Michael Ross Ault's Blog

I have a book called "Winnibozho Blues" unfortunately no one knows what a Winnibozho is and some think it is something about music. In reality it is an action adventure and a rousing one at that, though sales don't reflect that fact. I assume the title must be off-putting. Therefore I am changing the title. I hope it isn't the same as changing a ships name (bad luck!)

I am changing to "Rock Lake Mysteries" I hope folks like that better. Maybe it will give a more adventurous feel to the book and provoke a more positive response! Here is the new cover:

Ok trying to come up with a cover and title for my next action-adventure thriller. It started as "Grand Turk Adventure" as a working title but that was kind of so-so. I then thought Emerald Desire was good but decided it was to romance-like. I did a dummy cover with The Emeralds of Salt Cay but also was ho-hum. Ok so I did another cover using the title "The Emerald Curse"



Love it? Hate it?

The season November 15-January 15 is the peak book and ebook sales season. I have two novels nearly ready for publishing and with a little self-butt kicking I can get them ready by then.

The quandary is, do I pursue the phantom of traditional brick and mortar publishing, thereby guaranteeing no new books this year or go ahead and put these out there? In about a week I can have them ready for final edit and off to the editor, I have the covers done and a quick drop into CreateSpace publishing template will have them ready.

I guess I need to decide, do I want to try again for traditional publishing with their low royalties, minimal advances, low publicity (at least for first time authors) and in general lack luster performance just to be traditionally published, or go ahead and continue with independent publishing?

Author pages, websites, Blogs oh my! I sat down and looked at what electronic signatures I have attached to me over the years and it is quite a large number. Authorsden, Yahoo website, Blogspace, goodreads, Amazon, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Createspace, Publishers Lunch. Blogs, author pages and websites galore. But how to determine if they are being helpful or just time sucks?

Facebook provides good feedback as to likes, views and other statistics but how many lead to buys of your books? Blogs are great and usually track number of views but again, I have several with many viewers but I don't see upticks in sales after book specific blogs so again is it helping or just keeping me from writing on new books?

Still, you can't be a hermit I guess and expect sales to magically appear (believe me it doesn't work, better mousetrap book or not) so we must work the trenches and keep our name out there. Let me know what has worked for you!

We have all heard you can't judge a book by it's cover. Unfortunately we all do it. We pick an interesting looking book up, read the back cover and maybe look a little at the firs few pages. Of course many people judge just by what they see on the cover.

I just spent several days helping my daughter with the cover for her first book, "Ghost Stories and Legends of Murphy, NC" by Marie Ault. And we tried to pick fonts, pictures and of course the proper back cover blurbs about book contents and the author. I guess time will tell if we did well.

I have also been agonizing over potential covers form my two WIPs, "The Emeralds of Salt Cay" and "Suppressors: Shattered". Believe me until you really study the art of making a book cover you don't realize what goes into them.

Anyway I hope you will dive deeper than just the covers when you make your next purchases.

As artists we as a group have a love and hate relationship with reviews. The rush of a great review is quickly squashed by the depressing bad review. I am reminded of a saying we had in the Navy, one aw-shit wipes out all the atta-boys. It is like that with reviews, all the good ones seem to get cancelled by a single bad one no matter how hard we try to remember the good ones.

Actually I don't mind a thoughtful review that tells exactly why someone doesn't like what I have done, it is the ones that simply trash your work without reason that hurt the most.

I guess as public persons we all have to put on our big person underwear and just take the bad reviews with the bad. I just wish the reviewers had to also place their most cherished ideas and accomplishments in front of the world for review and criticism. Of course, maybe they are.