FREE on Amazon until December 16

SOMETHING MUST BE DONE - by Matt Carrell

FREE Until December 16

A short story:

America is rocked by another high school shooting. Something must be done and the solution is simple. When evil people have guns, the only way to protect the vulnerable, is to arm the good guys. After all, God made men but Samuel Colt made them equal.
Sam Bailey is only twelve years old when he arrives in the USA from a sleepy village on the east coast of England. He has already experienced at first hand how violence can tear a family apart, but nothing can prepare him for life in the loudest, brashest and most confident country in the world.
When the latest massacre occurs only a hundred miles away, the question everyone is asking is: could this happen at Sam's school?.

"Before you make your mind up about how children should be kept safe at school, read Something Must Be Done, it will make you think again."

Amazon UK

Amazon.com

My favourite review

Very few writers make a lot of money. It's an incredibly competitive market and only the top authors can make a decent living. So we get our reward in a different way. Seeing one's book in print is a great experience but the real highlight is receiving a good review.

I've been fortunate, if people don't like my stuff they seem to keep quiet about it. All three of my publications rank close to five on Amazon and most of the comments have been really encouraging. I don't want to appear ungrateful to any of my reviewers but the one I saw today has to be my favourite.

Two of my books are set in the Thai sex industry and many people make their judgement without reading a single page. I have always been particularly concerned about how my work would be received by women readers. That's why this review by a lady called Caroline Page really stood out for me.

Thank you Caroline - I read a review like this and it simply makes my day.

Under the heading - Fabulous Insight

I rarely review books as I read so many but this one deserved. As a middle aged female living in Thailand I found this book to be extremely insightful to the culture of the entertainment, religious and other aspects of Thai life. Yes, there are hundreds of books about bargirls in Thailand (I have read most) and this is of that genre but very well written, some real twists and turns and unusually the girls involved are treated with respect by the author in his story telling and descriptions. Super book and highly recommended for anyone visiting or living here.  

Why not check out the book -  Thai Lottery on Amazon.co.uk

You Tube for marketing your book

Like most authors, I use Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and Web forums as the main method of marketing my books. Spotting a trailer for a book the other day on YouTube, I thought it was worth a go.

There won't be any Academy Awards for this, but it was fun putting it together -

Thai Kiss by Matt Carrell  on You Tube

FREE BOOK DOWNLOAD THIS WEEKEND

Of course it's great when people buy your books - I have an unhealthy obsession with checking where I've got to on the Amazon rankings and the royalty cheque is always welcome. Thai Kiss and Thai Lottery took around a year and half in total to go from initial ideas to publication. Charging £3.18 per book seems pretty reasonable, especially as Amazon and the publisher take the lion's share. But....

A few months ago I had the idea for a short story set in a US High School. Gun control was being discussed on every news show and the constant mantra was.... Something Must Be Done. At just 29 pages long it's pretty hard to justify a big price ticket on Amazon, so I only market this when they let me put it out for free.

The story is free all this weekend on Amazon. I hope you will download it and let your friends know

Made your mind up about gun control? Read this first.

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Boosting your sales with a second book

My first book was published last November and although Thai Lottery has sold very well, it had plateaued after about four months. Sales were regular but at nothing like the levels I'd seen shortly after launch.  My second book, Thai Kiss, came out in the last week of May and is already well ahead of the trend set by its predecessor.

I'd made sure that I had the contact details for everyone who had contacted me about Thai Lottery and so I had a ready made market into which I could sell the second book. The response I got was fantastic. Thai Kiss, they told me, was even better than Thai Lottery.

The thing I'd not bargained for was the impact a second book would have on sales of the first. I'd obviously tapped into a new readership, at times Thai Lottery actually  outsold Thai Kiss, even though the second book was doing better than the first in its opening weeks. In short the publication of a second book sent the first on a higher trajectory than it had ever had before, even in its opening weeks.

If you are an author I'd love to hear any theories you have on why this might happen.  Maybe a second book ensures a degree of credibility with readers or maybe it's just the weight of mentions on the net. Whatever the reason, there seems to be no doubt that a second book helps to create a  virtuous circle. Now excuse me, I have to get to work on the third book.....

Social networking for authors - the pitfalls

Last November my publisher e-mailed me to say that my first book was out there, I was certain that I just had to sit back and collect the royalties. Then he explained the hard work had just begun. I had to create a social media presence or my book, he said, was doomed.

