Meanderings of a Middle Age Mind: January 2016

Sunday, January 31, 2016

Where Art Thou, My Writing Muse?

Well, my writing muse hasn't visited very often or for very long this past week. That being said, I've still made some progress on the new e-novel, Arizona State Guard: Freedom's Forge. The page count keeps growing and the story continues to come together in my mind as the days go by!!! I'm even getting some ideas for the cover art that I need to share with Sean in the near future.

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Just a reminder that I will be running a Kindle Promotion sale for my e-novels* starting at 12:00 a.m. (PST) February 12th and running through 12:00 a.m. (PST) February 19th. Sale prices will be:

Arizona State Guard: Bloody Border -- $2.99 (normally $3.99)

Arizona State Guard: Target Terror -- $2.99 (normally $3.99)

Chaos on Terra-Prime -- $1.99 (normally $2.99)

Foothold on Terra-Bravo -- $1.99 (normally $2.99)

Crisis on Terra-Bravo -- $1.99 (normally $2.99)

The Terra-Bravo Saga Volume 1 -- $3.99 (normally $5.97)

Death Haunts the Stars -- $3.99 (normally $4.99)

My e-novels can be found at my Amazon.com Author Page: www.amazon.com/author/jeffreyfortney.

* This is for my e-novels only and does NOT include Honing Your Instructional Skills which is already at the bargain of 99 cents!

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On a side note, I do intend to revise Honing Your Instructional Skills inside and out in the near future with new and revised content, add in some illustrations/photos, and a new cover. It's just not on the front burner...yet!

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Not much else to report at this moment. I'll let you know how the promotional sales goes after it's over.

Stay safe out there!

Jeffrey

Sunday, January 17, 2016

The Year of the e-Books - Part IV

January 2016 is off to a very good start! Sales are up (moderately, but up none the less)! With my books now exclusive with Amazon.com's Kindle Select Program (except for Honing Your Instructional Skills), Kindle Prime members can read each of these books for "free".

Never fear, authors aren't getting ripped off by this! Kindle Direct Publishing has established a multi-million dollar fund to pay authors based on the number of pages read per each book. An my pages read numbers are doing well.

I'm planning to run a price promotion on each of the books in the very near future for each of the books! Need to do some planning before I do this, but I'll let you all know when, for how much, and for how long! Stay tuned.

In the meantime, work on Arizona State Guard: Freedom's Forge is picking up steam! In going back through the novel, I've reached the point at which I stopped prior to the Christmas/New Years Holidays. I've made some changes along the way and am now writing fresh material as I go! Setting the stage with some of the villains at the moment. (Boo! Hiss!)

I've spoken with Sean to let him know that we need to start planning for the cover of Freedom's Forge. I want to be sure that we're ready to e-publish in mid-April!

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www.amazon.com/author/jeffreyfortney

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Wishing all of you a great week!

Jeffrey

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Big Changes Coming!!!

Death Haunts the Stars and The Terra-Bravo Saga - Volume 1 (box set) are doing well on Amazon; particularly in the Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) Read program. This program allows Kindle Unlimited subscribers to read Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select editions of e-books without having to purchase the books.

Now, it may seem that the authors are getting screwed. How are they paid for these reads? Well, Amazon/Kindle set aside a portion of the KU subscription dues paid to fund each page read by a reader! So, I enrolled both Death Haunts the Stars and The Terra-Bravo Saga - Volume 1 in the KDP Select program and I am indeed seeing the page counts racking up for those books and have calculated the royalties being generated.

So, this means some changes in the way my other e-books have been published. I've pulled Chaos on Terra-Prime, Foothold on Terra-Bravo, Crisis on Terra-Bravo, Arizona State Guard: Bloody Border, and Arizona State Guard: Target Terror from Smashwords.com (and thus, from any of their other distributors). This may sound counter-productive, but truth be told, I haven't been generating much of any royalties through Smashwords.com. This is not a reflection on them, but on my limited advertising budget to direct customers to them and other online bookstores.

I need to give it a couple of weeks for the e-books to clear then I'll enroll them in KDP Select. That will give me seven e-books available through Kindle Unlimited's reader program. Time will tell how much that increases my royalties!

So, Amazon.com's Kindle Store will be my exclusive sales point for my e-novels moving forward (unless some major event occurs).

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With all of the above going on, I haven't had much time to work on Arizona State Guard: Freedom's Forge. But, that will change starting tonight!

This evening I plan to revise the outline for ASG:FF then begin a major writing push. I'd really like to get this book published by mid-April. There! I said it! I've gone and given myself a deadline so by God, I've got to keep it! (OY VEY!!!)

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In the meantime, here's my usual advertising for the current books:

Amazon.com Author Page: [url]www.amazon.com/author/jeffreyfortney[/url]

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Winter is out there folks, so let's be careful! If you have to travel in the snow and ice, slow down and be sure to get there alive!

Jeffrey

Sunday, January 3, 2016

When Vacation Ends, Work Begins Anew!

Well, my big annual vacation for 2015 is drawing to a close in just a few hours. Tomorrow, I return to the office recharged and ready to tackle another year of creating new training materials for the Fire Services around the world!

I must say, this has been a very busy vacation:

- The family gathered the weekend before Christmas for our annual get together. Gary's fiancee, Stoni, was able to join us this year so the entire family was together.

- Death Haunts the Stars did not receive an exclusive Kindle contract, so I put the book online at Amazon's Kindle Store (Here!)

- I finalized the glossaries and other updates for the Terra-Bravo novels AND finished the collected box set, appropriately named The Terra-Bravo Saga - Volume 1! The new editions of the three original books and the new collected edition are available at Amazon's Kindle Store:

Chaos on Terra-Prime

Foothold on Terra-Bravo

Crisis on Terra-Bravo

The Terra-Bravo Saga - Volume 1

- And a little home/property repair necessitated by some high winds around Christmas-time which blew down part of our fence and a gate. I still have a little finish work to complete, but it will get done! The cold weather has not helped with the repairs!

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And here's my new joint advertising artwork for my novels over the next few months:

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