C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

02/28/2023 • 1:57 PM 0

The Communion of Shadows by Gordon Bonnet

**My friend Gordon Bonnet’s The Communion of Shadows is available now!**

Ghosts of the bayou don’t suffer fools…

It’s August of 1850, deep in the bayou country of southern Louisiana. Four good friends are working in the fields harvesting the crops when a sudden thunderstorm drives them all indoors. There’s kind, warm-hearted J. P. Ayo; eager, earnest young T-Joe Lirette; wry, hard-bitten Clovis Dantin; and gentle, easy-going Leandre Naquin.

“Hell of a night,” Leandre remarks, as they share a drink and wait for the storm to pass. “The kind of night when the ghosts walk.”

This seemingly offhand comment is the impetus to the four men sharing their own ghost story. The tale each man tells–by turns tragic, funny, frightening, and heartbreaking–gives them a window into their friends’ souls. When one of them confesses that his own personal ghost story isn’t over, that he’s still trapped in the middle of it, the events that follow will test the depth of their loyalty and friendship in ways that none of them could ever have dreamed.

What is certain is that after that night, none of the four will ever be the same.

If you enjoy ghostly tales, this link is for you. Alongside his work are plenty more eerie choices to add to your e-reader.

https://books.bookfunnel.com/ghoststories/syeb5yw28m

(Book funnel is a very useful tool to get your books into the hands of readers, complete with buy links to multiple stores and a sample of the text.)

Filed under: book promotion, Book Funnel, bookfunnel, eerie books on Amazon, ghostly tales, Gordon Bonnet, The Communion of Shadows

11/27/2022 • 1:57 PM 4

When a book deal takes you by surprise

When you run a promotion, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on your paperback prices. Amazon might be giving readers a deal you want to know about. The problem? It’s unpredictable and they won’t tell you they’re doing it, so we’re missing out on promoting the deal to readers.

Here’s the story

I ran a couple of promotions this week.

1. Through Book funnel: For the rest of today, you can pick up my bestseller This Plague of Days, Season One for just 99 cents! A bunch of other books are on offer, as well. Have a look!

2. The other was through Freebooksy. (AFTER Life, Inferno is set to free until the end of the day.)

The first promotion did not trigger an Amazon algo to drop the price of the massive paperback. However, the AFTER Life Omnibus, which at 600+ pages, is normally priced at $24.99, was dropped all the way down to under $7!

What a great deal for Christmas gifts, right? I could have promoted it more had I known, but I only just stumbled upon what Amazon was doing. Note to the uninitiated: This is a very good thing. Readers get an amazing deal, but the author still gets paid royalties based on the regular price!

There’s probably some software out there that can track such unannounced price drops for authors so we can take advantage of these promotional opportunities. I’ve asked my mastermind group. Let me know if you have a workable solution.

~ I’m Robert Chazz Chute. Check out all my sci-fi, horror, and crime fiction on my author site, AllThatChazz.com.

Filed under: book marketing, publishing, After life, Amazon price drops, book marketing, book promotions, bookfunnel, freebooksy, publishing, Robert Chazz Chute, This Plague of Days

01/08/2020 • 12:18 PM 1

Help for Authors

(Click here to go straight to the Dystopian Book Fair.)

It is not often that tools comes along that help authors automate and optimize a bunch of operations we used to have to do manually. If that were true, I’d post here more often. A few years ago, after posting daily at the beginning of publishing’s indie revolution, I decided to focus more on writing books. I post on ChazzWrites when I am sure I have something valuable to share. Today, that value comes from telling you about Bookfunnel and StoryOrigin. Participation will equal a smoother publishing process with your beta readers and ARCS and can certainly build your readership (without dropping a ton of money on time-consuming advertising experiments nobody can quite seem to perfect.)

StoryOrigin has three levels of membership, all free at the moment. Their highest level (AKA Professional) is in beta so I guess that’s why that’s still free for now. Bookfunnel also has three tiers of membership, all reasonably priced and dependent on your assessement of where you are in your writing career (First-time. Mid-list or Bestseller, $20, 100 or $250 respectively.)

StoryOrigin recently added a tool for writers to track their daily word counts and goals. I like the look of the goal creator because it offers an end date, not just a start date. God knows many of us are better at starting than finishing. I am new to StoryOrign but I used Bookfunnel for my latest release, Citizen Second Class. I can say that when I encountered a minor problem and contacted Bookfunnel’s tech support, they were fast and friendly and all over it immediately. That’s service worth paying for.

Something I enjoy about Bookfunnel is the promotional opportunity. Whether you’re giving away free samples, ARCS, reader magnets or full books, you can create a nifty landing page on Bookfunnel easily. You can also establish or join a book promotion with fellow authors in the same genre in a snap. New promotional opportunities show up in my inbox all the time and there’s no additional fee. Bookfunnel figured out an easy way to do for authors what you can’t do to cats: Herd us in a positive direction.

Today, for instance, I’m participating in a promotion of authors and their books similar to mine for Citizen Second Class. This one is called The Dystopian Book Fair. Each author is assigned an individual tracking link for their day during the book promotion. Each participating author spreads the happy word to their followers through newsletters and social media. Very professional. Click here to see what that looks like.

It’s the beginning of 2020 and many of you have probably made the identical resolution: “This is the year I will take my writing career to the next level.” Bookfunnel and StoryOrigin look like very inexpensive ways to solidify and execute that commitment.