Is My Book A Success Yet?

In terms of book sales, June has been a crappy month. In fact, it’s easily going down as the worst month in A Soul to Steal’s nine month history as a published work, including when I first beta-launched it last September.

After a blockbuster February and March, book sales have steadily dropped off, only to collapse completely when Amazon changed its algorithms around May 1. I’m hardly the only one to whom this has happened. Author’s blogs are filled with similar stories. Some wonder openly if this is the end of “indie” authors, whether Amazon—probably unintentionally—has killed us off.

I’ve struggled with this question, only to conclude that the answer really doesn’t matter. The real question is this: why did I publish my book in the first place?

I did it so I could tell stories to other people. Years ago, I wrote a good book. I consistently believed that if I could put it in people’s hands, they would enjoy it. Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing Program gave me a chance to test that theory. Sure, I had dreams that it would be a runaway bestseller, storming the charts and allowing me to launch my career as a novelist. But in my heart, I knew that wasn’t likely.

So I set a realistic goal for myself: if I sold 1,000 copies, I would consider the book a “success.” I passed that goal in early January, not quite four months after the novel first went on sale. But I wasn’t satisfied.

See, I have a problem with the notion of “success.” If A Soul to Steal was selling in the Top 100 Kindle books, I might reasonably conclude it was successful. But barring that, I have no idea what my parameters should be. How many sales are enough? Should the book always sell well, or should it wax and wane? How come I’m not selling like Fifty Shades of Grey?

In the past couple months, I have checked the sales figures and despaired. Has this book gone as far as it can? What if this is the end? Does that make the book a failure?

A friend of mine asked me recently, “Aren’t you just amazed at how well the book has done? Do you ever sit back and think, ‘Wow! I did it’?”

I stared at him like he was an alien. I never once had that thought. Not once. When people congratulate me on how well the book has done, I inwardly assume they are kidding—or worse, they don’t really know what “success” is in this business. After all, no one is buying movie rights. And it’s not like publishers are beating down my door to offer me a six-figure advance.

But I think I’m the one who needs to change my definition of success.

To help me, I decided to total up some statistics. To date, I’ve sold more than 3,800 copies of the book and had it borrowed around 250 times. During the book’s free days, an additional 35,925 people have downloaded it. All told, A Soul to Steal has been bought, borrowed or downloaded to more than 40,000 Kindles.

During its run, it has hit multiple Kindle bestseller lists, including #1 for Ghost-Horror and #4 for Horror. It was the thrill of a lifetime to see my book sitting alongside Stephen King’s latest novel, even if it was only briefly. It has even been in the top 20 for Thriller and Suspense novels.

I have sold books in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. I received a note from a gentleman in Romania who said he enjoyed the book and wanted me to write a sequel quickly.

The novel was well reviewed by the vast majority of book bloggers who read it, won praise from random strangers on its Facebook page, and been featured on USA Today. It has earned an average 4.7 rating on Amazon with 88 reviews—all but three of which were 4 or 5 stars. It even earned a celebrity endorsement from Mark Metcalf, the actor who played The Master on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Best of all, I’ve had dozens of people I’ve never met not only compliment the book, but ask me when a sequel will be out (It’s coming soon, I swear).

For me, that is the best sign of all. Not only did people like the book but, God help me, they want me to write more. If the goal was to pen a runaway best seller, then it’s clear I have not succeeded. On the other hand, if the goal was to find and connect with readers, then I think it’s time to lean back and say, “Wow! I did it.”

P.S. As a final hurrah for hitting 40,000 downloads, A Soul to Steal will be free one last time TODAY (Wednesday, June 27). If you haven’t read it yet, check it out.

The Real Reason I Self-Published: A Horror Story

When I was a kid, I played a strange mental game. Several days before a trip away, I would imagine that a monster was out there in the darkness, stalking me.

 Each night he would grow closer and closer and closer until finally… he would arrive at my house to find I had left. Howling in frustration, the vile creature would then sniff the air and begin the long journey to wherever I was visiting. But just as he was about to arrive there… surprise! I’d be gone again, usually back home.

