My latest promotion is the parody 'The Last Simple', written a long time ago, in 2011. I had read most of the Dan Brown novels published up to that date and had enjoyed them, up to a point. Dan has a method of writing that keeps the story moving and gives the impression that much of the storyline is well researched. However, in line with most novels, you only have to stray into your own sphere of knowledge and specialism to realise that the author is winging it a little.
That's not a criticism, by the way. We all do it, when we have to write about things we have limited experience of. For me the warning bells sound when authors start writing about aircraft, and how they fly. I've spent enough time working around fixed and rotary winged aircraft to know when someone is making assumptions, based no doubt on snatched views of a flight deck and scenes from movies. I'm sure practically every reader with specialist knowledge cringes with every book they read and film they watch, it's just that we all cringe in different parts.
Anyway, the winging was one thing. The trend towards ever shorter chapters was another. I get it, write short, punchy chapters and readers can park the book after two stops on the subway, the perfect commuting aide. Dan, or more probably his publisher, took this to a new level. To me a chapter is a self contained unit. Sometimes it can contain several perspectives but there should be some form of unity from start to end of the chapter. Many of Dan's chapters ended in the middle of a subject and the next chapter picked right up where the previous one had ended. That's a very artificial way of breaking a story up and to me it jarred, however after the Da Vinci Code became an international best seller the technique appears to have become legitimised.
So The Last Simple was born. In part it is a parody of several of Dan's novels - if you've read any of his books you should be able to spot most of them fairly easily. But it has it's own life as well and is pretty tongue in cheek. For starters, the characters in the book know they are characters in a book. In the case of Bradford, the lead character, he knows he's the lead in a third rate parody of a Dan Brown novel, but his ambition is to be one of Dan's lead characters. The trouble is, he doesn't know if he has to dumb up or down for the gig.
There is a lot of wordplay, puns and silly gags running through the book and none of these are meant to reflect on Dan Brown. I tried to cram in as many silly jokes as I could on every page. Some will make you groan, hopefull many will make you smile.
The promotion is time limited and finishes before the next weekend, probably Friday morning UK time. Of course, if you have access to Kindle Unlimited then the book is free to download any time you choose. For those stumbling across this blog entry too late, the book is reasonably priced anyway.
Books
Books written by Ray Sullivan
Showing posts with label Free download. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free download. Show all posts
Sunday, 29 March 2020
Saturday, 5 April 2014
Pre-order Assassin and get another (maybe two) books free
* I've just been alerted to a fault with the email link below - now fixed. If you have tried using it and received a failure delivery notice, please resubmit. Apologies for any inconvenience*
As part of my pre-order promotion I'm offering anyone who can prove they have pre-ordered Assassin from an eBook store the opportunity to download one of my other books via Smashwords for free. And when I say one of my books, I'm letting you choose which one. If you have already pre-ordered the book or do so between now and release date (1 May), then just forward the confirmation email to me at contact@raysullivanbooks.com stating which of my other books you would like to obtain for free then I will generate and email you back a code for Smashwords that will allow you to access your chosen book for free in any eBook format you wish. As an added incentive, I'm offering the first one hundred such pre-orders the chance to download any two of my books in this way.
My reasons for this promotion are to try and sell more books (obviously) but also to try and raise more awareness of my books in general. Both my website and my Smashwords pages are showing that I've picked up a fair amount of interest in the last two months or so but there's a lot of readers out there who will be unaware of my books at all. By setting Assassin up for pre-order it allows all pre-ordered book sales to be accrued on the same day. If there are enough sales in one go, the book rises up the rankings, enhancing visibility. It's a one-off opportunity to sell my name through a book.
So, for $0.99 (or the £ or Euro equivalent) you can obtain up to two of my other books for free. That's an average of $0.33 a book, which has to be a bargain.
The books you can choose from are:
Parallel Lives
The Journeymen
Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning
Skin
Digital Life Form
The Last Simple
Project: Evil
To read up the blurb on any or all of these, please follow the link below to my book website, or visit your favourite eBook seller and read about them there.
