The results are coming in, and as of 10:30 AM Eastern Time today, January 27, the free promotion for my ebook Big Chills is a success. Big Chills has been downloaded 284 times on Amazon and 66 times on Amazon UK. It's up to #15 on for short stories in the Kindle Store, and it keeps climbing.
How high can it go? I'd love to see it hit #1 for short stories! If you're reading this and you like short horror fiction, please download Big Chills on your Kindle. You'll get some very entertaining stories to read, and I'll get a higher rank on Amazon.
Thanks!
Friday, January 27, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Free Horror Stories Here
If you like horror short stories, you have two days to get a free copy of my ebook, "Big Chills", a collection of short horror stories that pack a wallop at the end.
That's because "Big Chills" is being offered for free on Amazon.com on January 26-27.
I've taken the plunge. After following the heated debate among indie authors about KDP Select, the Amazon program that lets readers borrow ebooks for free, I signed two of my ebooks up for it. KDP Select, in case you don't know, is a little perk that Amazon gives to its Amazon Prime members, where they can borrow one ebook a month for free, to read on their Kindle. There have been thousands of words written about this program since Amazon went public with it a few months ago, with writers divided on whether it's the greatest promotional tool ever invented or a crude ploy by Amazon to corner the market on ebooks.
Why are some writers mad? When you enroll an ebook in the KDP Select program, Amazon forces you to stop distributing it on any other sites -- including your own Web site or blog -- for 90 days. If you're selling a lot on Barnes & Noble, for example, you have to bite the bullet and lose those sales for 90 days. Other publishers are not pleased. Smashwords, in particular, released a statement saying that Amazon was being "predatory" and trying to take away writers' independence.
Amazon says that it's doing writers a favor -- that by offering your ebook to its huge audience for free, either through its lending library or as a free promotion (you're allowed to offer your ebook for free for five days during that 90 day period, and that's what I'm doing with "Big Chills") you'll get a large boost in name recognition among readers, and that will carry over to more sales for your other ebooks.
Plus, Amazon is paying writers every time their ebook is borrowed. There's a formula for payouts, but basically it works out to $1.70 per ebook.
I don't like the idea of giving my work away for free, but I finally decided to enroll a couple of my ebooks in the program. The reason is that Amazon does have a huge audience, and its giving away free Amazon Prime trial memberships to everyone who buys a Kindle Fire (and that's a lot of people). As an indie author I need exposure, and it's worth trying KDP Select to get that.
Plus, I already know it works pretty well. I did a test promotion on my book "Facebook Ate My Life" and got hundreds of downloads. When the promotion ended I saw a bump in sales for all of my ebooks.
Now I'm going to do it again. This time it's "Big Chills". I'll post the results here when the promotion is finished.
That's because "Big Chills" is being offered for free on Amazon.com on January 26-27.
I've taken the plunge. After following the heated debate among indie authors about KDP Select, the Amazon program that lets readers borrow ebooks for free, I signed two of my ebooks up for it. KDP Select, in case you don't know, is a little perk that Amazon gives to its Amazon Prime members, where they can borrow one ebook a month for free, to read on their Kindle. There have been thousands of words written about this program since Amazon went public with it a few months ago, with writers divided on whether it's the greatest promotional tool ever invented or a crude ploy by Amazon to corner the market on ebooks.
Why are some writers mad? When you enroll an ebook in the KDP Select program, Amazon forces you to stop distributing it on any other sites -- including your own Web site or blog -- for 90 days. If you're selling a lot on Barnes & Noble, for example, you have to bite the bullet and lose those sales for 90 days. Other publishers are not pleased. Smashwords, in particular, released a statement saying that Amazon was being "predatory" and trying to take away writers' independence.
Amazon says that it's doing writers a favor -- that by offering your ebook to its huge audience for free, either through its lending library or as a free promotion (you're allowed to offer your ebook for free for five days during that 90 day period, and that's what I'm doing with "Big Chills") you'll get a large boost in name recognition among readers, and that will carry over to more sales for your other ebooks.
Plus, Amazon is paying writers every time their ebook is borrowed. There's a formula for payouts, but basically it works out to $1.70 per ebook.
