AND THE WINNER IS ....

(NB - in case you are wondering, your eyes have not gone funny while reading this post: some of the text has gone greyish instead of black. Although I do know why this happened, I can't fix it without unformatting the whole lot. And much as I admire and care for you, I can't be bothered to do that.)Anyway.You know when someone is about to announce the winner of an award and begins by saying, "

AGENTS AGAIN - AND WHY YOU REALLY DO HAVE TO LOVE THEM

What a good idea and I just wish it was mine. We all like a good moan and sometimes we like it too much. But praise and good news are more uplifting and often more useful. So, those of you who over-indulged in the opportunity on Bookends to off-load about agents should make a return trip back to a new Bookends piece here and see all the very excellently positive things that people also say about

Obsession, Reviews, and the Afraid Tour

In some circles, I'm known to be a little over-zealous when it comes to self-promotion.

In other circles, I'm known to be a lot over-zealous.

Any first year psychology student could pinpoint the root of my zealotry simply by spending three minutes reading my blog. It can be broken down thusly:

1. Joe spends 12 years trying to get published, writing nine unsold novels and getting over 500 rejections.

2. Joe finally gets published, fulfilling a life-long dream.

3. Joe is determined to do everything within his power to make sure he stays published.

Now, while I can't vouch for how obsessive behavior leads to happiness, or if it's good for a person's mental health, I can say that it certainly helps a guy get a lot of stuff done.

If you look at wildly successful people, they are all, to some degree, obsessive about becoming successful. I'd go so far as to say they all share some similar traits:

1. They're hard workers.
2. They're innovators.
3. They make sacrifices to reach their goals.
4. They rely on themselves.
   

There are other traits, I'm sure, but these four seem to be common with obsessive types.

Bringing the topic back to me, since it's my blog, I just finished an OCD blog tour, appearing on over a hundred blogs in March.

I also asked for, and received, over a hundred reviews. If you have read Afraid, and haven't reviewed it yet, please do so. I'm thanking everyone who sends me a link to their review in the acknowledgments of the next Jack Kilborn novel. The one with the most reviews posted will have a character named after them.

There are plenty of places online to review books. Here's a list.

Here are two new reviews. One from my friend, Patrick Balester:

http://picksbypat.blogspot.com/2009/04/dont-be-afraid-to-read-this-book.html

And one I've been hoping for since 1979. That's when I started collecting Fangoria magazine. I can't describe the thrill of being reviewed by a zine I've been a fan of since my pre-teen years. It's way too cool. Plus, they loved it:

http://www.fangoria.com/reviews/6-books/1988-afraid-book-review.html

For my next obsessive act, I'm going to start visiting bookstores.

Yes, for the first time in three years, I will do a Big Tour.

My goal is to visit 200 bookstores between April 12th and May 12th.

These won't be official signings. These will be drop-ins, where I sign stock, meet the booksellers, and get on my way. If you've been following my blog for a while, you may remember I did something like this before. Here's the link.

Which brings me to my next request:

Do you want to meet Joe Konrath, and do you have a spare bedroom?

If you answered "yes" to the above question, do you want to invite this famous author into your house for the night and treat him to dinner in exchange for scintillating conversation and free books?

I'll be posting the tour stops very soon. For sure, I'll be visiting Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Lexington, Nashville, Atlanta, and several cities in Florida. Depending on the stars aligning, I'll also be visiting several other cities and states as well.

Now, I urge you not to get super excited that I'll be visiting your town and perhaps stopping by your house. I need several days to plan this tour and figure out the best route.

Until then, please buy a copy of Afraid if you haven't already. And if you want me to sign it, today I'll be at the Waldenbooks in Peru, IL, from 2pm-4pm. Their number is 815-223-4910. If you miss me there, they'll have signed copies off all my books available for you to purchase and resell on eBay.

Hope to see some of you today, or on the road.

Giddyup...

AGENTS, YOU'VE GOT TO LOVE 'EM

I did a post some time ago about what agents can do for you and how to become eminently agentable. Clearly, getting an agent is easier said than done, and many of you (those of you at least who are unpublished and/or unagented) will be understandably frustrated by the process and the knockbacks and the failure of your desired agents fully to appreciate the toffees or naked photos that you sent

Ebook Blowout: Amazon Kindle Free Downloads

Anyone who follows my blog knows my feelings about ebooks. Namely, they're the future.

Grand Central, the publisher for Afraid, has taken this concept to heart, and my horror novel is available as downloads for the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader, for just $1.99.

