Filed under: Amazon, Connections, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, tech | Tags: Amazon, direct publishing, Kindle, literature, Science Fiction, technology, travel, TV Tropes, writing
Some miscellaneous bits this morning…
Since the close of the Kindle edition promotion on Saturday, about two dozen people have actually purchased a copy of Communion of Dreams in one form or another. Yay! Keep it up, people!
Oh, no! – TV Tropes Warning – while doing some ego-surfing this morning (actually, I’m still trying to get a handle on what promotional efforts work, what don’t) I found that CoD is the first listing under the ‘Literature’ sub-heading of the TV Tropes entry on First Contact Team. I always get sucked into TV Tropes, because it is such a good tool for exploring modern literature in all its various and sundry forms, and it is cool to be included in it. Thanks to whomever added Communion of Dreams to the entry! (Any chance of getting a direct link to the CoD homepage?)
As you all know, I screwed up and wasn’t able to extend the promotion to yesterday. However, there’s another day coming soon which is also important in the novel: April 12. From the very first paragraph of the book:
He could see four or five thousand buffalo, one of the small herds. They stretched out in a long line below him, wide enough to fill the shallow valley along this side of the river, coming partway up the sides of the hill, not fifty meters from where he stood. The sky was its perpetual blue-grey, as clear as it ever got at this latitude, though the sun was almost bright. Late winter snow, churned into a dull brown mass by the buffalo where they trekked along the valley floor, nonetheless glinted along the tops of the hills. Weather forecasts said more snow was coming. It was Friday, April 12.
Hmm…let’s see if I can get my act together for that date. Stay tuned.
Lastly, there are some new reviews up on the Amazon page for Communion, and I’d invite you to check them out, rate them if you find them useful. As I said yesterday, reviews seem to really make a difference – if you’ve read the book, please consider writing your own review. Thanks!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction | Tags: blogging, direct publishing, jim downey, literature, suspenseful novel, technology, writing
So, as noted previously, forty years from today is the actual day which Darnell Sidwell finds the ‘artifact’ on Titan. I won’t say more in case of, well, spoilers.
Anyway, as I said, I had intended on having the Kindle promotion extend into today, but managed to screw that up. Since Amazon hasn’t gotten around to activating the additional promotion day, I’ll just have to pick a date here later this month to do so.
But that’s OK – yesterday’s promotion was actually quite good. It was slow going until one of the big “free ebook” sites posted about Communion of Dreams being free, and then things took off quite nicely. In the end, there were a total of 1,777 downloads of the book putting Communion at #1 in the “High Tech SF” category of the free Kindle store for much of the late evening. Yay!
And altogether, that means that there were 7,067 people who got the book in one form or another in all of March. Add in the 111 already in April (the difference between the accounting and scheduling branches of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing – though there have been 4 actual sales of the book this morning already), plus the sales in the first six weeks of the book being available, and that puts us well over 8,000 total copies of the book distributed. As I’ve said previously:
And again I would like to thank everyone who has helped to make this a reality. And in particular I appreciate everyone who has taken the time to let me know they’ve enjoyed the book, or have gone and written a review on Amazon. That is both rewarding and very helpful.
And speaking of which, if you *have* read the book, please do take a few minutes to review it on Amazon. It seems to make a huge difference – I’ve seen several people comment elsewhere that they decided to take a chance on the book because of the reviews. Likewise, rate the other reviews, or ‘Like’ the book – that also seems to make a substantial difference.
Lastly, just a note – you can ‘Like’ the Facebook page and follow me on Twitter. Now that the book is somewhat unsteadily standing on its own feet I plan on cutting back on the promotional efforts on my regular Facebook account. I will keep posting info here, but mostly I intend to focus communication about upcoming events on those other outlets specific to the book.
Thanks again, one and all – and Happy Artifact Day!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Feedback, Science Fiction, Space, Writing stuff | Tags: gratuitous sex, literature, suspenseful novel, writing
One of the more enjoyable aspects of having Communion of Dreams out there is the consistently positive response it is generating. Reading reviews, seeing what others post about it in comments & blog posts, getting messages – all of these help affirm that the work which went into writing the book was worthwhile.
This morning I opened my CoD inbox to find a very nice message from someone who had just read the book. After favorably commenting on my book, and then relating some other books by VERY big-name authors he had read recently, he said this:
The [other author’s] novel mentioned was, I think, his best to date, and while it ended beautifully, there was a darkness behind it that left a tragic feeling when I was done. The other two are very, very grim indeed. I mention all of these because in the absence of the awe and sense of newness of the pioneers of science fiction, most authors take the route of being deliberately cynical–often bolster their flagging motivation with plenty of sex.
I am greatly impressed that you have created a suspenseful novel without gratuitous sex or violence, and paint a hopeful human picture in what could easily have been the run-of-the-mill depressing post-apocalyptic world.
I have to chuckle – it seems almost like a back-handed compliment, though I know it wasn’t intended that way. And in truth, he’s quite right. In fact, this is what I said in regards to that in my return note:
Thanks – both the core story and the decision to leave out the gratuitous sex & violence was very deliberate (as you know) because I wanted the book to be akin to the SF I enjoyed in my own youth. I wanted not just my contemporaries to enjoy the book, but for it to be enjoyable by their kids and grandkids. I agree that it is impossible at this point to recapture the innocent optimism of Clarke and others, but there’s nothing wrong with trying to again find optimism in understanding the limitations of the world – I think we’ve lost that in the last couple of decades.
Anyway – yeah, I’m guilty of being a cynical old bastard. But my book isn’t.
And on that note, a reminder that today is a promotional day: you can get the Kindle edition for free, all day. Help me get the word out, if you would be so kind.
Thanks!
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 