I don't like the idea of giving my work away for free, but I finally decided to enroll a couple of my ebooks in the program. The reason is that Amazon does have a huge audience, and its giving away free Amazon Prime trial memberships to everyone who buys a Kindle Fire (and that's a lot of people). As an indie author I need exposure, and it's worth trying KDP Select to get that.
Plus, I already know it works pretty well. I did a test promotion on my book "Facebook Ate My Life" and got hundreds of downloads. When the promotion ended I saw a bump in sales for all of my ebooks.
Now I'm going to do it again. This time it's "Big Chills". I'll post the results here when the promotion is finished.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Networking With The Gods
By John McDonnell
“It's a sad situation when you can't get anyone to worship you anymore,” Zeus said. “What's the world coming to, I'd like to know?”
“I don't know, Zeus,” said Ra. “Things just aren't the same.”
They were riding the subway in New York, and nobody was paying attention to them. Zeus fit right in, because his long hair and beard made him look like a street person. Ra was dressed like an ancient Egyptian, naked except for a loincloth, but the only attention he attracted was from a little boy who told his mother he wanted that costume for Halloween.
“It’s not fair, I tell you,” Zeus said. “I haven't had any serious worshippers in about 1500 years. Who’d have thought things could come to this?”
“How do you think I feel?” Ra said. “I used to be the highest of the Egyptian deities. Thousands of people worshipped me. They painted my picture on their pyramids, they made statues of me. I was the man back then. Now, nothing.”
“You went out of style ages ago,” Zeus snorted. “I took over in Egypt, remember?”
“Oh yeah? Well, how many pyramids do you have? How many statues?”
“I have some pretty impressive temples around the Mediterranean. And the statue of me in Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.”
“Ancient is right,” Ra said. “It was destroyed centuries ago. The pyramid of Giza is still standing, my man.”
“Bah,” Zeus said. “I bet I get more tourists every year than you.”
“Tourists? We're arguing about tourists? We used to have followers who would sacrifice their first born children to us. Now we're counting up how many tour groups are snapping pictures in front of our broken-down temples.”
Zeus shook his shaggy head. “Yeah, you're right. It's a shame what happened.”
“It was the Christians who did us in,” Ra said. “Who can compete with all that ‘salvation for everybody’ stuff? In my day we didn’t let the riffraff into the afterlife.”
“I don't get it,” Zeus said. “I never asked much from my followers. I certainly never made them follow a bunch of commandments.”
“No, but you slept with their wives, and you turned them into goats when you disagreed with them.”
“Well, I'm lord of the universe, aren't I?” Zeus thundered. “Don't I get to do what I want?”
“Buddy, that attitude is what got you in trouble. People don’t want their gods throwing hissy fits and nuking everything in sight. That doesn’t sell anymore.”
“Oh, and you handled things better? You had your people working thousands of slaves to death every year just to build temples to you, and look at your great monuments today! Nothing but a pile of stones in the desert.”
“Listen,” Ra said. “We can talk all day about what we made our followers do. Gods do crazy things. I mean, the guy in Mexico asked for child sacrifice from the Aztecs, and he didn't last more than a couple of centuries. The question is, what are we going to do about it now?”
“Do? What can we do?” Zeus said, moodily. “We're a couple of broken-down old gods that nobody believes in anymore. We have no power, no influence.”
“Come on, don't give up so easily. There are some things we can do.”
“Like what?”
“Like social networking. We can get a Facebook page. A Twitter account. Google Plus, even.”
“And what will that do?”
“We'll get followers, dummy. It's simple. We just post some of our thoughts, some pictures (maybe you could comb your hair and trim your beard, make yourself look presentable), and people will start to friend us. The key is to be interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“Yes. That means no complaining about the last 2000 years, okay? No bitching about how Jesus stole all your followers. No threatening to throw thunderbolts, or wipe out whole cities. And no coming on to the women, okay? You'll ruin things if you do that.”
Zeus thought it over. “Okay, I guess you're right. But you have to promise you won't post any pictures of mummies. I hate looking at mummies.”
