Guerrilla Marketing -- Anatomy of a Free Promo

As part of this whole book thing, I've been working out a marketing campaign.It was Katherine Brooker, A California-based publicist and book editor, who gave me the shove into the world of Tweets and Google Plus and other virtual world realms where I have been spending excessive amounts of time polishing my marketing chops. Anyway, I just finished a five day free promotion of French Pond Road on Amazon and was consistently on the top 100 list for contemporary fiction for all five days, most days better than 75. That sounded wonderful to me, but I got an email from Katherine earlier today suggesting I trumpet the news. So I wrote up a press release and here it is. Feel free to do with it what you will. i already sent it out on some Press Release Submission Site that promised to trumpet it virtually:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Independent Author Breaks Into Best-Seller Ranks With Dark-Horse Story
As the publishing industry continues to reel under the weight of technological and cultural change, and professional book marketers seem ever more flustered by the vagaries of literary fortune, independent writers are seizing the revolutionary moment, using social media and word of mouth marketing to reach a hungry reading public. Over the Memorial Day weekend, Anthony Caplan launched a stealth attack on the Amazon bestseller ranks. Today, French Pond Road finished up a five-day free promotional offer on Amazon's Kindle Select program as fifty-sixth on Amazon's contemporary fiction list, out-competing titles from such established industry behemoths as Simon and Schuster and Little, Brown and Co.  On the strength of over 100 downloads per day of his book, Caplan expects to enjoy future sales to grow from his initial grass roots marketing. Is this the future of book selling?
Henniker, New Hampshire – June, 1, 2012 – FRENCH POND ROAD, the unlikely road story of a father and son reunion, Wednesday finished up a five day run in the top 60 best sellers on the Amazon Contemporary Fiction list on the strength of a word-of-mouth marketing campaign that its author Anthony Caplan hopes will propel the book's future sales and advance the cause of independent publishing.
The title, published this spring on Amazon's Kindle Select eBook program, was initially released in 2008 in paperback. Caplan decided to market it as an eBook this year as he prepared to launch another new book, a coming-of-age novel called LATITUDES- A Story of Coming Home, to be released on June 30.
"The difference this time around was the model I had on how to market using social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook," said Caplan. "But the truth is I decided on Friday night to launch the free campaign, and it wasn't until Saturday morning that I figured out how to tweet about it effectively. The whole idea was to do a dry run for the launch of LATITUDES."
Authors using the free promotional campaign on Amazon have been reporting declining gains in sales boost from the free campaigns, but for Caplan the benefits are numerous.
FRENCH POND ROAD, a story of a roofer reunited with his autistic teenage son after a 16-year separation, had sold virtually no copies in paperback before the free offer. Now, with the exposure on the well-publicized Amazon best-seller list, Caplan has a readership familiar with his name and his previous books as he prepares to release his latest title.
"My stories are about outsiders, so it's appropriate that my marketing techniques are guerrilla," he said. "I just want to inspire other people to follow their dreams. In today's world, anything can happen."

Anthony Caplan is a writer, blogger, teacher and homesteader in New Hampshire. He is the author of the novels Birdman, French Pond Road, and the forthcoming Latitudes - A Story of Coming Home, due out at the end of June from Hope Mountain Press. Find out more about him and his work at http://www.anthonycaplanwrites.com. 

FREE KINDLE Books I and II of Billy Kagan Series

FREE                                  FREE                                   FREE                               FREE

This weekend and until May 30 I'm running a special free Kindle offer on Birdman and French Pond Road, the first two books in the Billy Kagan road series.

In exchange for the free books, I want to get some reviews posted of the books on the Amazon site, so here's the deal:

1. Get free Kindle books while the offer lasts.
2. Post a review of either book on Amazon.
3. Email me -- tcaplan(at)mcttelecom.com and include a link to the review on Amazon.
4. You will receive a free Kindle of the forthcoming Latitudes - A Story of Coming Home.
5. Extra special offer -- post a review of both Birdman and French Pond Road and you will also receive a free copy of my short story collection Tumble.

So go now and load up with Birdman and French Pond Road, two quality reads guaranteed to entertain and entrance you this Memorial Day weekend and for years to come.

Here's what readers say about Birdman, the story of Billy Kagan's wild days in Ireland.

"Whimsical, even sublime..." Sandra Townsend -- Hippo Press
"Brilliantly evocative..."  James Woolridge -- Earthwatch Magazine

In French Pond Road, Billy Kagan is reunited with his son Mickey on the back roads of New Hampshire. An inspirational tale of love and redemption, this story is the sequel to Birdman.

Here's what readers have to say about French Pond Road:

"The characters are interesting and complex and the many strands of storyline kept my interest from beginning to end. In fact, I didn't want to put the book down!"    Carole Walker

"I loved the relationships in this book. It's about learning to live together."    Andrew Gammel

So for an unbeatable price you can support Indie writing. Be part of the Indie revolution. Get Birdman and French Pond Road, review one or both and get more free books. What are you waiting for?
Don't have a Kindle? Download the free Kindle app for your computer, smart phone or tablet.

French Pond Road Podcast

Take a listen to this week's podcast of French Pond Road...

"She'd thought of herself as a mover and shaker, hired by Bert's Ski Peak as a Marketing and Events Planner at the tender age of thirty-two..."

Audio Podcast French Pond Road

A lot of water under the bridge. Back at work, the frenzied factory setting where the youth pass through the gauntlet. Times are hard, which means we come down harder on them. The shit, after all, rolls down the hill.

There's a new president elect, a new breeze blowing. but it might not be enough to stave off the shit hitting the fan, to continue with my bodily wastes metaphor, of our cankered and cancerous body politic. In the end, though, we will emerge a better nation, more aligned with the good.

Here's my two bits again. If this works, the theory is I will be broadcasting a weekly installment of French Pond Road, in the authentic quavering voice of the self-published author. You heard it here first.

Running Out the Clock

Went out for a run after work today. Still a foot of snow on the ground. Thought about the story I'm working on at the moment, how to layer the plots so one frame, the abduction, fades out, as the survival frame takes over - the relationships among the various people who have been kidnapped by the terrorist, the unlikely heroism, etc. Need to include a character, maybe a woman who is a struggling artist dealing with issues of personal identity and authentic expression. Maybe she can be found at a gas station, an unlikely situation, while they are on their way north to Vermont.

I find that I have very clear ideas of plot and character development often while I'm running and then by the time I have a chance to write them down they have usually faded. Still, all it takes is a couple of notes usually jotted down at the top of the page I am working on to jog my memory later, sometimes weeks or months later while I am rereading or editing.

Ordered seven different types of scionwood, a total of eighty trees to be grafted and eventually planted out, our small apple orchard, from Fedco in Maine. They should arrive sometime in April, about the time I have a break from teaching for a week. By then the lambs will almost all be born also. Stay tuned for pictures. The Icelandic ewes we have, this is our fourth lambing season, are very self-reliant and have never had difficulties birthing, although our oldest ewe, Sadie, developed mastitis and had problems nursing last year and we had to put her down. A cruel business, but not as harsh as watching her lambs die two years in a row. We tried bottle feeding, but it was not enough to keep them healthy.

Promotion for French Pond Road continues. The print edition should be out sometime soon after some technical glitches with the cover and then available through the website and Amazon. Watch this space.