lawson

 by Jon F. Merz

Black Friday & Cyber Monday: A Special Offer from Author Jon F. Merz

By Jon F. Merz

This week is, of course, Thanksgiving. On that day, millions upon millions of Americans will devour many, many turkeys and enjoy a tryptophan-induced coma while watching football and spending time with family and relatives. In recent years, this formerly luxuriously-relaxing day has been invaded by the retail giants as they try to get you to leave the comfort of home and family in order to head out at night in the freezing cold to spend your money in their stores. In order to do this, they have lured you with promises of amazing deals. Many of you have done this and will do so again this year as you search for gifts for family and friends.

But there’s another way to enjoy Black Friday & Cyber Monday without leaving home: you can do it from the comfort of your laptop or wireless device.

And you do it by gifting ebooks.

You may not have known that you could gift ebooks. Many people don’t. But on each of the three major platforms that I sell on, the option to gift any of my ebooks is there.

Here’s where the gift option is on Amazon.com – and here is a link to all of my ebooks on Amazon.

Now, here’s the gift option on Barnes & Noble, which they make pretty small and hard-to-find. And here is a link to all of my ebooks on Barnes & Noble.com

Finally, here’s the gift option over on Kobo – very easy-to-see. And here’s a list of all of my ebooks on Kobo.

Now at this point, you’re probably wondering, “Well big deal – I don’t see any specials or discounts or stuff that would normally make me forego sleep in order to drive in the wee hours of the frigid morning the day of or after a major holiday. What gives, Merz?”

Here’s the deal: gift at least three of MY ebooks on Black Friday or Cyber Monday this year, send me the receipt at jonfmerz AT gmail DOT com, and I will do a couple of things, depending on the amount of the gift.

  1. Gifts of at least $10 will receive a personalized post card from me to both the recipient and the gift giver. For the recipient, I’ll put a nice “welcome to my fiction world” message, customized for them. The gift giver also gets a nice thank you post card from me.
  2. Gifts of at least $20 will get the above added extra, along with a select cover flat from one of the first four Lawson Vampire novels for both the recipient and gift giver.
  3. Gifts of at least $50 will get the post card AND a signed copy of THE KENSEI – again for both the recipient and gift giver.
  4. Gifts of at least $100 will get the BIG GIFT OF MERZ: a special personalized letter from me to both the recipient and gift giver, a signed copy of THE KENSEI, a box of author copies from my Rogue Angel writing years, cover flats, and Advanced Reader Copies of the NEW Shadow Warrior series coming in 2013 from Baen Books. (NOTE: the ARCs will ship when I get them, since I won’t receive them for a while yet).

Remember: not only is it TOTALLY cool to gift my ebooks, but in doing so, you – the gift giver – also gets a nice something special. This is a win-win and you don’t even have to deal with the insane crowds, mace incidents (remember last year), and early alarm clocks on a day when you should be sleeping.

In fact, I’ll go ONE STEP BEYOND all reason and sanity: I’m opening this up to anyone who gifts my ebooks between NOW and December 18th. Forget Black Friday and Cyber Monday – you can SHOP NOW and get it done!

With more people getting e-readers for gifts this year, the gift of ebooks to read on those e-readers makes incredible sense. And since I’m an indie, you can get MY ebooks for cheaper than those traditional BIG CONGLOMERATE publishers who price-gouge you like there’s no tomorrow. Your ten dollars goes a lot further with me than it does in a store and you get HOURS upon HOURS of entertainment. Ebooks are the perfect gift for anyone – if they at least have a smart phone, they can read ebooks!

So here are the links again to my ebooks on Amazon (KINDLE), Barnes & Noble.com (NOOK), and KOBO (other e-readers and computers). One final note: this offer is open to anyone from around the world! Send me your gift receipt to JONFMERZ at GMAIL dot COM once you’ve gifted the ebooks and I’ll get right to work creating your perfect present. (Please note: I’m unable to ensure that my part of your gift will reach them at the same time the ebooks do, but it will still rock their world to get a personalized gift from an actual author!)

