Hey, folks, I am pulling into Day 16 of my 45-Day blog tour and I have definitely started to break out on Amazon Kindle. Over at my good friend Dusty Rhoades' place I discuss how I've sold over 400 copies of CLAWS and The Colorado Sequence in the past 3-4 days.

Dusty Rhoades is the author of the Jack Keller Series of crime novels, as well as the author of the outstanding stand-alone Breaking Cover.

Day 14 of my blog tour sees me visiting my good buddy Dawson Vosburg's blog. Dawson is an extraordinarily talented young suspense writer whose debut novel Double Life is available from Amazon.com

At Dawson's place, I discuss a recent surge in sales for my books on the Amazon Kindle.

Check it out! And pick up a copy of Dawson's Double Life.

Day 13 of the blog tour to promote CLAWS sees me visiting my wife Susan's blog, where I reflect on the strength of our relationship (and healthy relationships in general) and how some of the core attributes of a healthy relationship are also essential to a sustainable writing career.

Additionally, I had the good fortune to interview #1 New York Times bestselling suspense author Lee Child yesterday. This interview unearths some of the fundamental personality and work-ethic choices a writer can make to ensure a good relationship with his/her publisher and agent. Lee's on tour for his recently published book GONE TOMORROW. 

Today marks day 12 of my blog tour to promote CLAWS, and I am visiting my friend Heather Hummel's excellent blog. At Heather's place, I discuss some of what I've learned from doing a blog tour so far, and I assess the effectiveness of a blog tour. Heather is the author of the book Through Hazel Eyes, which is available from Amazon.

In other news, my Amazon Kindle versions of CLAWS and The Colorado Sequence have suddenly taken off in the past 12 hours... earlier this morning CLAWS hit #24 overall in the Kindle Action-Adventure category, #28 in the horror category, and #100 in the Kindle suspense category. It was ranked overall for all 285,000 Kindle books at #1,266

There's several factors contributing to the sudden interest in both books, and I'll be sure to post about it later this week while guest blogging. I've never had a book just take off like this, and so it's very exciting to watch.

Take care, folks, and thanks for reading!

Stacey

Day 10 of the CLAWS blog tour, and I'm still breathing! Today, I am at my friend Sarah Weathersby's blog. My post describes the background and motivation I had for writing CLAWS.

Day 9 of my blog tour sees me visiting my good friend Barbara Quinby's blog Weave and Sew Dust. At Barbara's place today, I decided to talk a little bit about the TV show I work on in Raleigh, how the shows work, how we get guests, and some of the things I've learned working there the past couple of years.

Also, we've got another 5-copy buyer of CLAWS Julie C. Thanks so much, Julie, for your support!

Day 7 of the blog tour sees me interviewed by Carol Denbow on her blog A Book Inside. Thanks, Carol, for the great interview.

In other news, it looks like I've got another Skype interview lined up for Sunday, this one with PeopleTalk of the UK.

Day 6 of my blog tour sees me at my friend Anthony Policastro's blog and another friend Marcus Sakey's The Outfit. Today is going to be a busy day. In fact, the next 48 hours are going to be very busy.

We have a lot of stuff going on in Raleigh. Take care, folks. And buy your copy of CLAWS.

Day 5 of the blog tour sees me visiting my good friend Eileen Batson's blog. At her place I discuss a Skype interview I did just last night for an online podcast author-interview program called podioracket.com

I realized in discussing CLAWS on the Skype interview just how important the subject of the novel is; you live with a novel long enough (some five years in this case) and you forget how heated a discussion wildlife management, conservation, and real estate development can be. It's funny because I intended the novel to generate debate and discussion, but it wasn't until I was in a Live call-in interview last night that I realized how this book can really spark debate on these issues.

This was a pleasant realization, and it makes me want to send out press releases to get other interviews to talk about the book. It's a charged topic, which makes for very good discussion on a radio program. I had kind of forgotten that.

Day 4 of my blog book tour sees me visiting my friend Henry Hutton's website and blog publishandsell.com. The topic of the discussion at Henry's place is book marketing; specifically, I wrote about three points that any good book marketing campaign should have. Also, I wrote about thirteen different marketing strategies that I'm employing for CLAWS.

Additionally, I made a video for his site which you can view below.

Day 3 of my 45-day blog tour sees me visiting my good friend Alice Osborn's blog. At her place today, I discuss the background and motivation driving the writing of CLAWS.

