Thanks for the Book Trailer!

My friend, Tom, was practicing with some editing software, and unknown to me, came up with this cool book trailer...for MY books! 

I think it's amazing! It's also short and sweet, so please check it out and let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks, Tom!

#rogereschbacherbooks #booktrailer #sff #scifi #scifibooks #fantasy #fantasybooks #thankstom!

 

 

Roger Eschbacher lives in Los Angeles with his awesome family, a hilarious Border Terrier, and a grumpy Russian tortoise.

In addition to writing fantasy and sci-fi adventure novels, he writes TV animation for Warner Bros., Netflix, Cartoon Network, Hasbro Studios and more. Roger’s YA space opera Ghost Star is a winner of the Kindle Scout competition and received a publishing contract from Amazon’s Kindle Press imprint.

Ghost Star and other books by Roger are listed on his Amazon Author Page which can be found HERE.

Such a Deal! GHOST STAR On Sale $0.99 All April

As you saw in an earlier post, Amazon decided to do a price-drop marketing promotion for Ghost Star. All this month my little YA space opera is discounted from $2.99 to $0.99 per Kindle copy. Not too shabby for anyone looking to save a couple of bucks on an action-packed sci-fi read.

There are TWO WEEKS left on the promo, so if you haven't already picked up your copy, now's a good time to do so.

Also, please share this bargain with your family and friends. I'll thank you for it and I think they will too.

Clicking HERE will take you to the Ghost Star Amazon page.

Thanks!

Sci-Fi Novel Update

After receiving some wise counsel from several of my author pals, I've decided to go the Kindle Scout route with my space opera novel. As my friends pointed out, the concern about "having to do a lot of promotion" to get people to nominate my book is a hollow one. I was reminded that even traditionally-published authors have to self-promote like crazy these days (unless they're already big name authors or celebrities) and self-published authors definitely have to do that. The consensus: if I was fortunate enough to get a publishing contract with Kindle Press, it wouldn't be so bad to have Amazon as a marketing ally. In other words, worth the effort.

So...

Sci-Fi Wallpaper from Fond Décran (not my cover art, but cool nonetheless)

To get things just right, I'm in the middle of a heavy-duty polish edit of the manuscript. I lopped off the first chapter to get things moving right away and am currently involved in the somewhat tricky process of seeding anything of importance from the former Chapter One into the rest of the book. Somewhat tricky, but also fun in a jigsaw puzzle kind of way. I'm also doing a chapter-by-chapter edit for continuity and overall readability. At the end of the above edit I'll go through everything one more time by having MS Word read my words back to me in its quirky Text To Speech voice (I use "David" because he sounds like an authoritative robot 😉).

Then...

I'll get everything together--manuscript, cover, logline, brief summary, etc.--and submit it to the folks at Kindle Press. At this point, the self-promoting (begging) will begin in earnest, and for thirty days I'll be promoting  the link to my "Kindle Scout campaign page" and asking friends, family, and interested parties to go there and nominate my book for publication (free and easy, all you need is an Amazon account). Expect this to happen within the next week or so.

On a related note: I commissioned a super-cool cover for my book and I'm very much looking forward to showing it to everyone when my campaign launches. See ya soon!

Can Writers Monetize a Con Visit?

I had an interesting exchange with Shea Fontana, a writer friend of mine. She was wondering if it's possible for a writer to monetize a con visit (Comic-Con, Dragon Con, etc.). Here it is...

Shea:  Does anyone have good resources on how to business at Cons (especially for writers)? I like going to them and hanging out with the fans, but losing several days of potential work every time is not ideal... No paid vacation in freelance life...

Roger:  Shea, I've wondered about this, too. In general, I think it's much harder for a writer to monetize a con visit.

Artists are able to justify renting a booth to sell prints and self-pubbed comics/graphic novels, etc., but unless you have successful indie titles of your own (or are able to work out some sort of appearance deal with your publisher/studio), I'm not sure how it would work for a writer. Plus, those booths can be pricey.

Most of the writer success stories I've run across involve booth rentals and/or popular sci-fi/fantasy/youth authors who do signings (often on someone else's dime).

Over the years, I've been invited to reading festivals (the book equivalent of a con) where, in exchange for appearing on panels and doing readings and signings, etc., they paid for travel and lodging expenses and gave a small per diem. Maybe asking for at least that level of "payment" when you're invited to a con can take some of the sting out of taking an unpaid vacation.

I'm not sure if that's the kind of info you're looking for, but hopefully it's at least a little bit helpful.

Shea:  This is exactly what I'm looking for! Artist can do commissions and sell prints, so maybe they can make a little cash (but from all accounts, not much). But even if I could get wholesale books to sell, being a "merchant" sounds like a certain circle of hell. So I guess it's just a publicity/networking play...

How about you folks? Any thoughts on or experience with this subject? If so, please share in the comments.

Here's a link to an enlightening post by sci-fi pro author Chuck Wendig entitled "The Pros And Cons of Pro Cons (For Writers)" It's a real eye opener!

Dragonfriend Book Trailer

Trend slave that I am, I've decided to join in on the book trailer craze by asking my twelve year old to put one together. I think she did a wonderful job, especially considering she was working with a budget of $0 (some of the fancy ones I've seen must have cost many thousands with impressive graphics, animation, sfx, live action, etc.). She used Windows Movie Maker, public domain photos (except for the cover), and creative commons licensed music.

I'm not convinced that book trailers "work," nor, obviously, that it's a good idea to spend a lot of bucks producing one, but I do place them squarely in the "It couldn't hurt," column.

What do you think about book trailers? Help? Hindrance? Meh? Has a book trailer ever tipped the scales in favor of you buying the book? Let us know in the comments.

Dragonfriend Postcards and Bookmarks

Hot off the presses, these beauties arrived early last week. Designed by the excellent Mike Wykowski, I love how they turned out and look forward to giving them out at readings and signings. Penguin sprang for a bunch of postcards for my picture book, Road Trip, and I was surprised at how helpful they were in terms of generating reader interest. I mailed them out to bookstores and left stacks of them at places where there were likely readers -- libraries, bookstores, schools, churches, etc. -- and received invitations to read/sign from these places as well as some mentions of postcard inspired purchases on my website.

Naturally, I had to have some postcards for Dragonfriend and, as publisher, made the savvy executive decision to have some bookmarks printed, too. Yeah, that's me, savvy.

Got any promotional suggestions you'd like to share? Please leave them in the comments.