Tag Archives: KDP Select

THE INN price increase…

The Inn Cover 4
Today is the last day that THE INN will be priced at $0.99. 

In case you aren’t aware, THE INN is a 37000 word horror novella.  The description from its Amazon blurb:

BAND TRIP TO PERIL…

The Jackson High School Band and student director Kimberly Bouton are making their biennial journey to a music festival in the deep South for fun and educational opportunities. Kim expects to deal with hormonal teenagers, a severe lack of sleep, and long boring bus rides, but the roadside inn where the band stays on their visit hides a sinister secret – and it translates to unimagined horrors for students and teachers alike…

Check into THE INN, where the guests are the entertainment…

Tomorrow it will go up to $1.99.  So if you see this today and you were thinking that you might want to grab it, procrastinate no longer!

My 25000 word novella THE CAVE will remain priced at $0.99, as will all of my short fiction and short fiction collections.

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Giveaway results

It isn’t the first time I’ve given JACK’O’LANTERN (and other stories) away.  But it’s a Halloween story, and I think it’s pretty good.   The title story was published on a magazine/blog site called “Friendly Fiction” a few years back, and the site’s editor had a go at it, suggesting changes.  I made several at that time, and ignored a few that I disagreed with.  The result was a fairly tight story.  I connected it with two other Holiday stories, THE MOMENT (about a junior high student who finally finds the courage to ask his crush to dance at the school Halloween mixer, through the anonymity of a costume) and SARAH’S PUPPY (where a little girl hears the barking of a puppy that she’s hoping she’ll get for Christmas and meets a bearded stranger by the tree in her living room), because all of them feature younger children and holidays, even though only the title story is horror.

So, for Halloween, I decided to give it away again.  What the heck? I thought.  Maybe someone will like the stories enough to buy the collection that it’s also a part of, 14 DARK WINDOWS(No one did.)  But I also put in sample chapters of both of my $0.99 novellas, THE INN and THE CAVE.  My hope is that someone will read the three short stories, read the sample chapters and be interested enough to check out the novellas.  Maybe realize that they’re bargain basement priced at $0.99, and will buy one or both.

As it turns out, I did sell one copy of THE INN during the giveaway.  Whether it was because of the short story giveaway, who knows?

All in all, I gave away something like 33 copies of the collection, which is back up to $0.99 today.  Would I buy it myself for $0.99?  No.  I’d spend that same $0.99 and buy the collection mentioned above.  I clearly state as the first line in the story trio’s description that it is part of that collection and that the collection also costs only $0.99.

The pattern was something like this:  Thursday, 8 free copies were downloaded, with virtually no promotion besides mentioning it on Facebook.  And I think the downloads occurred before I even made the Facebook post.  On Friday, 6 free copies.  Saturday, only 1 copy was downloaded.  I posted pictures later on Friday of my own pumpkin carvings on my Scott Dyson page, with another link to the giveaway title.  On Sunday the number went back up to 5 free downloads.

Then on Monday, I thought to mention it on Goodreads, in a group I lurk within called Horror Afficionados.  As a direct result of that mention, 13 more copies were downloaded.  More to the point, they were downloaded by people who like horror, if I can safely assume that those who read the post in the promotion topic on the bulletin board.  I can only hope that they get around to reading them and like the sample chapters enough to try my novellas.

So the promotion is done for now.

I’ve been thinking about a topic for a post soon about how I personally rank the elements of a novel when I’m reading it.  Still thinking about how to organize it.

Till then, have a great day.

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JACK’O’LANTERN (and THE MOMENT and SARAH’S PUPPY) free on 10/29!

In honor of Halloween, I’ve made my short story trio containing JACK’O’LANTERN, THE MOMENT and SARAH’S PUPPY free for five days, starting Thursday, 10/29/15, till Monday, 11/2/15.  It’s been free before, but this time it contains sample chapters from my novellas THE INN and THE CAVE.

Jackolantern updated cover

All three stories are also found in the collection 14 DARK WINDOWS, which is priced at only $0.99 and will continue to be priced there for the foreseeable future.

Grab it while it’s free! If you like it, grab something else as well! Thanks for reading!

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ODD MAN OUT Promotion

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision – I decided to give away ODD MAN OUT, a short story pair that featured the title tale (about 1600 words) and a second short story called THE HOUSE AT THE BEND IN THE ROAD (about 1800 words).

Of all my works, I like this cover the best.  It looks professionally done, because it was.  I have a good friend, Rich Siegle, who did the cover for me (gratis), and he does book covers for small publisher Poison Pen Press in Scottsdale, Arizona.  I paired these two stories because, well, they seemed to go together.  Originally I had paired SOLE OCCUPANT and ODD MAN OUT because I liked them about the best of all my short stories, but I ended up using this pairing because it kept the word counts between the two ebooks about the same.