One final thing: if you feel like doing so, please SHARE this post with your friends who might not know about “gifting” ebooks. I’d also appreciate Facebook LIKES, retweets on Twitter, and re-pins on Pinterest. Thank you!

Have fun & Happy Holidays!

in black friday / common sense / gifts / lawson / libros electronicos / libros en espanol / novels / promotion & publicity / publishing / Shadow Warrior / the ninja apprentice / Uncategorized / writing / zombie ryu 0 comments
 by Jon F. Merz

Why I Love Failure

By Jon F. Merz

When most people talk about career goals, dreams, wishes, etc., they only talk about success. “Won’t it be great when I finally achieve this goal?” Or “won’t it be wonderful when I finally meet my perfect soul mate?” Our society is fixated on the idea of achieving success – so much so that kids who play sports are routinely rewarded with trophies and ribbons and medals even when they lose. “That’s okay, hon, even though you lost, you’re still a winner.”

Well, no. They’re not. At least not yet.

Part of the problem when we discuss the notion of success is that it immediately puts the notion of failure in a horrible light – as if failure is to be avoided at all costs, shut away in some dark closet and never spoken about in public. After all, if we’re focused on success, why would we talk about failure?

Here’s the thing: failure is actually awesome. It is by failing that we achieve our greatest successes – provided we have the endurance to weather the failure itself. If we fail and then get depressed and stuck in a rut of self-doubt, then failure can be truly debilitating. But if we embrace the failure for what it is: a sign that we have not yet reached our goal or performed up to standard and that we have a ways to go before we can stand triumphant, then failure is a fantastic motivator and an excellent waypoint indicator on our path to success.

I’ve made some of my greatest breakthroughs in life by failing – repeatedly. In recent years, my big breakthrough with ebooks came as a direct result of failing at selling any of them. I heard all about Joe Konrath selling thousands of copies each month, got annoyed and jealous and called him out on his blog. After talking and asking him to critique my efforts, things came up and delayed the critique so instead of waiting, I went back and looked at what I was doing wrong – where I was failing – and what Joe was doing right – where he was succeeding, made the changes and the rest has been history. I now sell thousands of copies of my ebooks each month as well. (Joe (and others) now sells tens of thousands of his ebooks, which only acts as a motivator for me to do even better…)

My business partner Jaime Hassett and I are still dealing with failures when it comes to getting THE FIXER TV series off the ground. We started this project in November of 2007 and have met with tons of people to back the project. Some of those meetings have yielded fruit, and others have been outright failures. Some of the more exasperating failures come as a result of dealing with idiots who say they want to get involved and then either back out or create some sort of insane drama to extricate themselves from the commitment. You honestly would not believe the stories we have to tell about our meetings; one day they’ll make for some fantastic entertainment. In the meantime, every new failure brings us right back to an intense appraisal about what we’re doing and our goals, as well as where we might have screwed up along the way. But as many times as we’ve failed so far, it only drives us even harder to be successful. And we will be very soon (news on that front is coming up, so stay tuned!)

The point is that failure shouldn’t be stigmatized as much as it has been. Failure is a fantastic generator of ideas and creativity. Okay, so we failed here, how do we make sure we don’t make those mistakes again? How do we get around this problem and achieve what we set out to do? I love talking to people who have repeatedly failed throughout their lives and not given into the temptation to quit and settle for less than what they dream is possible. Their stories are incredibly inspirational and motivating. And failure for them is something they wear as a badge of honor rather than as a scarlet letter of shame.

Nowadays, kids are routinely rewarded for failing, which I think is a dangerous trend. I understand the idea behind it, certainly, that it’s tough on a kid to lose and well-meaning parents want to cushion the blow to the ego, stem the insecurity, etc. But it sets a unrealistic expectation that will plague them as they grow older. And that is they will naturally expect everything they do, every activity they undertake, or every dream they have to be a walk in the park. We’ve all heard the stories of the college grad who didn’t get the job he applied for and had his mommy call up the employer and bitch them out. This is the notion of entitlement that arises when failure is improperly framed within a child’s mind at an early age.