I look forward to hearing from you.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit my Book Website here
Visit Project: Evil Website here Visit DLF Website here
Follow me on Twitter - @RayASullivan
Join me on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me
As part of my pre-order promotion I'm offering anyone who can prove they have pre-ordered Assassin from an eBook store the opportunity to download one of my other books via Smashwords for free. And when I say one of my books, I'm letting you choose which one. If you have already pre-ordered the book or do so between now and release date (1 May), then just forward the confirmation email to me at contact@raysullivanbooks.com stating which of my other books you would like to obtain for free then I will generate and email you back a code for Smashwords that will allow you to access your chosen book for free in any eBook format you wish. As an added incentive, I'm offering the first one hundred such pre-orders the chance to download any two of my books in this way.
My reasons for this promotion are to try and sell more books (obviously) but also to try and raise more awareness of my books in general. Both my website and my Smashwords pages are showing that I've picked up a fair amount of interest in the last two months or so but there's a lot of readers out there who will be unaware of my books at all. By setting Assassin up for pre-order it allows all pre-ordered book sales to be accrued on the same day. If there are enough sales in one go, the book rises up the rankings, enhancing visibility. It's a one-off opportunity to sell my name through a book.
So, for $0.99 (or the £ or Euro equivalent) you can obtain up to two of my other books for free. That's an average of $0.33 a book, which has to be a bargain.
The books you can choose from are:
Parallel Lives
The Journeymen
Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning
Skin
Digital Life Form
The Last Simple
Project: Evil
To read up the blurb on any or all of these, please follow the link below to my book website, or visit your favourite eBook seller and read about them there.
I look forward to hearing from you.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit my Book Website here
Follow me on Twitter - @RayASullivan
Join me on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me
Thursday, 25 July 2013
Tripped up by Amazon, Saved by Smashwords, Free Book To All
Although I can see there is a fair amount of interest in Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning from the Amazon listings, there is a glaring oversight on the page - the eBook isn't being listed!
I've had an email from Amazon stating that the book is live in all regions and they also sent me a link to the page it's on - the page exists somewhere in Amazon and the link opens it, but there is no pricing information so I suspect there's been a hitch there. I've emailed them so the book should appear soon, I hope.
In the meantime can I suggest you check the book out on Smashwords, instead? I've broken with convention and ignored Smashwords' ruling that if there is adult content then to indicate it - there are profanities, lots of violence and the merest suggestion of sex if you're averse to those topics, but looking at the content that removing the 'prude filter' reveals shows me that actually, there is a lot worse on Smashwords. It has become a bit of a dumping ground for - ahem - explicit erotica. I've previously tended to list my books as containing adult content and I know a lot of people struggle to find them on Smashwords as a result, but not this baby!
Anyway, here's a link to Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning
And here's a reason to go there today. XY33F This code, when used when purchasing a copy of the book, will render the price to zero. That's right, for a limited period I'm giving the eBook version away. But not for long, so you'll need to act fast.
Feel free to share this link with your friends.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit my Book Website here
Visit Project: Evil Website here Visit DLF Website here
Follow me on Twitter - @RayASullivan
Join me on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me
I've had an email from Amazon stating that the book is live in all regions and they also sent me a link to the page it's on - the page exists somewhere in Amazon and the link opens it, but there is no pricing information so I suspect there's been a hitch there. I've emailed them so the book should appear soon, I hope.
In the meantime can I suggest you check the book out on Smashwords, instead? I've broken with convention and ignored Smashwords' ruling that if there is adult content then to indicate it - there are profanities, lots of violence and the merest suggestion of sex if you're averse to those topics, but looking at the content that removing the 'prude filter' reveals shows me that actually, there is a lot worse on Smashwords. It has become a bit of a dumping ground for - ahem - explicit erotica. I've previously tended to list my books as containing adult content and I know a lot of people struggle to find them on Smashwords as a result, but not this baby!
Anyway, here's a link to Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning
And here's a reason to go there today. XY33F This code, when used when purchasing a copy of the book, will render the price to zero. That's right, for a limited period I'm giving the eBook version away. But not for long, so you'll need to act fast.
Feel free to share this link with your friends.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit my Book Website here
Follow me on Twitter - @RayASullivan
Join me on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me
Friday, 10 May 2013
The Numbers Game
When I finished my first couple of novels I tried to get published through what was then the only available route, excepting vanity publishing. I bought the Writers and Artists Yearbook, followed all the considered wisdom of the day and started to pitch my books. Not to publishers, it was pretty well clear that unsolicited manuscripts from unknown authors to the publishing houses would hit the reject pile unopened. Only those unknown authors who had achieved fame and popularity by other means such as playing sports successfully or being a TV celebrity, in all of its variable meanings, could go straight to the publisher.
