Two Shot Is Live

First, the spam:

Two Shot brings together two of Robert Swartwood's most exciting and suspenseful thrillers for the first time in one pulse-pounding volume.

THE SERIAL KILLER'S WIFE

Five years ago Elizabeth Piccioni's husband was arrested for being a serial killer. Her life suddenly turned upside down, she did what she thought was best for her newborn baby: she took her son and ran away to start a new life.

Now, living in a quiet part of the Midwest with a new identity, Elizabeth is ready to start over. But one day she receives a phone call from a person calling himself Cain. Cain somehow knows about her past life. He has abducted her son, and if Elizabeth wants to save him she must retrieve her husband's trophies -- the fingers he cut off each of his victims.

With a deadline of one hundred hours, Elizabeth has no choice but to return to the life she once fled, where she will soon realize that everything she thought she knew is a lie, and what's more shocking than Cain's identity is the truth about her husband.

The Serial Killer's Wife is a 80,000-word thriller in the vein of Jeffery Deaver, John Sanford, and Thomas Harris. It includes a special foreword by Blake Crouch.

"This is a scary, thrilling, page-turning, race-against-the-clock novel if ever there was one, with a true shocker of an ending. Miss this one at your own peril." -- Blake Crouch, author of Run and Desert Places

NO SHELTER

Holly Lin is living two lives. To her friends and family, she's a pleasant, hardworking nanny. To her boss and colleagues, she's one of the best non-sanctioned government assassins in the world.

But when a recent mission goes wrong causing one of her team members to die, she realizes she might no longer be cut out for the work -- except the mission, as it turns out, is only half over, and to complete it will take her halfway across the world and bring her face to face with a ghost from her past.

Things are about to get personal. And as Holly Lin's enemies are about to find out, she is not a nanny they want to piss off.

No Shelter is 65,000 words long and recommended for fans of Lee Child, Barry Eisler, and Duane Swierczynski.

"Excellent -- memorable and something I'll read more than once." -- HTMLGIANT

Available at:

• Kindle (US)
• Kindle (UK)
• Nook
• Apple
• Smashwords

Now if you've already read and reviewed both books, you're awesome. And if you want to make yourself even awesomer (yes, that's a word), feel free to do a combined review for Two Shot. Elizabeth and Holly would appreciate it very much. Oh, okay, and so would I.

Second, the backstory:

Combining books is not a new thing. Publishers have been doing it for many, many years (usually combining novels by mega best-selling authors like Dean Koontz or Michael Connelly or Nora Roberts). So with the ease and quickness of the digital marketplace, it's a no-brainer to combine books into one volume.

Only, when you do, be smart about it.

As I always say in regards to self-publishing, just because you can doesn't necessarily mean you should. The same applies here. Just because you can combine all four of your novels into one volume, you need to ask yourself: should you?

It all depends, of course, on the genre of your novels. If it's a series and they all feature the same main character, well then yes, certainly you should combine them.

If your novels fall into different genres -- one is horror, one is science fiction, one is mystery, one is romance -- then it's probably best not to combine them.

See what I'm saying here?

There seems to be a trend now with ebooks where some authors will just combine novels for the sake of combining novels. And while this can work sometimes, most times it can be a giant cluster.

For Two Shot, both novels feature strong female protagonists. Both novels are thrillers. Both, hopefully, play to the same kind of readership.

See what I mean?

Combining The Serial Killer's Wife and The Calling wouldn't really make sense, as the former is a straight-up thriller, the latter a supernatural thriller.

Now, if I were to publish another supernatural thriller, then maybe eventually I could combine that and The Calling.

It all really depends on the books, and how you think you can best market them.

My original one-line pitch for Two Shot was this:

Two Shot contains two kick ass thrillers featuring two kick ass women for one low kick ass price.

As you can imagine, my wife vetoed that pitch. Quickly and, I must say, rightly.

Finally, as always, price is important. Here I'm charging $4.99 for Two Shot in the US (£2.99 in the UK). This is pretty much a steal, as I've begun raising the price of my novels to $3.99. Not all of my titles are $3.99 yet, but eventually they will be, and in a year's time (if not less) I'll probably make Two Shot $5.99, which is still a bargain for the reader, plus I'm making some pretty good money on each unit sold. See -- everyone wins.