The better technique for introducing failure to a child is to take them aside when they do fail, or lose a game, or perform to a lower standard, and teach them how they can look at the experience and take away from it the lesson on how to do better. Instead of slapping a trophy in their hand and telling them how great they are for losing, there’s nothing wrong with telling them the truth: “You didn’t do so well today. Why do you think that happened? What can you do to be better the next time?” You can cushion this talk by pointing out things they did well even though they did fail.

Our nation – indeed, our world – needs to produce a generation of kids that grow up understanding the critical role that failure plays in moving society forward. Failure isn’t an end point; it’s a new opportunity to get it right the next time through. Success only comes about as a direct result of failing – often many, many times (paging Thomas Edison…) – but not giving up. Failure, when coupled with an enduring spirit, is the surest route to achieving the success we all crave.

GORUCK CHALLENGE UPDATE

The daily runs are back on. I’m also doing the 60-day Insanity workout and Crossfit WODs. Today’s run was an exercise in pain and dealing with intense humidity. Good livin’!

in authorpreneur / common sense / ebooks / film/TV / goodlivin' / goruck / lawson / life thoughts / THE FIXER TV series 0 comments
 by Jon F. Merz

Indie Authors & Business Sense

By Jon F. Merz

The summer doldrums have set in. Each year around this time, I get tired of the blanket of humidity that threatens to suffocate and I dream about crisp autumn days and cool nights that warrant good jazz on the stereo, a stiff drink, and a blazing fire in the hearth. But we’ve still got a way to go before those days are here, so it’s time to make the best of the situation by checking out how my business is doing during these hot months.

I know a lot of indie authors. Blog posts like these tend to bump up friend requests on Facebook, Twitter, etc., which is always cool. One of the things I’ve noticed, though, is how few indie authors treat their career like the business it is.

On one hand, it’s understandable. Never before have writers been able to actually create a career for themselves without needing to rely on New York City publishing. And when new authors figure out they can make a living doing this, they often spend the first year or so amazed at the success they’re enjoying and lose focus on the business side of things. Because what writers now are is most definitely a business. As such, it’s critical that you keep checking out your various systems to make sure your success continues.

Look at last summer, for example. It was my first real summer doing the indie thing and around the end of June, the bottom fell out on the strong sales I’d been enjoying during the Spring. I was still selling well, but not nearly what I had been. With that in mind, I was determined not to see a repeat of the sales slump this year. How have I done so far? Excellently. My sales have actually gone up each month this summer. Needless to say, I’m very pleased about that.

Here are some of the steps I took to combat the summer sales slump:

1. New work: my philosophy now is that it is absolutely critical that indie writers increase their output as much as they are capable of doing. If you can successfully write something and get it out every month, then I think that goes a long way toward ensuring continued success. Not only does new work increase your virtual shelf space, it also spreads the heavy lifting across multiple titles (meaning that no one title has to sell a whole lot of copies in order for your income to remain steady or increase. The more titles you have, the fewer copies you need to sell of each in order to reach your income goals.)

2. Series: I’ve said this before, but I really believe that authors need to create a series. Having a series that sells well virtually guarantees that you have a ready audience for the next adventure you release in that series. And once you have one series, you can experiment and start new ones. Zombie Ryu is my latest series – and it’s episodic with a new adventure out each month.

