Author - Dana Lockhart

As I waited for Amazon to accept me or reject me, my mind was whirling with ups and downs of why I could succeed and why I could fail.  What would my future hold?  This giant corporation had the blossoming bud of my life’s dream in their hands and I was on the edge of my seat in anticipation to see what their verdict could mean for the rest of my career as an author.  Would they toss it aside, or help it grow? I don’t think I did a bad job at the campaign.  By my figures, I spent close to half my entire 30 day campaign hot and trending – the last week I was close to spending every day-all day hot.  I got almost 3.5k views.  Five out of the top ten Scouts in the leaderboard nominated my book, including the #1 Scout.  My marketing folks I hired to help me showered me in support and compliments (I like to hope it’s because they liked my story and not because they were trying to make a customer happy).  I managed to make a little noise and got some...

In Part I , I discussed the marketing methods that I recommend and ones that I almost recommend.  In this Part II, I have a list of marketing techniques I do not recommend, as well as a final note of what I wish I would have done better and how Kindle Scout appears to work.  Not Recommended: Books and the Bear – This is another company that baited me by following me on Twitter.  I was getting desperate to become hot and get views again before I had found the Fiverr marketing.  So I panicked and purchased their $10 one-time promo to their giant Twitter account before I realized this one-or-two times promotion stuff just doesn’t yield results.  Look at where you’re getting promoted!  Look, I beg you!  The Bear has a lot of followers, yes, but they also post umpteen times a day with their own advertisements for marketing and editing so that in no time your paid advertisement gets lost on their page.  Heck, since following them back they’ve been ...

This is Part I, featuring recommended and maybe recommended marketing techniques for Kindle Scout.  Read Part II about what’s not recommended and a final overview of Kindle Scout. Before I even launched my Kindle Scout campaign, I was getting baited by marketing companies to try and buy their promotions.  Being pretty new at this marketing thing, I was looking for cheap, effective ways to promote, and I quickly learned that sometimes you get what you paid for and you better be a smart shopper. If you undergo a venture like Kindle Scout as a new author with little experience in marketing, I encourage you to really double check what you’re actually getting.  An ad of “reach 100k+ people on Twitter” sounds too good to be true because it is.  Sure, there might be 100k people following said Twitter account, but when you only pay for one post when they post over 30 times a day, you’re post is likely to never be seen. I have outlined some very specific methods that I...

Perhaps the worst part of being rejected by the Kindle Scout team was that they did it so politely, so encouragingly, so supportively. I almost wonder if it would have been easier to accept if they had told me they hated my novel. But for them to tell me they liked it, but didn’t want to publish it, threw me for a huge loop. How hard is this publishing thing really going to be if good works still get the axe? How good does “good” have to be? -It Hurts So Good- The editorial feedback is a special Kindle Scout is doing at this time, starting in November 2017 and ending at the end of February 2018. When you get the email, it starts with “general comments” about the novel and their opinion of it as a whole. Mine was as follows: “There is a lot that we like about this novel, and we’re impressed by the positive and pragmatic attitude you express on your blog about the business aspects of pursuing a long-term literary career. You’re definitely the kind of talented and business-con...

There's no way to sugar coat it.  If you nominated The Un-Life of William Moore , you probably already got the email by now.  It was not selected for publication. And there's a ton of things I could say about that and how that makes me feel, but I'm sure you can imagine it.  We've all fought hard for something before and ended up not being able to succeed.  It hurts like hell.  I've personally been trying to hold in the emotions because I don't have the time to process them right now.  I found out an hour before my second writers guild meeting and couldn't let some bad news ruin my makeup and what was going to be a fun night. I do plan on moving forward with getting The Un-Life published.  I did have a back-up plan, but had rather hoped I wouldn't have to use it.  Now that I'm in that situation, I want to make sure that Plan B is the right plan before going full steam ahead into it. Plan B is to self-publish via Kindle Direct and Createspac...