Third, the graphic designer:

Jeroen ten Berge.

Seriously, you had to ask?

Free Free Free Blah Blah Blah

The other day Kevin Lucia did a blog post about the constant bombardment of the OH MY GOD MY EBOOK IS FREE TODAY AT AMAZON ORDER IT AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS!!! you see constantly on Facebook and Twitter. I don't really have much to add to that other than yes, it is troublesome. For newbie writers to grow an audience, how do they find readers? The 99-cent price point is a waste, in my opinion, so obviously the next step is free. But then if readers know you've made your book free once, they might assume you'll make your other books free, and won't buy your stuff. So ... what are you left with (besides, potentially, just being really annoying)?

Anyway, as I discussed recently, I enrolled some books into the Kindle Select Program to test it out. The deal, in case you aren't aware, is making your ebook available exclusively to Amazon for 90 days, in which Amazon Prime members can then "borrow" that book (members can borrow only one ebook a month, and Amazon kicks in a kitty of over $500,000 to the participating writers and averages out that amount to all the borrows at the end of said month). One of the perks, however, is being able to make your ebook free for up to five days. This can have a tremendous impact on your book. In fact, last month it helped my thrillers No Shelter and Man of Wax sell a ton of copies, and brought me even more readers. So I consider it a success.

My point? Well, I had three free days left on No Shelter, two free days left on Man of Wax, so yesterday I made No Shelter free, and today I made Man of Wax free to close out the month. The exclusivity is up at the end of March, and I plan to enter them back into the other stores and see how they do there (my NOOK sales have begun to pick up, and I wonder what having more titles available will do).

Anyway, so I made both ebooks free, and didn't realize until today that making both titles free at the same time might not be a good idea. After all, they had both sneaked into the Free Top 100 at different times, and on its first day No Shelter reached the Top 100, so maybe that would somehow keep Man of Wax out of the Top 100.

Nope. They're both there in the Free Top 100, where they will hopefully stay into tomorrow night when the promotion ends.

And before anyone asks -- no, I have no idea how they got so high up in the ranking. I really didn't do much except mention they were free on Facebook and Twitter, and even then their rankings were pretty high. Maybe they reached the Top 100 because they had been in the Top 100 before, but again, I have no idea how it happened. As with everything, the answer is luck.

However, wherever there is luck, there is also unluck (which I'm saying is a word). For some reason, Amazon is acting up and messing with reviews. I noticed it late last night how some reviews would disappear ... and then reappear a half hour later. I did some quick research and found this was indeed a bug in Amazon's system that they were trying to figure out. Which is all fine and good, but reviews are crucial, especially when a title gets all the way up into the Top 100 where it's most widely seen.

Case in point: before the free promotion today, Man of Wax had 19 reviews, 11 of which were five-star. Then, maybe a half hour ago, I checked the ranking and for some reason saw that Man of Wax now had only 5 reviews: 1 five-star, 1 four-star, and 3 one-star. Obviously I saw this as a problem in regards to finding potential readers. Then again, while the one-star reviews don't help with the algorithm, they do alert potential readers to the fact that the book is indeed dark and disturbing. This is good, because not every reader likes dark and disturbing, so if a reader is turned off by the book based on that one-star review, then that's probably for the best. At least they didn't try reading it and hate it enough to then leave their own one-star review. On the flip side, a one-star review that complains the book is dark and disturbing can actually motivate some readers to download the book, so there's that.

(And then there's the reader who says they loved No Shelter so they tried Man of Wax and thought Man of Wax was awful so they left a one-star review ... despite the fact they didn't leave any review for No Shelter. Say whaaaaat?)

But now I just looked again and all the reviews seem to be restored for Man of Wax, including two additional reviews, bringing it to 21 overall. So there's that. But no telling how long before some of those reviews disappear again.

So again, my point?

Well, that you have one more day to download No Shelter and Man of Wax while they're free. Go grab 'em!