I’m not sure what started the game or how I could overlook the glaring logical fallacy that was part of it. Why didn’t he just wait in my room until I got back? Was he on a deadline or something?

The funny thing is: I barely remembered this game until I started thinking about this column. I couldn’t figure out why it even came up in my memory—and then it all clicked.

I get asked a lot why I self-published my novel or whether I’m actively seeking a traditional publisher (I’m not). I can offer you plenty of logical reasons: the indie label has become more acceptable, the agent querying process was taking too long and the economics of delivering a self-published work have dramatically changed with the development of the ebook. All of these are good, true answers.

But they aren’t the main one—at least not for me.

The truth is I’m running out of time.

Writing novels was something I always wanted to do. In many ways, I feel it is the thing I was born to do. Like many other writers, I am sometimes only 50% engaged in actual real life—there are always stories playing out in my head and they can be rather distracting. Yet for something I genuinely enjoy and view as my destiny, I have wasted a tremendous amount of time NOT doing it.

We can partly blame the traditional publishing houses for this. I finished the first draft of A Soul to Steal in 2001, and had reworked it substantially by 2004. But when it came time to try to publish it, I realized I was up against a vast black wall that was so dark I couldn’t see through it, and so high and wide that I never saw the end of it. It wasn’t that publishers were rejecting the novel—I never even got to that stage of the process. I couldn’t even get agents to read it. It was so disheartening that when my life got busy—kids, more challenging job—I just directed my focus elsewhere.

But it would be a mistake to blame this mostly on the Big Six publishers. I think we all know who the real person to blame is—and I see him in the mirror every day.

It’s true I couldn’t see a way to publish A Soul to Steal. I invested a lot of blood, sweat and tears in that book, and it was going nowhere. But rather than persisting in writing, I gave up. Some of my distractions were legitimate, like my family. Some were definitely not, like trying to reach 100% completion in the single-player mode of Red Dead Redemption.

Two things woke me up from my stupor. The first was reading about Amanda Hocking’s success in publishing her books on Kindle. The second was watching my dad’s progressive deterioration from Alzheimer’s.

I don’t want this to become another post about this, but my dad was diagnosed when he was 63. At the time, he could blog and still carry on a conversation, but writing was difficult. Fast forward six years, and even talking coherently is a challenge for him. It’s been incredibly hard on my mother, my sister and myself, but it has also unfortunately represented something else: my future.

My dad’s mother had Alzheimer’s. Of her sisters who lived long enough, they all succumbed to the disease. The odds that I will eventually get Alzheimer’s are extraordinarily high. When I see what my father has become, I weep for him, but I am also terrified for myself. His mother was diagnosed at 74. He was diagnosed at 63. For some reason doctors can’t explain, people are getting the disease younger and younger.

So if this is my fate—if I’m even fortunate enough to avoid all the other things before then that could kill me, like cancer or a runaway lumber truck on a highway—it’s possible, even likely, that I will be diagnosed even earlier than my father.

Which leaves me wondering: how much time do I have? I’m 37. Can I make it another 26 years until my dad’s age? Or will it be more like 20? 15? 10?

So the decision to self-publish was ultimately an easy one.

I could sit on the sidelines and wait, hoping that somehow I would break through that huge barrier in front of me and score a traditional book contract. But would that ever happen? And how old would I be if it did?

Or I could publish my book, roll the dice that readers would find it and enjoy it, and try to make my dream come true. I looked at the number of years I might have left and decided to focus on doing what I believe I was meant to do.

I read somewhere once that there comes a time when you realize the distance between who you are and who you want to be becomes an insurmountable gulf. I wanted to leap that chasm before it became too wide.

I decided to self-publish because I understand now that the monster I pretended was hunting me when I was a kid wasn’t made up. It’s real and it has a name. It’s called mortality. And it has teeth.

A Soul to Steal Now Topping the Fantasy Charts: The Benefits of Genre Hopping

I’ve written before about the difficulty of deciding what genre A Soul to Steal belongs in. It’s a mystery that turns into a thriller that then turns into an urban fantasy. Along the way, it contains elements of action adventure and romance to boot.