Here are my current Amazon Kindle rankings:

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #11 in Kindle Store

#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle Books > Fiction > Horror
#3 in Kindle Store > Kindle Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Thrillers > Suspense
#5 in Kindle Store > Kindle Books > Fiction > Genre Fiction

So, I'm pretty happy my publisher made this decision. There are a few hundred thousand books available on Kindle, so to be at #11 means that people are buying it.

But why are they buying it?

Is it because they've heard about it? Doubtful. I haven't had any advertising, done any touring, had a major marketing push.

So what are the ten books currently outselling me?

Four are Stephanie Meyer books--no big surprise there. Two are bibles. And while the bible is a popular book, the reason they're doing so well is they are free.

Also free is Lee Child's book, Persuader, and I'm tickled he's outselling both bibles. Persuader is one of his older titles, and giving it away for free is a smart way to hook new readers on his series.

The other three are the monster bestsellers The Shack, the Steve Harvey book, and the Mark R. Levin book. Like the Stephanie Meyer books, these are full price, between six dollars and ten dollars.

Rounding out the top 25, we find eight more free books, and six more full-priced bestsellers.

It's pretty easy to see why Afraid is on the Kindle bestseller list.

While it is not a print bestseller, and it is not free, the $1.99 price makes it an impulse purchase, like candy in the check-out line at the grocery store. If you just bought a $350 device to read books, naturally you want to fill the device up. But filling it up with $10 books will cost a fortune--very much like filling up an iPod using iTunes.

So Kindle owners are looking for free books, and cheap books. They're looking hard enough for them to spend $1.99 on a debut novel by an unknown author.

This works out perfect for Afraid by Jack Kilborn. I'm getting new readers, and if they like me, perhaps they'll seek out my other books, either in ebook form or in print.

Hyperion, the publisher of my Jack Daniels books, also gets it. They released the first in my series, Whiskey Sour, on Kindle for $3.96. How is that doing?

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #757 in Kindle Store

#3 in Kindle Store > Kindle Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Police Procedurals
#14 in Kindle Store > Kindle Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery > Women Sleuths
#36 in Kindle Store > Kindle Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Thrillers > Suspense

Not bad for a book that's been out for five years.

How are my other four regularly-priced Jack Daniels Kindle versions doing?

None of them are on the Kindle bestseller lists.

The Kindle bestseller lists, and the Amazon Shorts bestseller lists, are dominated by free books.

Both Amazon, and publishers, should be paying close attention to this. If they truly want to sell ebooks, cheap or free can get more downloads than full priced mega-bestsellers. For heaven's sake, in what crazy world can Afraid by Jack Kilborn outsell Stephen King, Dean Koontz, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, JK Rowling, Harlan Coben, Clive Cussler, and all the other giants?

Only in the world of lower prices.

Now imagine if all ebooks were cheap or free. Imagine how quickly they'd take over the print industry.

You won't have to imagine it for long. Because it's coming.

And for all of you Kindle and Sony Reader owners who surfed onto my blog on the basis of my header, visit www.JAKonrath.com, where I have six free ebooks, compatible with both devices, along with one for 99 cents.

Also something to consider: My free ebooks have been downloaded 17,568 times. My 99 cent book has been download 204 times.

If ebooks take over, like I think they will, freebies, pirated copies, and illegal downloads will decimate the print industry just like file sharing mp3s have decimated the CD industry.

You heard it here first.

More Afraid reviews:

http://unmainstreammomreads.blogspot.com/2009/03/101-afraid-by-jack-kilborn.html

http://hellnotes.com/afraid-book-review/

http://www.flamesrising.com/afraid-fiction-review/

http://bookreviewsbybobbie.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/book-review-of-afraid-arc/

http://www.1800blogger.com/2009/04/01/book-review-afraid-by-jack-kilborn/

Also, I'm guest posting at Naked Authors, to see if I get a better response than I did at The Outfit:

http://www.nakedauthors.com/2009/04/guest-blogger-ja-konrath.html

Where's...Enough Already! Blog Tour Recap

I began my monumental, trend-setting, ground-breaking, superhuman, death-defying, egomaniacal, much talked-about blog tour on February 28th, on a whim.

I had heard of blog tours; authors visit other blogs and guest post and/or answer questions about their current book. But I'd never attempted one. Partly because I didn't want to impose on my blogging peers. Partly because it seemed like a lot of work, with no guaranteed results.

But in February, before Afraid came out, I'd used my newsletter to solicit reviews in exchange for free copies of Afraid, asking people to blog about the book. I received well over a hundred responses from bloggers willing to review it. My publisher, who was behind me completely, wanted a way to keep track of who was getting books and reviewing them, so I suggested posting links on my blog every time a review came in.

