Thursday, January 27, 2011

Paging Mr. Bracken

I spent much of this evening creating my Author Page at Amazon.com. I wrote a bio, uploaded a picture, and tried to link to all of my books. Alas, for various reasons, I wasn't able to link to them all.

On a related note, I've noticed that my two bestselling titles for Kindle are All White Girls, a hardboiled private eye novel released in paperback and hardback several years ago by Wildside Press and still selling steadily as an ebook, and Unbridled Love, a romance I self-published last year.

The two books couldn't be more unalike and I can't imagine any but the most eclectic readers enjoying both, yet they continue to battle for the top spot, with one taking the lead for a short time and then the other taking the lead for awhile.

5 comments:

Brian Drake said...

I'm not surprised about the romance--that's the number one selling "genre". My aunt just released her own romance, and she's SMOKING me in sales--50 copies (as of two days ago) sold so far, and she released it on January 5th!

I'm glad you put "All White Girls" up. That's a great book and deserves exposure. Are we going to see your other titles on Kindle soon?

Michael Bracken said...

Does your aunt's success make you rethink your genre of choice?

Maybe we should give some thought to mixing genres and try to grab both audiences by writing hardboiled romance. (Noir with a Happy Ever After?)

Actually, Wildside Press released All White Girls for Kindle. They've also released a Kindle version of my short story collection Bad Girls.

They seem to be releasing Nook versions a little faster. My novels All White Girls and and my short story collections Bad Girls, Tequila Sunrise and Yesterday in Blood and Bone are all available for Nook.

A variety of my other work, from a variety of publishers, is also available for Kindle and Nook.

Graham Powell said...

I don't remember that much of the plot of ALL WHITE GIRLS but I always liked the protagonist. A big, tough, badass private eye - who's also losing his hair, getting soft around the middle, and has been reduced to driving his brother's broken-down van (if I remember correctly).

Brian Drake said...

Michael,
Nope, my aunt's book makes me in no way want to write a romance.

I tried to do a Harlequin Intrigue a few years ago. I bought four of those books on Amazon (which still recommends them to me!) but couldn't they were all horribly written, making the Mack Bolan books Harlequin also publishes read like Fitzgerald.

I wrote mine anyway, working from a full outline, but I couldn't finish it, and in the end scrapped it. I even had a feminized version of my name, too, but in the end the outline wound up in a drawer and later used for another book.

I hope you're ebooks do well. Think you might do an original and release it yourself?

Michael Bracken said...

That's him, Graham.

Brian, I'm not really a novelist, so it's unlikely I would write a novel specifically to self-publish it. The one complete but unsold novel I do have finished is in an editor's hands now (shh, don't tell anyone, but it's a romance) and there's always the possibility I would release it on my own if it doesn't find a home in the near future.

I have open invitations from two small presses that, based on having read my short fiction, want to see my next hardboiled novel. It's a freaking pity I don't have one handy.

But that's how it goes for us short story guys. If I write a short story, I have a 90%+ chance of placing it quickly (in three submissions or less), but if I stop writing short fiction long enough to produce a novel, my income dries up with no guarantee of a payoff at the end.

And the electric company discourages me from taking that risk.