No, I tried the accepted route and pitched at various literary agents and quickly realised a couple of home truths. First, those literary agents who had access to the publishing houses, had pretty much enough work to not want to break a sweat on a unknown author. Second, they didn't worry overmuch about reading the submitted material before rejecting it, based on some of the reject letters I received. I realised that pitching like this is a long slog - Stephen King famously had a nail above his writing desk overflowing with reject slips - and consequently I got on with the day job while continuing to write in my spare time.
And then came the self publishing revolution and here we are. All grown up and published. Now it might seem a little strange that someone trying to eke out a marginal second income from words should admit to being more interested in numbers, but apart from having a degree in mathematics I've worked in manufacturing industry monitoring production figures for a remarkably more rewarding income in my recent past, so for me monitoring the numbers is more interesting than many other parts of this industry.
It can be a little frustrating, because following the numbers can often yield way more insight than a hundred thousand words of inspirational text, in my opinion. Take Amazon, for example. Many self published authors do so through Amazon, some exclusively. In fact I suspect there are few who don't, and would question anyone who chose to not do so, despite my recent call to arms to stage a boycott on the company - which although it didn't get a lot of vocal support proved to be a very popular posting which suggests a few of you were thinking of joining in. Anyway, if and when you sell a book through Amazon you find out which region it is sold in - North America, which until recently used to include Canada but now includes India instead. Even if the sales data reveals where your books are selling best - my Amazon data indicates that North America is my best market followed by the UK, not sure if I would know if any of the US sales were actually India sales at present - I don't have any information about where I'm nearly selling books to Amazon. To make that a little clearer, I have no visibility of where my books are being looked at, no idea if people are cruising past my books on Amazon. If I did I might be able to target promotions in different regions.
Smashwords does let me know about drive-bys, but only by book. I don't know how many of the page views and book sample downloads took place in the US, how many in the UK or Germany or France, although I do often get some idea of where books were bought when the likes of Barnes & Noble return sales data to Smashwords. In some cases I can even narrow the sales down to sub regions - I watched Digital Life Form sell in one Canadian state then start moving around Canada state by state over a period of a couple of weeks for a short period last year. I could almost feel the emails flying between friends and family who had found an eBook that worked for them.
It's a similar story with this blog - I'm sure those of you who write a blog will track your daily pageviews and Blogger, Google's blogging tool, provides data that is tantalisingly helpful while not helping at all. For example I know that the US is the main landing location for my blog, with the UK in second place. In fact, in recent weeks, the UK hasn't featured greatly, the US has increased its readership followed by a slew of European locations. But I can't tell you if the main US readership is East or West coast, or whether it is the mid-West, perhaps? I can make some assumptions by the timings of hits but it's not scientific. Maybe I wouldn't do anything with the information even if I had it, but it would be nice to have the choice.
One of the things the data could help with would be the impact on pricing on different price points. We can all make assumptions about who can afford books and what they are likely to pay. Well, although it's not all the data I would like to play with, Smashwords' CEO Mark Coker has provided an update to last year's survey on eBook selling trends. Smashwords have an advantage in that they see a lot of books sold directly through them and through the likes of Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony etc and they can crunch the data to see if there are any trends. There are and they've shared them in their latest blog entry which you can read using the link above. Please note that Smashwords' blog is an incremental blog, so if you've stumbled across this entry some time after I've posted it you'll need to scroll down a bit to reach the May 8th entry.
I'm not going to regurgitate all of the data that the posting provides - Mark does his usual ultra detailed analysis in a fine way that I would only mangle - but I can reveal that some things haven't changed over the year and one of those is that books offered for free are the most downloaded - now who would have thought?