Dearest Amazon, If you do more than just look at the book, if you also look at the social presence of an author, if you are reading this now, let me tell you: when it comes to my Kindle Scout campaign, the only thing you’ve got to lose is a beautiful partnership with a loyal customer and determined businesswoman. I promise you there are only good things coming your way if you support me. If you take the chance to be the first one to jump start my writing career, you can bet that I’m going to come to you first with everything from here on out. When I’m treated right (and you’ve always treated me right for the past 10 years), I stick with you, and I really look forward to doing more business with you in the publishing world. I didn't go into Kindle Scout thinking it was a tool to use to get published - I went into it with starting a business in mind. I’m not going to be a one-shot wonder. I dream bigger than that. The Un-Life of William Moore is only the beginning. I’ve got b...

-My First Try- I actually tried querying The Un-Life of William Moore when I first finished it several years ago. I submitted my pitch to a dozen or so agents, and only got automated “Sorry, but no” emails in response (seriously, I think one even said “Dear [insert name]” on it and they didn’t bother to fill in the insert). And that was a time when anything with the word “vampire” seemed like it was getting sold. Remember “My Babysitter is a Vampire?” Shudder. I remember My Babysitter is a Vampire. It wasn’t exactly unexpected that I failed, but it was still disappointing. And at the time, my dreams of being a published author were a little dashed. I tried looking into self-publishing, but the only things I were finding were “vanity” publishers and hefty investments into printing and distributing your own book, which at the time was out of the realm of possibility for me. -A New Hope- But my hopes were reignited a couple years ago when I discovered how easy it was to ...

Well, I don’t really know how Kindle Scout is going, honestly. Kindle Scout does give you some tools to work with in order to figure out which of your marketing strategies are working and which are failing. But they won’t flat up tell you how many nominations you or anyone else has. For example, they tell me how many people have used external links to view my book, and where it was they were directed from when they clicked on it. It’s neat to see the breakdown: how many came from facebook, how many came from my website (and which page of it), how many came from promotional websites, etc. This is a screenshot of my traffic stats as of Jan 8 at 4 AM But external links don’t really seem all that important, because Kindle Scout also shows you what percentage of page views are coming from browsing Kindle Scout and how many are coming from outside sources. Right now, my ratio is about 90% of my views are coming from Kindle Scout, and 10% are from elsewhere. The highest externa...

It's official. About an hour ago I submitted my novel, The Un-Life of William Moore, to Kindle Scout . I'm ending 2017 on the hopes that just a few months into 2018 that I am going to be a published author. I'm not sure how long it's going to take before my novel is live and ready to be viewed and voted on, but I will certainly let everyone know! I'd hope it wouldn't be much longer than a week or so. If you haven't read my previous blog post about how to possibly get an early, free copy of my ebook , here's how it's going to work: Once my submission goes live on Kindle Scout, I have 30 days to receive nominations on my story. The more nominations I get, the more likely that my novel will be noticed by a Scout, who might offer me a publishing gig. Everyone that votes for my novel, The Un-Life of William Moore , gets an early, free copy if I succeed in getting published with Kindle Scout. All you need to vote is an Amazon account! For more...

For those of you that don't know exactly what my plans are, I'm going to outline my new few months so you can perhaps anticipate when your support is needed and when you can get a book! As of right now, my 50k+ novel The Un-Life of William Moore is done.  I plan to submit it to Amazon Kindle Scout by the end of the month. Currently, it's being reviewed by an editor.  She anticipates she'll be able to meet my time frame goal. I ordered a book cover, and assuming I like what I get, that should be wrapped up in about 10 days from now, also meeting my goal. According to Kindle Scout FAQ , once I submit my story, it will take a couple days before it hits the website.  So, I'm aiming for the ballpark of the last week in December or the first week of January for The Un-Life being up and ready to be voted on.  An except of approximately the first 5k words are then available to read.  Once up, the book has 30 days to generate buzz.  In that time per...