Yesterday, I was able to line up another interview. This one will be a Skype interview to air at podioracket.com. For those who haven't tried Skype yet (yesterday I made my first Skype call), it's essentially a way to make phone calls using your computer. Basically, you just talk into the internal mike on your computer to the person on the other end and they speak back through your computer's speakers (note: this is the non-technical definition).

It's really pretty neat. So what the gals at podioracket.com are doing is an audio-interview call-in show with authors who publish their books at Podiobooks.com

It's an inspiring programming model.

Today marks Day Two of my 45-Day Blog Tour, and I'll be visiting my good friend Elisa Lorello's blog Kairos Calling.

Elisa is the author of the poignant and hilarious novel FAKING IT, which I recommend to anyone who liked the movie When Harry Met Sally.

So how was Day 1? Fun... and very, very busy. I've never done a concentrated tour like this before, and am now realizing that it can take up seventeen hours of a day to keep everything moving along. I suspect things might slow down a bit in a few days, but for now, I'm just embracing the attention and trying to get the word out about CLAWS.

Thanks so much, everybody, for all of your words of encouragement yesterday. The ten free review copies were gobbled up very quickly (within an hour actually) and e-mails kept coming in all day and night from many others. The ten fastest e-mail replies promising to write reviews for CLAWS came from (in order):

1) Doug S.

2) Anthony P.

3) Mary S.

4) Martha G.

5) Robert W.

6) Mickey B.

7) Barbara H.

8) John & Bren P.

9) Alice Osborn (whose blog I'll be guesting at tomorrow, in fact)

10) Pat C.

Thanks so much, folks. You guys are the real deal, and I appreciate your enthusiasm and support.

Two other good signs that the Blog Tour is working: 1) My Amazon.com ranking cracked the top 40,000 books yesterday hitting the #38,073 spot. This is actually the highest I've ever seen one of my books ranked at Amazon (keep in mind they have over 5 million books in their database), so thanks so much to all who bought a copy; 2) I received one request for an interview from someone who read Jeremy's blog yesterday and so am adding Megalith's Blog to my blog tour for June 5. Thanks, Megalith!

So I guess the bottom line is that the tour is working so far. It'll be really interesting to see how this experiment works over the next 6 weeks.

Thanks so much, folks. And buy a copy of CLAWS today!

Stacey

Well, holy smack down! CLAWS is here. Today, I am kicking off a 45-Day Blog Tour to promote the release of my new novel.

My first stop on the tour is bestselling author Jeremy Robinson's place. You can read my guest blog post here!

Jeremy is the author of the awesome action-thriller novels The Didymus Contingency, Kronos, Raising the Past, Antarktos Rising, and the soon-to-be-published PULSE. Do yourself a favor and buy his novels now. He is going to be a New York Times bestselling author very, very soon. I guarantee it.

So, I am doing a 45-Day Blog Tour to promote CLAWS. I need folks to write reviews of the book, host me for an interview on your blog, anything you can think of to help spread the word.

Here's what I'm offering. Anyone who writes a review on Amazon.com will get a free signed copy of CLAWS from me. I will mail it to you postage paid.

Anyone who buys five or more copies of CLAWS at Amazon, I will do a phone interview with you about your writing, your book, whatever you like, and I will broadcast this interview on my TV show which airs on YouTube (keep in mind that my most "viewed" video on YouTube has been seen over 130,000 times, folks.)

Just let me know that you can help. The more creative you are, the better!

I'll be posting daily updates here at howtopublishabook.org and at my site staceycochran.com.

Take care, folks. See you tomorrow!

Stacey

P.S. Special thanks to Kerry M. who has already sent me proof of purchasing five copies at Amazon! (I'll post updates throughout the day if there are any others.)

How to Publish a Book Readers,

This past week, I had the opportunity to interview two literary agents and an editor from Random House. This may be one of the single best discussions on the state of publishing, what literary agents do and are like, and how to publish a book that I've ever done.

Literary agent Victoria Skurnick is with Levine-Greenberg and Michael Strong is a brand-new agent at Regal Literary. This is very cool for y'all reading/viewing at home because one of the best kinds of agents to find is one that is just starting out. Victoria and Mike are exceptional because they're brand new agents and looking to find writers like you, yet they're at established and highly credible agencies... truly the best of both worlds for aspiring writers.

Randall is fairly new as well. He is at Bantam Dell (a division of Random House) and works under Kate Miciak. Like Mike and Victoria, he's looking to find new writers for Bantam Dell.

Enjoy this discussion, folks! And thanks for visiting us here at How to Publish a Book.

Stacey