Jenny's Revenge in Audio

Jenny's Revenge is now available in print, ebook, large print, and audio formats.

Joe Formichella reads Jenny's Revenge. Joe is a seasoned author, editor, and audio performance professional. Check out the audio sample below. He's a Hackney Literary Award Winner and Pushcart Prize nominee.

Honest Westerns filled with dishonest characters.

Jenny Bolton has plans, and they don't bode well for Steve Dancy.

Married at 15 to a Nevada politician, Jenny suffered repeated assaults, witnessed her husband's ghastly murder, buried her mother-in-law, and killed a man. Dancy, who had once served as her paladin, rejected her without as much as a goodbye. Abandoned on a raw frontier, she's single-handedly building an empire that spans the state. Despite her triumphs, she feels she never should have been left alone.

Soon to marry, Steve is eager to begin a new life, unaware that Jenny is mad for revenge.

Crossing the Animas back from Editor

A few days ago, my editor sent me the edited version of Crossing the Animas and related files. I'm anxious to reviewed her revisions, but I have some personal issues which require me to be in northern California.

Here is the remaining process to publication. Next, I go through every revision, one at a time. I do this to approve the change and improve my writing skill. After I have a clean edited manuscript, the book goes to my ebook formatter. He makes sure the book looks good on various ereaders. My proofreader gets at crack at the book next.

In the past, I published the print and ebook versions simultaneously. The world has changed. Now, more than 90% of my sales are electronic versions of the book. (Excluding library large print sales) So the ebook versions will be published without waiting for the longer print book process.

All of this means that the ebook version of Crossing the Animas should be available before the end of March. The print version will follow about sixty days later.

I hope you enjoy it.

Rough Cover Option

Tell me what you think ...

Some author’s dread poor reviews from readers. I like to hear what readers think and find I learn more from critical reviews. Besides, what some readers find objectionable, other readers enjoy. I never had a better example than today when I received two Amazon reviews that had exactly opposite takes on a major plot element of The Return.

Click to enlarge

Marilyn says, "Not as good the previous books in the series. Get Steve Dancy back to the West where he seems at home."

While another Amazon Customer wrote, "Enjoyed the Western theme, along with the Edison involvement. New York gangs added flavor that made this a great read."

No author can please every reader and it's career suicide to try. Don't ignore poor reviews because they can help you become  a better writer, but keep your focus on the total weight of  all of  your reviews.  Every writer will get a few bad reviews, so take them with a grain of salt. 

Goodreads

Amazon

Best Selling Novelist of All Time?

Agatha Christie as a Young Woman

Agatha Christie is often listed as the bestselling novelist of all time. If the list is for fiction writers instead of just novelists, then Shakespeare takes the top spot. Even with a four hundred year head start, Christie may be catching up with The Bard because royalties from her books are estimated to still exceed £5m a year. In a 2002 relaunch of the 1939 And Then There Were None, the book became a surprise bestseller.

Christie wrote 85 books and sold well over two billion copies. And Then There Were None sold 100 million all by itself. The success of the 1965 Hollywood remake of the story caused subsequent editions of the book to be retitled Ten Little Indians. Her works have been translated into every major language and UNESCO named her the most translated author in the world.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became annoyed with Sherlock Holmes so he killed him. Never fear, he used a novelist's magic powers to bring the famous detective back to life. Similarly, Dame Agatha Christie grew tired of Poirot, once describing him as "insufferable" and "an egocentric creep".

Christie invented the classic murder mystery structure. A murder is committed with multiple suspects and secrets are gradually revealed with a surprise twist at the end. Murder mysteries are active reading, with the reader knowing all the clues uncovered by the investigator. The fun is guessing the guilty party. There have been truckloads of murder mystery written but few compare with "The Queen of Crime."

I studied Agatha Christie and other mystery writers before I started Murder at Thumb Butte. I wanted to use the Steve Dancy characters in a traditional murder mystery, albeit in the Wild West with gun play, horses, rowdy saloons, and celebrity frontiersmen like Doc Holiday and Vergil Earp.

I haven’t sold nearly as many copies as Christie, but I’m happy that the novel has found a large audience. C. K. Crigger in Roundup Magazine wrote, "This is a well-plotted mystery, as well as a terrific Old West story. Best has a great character in Steve Dancy, and has created an excellent cast of secondary characters." 

If you like murder mysteries, westerns, or historical novels, Murder at Thumb Butte should be your next book. The novel has been available in print, ebook, and large print. Recently Jim Tedder did an exceptional job narrating the audiobook version. 

As Tedder says, “Go on now, get to it.”

Print, eBook, Large Print & Audio Formats

10 Tips for Holiday Book Giving

Books are a perfect gift ... and a great way to avoid the crowds. 

At times, friends and relatives can be hard to buy for. Some seem to have everything. Due to age or illness, others may be less mobile than in years past. Some don’t really want much. Families scatter across this huge country and selecting a gift, packaging, and shipping can be a chore.