One final point on numbers, for this posting anyway. When I started self publishing I read up on all the considered wisdom on the subject and top of the list was to start a personal website to promote the books and the other was to start blogging. I didn't know what a blog was back then so have had to develop my own style over the last couple of years. I've just looked up and this is published blog entry number 500. I don't know if that's a milestone in blog terms, but I reckon that between my book serialisations and general musings I've posted somewhere near 400,000 words in those 500 postings. So, to celebrate, I'm adding a little extra to this posting. My first book, Parallel Lives is currently listed for free at all good booksellers except Amazon, for reasons I've adequately explained in earlier postings a week or so ago. For a very limited period I'm making the other five books free for a day or so, but only through Smashwords, using the codes provided below. Feel free to download a copy of any of these books you may be missing and do pass the codes to friends and family - just remember that they will expire fairly soon. If you pass them the blog URL instead of just the codes, then I may be able to derive some more data about you guys.
The Journeymen - MW35J
Skin - HP59D
Digital Life Form - ND94T
The Last Simple - AK96K
Project: Evil - MQ28M
Visit my Book Website here
Visit Project: Evil Website here Visit DLF Website here
Follow me on Twitter - @RayASullivan
Join me on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me
No, I tried the accepted route and pitched at various literary agents and quickly realised a couple of home truths. First, those literary agents who had access to the publishing houses, had pretty much enough work to not want to break a sweat on a unknown author. Second, they didn't worry overmuch about reading the submitted material before rejecting it, based on some of the reject letters I received. I realised that pitching like this is a long slog - Stephen King famously had a nail above his writing desk overflowing with reject slips - and consequently I got on with the day job while continuing to write in my spare time.
And then came the self publishing revolution and here we are. All grown up and published. Now it might seem a little strange that someone trying to eke out a marginal second income from words should admit to being more interested in numbers, but apart from having a degree in mathematics I've worked in manufacturing industry monitoring production figures for a remarkably more rewarding income in my recent past, so for me monitoring the numbers is more interesting than many other parts of this industry.
It can be a little frustrating, because following the numbers can often yield way more insight than a hundred thousand words of inspirational text, in my opinion. Take Amazon, for example. Many self published authors do so through Amazon, some exclusively. In fact I suspect there are few who don't, and would question anyone who chose to not do so, despite my recent call to arms to stage a boycott on the company - which although it didn't get a lot of vocal support proved to be a very popular posting which suggests a few of you were thinking of joining in. Anyway, if and when you sell a book through Amazon you find out which region it is sold in - North America, which until recently used to include Canada but now includes India instead. Even if the sales data reveals where your books are selling best - my Amazon data indicates that North America is my best market followed by the UK, not sure if I would know if any of the US sales were actually India sales at present - I don't have any information about where I'm nearly selling books to Amazon. To make that a little clearer, I have no visibility of where my books are being looked at, no idea if people are cruising past my books on Amazon. If I did I might be able to target promotions in different regions.
Smashwords does let me know about drive-bys, but only by book. I don't know how many of the page views and book sample downloads took place in the US, how many in the UK or Germany or France, although I do often get some idea of where books were bought when the likes of Barnes & Noble return sales data to Smashwords. In some cases I can even narrow the sales down to sub regions - I watched Digital Life Form sell in one Canadian state then start moving around Canada state by state over a period of a couple of weeks for a short period last year. I could almost feel the emails flying between friends and family who had found an eBook that worked for them.
It's a similar story with this blog - I'm sure those of you who write a blog will track your daily pageviews and Blogger, Google's blogging tool, provides data that is tantalisingly helpful while not helping at all. For example I know that the US is the main landing location for my blog, with the UK in second place. In fact, in recent weeks, the UK hasn't featured greatly, the US has increased its readership followed by a slew of European locations. But I can't tell you if the main US readership is East or West coast, or whether it is the mid-West, perhaps? I can make some assumptions by the timings of hits but it's not scientific. Maybe I wouldn't do anything with the information even if I had it, but it would be nice to have the choice.
One of the things the data could help with would be the impact on pricing on different price points. We can all make assumptions about who can afford books and what they are likely to pay. Well, although it's not all the data I would like to play with, Smashwords' CEO Mark Coker has provided an update to last year's survey on eBook selling trends. Smashwords have an advantage in that they see a lot of books sold directly through them and through the likes of Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony etc and they can crunch the data to see if there are any trends. There are and they've shared them in their latest blog entry which you can read using the link above. Please note that Smashwords' blog is an incremental blog, so if you've stumbled across this entry some time after I've posted it you'll need to scroll down a bit to reach the May 8th entry.