“Fine, no mummies.”
So Zeus and Ra opened a Facebook account and started posting. They hooked up with some old friends online (except one or two gods whom Zeus had cuckolded a thousand years before, who didn't accept his friend requests). Things were going well for awhile, and they got up to a few thousand followers. However, their account was shut down after Zeus repeatedly left lewd messages on attractive females’ walls and Ra tried to start a pyramid scheme.
You just can’t teach old gods new tricks.
THE END
“It's a sad situation when you can't get anyone to worship you anymore,” Zeus said. “What's the world coming to, I'd like to know?”
“I don't know, Zeus,” said Ra. “Things just aren't the same.”
They were riding the subway in New York, and nobody was paying attention to them. Zeus fit right in, because his long hair and beard made him look like a street person. Ra was dressed like an ancient Egyptian, naked except for a loincloth, but the only attention he attracted was from a little boy who told his mother he wanted that costume for Halloween.
“It’s not fair, I tell you,” Zeus said. “I haven't had any serious worshippers in about 1500 years. Who’d have thought things could come to this?”
“How do you think I feel?” Ra said. “I used to be the highest of the Egyptian deities. Thousands of people worshipped me. They painted my picture on their pyramids, they made statues of me. I was the man back then. Now, nothing.”
“You went out of style ages ago,” Zeus snorted. “I took over in Egypt, remember?”
“Oh yeah? Well, how many pyramids do you have? How many statues?”
“I have some pretty impressive temples around the Mediterranean. And the statue of me in Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.”
“Ancient is right,” Ra said. “It was destroyed centuries ago. The pyramid of Giza is still standing, my man.”
“Bah,” Zeus said. “I bet I get more tourists every year than you.”
“Tourists? We're arguing about tourists? We used to have followers who would sacrifice their first born children to us. Now we're counting up how many tour groups are snapping pictures in front of our broken-down temples.”
Zeus shook his shaggy head. “Yeah, you're right. It's a shame what happened.”
“It was the Christians who did us in,” Ra said. “Who can compete with all that ‘salvation for everybody’ stuff? In my day we didn’t let the riffraff into the afterlife.”
“I don't get it,” Zeus said. “I never asked much from my followers. I certainly never made them follow a bunch of commandments.”
“No, but you slept with their wives, and you turned them into goats when you disagreed with them.”
“Well, I'm lord of the universe, aren't I?” Zeus thundered. “Don't I get to do what I want?”
“Buddy, that attitude is what got you in trouble. People don’t want their gods throwing hissy fits and nuking everything in sight. That doesn’t sell anymore.”
“Oh, and you handled things better? You had your people working thousands of slaves to death every year just to build temples to you, and look at your great monuments today! Nothing but a pile of stones in the desert.”
“Listen,” Ra said. “We can talk all day about what we made our followers do. Gods do crazy things. I mean, the guy in Mexico asked for child sacrifice from the Aztecs, and he didn't last more than a couple of centuries. The question is, what are we going to do about it now?”
“Do? What can we do?” Zeus said, moodily. “We're a couple of broken-down old gods that nobody believes in anymore. We have no power, no influence.”
“Come on, don't give up so easily. There are some things we can do.”
“Like what?”
“Like social networking. We can get a Facebook page. A Twitter account. Google Plus, even.”
“And what will that do?”
“We'll get followers, dummy. It's simple. We just post some of our thoughts, some pictures (maybe you could comb your hair and trim your beard, make yourself look presentable), and people will start to friend us. The key is to be interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“Yes. That means no complaining about the last 2000 years, okay? No bitching about how Jesus stole all your followers. No threatening to throw thunderbolts, or wipe out whole cities. And no coming on to the women, okay? You'll ruin things if you do that.”
Zeus thought it over. “Okay, I guess you're right. But you have to promise you won't post any pictures of mummies. I hate looking at mummies.”
“Fine, no mummies.”
So Zeus and Ra opened a Facebook account and started posting. They hooked up with some old friends online (except one or two gods whom Zeus had cuckolded a thousand years before, who didn't accept his friend requests). Things were going well for awhile, and they got up to a few thousand followers. However, their account was shut down after Zeus repeatedly left lewd messages on attractive females’ walls and Ra tried to start a pyramid scheme.