ODD MAN OUT is also found in the collection 14 DARK WINDOWS.  The short story pair costs $0.99 on Amazon, because that is the lowest price Amazon will let you set for something.  I lowered the collection to $0.99 also, because I hoped to move some titles.

I decided to give this short story away because I thought if someone liked enough, they might be inspired to buy the collection which contains both of these and twelve other stories (including the aforementioned SOLE OCCUPANT).

I also started to expand this short story into a longer work.  Hoping that I can get 20 or 30 thousand words out of it.  It struck me as I read it that there was a lot more story to tell.  So we’ll see what comes out of that project.  I haven’t been putting much time into writing on this story recently; there’s been a LOT going on with my family, but I think things might start to wind down now.

The other reason I haven’t been writing it is because I spent some time finishing up the collaboration between my son Kevin and me.  It’s part of a series, and we completed Book 1 and got a fair start on Book 2.  Book 1 is about 77000 words, so it’s a full length novel.  Believe it or not, it started life as Harry Potter/SwordArt Online crossover fan fiction written by my son.  I saw some potential in it and decided to write it with a more original slant.

So, maybe I will get some things written before summer runs out of time.  We’ll see.

Oh, yeah.  The point of this post was that I did a giveaway with ODD MAN OUT.  The giveaway ran three days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday).  I only announced it on Facebook.  I gave away 35 copies of the short story in that time frame.  (Well, 36, but one was downloaded by me for free in an attempt to boost the number by one.)

I guess that’s 35 people who never heard of me before, because I doubt I had anyone from my Facebook announcement get it.  Okay, perhaps there were four or five downloads because of that announcement.  I can’t say for sure.  We’ll see if anyone grabs the collection in the next week or so.  Even one or two downloads would be great!

So, did it do what I hoped?  No…it made it to #10 on a “Ghosts and Haunted Houses” list on Amazon, but it certainly didn’t amount to much in the sense of sheer downloads.  But it’s just one of those things.

Have a great week.

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Going all-in on KDP Select…

Yesterday I was reading blog entries on The Passive Voice, on Joe Konrath’s blog and some Hugh Howey thoughts, and I thought, “Wow!  Why am I not in KDP Select?”

So why wasn’t I?

I put my short stories in KDP Select when I wanted to give some of them away several months ago.  But I never put my longer collections and my novella into it.  My reasoning was that I was going to move to publish the works with other platforms, like B&N, iBooks, Kobo, and Smashwords.  I was thinking that maybe Draft2Digital was the way to go, but I wasn’t sure.

I never did any of that.  Honestly, I can’t see myself putting in the work to do so at this time.  Maybe if I was seeing income worth talking about, I could justify putting in the time.  But right now, I can’t.

So, I placed everything into KDP Select.  My novella, THE CAVE, costs $0.99 to buy, but can be borrowed in Kindle Unlimited or through Prime.  My short story collections, DIE 6, 14 DARK WINDOWS, and THE STRIKER FILES, are all currently priced at $0.99, and all can be borrowed via KU or through Prime.  And my four short stories (all of which are found in 14 DARK WINDOWS as well), are also priced at $0.99, and all are part of KU and Prime.

Here’s what one reviewer said about my short story ODD MAN OUT:

A pair of creepy tales, well written if on the short side. Worth a read, especially via Kindle Unlimited. I’ll be checking out the collection that includes these.   EC, Amazon review.

Another review about the same says:

The book is two short word pictures of atmospheric horror. They both nicely evoke a feeling of creepy dread, and in the case of the House At the Bend In the Road, mystery. Worth a read!  Scott R. Turner, Amazon review.

(ODD MAN OUT is available as a standalone short story or as part of the collection 14 DARK WINDOWS.)

Anyway, there it is.  I’m all in on KDP Select for now.  Grab ’em or borrow them.  They’re not pricey.  I think they’re good reads, but of course I would think that, since I wrote them.  But a few others think the same.  Don’t let others do your thinking for you; check them out yourself…

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My second free promotion results…

So my promotion ended yesterday.  It ended with a slight uptick on the downloaded copies of my two short story trios but it still was unimpressive.  Thank you to everyone who DID download the stories.  Hope you find something you like.  Even more, I hope you’ll maybe try something else I’ve written.  DIE 6 has some pretty good stories in it….I think…

So how did it compare to my first giveaway, where I promoted my titles SOLE OCCUPANT and DEAD OR ALIVE?  Well, that time I gave away 144 copies of the two titles.  The first of them did better.  I don’t think it’s surprising.  The cover for SOLE OCCUPANT was done by a professional, while the cover for DEAD OR ALIVE was done by…well, by me.

