Book Trailer Video: Owe Nothing

Check out the new book trailer video for Owe Nothing:

http://ejohnlovebooks.com/books/owe-nothing/owe-nothing-video-trailers/

This captures a bit of the humour and intrigue of Owe Nothing. I think I definitely see more video trailers in my future…

(Apex Reviews, and GhostWriter Extraordinaire)

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How do you set a price for an eBook edition?

What’s the right price, relative to the cover price of the printed edition, or relative to the expectations of the eReader market?

This is something I must resolve for myself: when I publish “Owe Nothing” in eBook format (which I am going to do fairly soon), what is the best price? I’ve seen eBooks on sale for $0.00, $0.99, $2.99, $4.99 and so on.

Aside from resolving this particular quandry, I’m beginning to see that eBooks represent a huge benefit to the author-seller: no shipping costs, no inventory, and no re-ordering from the publisher. Admittedly, the burgeoning growth of eBooks, eReaders  and a new author-based publishing market (compared to some noticeable declines in sales for traditional publishers)  is an exciting prospect.

http://www.secure-ebook.com/blog/post/2006/12/12/3-ebook-pricing

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Visual artist Sonny Assu fuses native symbols with pop culture

Visual artist Sonny Assu fuses native symbols with pop culture, and reminds us that native culture isn’t dead, or dying, or just about preserving the past: it’s alive and interacting with us every day.

Visual artist Sonny Assu fuses native symbols with pop culture, and reminds us that native culture isn’t dead, or dying, or just about preserving the past: it’s alive and interacting with us every day.

Intelligent, beautifully-crafted messages…

http://sonnyassu.com/work.html

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Writing as a Form of Cocoon…

I tend to write the most and the best when the process is driven by a personal memory or feeling – something that might have been evoked by a unexpected sound or smell, or a memory triggered by that. Sometimes, a new perspective or pattern of thought evolves, which was brought on by a recurrence of events during the day.

I tend to write the most and the best when the process is driven by a personal memory or feeling – something that might have been evoked by a unexpected sound or smell, or a memory triggered by that. Sometimes, a new perspective or pattern of thought evolves, which was brought on by a recurrence of events during the day.

When I start digging into this raw material – often unconnected or disjointed – it takes shape as things that one of my fictionalized alter-egos, Jack, Jim, or maybe Mike – might say, do or have a strong opinion about.

Writing from the Gut?

In short, it’s a chain reaction: gut, sensory experience evokes a thought or a theme, which finds resonance inside my current cast of characters, until one or more scenarios begins to form.

This whole process happens in my skull, with often little or no input from outside parties. It’s like writing inside of a cocoon. Research comes later, when I realize that I’ve painted myself into a corner – when I don’t understand a particular aspect of what I’m describing – or if I’m dealing with things and places, rather than people.

Working this way is largely solitary, and I wonder if or how this process may limit me.

Most of my favourite writers are dead.

I’m largely ignorant of “the book market” or popular writers, save for a have dozen of the biggest, most famous names. I’m not up on new fiction, period. Most of my favourite writers are dead. Raymond Chandler. Dashiell Hammett. John Steinbeck. O. Henry.  Ernest Hemingway. All dead.

A few writers I like are still kicking.

Canadian crime/adventure author, Brad Smith. I love his blue-collar humour and crime tales. His voice sounds so familiar to me.

Douglas Coupland. I loved Generation X, and I loved Microserfs even more. I relived my own tech bubble meltdowns reading Microserfs. Life After God was pretty good too. (I’m puzzled as to why Coupland needs his own Roots clothing line. Oh well…)

Elmore Leonard. His is a tough, contemporary voice, that reminds me of how much of our cop/crime fiction we get from TV shows like Law and Order.

But, here’s the thing… I’m selfish.

I read often – almost all the time, but I’m really much more interested in writing my own stuff than in reading someone else’s stuff. What does that mean? Does that mean I’m insensitive to readers and writers who aren’t me? Is it Art School all over again, where no project is as fascinating to you as the one you’re currently working on? It’s taken about 14 readings for me to see my own novel, Owe Nothing, in anything resembling an objective light.

I don’t really know. I suppose all I can say is that in time, I will see my audience more clearly, and when I do, I should listen to them as carefully as I can.

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Life: Connecting the dots between my Parents and Groucho…

This post from my personal blog connects the dots between my folks and Mr. Groucho Marx, who’s image and sayings were part of my parent’s vocabulary, and now, my own.

The human mind is amazing in its ability to associate, relate and synthesize.

I’m going through a “Groucho phase”, reading about Groucho’s life, and watching Marx Brothers movies on DVD.