You just can’t teach old gods new tricks.
THE END
Sunday, September 11, 2011
My favorite short story writers
I just created my first Listmania list on Amazon.com. I love short stories, so I thought I'd list my favorite short story writers. The list, which is here, has my thoughts on the authors I like the most. I highly recommend these writers if you want to delve into some entertaining stories that can be read in one sitting.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Cute And Scary
My newest book trailer is up. I thought it would be fun to use a cute bunny as a spokesperson for my book "Big Chills". He's called Happy Bunny. Some writers write cute, some write scary. Only John McDonnell writes cute and scary!
GoAnimate.com: by JohnMcDonnell
Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!
GoAnimate.com: by JohnMcDonnell
Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!
Friday, September 2, 2011
A contest for readers
Do you like contests? I haven't done many promotions for my ebooks, but I thought I'd try something fun for my newest collection of horror stories, Big Chills.
For the Labor Day weekend I'm offering a $10 Amazon gift certificate to the first three people who can name the female character in "Crusher", one of the stories in Big Chills.
"Crusher" is one of those stories with a twist at the end, and I hope you like it. In any case, if you can name the female character, I'll send an Amazon gift certificate to your email address. Just email me at jaymack@comcast.net with the name of the character, and I'll let you know if you won.
You can find Big Chills at Amazon.com or Smashwords.
This contest ends at 8 PM Eastern Time on Monday, September 5. Good luck!
For the Labor Day weekend I'm offering a $10 Amazon gift certificate to the first three people who can name the female character in "Crusher", one of the stories in Big Chills.
"Crusher" is one of those stories with a twist at the end, and I hope you like it. In any case, if you can name the female character, I'll send an Amazon gift certificate to your email address. Just email me at jaymack@comcast.net with the name of the character, and I'll let you know if you won.
You can find Big Chills at Amazon.com or Smashwords.
This contest ends at 8 PM Eastern Time on Monday, September 5. Good luck!
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
How Not To Starve As A Short Story Writer
By John McDonnell
Back in 2001 I decided to start sending out short stories to online magazines. Short fiction writers like Ernest Hemingway and Flannery O’Connor have always been my heroes, and I had a dream of being a successful short story writer myself. I put that dream off for many years, but when I saw how many magazines there were on the Internet devoted to “flash fiction”, or ultra-short stories, I decided to jump into the pool.
I joined an online flash fiction writing group, used its feedback to polish my stories, and I started sending them out.
And I had success. Some of my stories got published. Actually, a lot more of my stories got published than I had expected. It turned out that editors liked my writing. I went around in a pretty good mood for awhile, thinking that I could finally call myself a short story writer, because, hot damn, I was published!
My euphoria faded a bit with time. I was still happy with my decision to send out my stories, but there were times when I wondered, Is this all there is? The reason is that the rush of seeing my name in print was followed by an empty feeling in my wallet.
The fact is, online magazines don’t pay very much. Actually, most of them don’t pay at all. If you get a dollar or two for your story, consider yourself lucky. In most cases you get a byline and a link to your Web site or blog, and maybe a 50 word bio.
Now, I’m not griping too much, mind you. It’s a great thrill to see your story on the screen, and to have the validation that an editor liked what you wrote. Sometimes you even get fan e-mail.
Money, though, is a kind of validation, perhaps the most telling kind. If somebody parts with their hard-earned cash to buy what you’ve written, it means more than if you’re giving it away for free.
And that’s why I love ebooks. The ebook revolution has made it easy for authors to publish their short stories, and to actually sell them to the reading public. I have four ebooks of my short stories online now, and I have been pleasantly surprised at how well they’re selling.
What makes me really happy, however, is this interesting fact. My first ebook has 13 horror stories in it. Five years ago I could have sent all 13 of those stories out to online magazines, waited weeks or months for editors to decide if they wanted to publish them, re-submitted to new magazines the ones that were rejected, waited some more, and kept at it until maybe a year later when I could see every one of the 13 published.
