New low price.

Book #2 in the Light Speed series, Light Speed: Struggle for the Stars, will be available soon in both trade paperback and for the Kindle.

Stay tuned.

A few weeks ago I “attended” a free telephone presentation (90 minutes!) explaining and extolling the virtues of becoming an online best seller, especially at Amazon. The jist of the presentation is that if a publisher can get a book into Amazon’s top 100, maybe even their top 10, people will notice. And if the right people notice, like newspapers, radio, television, and so on, the attention could snowball into greater sales still. Makes sense, right? Maybe.

So if you buy into the “Become a Top Amazon Ranking Book” then the rest of the pitch makes sense, too. Maybe. The idea is to tell thousands of people (at least 300,000) to buy your book at Amazon at a predetermined date and time. In order to reach this many people you’ll have to partner with other publishers, bloggers, and anyone willing to send emails plugging your book and the scheme to buy books at the predetermined moment. The goal, to get 300 people to make their purchases within minutes of each other, should easily get your book above 100 in Amazon rankings. And when you achieve that you can focus on driving potential buyers to Barnes and Noble to climb in their sales rankings.

This is great (I’m thinking), all I have to do is tell 300,000 people about my book so that 300 (0.1%) will buy my book one morning and I’ll have a best seller on my hands!  After 90 minutes of listening to an apparently pre-recorded sales pitch, I never heard the price of the exclusive mentoring program to achieve this lofty (and instant) sales ranking. After a little research I discovered it costs less than $3,000.  Well, that’s a dollar per book if I reach the sales goal. Of course, a dollar to sell 300 books is nothing compared with the hundreds of thousands of books I’m going to sell after becoming an Amazon bestseller, right?

Wait a minute! Stop. Take a deep breath. . . . This sounded quite similar to a promotion that Jeremy Robinson of Breckneck Books was using to promote his latest title, Antarktos Rising. Jeremy sent out a series of emails with links to a series of clever ”viral” videos that he posted on You Tube, all leading up to a specific date and time asking recipients to purchase the book, but only at the appointed time. The stated reason for this massive promotion and coordinated purchase scheme was so that the book would hit the Amazon top 100. Well, on the specified day (8/1/2007) Jeremy’s book hit #536 for about a second and slowly dropped to the 3,000 to 4,000 ranking within a few days. This morning (10/2/2007) the Amazon ranking is 4,448. I hope he didn’t spend $3,000 making this happen.

In the end, I now believe that slow, consistent marketing will work best, not the one day blast. No one is impressed that Antarktos Rising made it to #536 at Amazon for a brief, fleeting moment. But they might be impressed if the book keeps its ranking over a long period of time. So far Light Speed bounces several 100,000 in rankings everytime someone buys a book and then goes back down quickly, so maybe I’m the last publisher who should be commenting.

The same company promoting the one-day campaign now promises that I can sell “boatloads” of books by following their advice. I cannot improve on Morris Rosenthal’s comments about this scheme: http://www.fonerbooks.com/2007/10/selling-boatloads-of-books.html.

Congratulations to author Paul Harrington and cover artist Mike Gager for the fine results of their efforts. Now let’s sell some books!

Finishing touches on Light Speed: Ultimate Destiny are in the works, including some minor editing and layout work, and fixing a problem with the cover art (stars aren’t showing up as much as they should). The book is expected to be released by the middle of September 2007. Stay tuned!

In the meantime you can read an excerpt here.

Recommended as 3 out of 5 (GOOD)

Two weeks ago author Scott Allen sent me an email asking for permission to send me his teen fiction title, Survival Op: The Fear in the Wilderness. The book came in the mail last week, and in between finishing up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I read Scott’s novel.

Marcus, a homeless teenager, is left alone in the wilderness of an unknown and uncharted southwest Atlantic island, somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle, as part of a dangerous and unauthorized survival experiment. The staff of Survival Op, the top secret government agency that kidnapped Marcus, adds Lynn, a teenaged girl, to the experiment. Together Marcus and Lynn learn how to survive in the island outback, eating Bursting Berries, Honey Hole catfish, and wild boar meat.  As they fend off assassins hired by Survival Op headquarters to kill them, the two teens become comrades in arms with the common goal of survival.

One day Lynn is captured and presumed dead, but Marcus strikes back and captures one of the Survival Op staff, another teenaged boy named Jay. After days of talking and working together the two boys learn to trust each other enough to plan their escape from the mysterious island. The odds are stacked against them as Survival Op’s fire power and not-so-close watch on their activities make escape all but impossible.  But Jay has useful information about Survival Op and Marcus is motivated to find out whether Lynn is dead or alive. In the end, two of the teens are left behind on the island to survive for further adventures.

The story reminds me of the 1984 John Milius film Red Dawn where a few teenagers hole up in the Colorado mountains and wage war against Russian invaders.  They, too, must learn how to survive in the wilderness and strike back at an evil oppressor. The book is also reminiscent of the Survivor television series as the narrative describes the specific ideas that Marcus, Lynn, and Jay invent in order to survive and succeed at hitting the enemy.

At first read everything indicates that the story is set in the present day. There are microchips implanted in the back of the neck of each teen. We have DNA analysis and genetic scientists on the staff of Survival Op. A solar-powered electric vehicle shows up. And Lynn even sings a parody of the theme song from the television series Cops. But there is one single bit of information that requires the reader to switch gears and reset the story in the 1970s: Lynn was born during the Vietnam War and raised by her Green Beret father when her parents divorced after the war. The 1970s it is!