That got me to thinking. In conjunction with the review campaign, wouldn't it be a good idea to supplement that with interviews and excerpts of the novel?

Over the years, I've managed to trade links with quite a few bloggers. I'm lucky that this blog has a decent following. It occurred to me that blogging on other sites might also benefit the sites I visit, because I'd be sending my regular visitors to new blogs. So instead of imposing, it would be more like win-win.

So, mostly to see if I could do it, I asked the blogosphere if anyone wanted to host me during. The amount of responses surprised me, and I easily had enough requests to fill every day in March.

Then it became a question of organization and time management. Who wanted what from me, and when would it be posted?

I'm awful at time management and organization. But whenever I did a guest blog, I asked for the blogger to email me the URL the morning it was posted. That way, even if I forgot what I was doing (which was often) I would get a reminder of who to link to. Google Alerts also helped, every day sending me an email of all of the places I was currently being featured on.

I've gotten over 30 reviews so far. As I'd requested, many of the reviewers posted their reviews in multiple locations--some of them in over a dozen places. The reviews are still coming in, and I'll continue to post them as I get them.

For the curious, here's a pdf of the letter I sent to reviewers:

http://www.jakonrath.com/afraidletter.pdf

Then it became a question of checking out the blogs that asked to host me, and asking them what they'd like me to do. Some preferred interviews. Some preferred me to blog about specific topics. It took a bit of time to write the 75 posts, and I did my best to not repeat myself and to conform to the blog owner's style.

So, did it work?

Googling "Jack Kilborn" in February resulted in 2880 hits. Googling "Jack Kilborn" today results in 12,000 hits.

In February, Afraid was ranked 1,299,341 on Amazon. Currently, it's at 9565. Keep in mind this is a paperback original from a new author with a small marketing budget, so debuting in the top 10,000 is pretty good, considering no previous track record, no ads, no tour, no radio campaign, no major reviews other than Publisher's Weekly.

Three of my Jack Daniels books hit the Amazon.com Police Procedural bestseller list, at four different times during the month. My backlist numbers have all spiked considerably compared to last month.

I'm still getting requests for interviews and reviews. Plus, even though the blog tour is over, the blogs I visited are permanent, and will continue to get visitors for weeks, months, even years to come.

During my month of blog touring, I got requests for more than 600 new Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter friends. Over a hundred new people signed up for my newsletter.

So, is blog touring a good time investment?

I say yes. Many of the blogs I visited told me they were thrilled with their increased traffic, and there seemed to be a lot of cross pollenization of fans going on. In fact, except for selling short stories and visiting bookstores, I can't think of a better return on your self-promo investment than blog touring.

If you're considering doing a blog tour, here are some things to keep in mind.

1. Have copies of your book to give away, to reviewers and to contest winners. I gave away books at several of the blogs I visited.

2. Momentum is important. Hitting as many blogs as you can in a short amount of time helps build buzz. Too long between posts and people will forget you're on a blog tour.

3. Make sure you've networked with enough people to be able to find enough blogs to host you. If possible, try to appear on a variety of blogs that have different demographics.

4. Don't repeat yourself. And don't try to sell books. Blogging is about information and entertainment, not infomercials.

5. Be willing to spend a lot of time on this. I spent well over a hundred hours in March, writing blogs, answering email, figuring out what I was doing and when.

6. Use your social networks to amplify the tour. I used Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace to point people toward my blog, and many of the hits I got came from these online billboards.

7. Partner with your publisher. Grand Central has been great, helping with reviews and logistics, and coming up with many terrific ideas, including offering Afraid as an ebook download for only $1.99. These are savvy folks who know what they're doing, and they're a pleasure to work alongside.

Blog touring isn't easy, but I expect to see more and more authors giving it a try. Your results may vary, but like all self-promotion, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.

More Afraid reviews:

http://scottishchick.livejournal.com/88431.html

http://guitar6.com/saviourmachine/viewtopic.php?p=22571#22571

http://authorfriendly.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/afraid-i-liked-it-a-review-of-jack-kilborns-afraid/

An Afraid book giveaway:

http://sweeps4bloggers.blogspot.com/2009/03/afraid-by-jack-kilborn-giveaway-ends.html

Everything you need to know about getting published

Not quite sure why I blog at all when there are blogs as good as James Moran's around. If you're an unpublished author, wondering what you're doing wrong, please, please, read it and follow the advice in it. Your future fame, fortune and everything else depend on it.The only things he fails to mention are boots, chocolate and sparkly wine, but I reckon he has all the other publishing essentials