            For the most part, readers have been excited about the blend of genres, although I’ve also made a few angry in the process. Why? Some were excited about the mystery part of the book but didn’t enjoy it when supernatural elements entered into the plot line. This is a legitimate complaint as far as I’m concerned. If you don’t like the supernatural, the book probably isn’t for you.  

I thought putting the Headless Horseman on the cover was a sign that paranormal elements were included—and I’ve made sure to mention those parts of the book in the description on Amazon—but clearly some didn’t get the message.

            But there are also benefits to genre hopping as well. I originally slotted the novel into Horror/Ghost and Horror/Occult, although I never really felt comfortable about the latter as a category. When I re-launched the book with a new cover in February, I also decided to take it out of Occult and move it to Mystery/Thriller/Suspense. As I detailed here, Amazon doesn’t make it easy to find Horror books in less you specifically go looking for them. Mystery and Thriller, in contrast, is the easiest genre to find.

            But after some of the issues raised in reviews, I started to wonder if Suspense was the best space for the book. Yes, it’s a mystery and a thriller, but it’s also what’s defined as “urban fantasy,” mostly because of the paranormal parts of the novel (which become more significant as the book nears its climax).

            At this stage, I’m also worrying about the two sequels to A Soul to Steal. The second book in The Sanheim Chronicles is in its draft stage—and it fits much easier into urban fantasy than it does mystery. I think fans of the first book will definitely enjoy it—but I also would like all the novels in the series to be sitting in the same place.

            So I decided to try something new during my latest free day promotion on Amazon. I took the novel out of Suspense and moved it to Contemporary Fantasy, hoping to find fans that might not have seen it when it was slotted elsewhere.

            I’m happy to say that so far, at least, it’s paying off. Currently, the book is #1 among FREE fantasy books on Amazon. It’s also #1 in Contemporary Fantasy (Amazon’s description for urban fantasy). I admit it is a thrill to see the novel alongside George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones.

            I don’t know, of course, what the result of this experiment will be. Will readers be angry to find a mystery in their urban fantasy novel? I hope not, but you never really know.  But seeing other books in the category, it’s feeling like A Soul to Steal may finally have found its perfect spot.

            Want to find out yourself? The novel is FREE today, May 17, so feel free to download it. If you missed out and are reading this post later, never fear – the novel only costs $2.99, so it’s cheaper than a trip to Starbucks. 

My Novel is Being Featured on USA Today! “An edge-of-your-seat thriller!”

Wanted to share the fantastic news. Over the weekend, USA Today Books featured a terrific review for my novel, A Soul to Steal. Calling it an “edge-of-your-seat thriller,” reviewer Keri English says the novel will keep “you up into the wee hours” and touts its “nice surprise ending.”

“Rob Blackwell introduces the reader to fear in an innovative way: right from the start. A Soul to Steal is simply scary. With the combination of an ancient Celtic myth and the legend of the Headless Horseman, Blackwell's story is a leave-the-light-on kind of page turner….If you like suspenseful thrillers, check out A Soul to Steal.”

Read the rest of the extensive review here: http://usat.ly/KnkqxX

Buy the book here: http://amzn.to/asoul2steal

A Letter to My 16-Year-Old Self -- Advice I Wish I Could Give Myself on Love, Writing, and Growing Up

A college friend of mine, Betsy, asked a few people she knew to write a letter to their 16-year-old selves. Here's what I came up with:

Hey.

I have a few things I need to tell you. Some will be really awesome (your wife is hot) and some will be hard (your dad is going to get Alzheimer’s much sooner than you, he, or anyone, is expecting), but these are things I think you would want to know:

1. Stop Chasing that Girl

You know who I’m talking about and it’s totally cool. There is absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about. You are giving it your best shot, but it isn’t going to work out. Ironically, the strategy you are pursuing is a great one. You are trapped in the “friend” zone. This is a terrible place to be in high school. It is, however, exactly where you want to be later in life. The problem isn’t your approach; it’s just not the right time or person. So don’t be discouraged and don’t worry so much about it.

2. Buy a Tape Recorder

You don’t know this now, but you are a pretty good reporter. I know, right? You aren’t even interested in journalism and the idea of calling people you don’t know makes you sweat. It’s okay. You are actually surprisingly good at asking the right questions to the right people.