You already know I have a blog, you're reading it. You will also find me on Twitter, Facebook, GoodReads, Independent Author Network and.... well I've actually forgotten some of the places I signed up for to get the word out there.

They are all invaluable and I have definitely sold a lot of books by virtue of contacts I have made on social media. I have also made quite a few new friends. If you are trying to get publicity for your book, you have to do all these things but this post offers a simple word of warning:

The vast majority of the people you will encounter when trying to market a book are other authors trying to market their own. You will get exposure to web sites that claim to have twenty thousand members, the problem is that nineteen thousand five hundred of them are other authors just like you. The message really sunk home the other day when I saw someone claim that their book had been voted Number 1 in a specific, but fairly broad, category on a well known book site. I then checked the book's Amazon ranking. It was outside the top 100,000 on both of the main Amazon sites. That means it will probably have sold no more than one copy that week. In all probability they had traded votes with other authors to gain a high ranking - but it had made no impact on sales. Their voters had not bought the book, neither did they intend to, they had a book of their own to sell.

There is no doubt that social networking is essential, this is just a word of caution. You can get all the "likes", "follows", "plus 1s" and other votes as there are fish in the sea, but they need to be from people who are going to buy your book or recommend it to others who will.

The Power of Words

It's barely a minute and a half long - so definitely worth a look.

If you were ever in doubt about how a well crafted sentence can hit you right between the eyes......

Power of Words

FREE AMAZON DOWNLOAD

In case you missed it last week. My latest short story is free until midnight Pacific time.

Download it here if you are on amazon.co.uk : CLICK

And here on Amazon.com - CLICK

It's also free on all other Amazon sites - until around mid morning Monday in Europe  - much alter in Asia...

Something Must Be Done -

America is rocked by another high school shooting. Something must be done and the solution is simple. When evil people have guns, the only way to protect the vulnerable, is to arm the good guys. After all, God made men but Samuel Colt made them equal.
Sam Bailey is only twelve years old when he arrives in the USA from a sleepy village on the east coast of England. He has already experienced at first hand how violence can tear a family apart, but nothing can prepare him for life in the loudest, brashest and most confident country in the world.
When the latest massacre occurs only a hundred miles away, the question everyone is asking is: could this happen at Sam's school?.

"Before you make your mind up about how children should be kept safe at school, read Something Must Be Done, it will make you think again."

FREE Amazon downloads

It's hard to get noticed when you are a new author competing with thousands of others, many with heavy marketing budgets behind them.

My two books, Thai Lottery and Thai Kiss are both selling well on the main e-book sites but the publisher is keen to keep the price above £4 and $7 - some people won't be keen to pay that much unless they are sure they are going to like what they buy.

Free promotions are not under my control for the two books, so I decided to write something completely new. It's free on Amazon after 00.01 Pacific time today only. Saturday June 1. I guess that means it won't kick in, in the UK until mid morning and much later in Asia. I hope you will give it a try and take the FREE download. There's a brief description below the links:

Something Must Be Done on Amazon.co.uk 

Something Must Be Done on Amazon.com

A short story:

America is rocked by another high school shooting. Something must be done and the solution is simple. When evil people have guns, the only way to protect the vulnerable, is to arm the good guys. After all, God made men but Samuel Colt made them equal.
Sam Bailey is only twelve years old when he arrives in the USA from a sleepy village on the east coast of England. He has already experienced at first hand how violence can tear a family apart, but nothing can prepare him for life in the loudest, brashest and most confident country in the world.
When the latest massacre occurs only a hundred miles away, the question everyone is asking is: could this happen at Sam's school?.

"Before you make your mind up about how children should be kept safe at school, read Something Must Be Done, it will make you think again."

Don't be a one book wonder

One of the things I take into account when deciding whether I want to buy a book is whether the author has written more than one. It may not be fair but it's hard to escape the logic that if the first one was popular they will have written another.

