The ebook for Rogue Elements released on 1/1/2020 (thank you if you were one of the hundreds that placed a preorder – I hooked you up at 99 cents, didn’t I?) but we didn’t place any ads for Rogue until today – and today…

Rogue Elements will reach #1 in its category, medical thrillers.

Tomorrow, Rogue Elements will generate a ton of page reads, and over the rest of January, the ebooks will generate a few thousand dollars in royalties. It’s selling well at $4.99 for the ebook, and although the paperback is listed at $13.99, that’s selling okay, too – as in, the paperback isn’t selling much at all, but my paperbacks usually don’t. 85% of my sales last year were ebooks. (But I personally LOVE paperbacks, so I keep making them! And if you’ve noticed, I release them first, so paperback readers get new books soonest.)

Interesting note: 85% of royalties from November through today have been page reads on Kindle Unlimited.

That’s an eye opener, gang.

I buy ads to sell the ebook, but it raises the profile of the book overall and gets people to read it on Kindle Unlimited or Audible, etc. Then, many buy other books I’ve written. You’ve done that as a reader; Hey, The Shining was good; what else has Stephen King written? You scan the descriptions and decide to try A Change Of Seasons, and end up loving “The Body,” so you go on to check out “It” and “Pet Semetary.” Then Amazon is bombarding you with emails saying you’d like Dumas Key and Mr. Mercedes…

Anyway, The Gamma Sequence is rolling along. Hundreds of thousand of KU page reads last month, thousands in royalties. Good for me.

As a reader, it’s awesome that Amazon:

• sees what you read and like/dislike,

• compares that to what other people read and like/dislike, and

• suggests other books based on what other people like you have enjoyed.

For my fellow authors, you need to know that for me, page reads are where it’s at – and you need to know places to advertise that aren’t a waste of money. (LOTS are a waste of money!) Many authors who sell more books than I do have been able to master Amazon ads and Facebook ads. That was a goal of mine for 2019 that went unfulfilled, but it will be a necessity in 2020.

Getting my books written is relatively easy compared to getting them marketed.

Getting them to #1 and keeping them in the top 10 or top 30 is easy for a few days but hard over a month / several months.

Here’s how you can help YOUR favorite author:

1. Love it or hate it, please leave a review on Amazon.

Leave an honest review. If you like my book, obviously I’d like you to say so. If you dislike my book, please say that, too. Yes, a lot of 3-star reviews will eventually prevent me from advertising in certain places because the book’s overall rating falls, but it’s just as important to get the book into the right hands as it is to keep it out of the wrong hands.

2. Tell a friend.

Word of mouth is huge and probably always will be. We all tend to take recommendations from friends without reservation. If you have friends who like a book and tell you about it, you drop the $$$ and get it. That helps me gain another reader, which is a really big deal to me.

3. Tell the world.

Or at least your world. Share your book loving experience on social medial or the water cooler or the nursing home – hey, nurses read, too.

4. Tell me.

I love hearing from you guys. I try to reply to every email and blog comment I get because I like chatting with you guys. Authoring can be a lonely business. Drop me a line. It’s always a thrill when i get an email from a reader that says, just finished chapter XYZ and Wow, I did NOT see that coming!

5. Tell me how you read your books.

eBook? Paperback? Kindle Unlimited? Audible audio book? Telling the authors helps them market properly. I almost always have audio books I can give away to audio book listeners because for me it’s much harder to market to them and to get reviews for audio books.

6. Buy my other stuff.

It’s all pretty good, I promise. Even the stuff that’s not your preferred genre still has that storytelling voice of mine that you like.

7. Be a beta reader – practically no skills required.

Betas read the book before it goes live, to see how it flows and to help catch errors, but mostly they just read and enjoy. It’s helpful when they spot a typo, though, before a few thousand copies go out. (In one book, a car accidentally changed from a Ford to something else. That was a good catch.) You can do that.

Personal Note: Last night my daughter Savannah (Savvy) asked me when I’d write another book about her. I said, well, the Savvy Stories series (books 1-3) are published of course, and book 4 has been written but shelved indefinitely so she can grow up with some privacy, but there is often a little girl character who finds her way into my stories, and even though she has a different name each time, it’s always based on my daughter. She liked that. If you read the upcoming Terminal Sequence, you’ll see what I mean.

That’s it for now, gang!

By the way, Rogue Elements is available FREE today 1/10/2020 (see? It pays to read all the way to the end of these rants) and I’ll be looking for beta readers for Terminal Sequence (release date 2/28/2020) VERY SOON!

Thanks for your awesome support!

Dan