A book, however, is always a great gift … especially if you take the time to match their taste in fiction or nonfiction special interest. Suddenly, your thoughtfulness becomes part of the gift. Whether your relatives or friends are interested in the Civil War, literature, romance novels, Westerns, paranormal fiction, railroads, guns, cooking, collecting old comic books, antique automobiles, or anything else, there's always a book that will bring a smile to their face. 

1. Shop or search online for a book specific to the interests of your relative or friend—Goodreads is a good source for ideas
2. Write a personal message on the flyleaf that won't get tossed out like last year's Christmas card
3. Give a bookseller gift card for e-book and audio book enthusiasts
4. Search out an author signing for your recipient’s favorite author or give a collector’s version of the recipient’s favorite book
5. If you need professional help or want something unique, shop at an independent book store, or specialty bookstore (like the Poison Pen in Scottsdale that specializes in mysteries)
6. Remember, if you subscribe to Amazon Prime then shipping is free, or mail books early to take advantage of media class at the Post Office.
7. Give a book as a piece of art, like a fine print book, unique coffee table book, favorite book as a child, or collectable cover art (I collect early 20th century Western pulp fiction books for the cover illustrations)
8. Make a highly personal photo book with ShutterFly or Apple iPhoto or Apple Aperture
9. If you’re giving a gift to a student—or me, for that matter—tuck a crisp $100 bill into the book as a bookmark
10. Finally, if your  friend or relative already owns piles of books, give a unique set of book ends to hold them in their proper place

One final tip that comes close to re-gifting—find an Amazon hardcopy and that includes a “Match Book” deal with the simultaneous purchase of the e-book format. Gift the printed version and get an e-book for yourself.

Books are the best entertainment value. They provide hour after hour of personal pleasure, and then they can be passed on to another person.

Children's books are also great gifts. We search for autographed storybooks for our grandkids. Bookstores always have children book signings around the holidays, and this is one area where we join the crowd. The icing on the cake is that we get to read them a story from one of these books when we visit.

Here are Amazon links to bestselling books in a few categories. There are many more categories a click away. Topic searches also work with Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.

Golf

Carpentry

Children's books

Cook books

Crafts & Hobbies

Action Adventure

Romance

Westerns

Amazon Bestsellers

If you choose to gift one of my books, thank you.  I appreciate it.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays. And have a great 2015.

Word of Mouth Revisited

I’ve contended that word of mouth is the greatest marketing tool available to authors. Word of mouth includes book clubs, online recommendations at sites like Goodreads and LibraryThing, reader reviews, and good ol’ fashioned face-to-face conversation. Word of mouth does not include anything the author says, including social media leavings that come from gallivanting around cyberspace. Potent word of mouth comes unexpectedly from a trusted source. Every author’s marketing strategy must focus on generating positive word of mouth.

Recently, I had confirmation of this axiom. In the first of August, I ran a discount promotion for a couple of days for the e-book version of The Shopkeeper. I don’t believe in offering free e-books because there is no lasting effect beyond a couple days. Many people gather up free books and never bother to read them. I’ve discovered that there is an entirely different dynamic for 99¢ e-books. Evidently this tiny fee motivates people to read the book.

 I decided to use a brief 99¢ price for the first novel in the Steve Dancy Tales to give a boost to the entire series. It worked far better than I expected. Not only did The Shopkeeper sell almost two thousand copies, all the other books in the series showed accelerated sales. Actually, it has been over a month since the promotion and all five books in the series still sell at more than double the pace of sales prior to the promotion. Free e-books have no legs, but 99¢ e-books seem to have a long tail.

None of this was news to me. But I did make an observation about this promotion that had previously eluded me. If a promotion goes well and readers like the book, then word of mouth accelerates sales in other formats and for other books by the same author. I never track audio sales because they’re small compared to other formats. I kept an eye on them this time, and I noticed a major surge in sales about a week or so after the promotion. Print sales also surprisingly increased, and sales of my other books grew significantly. The additional sales could only come from word of mouth because none of these other books or formats were discounted or promoted beyond my normal feeble efforts. People who liked The Shopkeeper told other people about my books. Some marketing gurus tell you to make fans out of your readers. Good advice, but if you really want to sell lots of books, turn your readers into your own personal sales force.

How? Write an engaging story that never jerks your reader out of the story. This means you need to keep the story moving forward, avoid unnecessary plot detours, and have it all professionally packaged. If you enthrall your readers, they’ll tell their friends, family, and neighbors about this great new author they found. After you have a large and growing sales force, you can concentrate on what you really love to do—write.

Ask the Author at Goodreads

Goodreads has added “Ask the Author” to its website. The new feature allows readers to ask questions of authors, and I have enabled Ask the Author on my Goodreads account. So ... if you have questions, fire away. I’ll answer anything except questions about the plot of Jenny’s Revenge. Jenny’s story remains secret for now.

Steve Dancy Tales
Honest Westerns ... filled with dishonest characters.