I'm not going to regurgitate all of the data that the posting provides - Mark does his usual ultra detailed analysis in a fine way that I would only mangle - but I can reveal that some things haven't changed over the year and one of those is that books offered for free are the most downloaded - now who would have thought?
One final point on numbers, for this posting anyway. When I started self publishing I read up on all the considered wisdom on the subject and top of the list was to start a personal website to promote the books and the other was to start blogging. I didn't know what a blog was back then so have had to develop my own style over the last couple of years. I've just looked up and this is published blog entry number 500. I don't know if that's a milestone in blog terms, but I reckon that between my book serialisations and general musings I've posted somewhere near 400,000 words in those 500 postings. So, to celebrate, I'm adding a little extra to this posting. My first book, Parallel Lives is currently listed for free at all good booksellers except Amazon, for reasons I've adequately explained in earlier postings a week or so ago. For a very limited period I'm making the other five books free for a day or so, but only through Smashwords, using the codes provided below. Feel free to download a copy of any of these books you may be missing and do pass the codes to friends and family - just remember that they will expire fairly soon. If you pass them the blog URL instead of just the codes, then I may be able to derive some more data about you guys.
The Journeymen - MW35J
Skin - HP59D
Digital Life Form - ND94T
The Last Simple - AK96K
Project: Evil - MQ28M
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit my Book Website here
Follow me on Twitter - @RayASullivan
Join me on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me
Saturday, 23 March 2013
Get a Bit of Jo Bo in Your Life
If you enjoy music you may have heard of one of the fastest up and coming guitarists of this generation. He's been around a while now and is considered to be one of the hardest working guys in the business. His name is Joe Bonamassa and he's served a long apprenticeship along the way.
I first became aware of Joe a few years ago when his Sloe Gin CD was released. Despite this being a major blues hit, Joe was working for peanuts back then. I had the opportunity to see him in a Leeds venue for £15 - that wouldn't cover the programme today. I had to pass that opportunity up but did get to see him last year at the Liverpool Echo Arena. Here's a tip - do try and get a front row seat (I have my wife to thank for that) - but also consider taking ear plugs with you if that front row seat is facing the PA speaker! I was deaf for half an hour after the gig and my father-in-Law took nearly three days to hear anything!
Joe is promoting a new CD/DVD/Blu-Ray outing, an acoustic set in Vienna that is due to be released anytime soon. If you like Joe's music or would like to try a track out, why not follow the link below to download a free track - Athens to Athens.
If you know someone who may like the song then why not copy and paste the link for them?
I think you'll enjoy this free song download from one of my favourite musicians and #1 billboard artist, Joe Bonamassa. Get the free song from his latest album "An Acoustic Evening at the Vienna Opera House" from the link below. http://mbsy.co/cGvH
Why not take a look at my books and read up on my Biog here
Want to see what B L O'Feld is up to? Take a look at his website here
Worried/Interested in the secretive world of DLFs? Take a look at this website dedicated to DLFs here, if you dare!
I first became aware of Joe a few years ago when his Sloe Gin CD was released. Despite this being a major blues hit, Joe was working for peanuts back then. I had the opportunity to see him in a Leeds venue for £15 - that wouldn't cover the programme today. I had to pass that opportunity up but did get to see him last year at the Liverpool Echo Arena. Here's a tip - do try and get a front row seat (I have my wife to thank for that) - but also consider taking ear plugs with you if that front row seat is facing the PA speaker! I was deaf for half an hour after the gig and my father-in-Law took nearly three days to hear anything!
Joe is promoting a new CD/DVD/Blu-Ray outing, an acoustic set in Vienna that is due to be released anytime soon. If you like Joe's music or would like to try a track out, why not follow the link below to download a free track - Athens to Athens.
If you know someone who may like the song then why not copy and paste the link for them?
I think you'll enjoy this free song download from one of my favourite musicians and #1 billboard artist, Joe Bonamassa. Get the free song from his latest album "An Acoustic Evening at the Vienna Opera House" from the link below. http://mbsy.co/cGvH
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me
I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me
Want to see what B L O'Feld is up to? Take a look at his website here
Worried/Interested in the secretive world of DLFs? Take a look at this website dedicated to DLFs here, if you dare!
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