So E-Far, So E-Good

The free promotion for Man of Wax and Phantom Energy started just this morning, and already Man of Wax has gotten here:

Yes, that's right -- it's in the top 100. After No Shelter had managed to sneak into the top 100 last week, I doubted Man of Wax would be able to replicate the same success. In fact it's done even better. Why? Who knows. There really isn't any rhyme or reason for why a free book is downloaded more than another free book, as far as I can tell, and the only promotion I did was here on this website and links posted on Twitter and Facebook.

As of right now, Man of Wax has been downloaded over 14,000 times since this morning. Phantom Energy? About 150.

Anyway, the inevitable response will be something along the lines of Yeah, that's great and all, but why in the blue blazes are you giving away your stuff for free anyhow?

I was actually asked this question just the other day, and my answer then was the same as it is now: Why not?

If you believe that every free download is a missed sale, you have a lot to learn about the publishing business -- or practically any business. Companies -- such as, you know, publishers -- give away products all the time. Free is always the best form of promotion (which isn't the same as pirating, but that's a whole other discussion for another time ... though I will say that, while I think pirating is wrong, I don't lose sleep over the fact that several of my e-books are currently available on torrent websites).

Of course not every person who downloads the book is actually going to read it, but for the few seconds it took them to download it, they at least saw the cover and title and my name. And who knows, maybe they will read it at some point. Yet out of the 14,000 downloads so far for Man of Wax, how many readers will actually try the book? I'd be happy with even a tenth of that number, but I think that's being too generous. Then again, maybe not. After all, the whole point here is to be read, plus -- wink, wink -- the second book in the trilogy is slated to be released this April ...

The downside of free promotion, however, is that not everyone is going to like whatever it is that's free. This seems to be especially the case with free e-books. In my experience, many one-star reviews are the result of free e-books. It seems readers who don't care for a book they didn't pay anything for find it their duty to tell the world. And you know what? That's okay. No writer's work is ever universally loved.

But you know the massive upside of free promotion, especially at Amazon? The more free downloads, the more your book gets recommended, both during the free promotion ... and even after.

Last year No Shelter sold around 300 copies. That's 300 copies for the entire year of 2011.

After last week's free promotion, No Shelter sold nearly 300 copies in just one day.

Let me repeat that -- No Shelter sold nearly 300 copies in just one day.

So think about that.

And while you're thinking about it, download Man of Wax and Phantom Energy if you haven't done so already. Did I mention they're FREE?

New Year, New Promotion

So 2012 has begun, and to celebrate, I'm giving away two e-books on Kindle. For the next several days, you can download The Dishonored Dead and No Shelter for free. That's right -- FREE.

US Kindle / UK Kindle

US Kindle / UK Kindle

So if you haven't checked these out (and even if you have), please download them and help spread the word. Even if you don't have a Kindle, there are plenty of apps to read on practically any device. Enjoy!

P.S. My friend Adam Perry's children's book Mister Ray is currently free too. Download it!

Confession Time

It's about time I came clean about something rather important. Don't worry -- I'm not admitting to any major crimes ... yet. But I want to tell you about the first novel I self-published nearly a year ago. Wait, some of you might be thinking. A year ago? But you published The Calling in April.

And right you would be.

The Calling was the first novel I published under my own name.

Before that, I published a novel under a different name.

Some eagle-eyed readers probably already figured it out. Honestly, I didn't really do much to try to hide the fact.

What fact, you might be asking?

Quite simply that I wrote this book:

Yes, that's right. I am Z. Constance Frost. Or Z. Constance Frost is me. Either way, I'm the author of No Shelter.

Surprise!

As I explained during last night's two live readings, the entire thing was meant to be an experiment that didn't go very well. You see, I wrote No Shelter years ago. In fact, in the spring of 2009 when the whole Hint Fiction thing came about, my agent was shopping around No Shelter. He was sending it out under a pen name, because that's what I requested. I knew I wanted to do a female assassin series, but I figured since it would be a straight series (five or seven or however many books) it would be best to put them under a different name, as the books I planned (hoped) to publish under my own name would be different standalone novels. Besides, the series is about a female assassin, so who better to author the books than a female writer?