By the time you figure this out, though, you will have lost the chance to interview some crucial sources. You need to buy a tape recorder and interview your grandparents extensively on your next visit to them. You want to learn as much as they can tell you about their lives. This is important for learning who they are, but also for understanding more about where you and your parents came from.

3. Spend More Time With Your Parents

Your dad is going to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in about 15 years. The incredibly intelligent and gregarious guy you see right now? Enjoy him while you can, because he will disappear bit by bit until you have trouble remembering him. I’m sorry, but there isn’t a damn thing you can do about this. What you can do is set aside more time to hang out with him—and your mom. This is going to take a toll on her, too. This is a great time to be around both of them, so please enjoy it.

4. Stop Listening to Aerosmith

Right now. Later, you will refuse to throw out the 3-CD box set of “Pandora’s Box” because your dad gave it to you as a surprise gift, NOT because you ever want to listen to it.

5. Apply Early-Admission to William and Mary

I don’t know why you didn’t, but honestly, you never wanted to go anywhere else. Going here is a great choice—might as well lock it in right now.

6. Dream Bigger

You have a lot of hopes and dreams, but you have a tendency to worry about what’s “realistic.” Please stop. I know people think you want to be an actor—even you may think this—but you don’t. You do, however, want to write, and you’re largely afraid to admit this. You’ve been writing stories since the sixth grade and tucking them away, never showing them to anyone. You spend 50 percent of your time living in your imagination, thinking about novels you never even plan on writing. You have this strange idea that someone will come up to you and offer you a writing contract. I’ve got news for you: you are going to have to do this on your own. Don’t be too worried, though: it’s going to be fine. But you need to stop being intimidated about writing a book. Stephen King started when he was 17 years old. You should get a jump on him. Oh, and don’t worry about getting it published. Technology and a company named after a river in South America are going to solve that problem for you. Just focus on writing.

7. You Already Know Who You Are

If you ignore everything else in this message, I want you to know this: You are just fine as you are. I know you think you’re a nerd. But believe it or not, nerds are cool now. The last Star Trek movie was a huge hit, people love Lord of the Rings and there is a popular TV show about dorks. Weird, I know. It doesn’t matter anyway. You like to pretend that you don’t care what people think of you. It’s time to stop pretending. You will be much happier.

Sincerely,

Your 37-Year-Old Self 

That's my letter. For Betsy's, check out her blog here: http://youaskalotofquestions.com/ What would you write to yourself if you had the chance? 

G is for Genre #AtoZChallenge

This is a guest post on The Masquerade Crew: 


Aside from a book’s title and cover, its genre is the most important factor in how it is marketed to and discovered by readers. 

Of course I never considered this when I wrote my novel. When I started A Soul to Steal, I thought I was writing a horror novel. That’s about as much thought as I put into it. I never considered that horror meant different things to different people. I was quite comfortable being in the same category as Stephen King, my literary hero, and that’s all there was to it. 

This was a mistake, one I didn’t realize until I had actually published the book. 

Looking back, I had unnecessarily pigeon-holed my book, sticking it in a category that it belonged in, but also limiting its reach and marketability at the same time. Here’s why: 


To read more of this post, please go to the Masquerade Crew here: http://masqueradecrew.blogspot.com/2012/04/g-is-for-genre-atozchallenge.html

Loudoun County and my Southern Identity Crisis

When I heard about the chance to be part of a “Southern Book Tour,” I jumped at the chance. After all, I was raised in Virginia, my novel is set in the state, and I have always considered myself a Southerner.

And yet…

The place I write about—Loudoun County, Va.—and I both have a bit of an identity crisis when it comes to being part of the South.

While outwardly I qualify, I’ve never really been sure if I’m part of the club or not. On the one hand, my credentials are strong. For starters, there’s my name: Robert E. Blackwell—or R.E.B. With initials like that, my parents were definitely trying to send a signal. 

To read more, hop on over to the Bound and Determined Book Blog, which is on a Southern Book Tour -- and also enter for your chance to win A Soul to Steal... 

Here's the link: http://tinyurl.com/7n6xrbg