Isn’t it astounding how a few tweaks can dramatically affect the whole?

I’ve found this to be true in nearly every area of life, from design, to task management, to relationships.

You see, when I first published the paperback edition of “The Truth Beyond the Sky,” I still had plenty to learn about making a great paperback, and I knew it. Even though I had a background in design and plenty of examples to choose from, I had to admit that it was still the first full-length book I’d ever designed a cover for.

Thankfully, my research and extensive testing paid off, and many bookish people have told me that they can’t tell any difference in quality between it and any book you’d find in the library.

Hearing this was a relief!

I’m a detail-oriented kind of guy, and even a single piece of improper punctuation can bug me, and for good reason: I am competing, on some level, with Asimov, Clarke, Wells, etc. And as my plan unfolds, my books will be sharing shelf space with them more and more, and if my quality didn’t at least meet their level of quality, I’d be rather screwed.

An Example

So today, I’d like to share a visual example of something I’ve learned over the last few months: the importance of putting reviews on the back of your paperback!

In retrospect this seems fairly obvious, but you may be surprised how many books don’t do it. Reviews are key because they provide extremely helpful “social proof” for the book, and I’m excited to announce that the back cover of the book will soon feature the new design below.

First, here’s what it looked like before:

And after:

As with most things in life, I had to make a compromise and shorten some of the book’s description and make some other tweaks. The compromise was tricky, but I realized that having two reputable reviews was more important than the entire description. The description is meant to be a tease, anyway. Plus, the overall image composition is better now, too. Better use of negative space, don’t you think?

Word of Caution: don’t use reviews from Amazon reviewers on the back of your book unless they’re from known people, like reviewers you have actually heard of. Instead, have independent reviewers write a review for your book (i.e., people who actually have a site or a business dedicated for that purpose). That way, you can cite their website which lends the review much more credibility.

“What if I don’t have any reviews by actual professional reviewers?” I hear you asking. Well, get them! If your book is worth its bits, you shouldn’t have much trouble if you have patience. (This directory is a great place to find people who review books, most of them for free: TheIndieView.com)

Do you have any opinions on the new back cover?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. 🙂

Aloha from Hawaii!

I thought I’d give you a brief update on how the Kindle promos are going and the exciting developments since the last update!

First, Let’s Talk Numbers

You may not be aware, but the Kindle Select program lets me give away my book for 5 different days within a certain range of time. These days can be consecutive, all split up, or somewhere in between. And in February, I ran the first single-day promotion, giving away The Truth Beyond the Sky, completely freely, for 24 hours.

The result? Counting all countries, 322 copies of the book were given away on February 21. Not horrible, but not great. I knew we could do better.

Then in March, the Kindle community blew my socks off!

In March, I did my first 2-day promo wherein I gave away The Truth Beyond the Sky for an uninterrupted 48 hour period, and in that time, I was stunned to reach over 3,400 downloads (and that’s just the US Kindle store).

I need to stress how unprecedented this is. To have the chance to touch over 3,000 people’s lives in just 2 days is incredibly humbling to me. And even though I didn’t make a dime on those two days, I noticed (just as many other authors have remarked), that my real sales increased afterward, and March was by far my best sales month.

I no sooner saw this in action than the very next month. During April, I didn’t do any free days (partially because I was on the road for nearly the entire month), and I saw my overall sales drop to less than one-fourth of my March sales. Now, I don’t claim to understand the wisdom of the masses (and other factors may have been at play), but what’s happened this month really drove the point home. Once again, I saw a clear spike in sales after this month’s promos.

The correlation between promos and real sales is undeniable.

Which brings us to Now

This month, I’m pleased to announce that I had my best ever single-day promo yet, reaching 814 people in a single 24 hour period. And the 2-day promo which happened a couple weeks later reached over 2,300 downloads. While it’s not the 3,000+ I had the first time, I’m still incredibly humbled and grateful to reach so many people.

And remember, another great aspect of doing ebook giveaways is that by reaching more readers, it really helped fuel my book to get more reviews as time went on. In fact, I’m very pleased to report that the book averages over 4+ stars with 19 reviews 26 reviews!

TLDR: free downloads increase real sales. The Truth Beyond the Sky is living proof of this.

Coming Soon…

I’m also excited to announce that reviews of The Truth Beyond the Sky will be showing up at SF blogs around the web in the coming months. (i.e., I almost went batty last week preparing dozens of review submissions to various blogs, each of which insist on their own special submission formatting.)

The practical upshot of all of this, is that the amount of eyeballs on the galactic myth that we all love continues to rise exponentially, and I continue to make progress on the sequel.

In fact, I just may have created a little teaser page about it.

You can draw your own conclusions, I’m sure.