And so, after some creative thinking, Z. Constance Frost was born.

I liked the name. My agent liked the name. It has a distinct ring to it that definitely sticks in a reader's head, and that was what I was going for.

But, as usual, though there were several nibbles from publishers, nobody took a bite, and so into the digital drawer the book went.

Until late 2010 when I started to seeing the disturbing trend in publishing and saw some other authors having success self-publishing their work digitally, and I thought about No Shelter and figured why not. Besides, I saw this as a great opportunity to pull a Richard Bachman.

If you're unaware, Stephen King in his early career published four novels under the pen name Richard Bachman (five, I guess, counting Thinner, though that was the book that eventually made the whole truth come to light, and besides, I don't believe King was really trying to hide the fact he was the true author in that book to begin with). King's publisher was afraid he would oversaturate the market with his own work, so they released the novels under the pen name. It was a big secret. Nobody really knew King was Bachman, unlike nowadays when everyone knows J. D. Robb is really Nora Roberts (also nowadays publishers don't give a shit about over-saturation as long as it sells).

You see, it was a marketing thing. Dean Koontz used to do the same, publishing works in different genres under different names. Only, from what I understand, Koontz decided in the end it was a bad idea, and, I'm assuming, can become confusing for readers who begin to become fans of one particular author, even though that author isn't real.

Had No Shelter sold, the publisher might have gone ahead and published it under the pen name, but would have wanted me to make it clear that I was the actual author. After all, somebody has to help market the thing, and as we've discussed before, it almost always falls on the author's shoulders.

So when I realized I could self-publish it, the fact that practically nobody had to know the truth was appealing. I created a blog, as well as Gmail and Facebook and Twitter accounts, and pretended to be this single mother of two living just outside of Washington, D.C. It was going to be fun.

And it was fun, at first. But the truth is it's hard enough trying to focus on writing for and promoting just one writer -- namely me -- let alone writing for and promoting another writer -- like, you know, Z. Constance Frost. Just how do you get the word out about a very new writer? I did a post here last year, which even included an interview with Z. Constance Frost. She in turn interviewed me at her website for my blog tour of The Calling. I included an excerpt from her book in the back of my book, and she included an excerpt from my book in the back of her book. Sometimes she would even leave comments here on this website (!).

Cute? Clever? Pathetic? Asinine?

No matter what you call it, it was exhausting.

As I began to make more sales and money with my own books, I began to spend less time keeping Z. Constance Frost alive. I wanted to start working on another Holly Lin novel, but the truth was the sales for No Shelter were so low that I didn't see much point. It made more sense to keep promoting myself, as my books had started selling well. Maybe if Frost had more books out there would be more sales, but as it is No Shelter has sold just over 300 copies for the year, with the e-book being priced between 99 cents and $2.99. Compare that do The Serial Killer's Wife or The Calling, both which have already sold over 400 units each this month alone, and you'll see my problem.

I wish things could have been different, truly. I wish Z. Constance Frost could continue living her imaginary life with her imaginary children (hell, No Shelter is even dedicated to her children!). I wish I could keep this secret going for the next couple of years, as more and more Holly Lin books became available and "she" grew a bigger readership (nay, fan base!) and then, at the peak, I would somehow let it slip that it was me.

But, alas, it was not meant to be.

Z. Constance Frost's byline will remain on No Shelter until later this year when the second book comes out. Then No Shelter gets a new cover and Z. Constance Frost will be no more.

Which is sad.

I was really getting to like her, despite the fact she was apparently a pretty slow writer.

But, in all honesty, her two kids are complete brats.

Anyway, so this is my confession. The truth is out now. Not sure if it was the best way to "out" myself, though I don't think there's proper etiquette when it comes to something like this. But now you all know my dirty little secret, the time I tried to pull a Richard Bachman.

Which is not to say that, who knows, I might not try it again at some point down the line.

Only time will tell.

For now, do yourself a favor if you haven't already -- go check out No Shelter.

From what I hear, it's a pretty good yarn.