3. Top sellers: I hope that you’re using a spreadsheet to track your sales (if not, for crying out loud develop one and use it religiously) and that you have access to previous month’s numbers. Over time, you’ll naturally see what titles sell better than others. If it happens to be a series, then it’s obviously a good idea to plan new releases for that series. You want to keep adding fuel to that fire that’s burning. More sales in that series are always important. My Lawson Vampire series is one of the primary income generators for me, so you can bet that I have new releases mapped out well ahead of time. I shoot to release four new Lawson adventures each year: one new novel, at least one novella, and at least two short stories. If you don’t have a series but a single standalone title that makes the most for you, is there any way to write a sequel or turn it into a series? If so, you can capitalize on the popularity of that title.

4. New stories: throughout the summer, there have been lots of topical news stories that savvy authors can use to help promote themselves – especially on Twitter, and especially without being blatant about it. What do I mean? Here’s one example I used recently: two weeks or so ago, the Olympics opened. NBC did a horrible job of covering it and then populated the broadcast with moronic commentary from Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera who seemed incapable of simply shutting their mouths. I took to Twitter and posted several tweets expressing my frustration with the broadcast. Tons of people re-tweeted my posts. And many more wandered over to my Twitter profile page. Guess what? Sales went up that night and for that entire weekend. As I’ve written previously, it’s vital that you maximize your selling power by creating your own Twitter background. That way, when people wander over to see who you are they see the book covers and you might just entice them to pick up some of your books. My Twitter profile background shows the first four books in my Lawson series – the same books that sold more that weekend. Coincidence? Maybe, but I don’t think so. And I was able to generate sales passively – that is to say I didn’t have to hit them over the head with a tweet pushing my latest book. I picked up a whole lot of new followers as well that weekend – and everyone who follows me gets a nice message inviting them to sign up for my free newsletter. And wouldn’t you know it, my newsletter subscription numbers went up that weekend as well. The point here is that there are new stories happening all the time that you can take advantage of to introduce yourself to new readers.

5. Holiday Season: We might still be in the midst of summer, but you’d better already be developing a plan to take advantage of the Christmas shopping season. E-readers will no doubt be the hot gift item this year, so what are you doing now to make sure your brand gets noticed by eager new readers? How will you interact with your new readers? Do you have a newsletter yet? How is your Facebook Fan Page? Your personal website? Take advantage of the lazy days of summer to get your entire business in shape now so that come the chaos of the holiday season, you’ll know all of your systems are firing exactly as they should be.

Like this post? Share it around with other indie authors!

GORUCK CHALLENGE UPDATE:

I’ve spent the last two weeks on vacation and then redecorating my sons’ bedrooms, so my regimen has been off slightly. That said, I did the first Insanity workout today (and it kicked my ass).

in authorpreneur / Build a Bestseller / common sense / ebooks / goodlivin' / goruck / how I write / lawson / novels / promotion & publicity / publishing / Uncategorized / zombie ryu 0 comments
 by Jon F. Merz

Couple of Quickies…

I’m back from vacation well-rested and ready to get cranking again. Today, however, is devoted to painting my sons’ bedrooms. I started one yesterday and will finish today. That Monday adrenaline rush never gets old, eh? 😉 GORUCK Challenge updates will return soon…

Joe Nassise and I have a brand new ebook bundle out called DOUBLE TROUBLE. It features two full-length novels. From Joe, you get the first book in his awesome Templar Chronicles, THE HERETIC. And from me, you get Lawson in THE FIXER. The bundle is just $8.95 for two incredible reads. You should buy it here for the Kindle and here for the Nook and here if you shop at Kobo.

ZOMBIE RYU Episode Two will be out later this month. Make sure you grab the first episode and if you love it, then leave a review on Amazon, B&N, and anywhere else people purchase fine ebooks. The second episode cranks things up even more. Zombie vs. samurai and ninja in feudal Japan is a winning combination! Again, KINDLE | NOOK | KOBO

Finally, while many of you were asleep last night, I got a phone call from NASA. Seems that Curiosity Lander touched down and its first picture caught a lot of folks by surprise. Who knew Martians had such good taste? Apparently not even the best minds at NASA knew, so I’m being flown down today on a private Gulfstream 5 (after painting) to discuss the inherent galactic implications this photograph entails. I have no idea if Lawson will be chosen for first contact or not, but all options are on the table. More news when I have it…

