Book cover reveal for ‘The Great Bear’ book 3 of the Adarna chronicles

Okey dokey then, it’s that time again. (drum roll please…). Here’s the book cover reveal for book 3 of ‘The Adarna Chronicles’, It’s called ‘The Great Bear’ (you can probably tell that by looking at the cover, right?). Let me know what you think. Is it as good as the covers for ‘Empire Under Siege‘ and ‘Phoenix Rising‘? Does it tie in with the image of the series so far? I’ve put a really big version at the bottom of the post so that you can have a good old look.

I think the guys over at Deranged Doctor Design have done an amazing job again (thank you guys!) and I cannot recommend them highly enough. If i’m honest though, this was the hardest one so far! 

The book itself is as long as ‘Empire Under Siege‘ and ‘Phoenix Rising‘ combined, which explains why it is giving me a bit of a headache at the moment. Preliminary structural edits are complete though, so it should be off to the editor within three weeks and then (hopefully!) out before the end of October as promised.

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Getting reviews for your book takes a bit of luck…

EMPIRE UNDER SIEGE Jason K. Lewis

Anyone in the self publishing world will tell you that getting reviews for your books is really difficult and, put simply, reviews sell books. So how can you get more reviews for your books? There are a few tactics that you can use to get book reviews:-

1) Goodreads giveaways- basically you give away copies of your book in the hope that one of the lucky winners will leave a review. This is quite an expensive option (global postage is not cheap and you will have to give away an actual copy of your book).

2) Amazon giveaways- Make your book free on Amazon (either perma-free or temporarily using the KDP select programme), then sit back and wait for the reviews to roll in. I have some experience of this. I’ve run two giveaways for my science fiction novelette ‘Paradise‘ and I’ve managed to give away almost three thousand copies. The number of reviews that I think can be attributed to the giveaways? My best guess is about ten…

3) Find book reviewers (through twitter or Amazon or blogs) and submit your book to them in the hope that they will choose to review it. I have had some success with this (about six reviews) but it is an awful lot of work and you end up badgering the reviewers and feeling like a pest…

4) Join a book review group on Goodreads or a similar site. There are loads of groups on Goodreads where you can submit your book and, in return for giving honest reviews of other books, you can get a review of your own. Verdict on this one? Well I’ve had some success with this but the problem is that you have to actually read a lot of books and this takes an awfully long time. You then have to leave an honest review (read what you will into that)…

5) Blind luck (read on below to see what I mean…).

I got really lucky this week (or at least I feel really lucky). I got what I consider to be a great review from one of the top fantasy book review sites (fantasybookcritic) for the first two books in the Adarna chronicles (Empire Under Siege and Phoenix Rising). If you want to pop over and read the review, then why not check out their amazing and informative site.

I also got a rather wonderful review for Empire Under Siege from independent book reviewer and blogger L.K.Evans (you can check out her site and the review here).

PHOENIX RISING by Jason K. Lewis

The reason I feel lucky? Well, I didn’t search these reviewers out and hound them until they took a look at the books (and every independent author knows that sometimes, just sometimes, it is tempting to do this- see point 3). They each chose to do it on their own.  Yes, that’s right, they actually found my books in the seething ocean of other works that is Amazon et al (which in my view is a minor miracle in itself).

I also feel lucky that they actually liked the books though (coz that’s quite important too, right?). Phew! What a relief (I thought when I read one review). I had known that Mihir, over at fantasybookcritic, would be reviewing the books for the last few weeks and crikey, did I sweat over it 🙂

In other news, I have decided on a title for the third novella in the Adarna chronicles. ‘The Great Bear’ will be released in October… More info, including a cover reveal, to follow soon…

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Experimenting with Amazon KDP Select

I made an important decision today. I determined that, as I really wasn’t selling many books through all the other book vending channels, I would put all of my eggs in one basket. That basket is Amazon, the great titan of the modern publishing world.

I have enrolled all four of my current works (‘Empire Under Siege’, ‘Phoenix Rising’, ‘Paradise’, and ‘The Bloody King’) in Amazon’s KDP select programme.

The KDP select programme works in two ways:-

1) It allows members of Amazon ‘Prime’ to borrow your book for a month through the ‘Kindle owners lending library’.

2) It allows members of Amazon’s new subscription service ‘Amazon unlimited’ (which they pay $9.99 a month for and allows them to read as many books as they like) to download your book.

What does this mean? I hear you say… Well, if an Amazon Prime member borrows your book or an Amazon unlimited subscriber reads more than 10% of you book, then you earn a share of the ‘KDP select global fund’. For the month of September the global fund stands at 3 million dollars with the average amount being paid for each book being about $1.80 (as far as I can tell).

The only downside is that you have to remove your book from all other vending channels. This is a bit of pain but it may be worth it… (I hope).

Will it work? Will this move generate additional sales? Who knows… But I don’t really have anything to lose as the books weren’t really selling through the other channels anyway 🙂

I feel like I am experimenting a lot with different things at the moment but I guess that is the lot of the indie author. I will report back on my little experiment when I have some useful data. In the meantime, if you are an Amazon ‘Prime’ or ‘Unlimited’ member, why not pop on over to Amazon and have a read of my books? 🙂

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