My net income would have been at most, 13 dollars, assuming every one of the stories got published in a magazine that paid a dollar a story (which, like I said before, is a princely sum for most online magazines).
Instead, I put those stories in an ebook, and started making money on them immediately. Now, I’m not on the level of a Joe Konrath or Amanda Hocking, people who are selling thousands of their ebooks every month, but I can tell you that I’ve made many, many times that 13 dollars I referred to above.
The lesson to me is clear. Online magazines are a great outlet for short story writers, but if you like to be paid for your work, and you don’t like waiting for an editor to get back to you with a decision, and you like immediate feedback from readers, put your stories in an ebook and sell them on Smashwords, Amazon, or one of the other ebook outlets.
What happens if every writer does this? Will online magazines go out of business for lack of story submissions? Maybe some will, but I imagine there will still be enough people out there who want the validation that comes from an editor wanting to publish their work. And who knows, maybe the online magazines will have to increase their pay rates to get good writers to send stories to them in this new environment.
All I know is that from now on, my stories are going straight to ebooks.
Back in 2001 I decided to start sending out short stories to online magazines. Short fiction writers like Ernest Hemingway and Flannery O’Connor have always been my heroes, and I had a dream of being a successful short story writer myself. I put that dream off for many years, but when I saw how many magazines there were on the Internet devoted to “flash fiction”, or ultra-short stories, I decided to jump into the pool.
I joined an online flash fiction writing group, used its feedback to polish my stories, and I started sending them out.
And I had success. Some of my stories got published. Actually, a lot more of my stories got published than I had expected. It turned out that editors liked my writing. I went around in a pretty good mood for awhile, thinking that I could finally call myself a short story writer, because, hot damn, I was published!
My euphoria faded a bit with time. I was still happy with my decision to send out my stories, but there were times when I wondered, Is this all there is? The reason is that the rush of seeing my name in print was followed by an empty feeling in my wallet.
The fact is, online magazines don’t pay very much. Actually, most of them don’t pay at all. If you get a dollar or two for your story, consider yourself lucky. In most cases you get a byline and a link to your Web site or blog, and maybe a 50 word bio.
Now, I’m not griping too much, mind you. It’s a great thrill to see your story on the screen, and to have the validation that an editor liked what you wrote. Sometimes you even get fan e-mail.
Money, though, is a kind of validation, perhaps the most telling kind. If somebody parts with their hard-earned cash to buy what you’ve written, it means more than if you’re giving it away for free.
And that’s why I love ebooks. The ebook revolution has made it easy for authors to publish their short stories, and to actually sell them to the reading public. I have four ebooks of my short stories online now, and I have been pleasantly surprised at how well they’re selling.
What makes me really happy, however, is this interesting fact. My first ebook has 13 horror stories in it. Five years ago I could have sent all 13 of those stories out to online magazines, waited weeks or months for editors to decide if they wanted to publish them, re-submitted to new magazines the ones that were rejected, waited some more, and kept at it until maybe a year later when I could see every one of the 13 published.
My net income would have been at most, 13 dollars, assuming every one of the stories got published in a magazine that paid a dollar a story (which, like I said before, is a princely sum for most online magazines).
Instead, I put those stories in an ebook, and started making money on them immediately. Now, I’m not on the level of a Joe Konrath or Amanda Hocking, people who are selling thousands of their ebooks every month, but I can tell you that I’ve made many, many times that 13 dollars I referred to above.
The lesson to me is clear. Online magazines are a great outlet for short story writers, but if you like to be paid for your work, and you don’t like waiting for an editor to get back to you with a decision, and you like immediate feedback from readers, put your stories in an ebook and sell them on Smashwords, Amazon, or one of the other ebook outlets.
What happens if every writer does this? Will online magazines go out of business for lack of story submissions? Maybe some will, but I imagine there will still be enough people out there who want the validation that comes from an editor wanting to publish their work. And who knows, maybe the online magazines will have to increase their pay rates to get good writers to send stories to them in this new environment.
All I know is that from now on, my stories are going straight to ebooks.
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