This time I gave away 71 copies in total.  Forty nine copies of JACK’O’LANTERN and 32 copies of THE GATEWAY were given away (by zombies…no, not really…by me).  Half the number of copies, though almost as many copies of JACK’O’LANTERN were given away as of DEAD OR ALIVE.  Anyway, why so few this time?  I have a few theories.

First, I did not have the opportunity to tag my giveaway with another giveaway.  In that case it was QUANTUM ZOO, with the giveaway promoted by all twelve authors (to some degree) and D.J. Gelner shared my status update, where I plugged both my own stories’ free status as well as that of QUANTUM ZOO.  This time, no shares from any authors.  (One offered but didn’t follow through, far as I could tell.)  I did have two friends share it with their own friends, and there is not much overlap between our groups of friends.  Anyway, when D.J. shared it on FB, my post views approached 300.  This time my post views were around 150 (maybe a bit more).  Half the page views, half the downloads.  Plus, people who were downloading QZ might have theoretically searched out works by the other authors in the collection and found a couple of mine on promotion, and grabbed them that way.  I’ll never know.

Second, these two covers are probably my worst covers.  I did them myself, and they were the first and second covers I ever did.  I’ll probably try to redo them sometime when I have the time.  But I don’t want to spend any actual money on them.  At $0.99 per download (which means $0.35 to me) it just does not make sense to spend the money on them.

It’s a shame, really.  I’ve had really good feedback on some of the stories.  Annetta Ribken once said of JACK’O’LANTERN (seen in a less edited form on the Friendly Fiction forum on Journalscape) that she could totally see it in a YA Halloween themed collection.  J. Michael Major listed AMERICA’S PASTIME (part of THE GATEWAY trio) as one of his favorites of the 14 DARK WINDOWS collection.  THE MOMENT also received good comments when I posted it on a blog a few years back.  And SARAH’S PUPPY won a contest on The Book and Candle Pub several years ago.  I think they’re decent stories.

Here’s Annetta’s quote (about JACK’O’LANTERN):

I can so see this in a YA Halloween anthology.
Cute and interesting premise. nicely done!

Author Eric Mayer (of the John the Lord Chamberlain mysteries) said this about THE MOMENT:

I enjoyed the story. From what I recall of eighth grade it seems true to life. Although I only wish I could’ve been bright enough to ever come up with a ruse like that. I’m surprised you could concoct this from six words not of your own choosing. Out of curiosity, do you recall what the words were?

I couldn’t, by the way.  I remembered “pirate” and “tommy gun” and “black cat” once I read it and looked for them.

And J. Michael Major’s Amazon review of 14 DARK WINDOWS:

It’s always fun to discover a new, talented author, and Scott Dyson is my latest find. The fourteen creepy tales here range from wistful and romantic (“The Moment” and “Ghost of Love”) to the horrific (“Hot Spot” and “The House at the Bend in the Road”). My personal favorites are “The Only Solution” and “America’s Pastime,” but all are wonderfully written and there is something here for everyone — just don’t read these hair-raising stories when you are alone at night! I look forward to reading more by Dyson. Buy a copy today and tell your friends about this exciting new author!

So there you have it. The results of the giveaway.

I had been debating whether to put ODD MAN OUT on promotion next month.  It’s my best cover, and I like both stories.  But I don’t know if it’s worth it.  Maybe I’ll just schedule it for a two day giveaway or something like that.

Better get something new written and published.  And soon.

Take care!  Thanks if you downloaded them.  Heck, thanks if you’re reading my blog!

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Free Promotion is here!

Started today, January 29th.  For five days only, ending February 2nd (Monday).

Two of my titles are free for Kindle on Amazon via KDP promotion.

Here are the links:

The Gateway Coverand

Jackolantern Cover

Please download them, read them, if you like them, consider leaving a review.  There are SIX (!!!) short stories contained in the two titles.  See the previous post for a description, or check out the Amazon book page for that same description.  They’re more or less flash fiction pieces.  The longest clocks in at something around 1800 words, if I recall correctly.

Thanks for grabbing them!

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Another KDP Select promo coming up…

I’m running a promotion on two of my titles, THE GATEWAY (with AMERICA’S PASTIME and HOT SPOT) and JACK’O’LANTERN (with THE MOMENT and SARAH’S PUPPY).  They will be free starting on Thursday January 29 for five days.  The promo ends on Monday, February 2.

The Gateway CoverAn imaginative boy discovers that the gateway for all evil has been opened, and his neighbor has been possessed! The fate of the whole world, or at least his neighborhood, is in his hands now. He must act to destroy the Gateway.

A 1500 word short tale of horror.