While that’s going on, two significant dates from my personal life have come and gone: the anniversary of my late Mother’s birth, and Father’s Day, a natural time to think about my late Dad. I missed them both this year.

Anyway, this post from my personal blog connects the dots between my folks and Mr. Groucho Marx, who’s image and sayings were part of my parent’s vocabulary, and now, my own.

Mum’s Birthday, 2010: Connecting the dots between my Parents and Groucho…

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New Home, New Look, New Approach

Officially, here it is:

My new fiction website is launched!

ejohnlovebooks.com is the new focal point for my works of fiction, including Owe Nothing, my novel about Jack Owen’s life in Vancouver.

On my new site, I’ve tried to provide you with an introduction to myself and my background, both as a writer and as a designer. Of course, there are descriptions of my first novel, Owe Nothing, including reviews from readers.

This site is built around the WordPress blogging platform, which means that it will always stay well-organized, be easy to search and navigate, and be easier to keep updated with new information.

Now, to get the word out, and make ejohnlovebooks.com into  the destination that it needs to be!

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To Blog, or To Blog More Often…

It’s not even a question, but, it’s a lesson that I need to take to heart and to practice, if I’m going to increase the visibility of my novels in the online world.

Blogging is the one of the easiest ways to create new web content, and blogs are often better designed for search engine optimization and linking.

Bottom Line: To help improve your traffic, you need to blog meaningfully, and frequently.

This article from HubSpot describes some adhoc research that bears out the concept:
HubSpot.com: Want More Web Traffic? Blog More Often!

Some of the reader’s comments in this article remind you that Twitter can be a useful promo method as well (e.g. Post a blog article, and then tweet about it to help draw traffic to it).

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Owe Nothing: Taking Writing and Marketing to the Next Level…

Ah, Spring. A time for growth, renewal, and positive change. And spring cleaning.

My personal web presence at www.ejohnlove.com has been in play since 1998, and over the years, it has been the home of all of my online personal shrines and pet projects, not the least of these is “True Life”, my personal family memoirs project.

Creating Characters, and a world…

In 2002, during a particularly bleak period of unemployment, I reacted to my frustration and lack of control with a familiar and comfortable escape into fiction. However, instead of reading spy novels, comics or graphic novels, I began my first attempts at writing fiction. Scribbling in my notebook on the edge of my bed during the late nights and early morning hours, I created a cast of characters and a world through which I could tell stories that spoke about the events and values of my personal life.

I created a mythical family and friends – composites based upon real people. Jack Owen and his family, friends, his motel home, and his fictionalized Vancouver-Kingsway neighbourhood all resulted from this. After seven years, countless Starbucks runs, and seemingly endless paragraph-by-paragraph writing and editing sessions, my first novel, Owe Nothing, finally came into being in April 2009.

September through October of 2002 turned out to be an incredibly productive time for me. Not only then did I begin writing the first scenes of Owe Nothing, but I also developed basic outlines for many of the characters who appear in the novel, and a few who don’t.  This burst of activity, seemingly automatic in nature, spurred further ideas for related stories, all of which could occur at different times within the same world as Owe Nothing. I was sketching out a new world inside my dog-eared, spiral-bound notebook.

My second novel, The Two Sisters (currently in progress towards a first draft), was originally sketched out as a short story outline in 2002. Not long after Owe Nothing launched online with Trafford in April 2009, I revisited my notes for Two Sisters and started trying to flesh out the story. It was around this time that I realized that I might actually have a second novel in me, and maybe even a third one after that. I realized that this fiction writing thing was starting to become a major preoccupation, and that perhaps I should consider developing it into more of an occupation.

Taking my book marketing to a new level…

In the first year since the publication of Owe Nothing, I’ve confined my marketing and sales efforts to anything I can accomplish online, particularly in some sort of semi-automatic manner. From this came a Facebook page, AdWords ads, one hundred Twitter tweets, and promoting and linking my old fiction page (http://fiction.ejohnlove.com) in directories, blogs and message boards all over the web. I tried a number of tactics. While these may have helped somewhat to get me web visitors, none of them seemed to result in any actual sales (if Trafford’s records are to be believed, anyway). I began to feel as if I were flailing around ineffectually, so I decided to find myself some good advice.

Nowadays, I’m taking counsel from a book marketing pro, and thinking more about the future of Jack Owen, the character, and of E. John Love, his official biographer. It has become the right time to move Jack and the “Owe Nothing Universe” off of my personal hobby site, and to develop a separate new web presence – one that gives Owe Nothing and any related stories the focuses they need and deserve.

It’s time…

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