Louis CK

BREAKING NEWS: Acclaimed author Steven Konkoly, whose new thriller Black Flagged just hit stores and whose Jakarta Pandemic just got its 100th review on Amazon, just published an in-depth review of the Zero Sum trilogy that’s the best analysis of the books I’ve seen. A must read. And please, distribute it and tweet it, as it’s honest, accurate and engaging.

UPDATE: An Angel With Fur and the Pet Wall get spotlight coverage at Justin Bogdanovitch’s blog. Great pooch photos too. And the book is currently back in the #2 position in Animal Essays on Amazon UK!

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It’s been an interesting few days.

My Wall Street thriller Zero Sum, Book 1, Kotov Syndrome, has been free on Amazon for a little over a week, and after a truly stunning first week downloads have slowed, as I’d been warned they would. Conversely, sales of the bundled Book 2 and Book 3 have picked up, and it’s bounced around between #1500 and #3000 on Amazon Kindle books for that same period, so that’s good. The free Book 1 bounces between #10 and #5 on Action Adventure in free downloads, so it’s still seeing decent traffic. The question is of course, how many readers who download free books ultimately will be willing to pay for content – I can see a sort of sub-culture that believes that writers should do so for free and that books aren’t worth buying – although of course those in that culture wouldn’t dream of doing a ton of work for free themselves. It’s an interesting question, and I suppose we’ll see the answer soon enough.

I had a hitch in the gitty-up over the size of the excerpts in Book 1, so trimmed them to just a couple. This is a learning experience, as once they loaded in David Lender’s excerpts and mine, it bloated the file so over 40% of the download was excerpts, which I was unaware of until alerted (my tech guy does the excerpts and formatting – I just write the books and wash the bottles). That’s fixed now by cutting back on the excerpts, so it’s a brave new world. Also, since making the book available free, I’ve gotten a few one star reviews – a first out of 100 or so reviews for my work, and all on the free book. I guess John Locke’s observation that people will either love or hate your work is true, and you have to expect some haters to get mixed in with the lovers, especially as the numbers climb. It’s all par for the course, and the road’s been walked before.

As an aside, comedian Louis CK has a wonderful bit about how some folks feel a sense of entitlement, no matter how good things are, and will always be disappointed. He tells the tale of a flight where free in-flight internet was being tested, and after half an hour it stopped working, and the guy next to him began fuming, saying, “Man, this is bullshit!” The bit is funny because the guy is annoyed and feels entitled to something he didn’t even know existed until a few minutes prior. That seems to be human nature for some. Point is you can’t please everyone. Louis CK is amazingly funny, for those who haven’t seen his work, and you should look for him on YouTube for a laugh.

I’m currently chugging away at my next WIP, which will be The Delphi Chronicle. I hope to have the whole thing finished up in a week or so, at which point it will be polish time, and then off for editing and a cover. This one is scaring even me a bit, as the underlying conspiracy is frighteningly plausible and is based on an amazing piece of investigative journalism I stumbled across while researching book titles.

After that, I’ve got the next book featuring Dr. Steven Archer/Cross from Zero Sum, and then three other book ideas for next year, all of which I’m pretty excited about as they’re novel premises.

The Pet Wall is growing slowly, and An Angel With Fur continues to receive rave reviews, all of which comment on how touching the book is. That feels good for me, as I’m so close to the story sometimes I lose perspective on whether it really is moving for someone who wasn’t there.

So I will be relatively quiet over the next week or two as I finish my current WIP, and then will come up for air and chew the fat more. Thanks again to all who have retweeted my tweets about Zero Sum Book 1 being free on Amazon, and who have been supportive as I experiment with different marketing approaches. It seems there is no one magic bullet, but there’s at least a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully it’s not a train coming at me.

Until next time…

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