Breaking Into the Top 100

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So this happened:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,398 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

     #93 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > African American > Women's Fiction

     #97 in Books > Literature & Fiction > African American > Women's Fiction

     #169 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > African American > Urban

This is in relation to my first book, The Dumb Bitch.  Just doing the math, with something like 8 million books on Amazon, a rank of 6398 puts my book in the top .10%.  (That's the top tenth of the top 1%.) And on top of that, I broke into the Top 100 in a couple of categories.

Needless to say, I've uber-excited since seeing that ranking this morning.  It seems that readers are really liking not just the first book, but also the second in the series, A Ratchet City Tale 2: Dee's Story. It makes me all the more eager to finish the third book, which I hope to release in a few weeks.

(That reminds me: If anyone is interested in being notified when I release new books, please subscribe to my mailing list:  http://eepurl.com/bGbgR1)

Thanks again to all my readers for your support.

My First Free Promotion

My first free promotion started yesterday.  I'm running it for The Dumb Bitch, making the book free until October 19. 

For those who don't know, book marketing and promotion is a necessity of life for most self-published authors. In most companies and corporations (McDonald's, Coke, etc.), you generally have to advertise your product to make potential consumers aware of it. Books are no different.

In this instance, I feel like I've been having success with my Ratchet City series, but I'm always eager to find new fans.  A free book promotion seemed like a an excellent way to do that, as it would [hopefully] put the first book in the series into the hands of a wide swath of readers.

It's only been a day, but I feel like the promo is going very well. I gave away over 400 books yesterday.  That means - potentially - over 400 new fans!  Even better, I got to see this on Amazon:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #461 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

• #2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > African American > Urban
• #2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Urban

Of course, I also had to get a screen grab as well:

Needless to say, I'm giddy with excitement.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it does just as well today.


*Update (10/26/16): As luck would have it, I actually managed to grab the #1 spot for a little while in the Free Store while my promo was going on.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #370 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

• #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > African American > Urban
• #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Urban

It's not easy to reach #1 - Free or Paid - so I was giddy with excitement to see this.  Hopefully it's the shape of things to come.

New Book Release - A Ratchet City Tale 2: Dee's Story

I am proud to announce that A Ratchet City Tale 2: Dee's Story is now available.  Since the first book was released, readers have been asking for a sequel and I'm happy to oblige.

Writing this book has been a lot of fun, as you can imagine, but I'm glad to have finally reached the point where it can be published.

Needless to say, I've tried to remain true to the flavor of the first novel that seemed to resonate so well with readers. Fortunately, the world of Ratchet City has an endless supply of rich, vibrant characters (as well as colorful stories), so maintaining the same vibe has not been as difficult as one might expect (although I wouldn't go so far as to call it easy, either).

As always, I'm very grateful for the support I received on the first Ratchet City novel and hope the second novel will also receive a warm reception from readers.  Now, off on work on A Ratchet City Tale 3.  (No rest for the wicked...)

Excerpt From Ratchet City #2

Finally, my second book is almost ready for release.  It is the second book in the Ratchet City series, entitled "Dee's Story (Ratchet City #2)."  With that in mind, I decided to post another excerpt:

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     Soon as I unlocked the door Keisha, was in my face yelling, talking about how my case worker had been by there earlier and I was nowhere to be found.
     She was hollering and screaming at me. Shit, you woulda thought she was a real momma, the way she was going off.
     I just walked past her ass, pulling my bags right along with me.

     I was more than ready to put my stuff down, take a shower, and lay down, but this bitch felt like I, me, Dee’Adra, owed her crackhead ass an explanation.
     I counted in my head and said by ten if this bitch wasn’t outta my face I was gone fuck her up.
     One. Still talking… Two. Right on my heels… Five. I was placing the bags inside my closet… Seven. I popped my neck, because I realized I wasn’t gone make it to ten, and this bitch was still gone be talking shit!
     Nine. Fuck it! I grabbed Keisha around her pencil ass neck, pushing her against the wall next to my closet.
     I got an inch away from her face, still squeezing, not caring if this hoe took her last breath right there in my hands.
     She was clawing at my fingers but I outweighed her by at least fifty pounds.
      I told her in the calmest voice I could, “Bitch, when I let go you better turn the fuck around and walk away. If you tell anybody – my case worker, the police, anybody – I will take you out faster than that pipe you suck! You understand, bitch?” She couldn’t respond, so I told her to blink twice for yes.