I wrote to author Scott Allen and asked about the Vietnam connection because virtually every other clue about the time frame of the story screams out 2000s or 1990s. There would be no “Bad Boys” song for Lynn to sing in the 1970s, no individual DNA analysis, no subcutaneous microchip telemetry, and so on. His reasons for the Vietnam connection and the 1970s setting are unclear to me, but he wants the reader to perceive that Survival Op is a highly advanced, top secret government operation, far ahead of its time. With the exception of the theme to Cops, I stretched my imagination enough to believe that everything mentioned in the narrative could have existed in the 1970s.

Scott Allen is an eighth grade English teacher in the Oklahoma City area. I was surprised to find several typos scattered throughout the text. Also, he has an affection for not using the ordinary “he said” and “she said” when identifying dialogue.  Instead his characters exclaimed, yelled, screamed, replied, mentioned, asked, informed, pleaded, stated, giggled, whispered, said loudly, said softly, and so on. Using the words “he said” is functionally invisible and adding to or changing them distracts from the dialogue and blurs the scene, when used to excess. For example:

“I am so tired of Bursting Berries! You should have called them Puke Berries. We need more food,” Lynn exclaimed . . .

“After we explore the cave, we will try to find a different food source,” I explained . . .

Lynn exclaimed, “Race you to our new home.” . . .

“Hey, thanks for helping me carry the torches,” I said sarcastically.

“Oh yeah, I forgot,” she giggled.

“We’ll just light one torch at a time,” I informed her.

Most of the time who said what is obvious and the extra words just get in the way, and using so many different ways of saying “said” is really a distraction.

With a little better editing and a lot better proofreading, I look forward to Scott’s next adventure in the Survival Op series. I recommend this book with a good rating of three butterflies.

Artist Mike Gager’s passion is Space Art, having created several renditions of suns, moons, planets, galaxies, and other celestial objects.  His work on the cover for Light Speed is a new adventure and Save My Dreams looks forward to working with him on another project.

Check back soon for more news about the first adventure in the Light Speed series.

In 2001 Paul’s first novel, Light Speed, was released as a free e-book in Microsoft Reader format. A freshly edited print version, Light Speed: Ultimate Destiny, will be released later this summer. The book will have new artwork and will be available at Amazon.com and other online retailers, and fans will be able to order the book from their favorite bookstore.

Paul is tidying up his second book in the series, Light Speed: Struggle for the Stars, and if things go as planned the second installment should be available in time for Christmas. Meanwhile, a third book, tentatively titled Light Speed: Crossing the Void, is Paul’s current writing project.

RANDY KINNAMON
Randy Kinnamon served as an officer in The Salvation Army for 22 years, moving around the western USA a dozen times before settling in Olympia, Washington in 2003. He currently works as manager and director for a senior citizens housing program in Olympia, sponsored by the Sisters of Providence. He enjoys riding his blue, fullsize electric scooter around town to save on gas.

After Randy’s mother died in 2005 he began writing a memoir of her interesting life, All About Love: Elizabeth’s Story, with a publication date of July 6, 2007. The story includes Elizabeth’s life in the Salvation Army growing up, her marriage to a submarine sailor during World War II, her agony after he is missing, and an exciting struggle for happiness that takes her from wealth into poverty.

Randy also is writing a young adult adventure novel, Darkfeather, based on a Crow Indian legend brought into the present with a modern twist. He also plans on completing an aging handbook to help families better plan for the future of their elder loved ones.

Everyone knows how in the last century two young men, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, dreamed about the future of computers and formed a company that would change the world. Paul Harrington writes about the future of this century when two young men, Kenneth Shepherd and Bernard Rush, have built a company to exploit the riches of the solar system with mining vessels capable of traveling at five percent of light speed between the earth and the asteroid belt. When Shepherd and Rush disagree about business philosophies, competing companies emerge, each with a goal of discovering faster-than-light travel, an achievement that would change the world and humankind forever.

Harrington writes his sci-fi narrative as speculative fiction — no weird aliens (yet), no telepathatic crew members, no fantastical oddities. Instead, Harrington wonders, If we could travel in Space what would it really be like? What would happen if we projected today’s technology on into the future?

Light Speed: Ultimate Destiny is the story of conflict when business practices and economic realities are at odds with human character values. Harrington borrows only a few style elements from Star Trek to create an exciting world for readers and a vision of the future that any sci-fi fan will enjoy.

More news on Light Speed: Ultimate Destiny will be posted this Summer.

I had read Aaron’s book and visited his web pages many times before discovering that he lives in Olympia, barely a mile from my home. After I sent him an introductory e-mail he invited Cheryl and me over to his apartment for a pizza dinner hosted by Anne. We shared good conversation, talked about Anne’s new book, discussed the memoir about my mother, and compared differences between Aaron’s book and other self-publishing books on the market. We even discussed publishing through Lulu.com, a topic which I promise to write more on later. Everything was fine until, to my embarrassment, my cell phone went off twice during our conversations (the welcomed burden of fatherhood and grandfatherhood). Next time I’m in a similar situation I’ll be sure to turn the phone off.

The other news this week is that Save My Dreams is finishing up negotiations to publish an innovative science-fiction novel. I’ll write more on that after copies of the contract have been signed and exchanged. I discovered the novel as a free e-book a few years ago, and after reading it, I contacted the author and offered to proofread and make minor edits to the book.  The author is now ready to take it into print through Save My Dreams, informing me that he has finished a second book, and he’s writing a third to complete the trilogy. I can hardly wait to read the final installment in the series.

Another recent contact has been with a talented graphic artist from Texas who has shown interest in helping to provide artwork for the sci-fi project. Cheryl and I are very excited about the possibilities of creating a great group of partners including authors, editors, artists, and other business associates. Goals can be achieved with higher excellence when people band together as a team.