(Also found in the collection 14 Dark Windows.)

Contains two bonus stories:
America’s Pastime – a 1300 word short horror story, &
Hot Spot – a 700 word short horror story (dedicated to Dale Vincent Schwitalla)

Jackolantern CoverAs four young wanna-be Halloween vandals terrorize the far side of their neighborhood by smashing pumpkins, they encounter a jack’o’lantern that is by far the biggest and ugliest pumpkin they’ve seen this night. But this pumpkin is more than it appears.

A mild horror short story of about 1300 words.

*Also contains TWO bonus stories (NEITHER IS HORROR):
THE MOMENT (about 1500 words) and                                                                                                    SARAH’S PUPPY (about 1000 words)
And a short author’s note.

(These titles can also be found in the collection 14 Dark Windows.)

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Please feel free to download them, starting Thursday January 29.  Thank you!

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Kindle Giveaway (via KDP Select) – Success or Failure?

So the giveaway is over.  I put two of my titles, SOLE OCCUPANT and DEAD OR ALIVE, on free promotion from Wednesday 12/10/14 to Sunday 12/14/14.  How did they do, you ask?  Well, between the two of them, I gave away 144 copies of the two short stories.  I really didn’t know what to expect as far as numbers, but it was mentioned to me by SF/Thriller author Steven M. Moore that giveaways used to be measured in the thousands and now they’re measured in the hundreds.

I piggy-backed this giveaway on the concurrent giveaway of QUANTUM ZOO, hoping for a few shares of my posts promoting both giveaways on Facebook so that I would be exposed to other authors’ fans, but the only share I got was by D.J. Gelner, the editor of QUANTUM ZOO.  (Thanks DJ!)  It did help, because instead of around a hundred people seeing my posts, close to 300 saw the first post with the links in the comments.

SOLE OCCUPANT got more downloads than DEAD OR ALIVE did, in the US by 75 to 50.  It’s a much shorter title, with two stories adding up right around 3100 words, while DEAD OR ALIVE is a single story of about 7800 words, something like that.  DEAD OR ALIVE is part of a larger “trilogy” of vampire detective stories, which I hoped might work in its favor.  SOLE OCCUPANT has a cover made by professional Rich Siegle, while DEAD OR ALIVE features a home-made cover.  I don’t think it sucks, but no way is it as good as Rich’s cover.

My hope was that perhaps I might get a paid download or three of one of the collections.  I haven’t had a paid sale in a month.  My other goal was to get a review or three.  But so far, out of 144 titles given away, there are no additional reviews, either good or bad.  I don’t know if that means that most of the downloads haven’t actually been read, so I suppose there’s still some time.

A third goal was simply to get some of my work into the hands of readers, who may or may not like it, but I figured it was worth a shot.  Tastes vary, and out of 144 tries, you’d think that maybe I might get a new reader or three.

It’s sort of depressing.  A commenter, John Ellsworth (I think) on one of my other posts suggested that I focus on writing something longer.  I have longer pieces out there, nothing approaching 80K words (the length he suggested) but maybe closing in on 50K for a couple of them.  Nothing under 23K, I think.  Mostly horror, though one of them is a mystery.

It’s sort of one of those catch-22’s, in that I want this to be a self-supporting hobby.  I am willing to pay for covers and editing, but I want to see enough earnings to suggest that it’s worth it for me to do so.  I hoped to sell enough short stories to make enough money, even if it was just a hundred bucks a month, to pay for cover art for some of these longer projects.  But it’s been a no-go.

So what should I do?  Keep writing?  (I’ll do that anyway.)  Keep publishing?  (Not as certain about that one.)  I’m dismayed by the lack of reciprocal promotion I get from authors whose works I’ve promoted on my FB page and here on the blog.  Not even a “Like” from any besides D.J. and J. Michael Major, who has also reviewed a few of my stories on Amazon.

That’s okay.  I have to admit, however, that it makes me less enthusiastic about supporting (via promotion on either here or on my FB page) other indie authors.  I’ll still support the ones I like to read by buying their books, and possibly reviewing them if the mood strikes me.

Maybe this giveaway experiment will result in sales down the road.  Maybe it will result in a few reviews, positive or negative.  But right now, I have to come down on the side of “failure” when asking myself if it was a success or failure.

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Successful giveaway?

Just a quick post to update the KDP Select promotion for two of my titles.

I’ve given away 114 ebooks in 3 1/2 days (today being the 1/2).  It’s scheduled to run through tomorrow.  (12/14/14)

Here’s the links:  SOLE OCCUPANT

DEAD OR ALIVE

It will be interesting to see if getting these two stories in the hands of readers results in any reviews of the stories or better still, any increase in sales from them.  Crossing my fingers…

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