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As before, I had a great time writing this book.  I hope readers will enjoy it as well.

Promoting My Book with Amazon Marketing Services: Results

Okay, so I'm still new to this writing thing and still learning the ropes.  There are so many parts to putting a book out there that go beyond just writing: getting a decent cover, having a strong launch, etc. One of the many issues you have to get your arms around is marketing and promotion.

To be honest, you can't just release your book with virtually no fanfare and expect it to become a bestseller.  Like winning the lottery, it just isn't going to happen for most of us.  That being the case, you have to market and promote your work. And it was with that in mind that I looked at Amazon Marketing Services.

AMS is almost exactly what you'd expect based on its name:  it's a service that allows you to market and promote your products on Amazon. You have two ways to tailor your marketing efforts: 1) you can target prospective customers based on categories, or 2) you can target them based on products.  I took a two-fold approach and did ad campaigns both ways.  Thus, I was marketing my book based on certain categories or interests (eg, women's fiction, romance, etc.), and also promoting it by tying it to the best-selling books in my genre.  In short, if someone searched for books in the women's fiction category there was a chance that an ad for my book would pop up.  Likewise, if they were looking at the bestsellers in street literature or urban fiction, an ad for my book was likely to appear.

The point of all this, of course, was to get sales.  So the question is, how effective was AMS?

If I'm being perfectly honest, the answer is "not very."

In the 15 days prior to using AMS (which is roughly the two weeks that followed the release of The Dumb Bitch), I sold about twice as many books as during the 15 days after signing up.  And while it was nice to see the ads for my book popping up (and realize that I was getting something for my money), they didn't translate into the amount of bang I should have been getting for my buck. 

Long story short, I applaud Amazon for trying (and there are some bright spots to AMS), but I don't think this one is a winner in the long term.  If you're thinking of trying this to promote your book, I'd advise you to save your money.  The payoff for this for utilizing this particular product just isn't there.

Excerpt from "The Dumb Bitch 2"

Everybody's been asking me about the sequel to The Dumb Bitch.  Just to show that I'm actually working on the next book, here's the intro from The Dumb Bitch 2: Dee’s Story:

What’s up y’all? I know I’m the last person ya’ll wanna hear from after what I did to that hoe La-La, but fuck her!  She was a dummy - ain’t have no sense. A real bitch woulda peeped game a mile away. Y’all can say I was dirty all ya want, but that hoe was lucky all she got was 20. She had that fine ass brother backin' for her, so she took the plea. I even heard the bitch tried to snitch, but it was too little, too late. She had it all and didn’t even much know it. She always had her grandma. I ain’t have no muthafuckin' body but Dee’Adra Yvonne Reese! Whatcha know 'bout suckin' dick at thirteen to sleep in a nigga's pissy-ass closet just to keep warm cause yo momma won't let you in? Yeah, exactly - not a muthafuckin' thing! So sit back and get ready to hear a real Ratchet City Tale….

Staying Motivated to Write

I'm still hard at work on The Dumb Bitch II, trying to hurry up and get this thing done.  Fans have been asking for the sequel since the first book got published in mid-November.  It's still hard to believe that yesterday marked three weeks since I became a published writer.  It still feels weird.

 

I'm working hard to stay on point, though.  Still, it can be difficult to stay motivated to write every single day. (In that way, I suppose it's a lot like having to go to the gym and work out every day.)  There's a temptation to fall back into the old routine: watching TV, goofing off online, etc. 

 

Plus, there's all the stuff that goes along with publishing that I never thought about, such as marketing. I'm constantly having to find ways to promote my work, whether advertising on Amazon, posting on Facebook, and so on. It's something that almost all indie writers have to do if they want to be successful.

 

All in all, there are a lot of things that can cut into your writing if you let them. That's why I'm focused on keeping my eyes on the prize: becoming a successful author. I'll still have to do those other things, but writing every day is the one thing that is simply mandatory.