly, I had forgotten all about them. They appear in chronological order; “Another Helen’s Haircomb” was written in 2011 and is the oldest. The last short story, “There’s Always Another One,” was finished in 2014. As readers can see, even with all of them combined, the cumulative word total is less than 8,500 words, but I remembered that while I attended business college I had enjoyed various compilations and Reader’s Digest editions during breaks from classes. An idea of putting four of my own writing projects together grew more and more appealing to me, so I ran with it. Pun intended.
I really like the cover of the book. How did you decide on what cover to choose?
I appreciate what you wrote about the cover for my compilation, many people have had similar comments, for which I’m grateful. But credit doesn’t belong to me. The Chief Executive Officer of my publisher, Captive Quill Press, is also an author friend of mine, Kenya, and that attractive, haunting woman on “The Nefarious, Noble and Nocturnal” cover was Kenya’s idea. She said market research showed potential consumers react with more interest when a striking female model appears on a book, especially when it is in the paranormal fiction genre. I trust my friend’s savvy, so I approved her suggestion.
I consider this a thrilling paranormal romance collection. Do you read books in that genre? Are there any books in that genre that have influenced you over the years?
Yes, I do read paranormal romances. Perhaps that’s unusual for bachelors, but my reasoning is there’s more opportunity for the creative half of my brain to engage when I read stories with supernatural content, and I can immerse myself with the element of “what if” because it makes for great entertainment, a great escape from my work life which is compartmentalized, ordered. I see enough drab, plain stuff everyday.
I want my imagination to have adventures.
Stephen King’s “Bag of Bones” influenced me to write “Intervention” in particular.
I felt that the characters had a lot of depth. What ideas did you have about your characters when you started and how did that change as you were writing?
As I mentioned earlier, “Another Helen’s Haircomb” was written in 2011, so I can’t remember specific ideas about my characters as I wrote at the time, but the reason I thought it was so important to include within The Nefarious, Noble and Nocturnal is our basic human curiosity and awe when it comes to the vastness of eternity. However, what dove tails with that concept is simply no matter how many technological advances are made, we’re still much like my fictional character of Helen from ancient Athens, in that we grieve and love deeply. Furthermore, according to what I’ve read and heard over my life span, thirteen-year-old girls, especially those who have faced traumatic incidents (such as the loss of a parent), seem to be more apt to accept paranormal manifestations they witness. I took some liberty with a father “rolling with the punches” too, granted, but I thought it was reasonable if I demonstrated a dad and his daughter seeking to adapt as best they could together. Where my other three short stories are concerned, the characters remained as originally written, except for Moira in “There’s Always Another One.” When I did a final edit before I sent my file to you, I decided to make her a bit more complex. While I wanted her to keep a degree of seductiveness, it was vital for readers have a more pronounced idea that she’s no bubble-headed nymphomaniac who happens to be a vampire. She has an agenda, and she has every intention of carrying out her objective with a mercenary’s calculating, cold willfulness to succeed.
What is the next story that you are writing and when will that be published?
Currently, I’m in the process of writing a novel, still on its fifth chapter, which is a ghost story entitled “The Stein and the Studebaker: Book 1 of the Norseman Chronicles.” Another of Stephen King’s older works, “Christine,” is influencing me again, but there will be notable differences when my book is done this coming summer or autumn. For starters, King’s supernatural auto, a 1958 Plymouth Fury, is written as a homicidal, vengeful wraith on wheels. By contrast, the 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk in my story is motivated by a desire to see justice is brought to bear for a murder investigation that went cold in 1960. My intent is to have the story written sometime between June and October of 2017, but I have no idea how long it will take to get the book published after that. Oh, and it will be the first of a trilogy series.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Website
Readers, prepare yourselves, and embark on a supernatural journey spanning the battlefield of Marathon in ancient Greece to the present day in America’s Pacific Northwest. Three long distance runners will encounter ghosts, one falls in love with a beautiful vampire who has an agenda, and all four will cross very different finish lines, whether they’re ready or not.