I have wanted to make this post for ages but my second... and third only came out yesterday. I hope you will take a look - they are both available at Amazon. Thai Kiss is also available on Kobo and Barnes & Noble

Thai Kiss - a novel

Paul Murphy desperately wants to be a big shot but the pursuit of fortune often comes with a heavy price. For Paul, it was the life of his best friend and partner, Tommy, apparently murdered for encroaching on a local drug gang's turf. Paul, a lowly hospital porter, fearful that he'll be next, flees to Thailand to lay low while reconnecting with Tommy's supplier in Pattaya. He meets the enchanting Yim and, veering from his intended plan, starts to rebuild his life running a chain of bars. Sonthi, a local heavy, offers protection for a price and the corrupt Mongkut ensures that the police will always turn a blind eye. So many want a share of Paul's success, but when greed prevails and they get tired of sharing, it's Paul's liberty and life itself that are on the line. 

Something Must Be Done - a short story

America is rocked by another high school shooting. Something must be done and the solution is simple. When evil people have guns, the only way to protect the vulnerable, is to arm the good guys. After all, God made men but Samuel Colt made them equal.
Sam Bailey is only twelve years old when he arrives in the USA from a sleepy village on the east coast of England. He has already experienced at first hand how violence can tear a family apart, but nothing can prepare him for life in the loudest, brashest and most confident country in the world.
When the latest massacre occurs only a hundred miles away, the question everyone is asking is: could this happen at Sam's school?.

"Before you make your mind up about how children should be kept safe at school, read Something Must Be Done, it will make you think again."

Seeing it in print - your first book.

It was a real thrill to get a small third party publisher interested in my manuscript. They definitely gave the book a polish that I could never have achieved on my own. To be fair they also pointed out some plot inconsistencies and timing issues that I couldn't see any more. I'd just got too close to the story.

The only downside was that they only wanted to do an e-book launch until we could prove that the book had a market. It took four months before we finally agreed that the e-book had sold enough to demonstrate that a print run would be worth the effort.

It was amazing to see my first book on Amazon when it was only available as a download. When you finally get a professionally printed book in your hands you start to believe that you are in the foothills, at least, of being an author.

Some friends were kind enough to buy the first few copies, then a bookshop in Thailand agreed to stock it. We are miles away from seeing it in high street bookshops but its still a great feeling to see your work on a bookshelf instead of just a screen.

If you've self published an e-book and are trying to make up your mind, you really have to go for it. There are plenty of small printing firms that specialise in short run prints - we used a company called Russell Press in the UK. I am now seeing copies of the paperback notching up sales through Amazon and it feels a little more real than all the e-book sales that preceded it.

If you are thinking of doing a print run, do it.

Mine is here - Thai Lottery - paperback version

Using Twitter to attract new readers

Authors who are not backed by the huge publishing houses have to work really hard to get their books noticed. Mercifully, social media like Facebook and Twitter provide a handy mechanism for doing just that. If you have ideas that you are willing to share, please contact me or post a comment on this blog. In the meantime, I wanted to share an approach that has worked really well for me just recently.

The approach is predicated on being able to identify a group of people who would be interested in your book and therefore the type of people they might follow on Twitter.

I believe my book has broad appeal, I have received as many positive comments from women as I have from men. Nonetheless, the book is about the Thai bar scene and the people who fall in love, or think they are in love, with the country and its women.

The scatter gun approach may work for some, by that I mean:

1. Do whatever you can to get as many followers as you can
2. Tweet other users asking them to read your book.

I have avoided both methods, in favour of:

1. Identifying those people on Twitter who will have followers who might like your book. I chose users who run forums on Thailand and the bar scene in particular, those who run bars and clubs and authors who have written exclusively about Thailand.

Clearly you should follow them but it's their followers you are really interested in.

2. Either manually or using a free service like JustUnfollow (@justunfollow on Twitter) you can look at their followers and select those you think might be interesting. I chose those who looked like they had a strong presence on Twitter and appeared, from their profile, to be most likely to buy a book (trust me you can tell that quite a few won't be).

3. At this stage, you could obviously tweet the person you have found. Instead I just followed them, believing that most people follow back if your profile looks interesting.

4. As soon as I get a follow back message - I send them a thank you, with some reference to my book, my web-site or the free stories i have posted on Facebook, depending on what they appear to be interested in.

5. Once a week I use Justunfollow again to clear out the people I followed who have shown no interest.

The method sounds a bit laborious but it has had a clear impact on sales. People I have found on Twitter have subsequently posted 5 star reviews on Amazon.

If you have ideas you are willing to share please post them here or e-mail me at mattcarrellbooks@gmail.com