🙂

in Build a Bestseller / ebooks / general / goodlivin' / goruck / lawson / life thoughts / novels / promotion & publicity / publishing / silly stuff / zombie ryu 0 comments
 by Jon F. Merz

Summer Sales Tactics for Indie Authors

By Jon F. Merz

So, it’s the summer (y’know, in case the scorching heat waves hadn’t made that obvious enough) and this is typically the time when the entire NYC traditional publishing beast slows waaaaaaay down. Summer hours mean most NYC publishing professionals leave work at about 3pm to start the weekend, traditional sales slow down as more editors and agents are off on vacations, and in general it’s a dead time. In the old days, if you were a writer, the summer could be a very frustrating time because you weren’t getting any sort of feedback from your agent or potential editors. It used to drive me nuts that months would pass without a peep.

Then along came the ebook revolution. No longer were you forced to bide your time while everyone jetted off to the Hamptons for a luxurious vacation or a weekend party at Diddy’s. Now, with the writers in control, you could sell your work year round. It was a great time of revelation.

But there’s something curious about the summer that still affects publishing: less sales.

See, not only does traditional publishing go off on vacation, but so do readers. Kids are out of school and people aren’t necessarily thinking about buying books during these months. They’re outside (as they should be) enjoying the weather and frolicking and getting their collective groove on. From one perspective, that’s awesome. Happy people is always a good thing, I think.

But from the perspective of a “company” engaged in selling product (namely, my ebooks) any sort of sales drop-off is bad for my business. Last year, my sales dropped in the summer and stayed depressed through the Autumn months. I was still selling well, but not nearly at the volume as last Spring. And it’s not just me this happens to. Ask most indie authors how their sales are right now and you’ll find that the majority of them report that sales have slowed – sometimes dramatically. The question then becomes: what can we do about a sales slowdown?

The popular tactic right now seems to be this idea that writers need to lower their prices. I know of a LOT of indie authors right now who have dropped their prices into the 99 cent cesspool in an attempt to gain exposure with increased sales that will position them on certain bestseller lists. Once that happens, they switch the price back to a higher point and hope to reap some extra sales that way.

I happen to think that’s rather dumb.

First of all, the price you set for your work tells potential customers a lot. There’s been significant talk in the indie author circles that readers equate lower prices with lower quality work. “99 cents for a novel? It can’t be that good.” Now, obviously, that’s not a fair assumption to make. There are plenty of great reads out there for 99 cents. But there are also awful books as well. Dropping your work into that swamp of 99 cent books could tarnish it instead of elevate it.

Second, I don’t like jerking price points around like marionette strings. Consumers aren’t stupid. If I bought something at $4.99 and the next day it dropped to 99 cents, I’d be pissed off. And I probably wouldn’t buy from that author again. I’m not looking to make a quick buck off of people; I’m looking to turn them into lifelong fans of mine. That means treating them with the respect they deserve. I set my prices at a point that I feel is fair to me – as the creator – and fair to them as the consumer.

So rather than going with the flow this summer, I’ve decided to be a bit of a contrarian. My price points will stay where they are right now and we’ll see how sales do. So far, this summer has been very good to me. And next week, I launch my brand new episodic series ZOMBIE RYU, about an 18-year-old girl in feudal Japan who teams up with a grizzled band of warriors to stop a zombie invasion unleashed by an evil sorcerer. A brand new 25,000-word episode debuts each month. It’s a big experiment for me, so it’s going to be very interesting to see how it pans out.

If you’re an indie author, my advice this summer is not to do what everyone else is doing. Be different; set yourself apart. Launch a new project at a time when most people aren’t. Keep your prices where they are. Do things no one else is doing and see what you can do to ensure this summer isn’t about slow sales, but rather about even greater success.

Best of luck!

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