My Own Personal Power
Brittany Quagan Author Interview
REN: Awakened follows Ren as she is learning to control a power she never knew she had while being hunted by evil. What was the inspiration for you to start writing this novel and the journey that Ren goes on?
Ren’s story is actually a spin on my own, personal life story. As a kid and young adult, I struggled with anxiety and depression, only to come into my own personal power, just as Ren does. Her story is a play on both my life and the world we live in presently where humans fight good and evil everyday; those “evils” can ultimately destroy the world as we know it. I always believed energy affects every one of us, and if it can affect us as humans, why can’t it affect the earth adversely or positively? I think as a society, many of us struggle with anxiety and depression, as well, and as someone who healed from anxiety and depression through understanding the same things Ren learns, why not help others who can relate to her heal the same way? These two ideas fused together and shaped Ren’s journey. Fun fact – the road trip Ren, Kiki, and Gage take from CT to WY is based on the road trip I took with my friend (the real-life version of Kiki), where I literally wrote the shell of REN.
Ren is a fantastic character. How did you set about creating a character with such depth?
Thank you so much! Ren is definitely a complex character. One of the reasons I love her so much is because she’s so realistic; not just as a teen, but for any person who struggles with who they are. But if you remember being a teen, you know the battle that can go down between the thoughts in your mind. Ren faces loss, feelings of displacement, never truly finding “home,” and a lifetime of being told she’s basically insane. When you’ve been told one thing your entire life, you grow to accept it. Then wham!, here’s an entirely new idea for you to accept that says you’re not crazy, but in fact extraordinarily gifted and the worlds survival rests on your shoulders. It should be a relief, to know you’ve got these abilities and aren’t crazy, but it’s quite a load to bear. Ren doesn’t just flip the switch to “oh ok, I’m a hero now!” Readers get to grow with Ren as she steps into this new reality and fights the old thoughts of being “nothing.” In all honesty, creating Ren was easy because I’ve lived through it. I’ve battled the thoughts, I’ve worked hard to recreate my life and move from the “I’m worthless” thoughts to empowering ones. Much of Ren’s experiences were very much my own.
Ren is an Implement, which are beings from a different plane of existence that have ties to Earth’s time line. How did this idea develop as you were writing and were you able to cover everything you wanted?
It’s fun to look back at all of my notes and see how the story started out and what ended up unfolding. It was like watching a movie that played in my head and I just wrote it as it played, so much of the surprise twists and turns were a surprise to me; including the Implements. The Implements started out based on the idea of “Indigo Kids,” a spiritual notion that a group of humans exist today with heightened intuition and gifts meant to change the world. As I wrote, their gifts were tweaked and I wanted them to have more defined characteristics (i.e. Implements of Conception being able to manipulate energy in different ways), rather than just “heightened gifts in a group of people.” That seemed too broad for me. I don’t think, as a writer, you ever cover everything you want to. Ideas forever come to you after your manuscript is complete, so in a way, it’s never complete. But I’m a firm believer in everything happens as it’s supposed to, so the book went out the way it needed to. Much is expanded upon in the following books, though, so readers will learn a great deal more about the Implements and the individual characters lives.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will that be available?
REN: Reposed, the second in the series, is still undergoing some final touches. I’m also working on the third in the series. REN: Reposed is set to come out in Spring 2017. I’m so excited for that to be released, it’s my favorite!
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Website
Book Cover Reveal
Check out the new book cover!
Seventeen-year-old Ren Nagel knows that the strange things she’s seen are real–even if no one else believes her. But, when she’s locked up in a psychiatric hospital; she loses hope that anyone will ever truly be on her side.
Then everything changes. With the help of a new friend, Ren breaks out. It’s when she’s on the run that she learns who she really is.
Hunted by evil, Ren must learn to control a power she never knew she had, organize a coalition of people she never knew existed, and remind humanity why fighting the darkness is a big part of being human.
Sometimes, feeling different is much more than just a feeling. For Ren, it means the fate of the world.
LITERARY TITAN 