Hitting the USAT List!

I'm trying, once again, to reach USA Today Bestseller status. It's a lofty goal for any writer but not unattainable. And I believe I'm as deserving of many who've reached this milestone as a writer.
I put together a box set anthology of 12 happy Christmas Romance novellas. Some are sweet, some sexy, one is a bestselling mystery, there's a cowboy in one, a Marine, a hockey player, a juror. All have loads of Christmas spirit and at the end of the set is a wonderful collection of over 20 Holiday Recipes.
If we sell a lot of these books, USAT bestseller status might happen for the six authors of the thirteen who are not yet USAT bestselling authors.
It's hard for an Indie author to reach this status without lots of money from a publisher to buy ads. Ads sell books.
We have only $1200 to spend, not $20,000 like the big publishing houses who can pretty much buy bestseller status for their authors.
On November 14th, our box set launches everywhere and we have one week to make enough sales to reach top 150 books sold that week. We have 800 sales, so far which might seem like a lot, but we need about 4,000. Our ads that week, will hopefully make up the difference. Our fingers are crossed.



My first box set in 2015 got really close but we didn't make it. My second didn't get all that close because we made some serious mistakes. I'm hoping third time is a charm.
If you can spare 99 cents, even if you don't read romance, please consider donating to breast cancer with that money. We are donating proceeds to the Breasts Cancer Awareness Fund. The last time I did this, we gave over $1,000 to the charity.

So for 99 cents you get a Christmas Recipe Book, 12 wonderful Christmas novels and a donation to cancer.
Thanks for your support!
BUY A COPY Here...

Amazon link

Barnes & Noble link

KIM HORNSBY is an Amazon #1 Bestselling Author who lives in Seattle, writing Suspense and Romance. Find her on Amazon to see how she opened shows for Jamie Foxx and The Smother's Brothers in Hawaii, then became a novelist.

Sign up for Kim's Newsletter to get info on FREE books, new book launches and Kim News!

www.bit.ly/KimHNews

Christmas Entertainment for Women!

I believe in entertainment.


When the world looks grim, having something to laugh at and enjoy, is worthy and necessary. I used to sing for a living. That felt like I was giving people a moment of pleasure, maybe even helping some forget their troubles for a brief time. Now I write novels. My audience can be entertained whenever it suits them, not having to come to a show of mine.

For years, I haven't admitted that I write romance novels. And some would say my books are light on the romance. I don't write formulaic romance where the hero is introduced on page 3 and the first kiss happens by page 10, etc. I write stories where the romance creeps in, almost organically.

I recently spoke at Bouchercon -- The World Mystery Conference -- on a panel about Romantic Suspense and when questioned why I write this genre, I said that love makes the world go round and I think if you are compelled to write suspense, having a romance in the story balances things out so the only message is not "Watch Out--the World is a dangerous place!" but something more hopeful.

I want women to know that the world is full of love too. And not just romantic love but familial love, neighborly love, even stranger love. I don't mean a one night stand either. Yesterday I had a conversation with a stranger where we found common ground and exchanged information that may make life better for a family member of mine. It was ten minutes of sharing information, out of nowhere, in which both the stranger and I ended tearing up. These moments are everywhere when you remain open to listening and taking time.
For that reason, I write a romantic story line in every book. No woman in need of good love is left behind. She gets her happily ever after when I'm in charge. And there are no shades of grey in my books, just plain grey. And no hiding behind fetishes and calling it love. No degrading college girls with light torture. I want my readers to feel pampered, lovely, not frightened. I want to show empowerment and possibilities.

I decided this autumn to compile a group of 12 happy, holiday romances to sell at rock bottom price, everywhere. I wanted to offer something fun and satisfying this year. We need it, Ladies. It's been a stressful year as a nation, as caregivers and as women.
On November 14th, we launch that set of 12 novellas (shorter than a novel and longer than a short story) but if you want to make sure you get your set now, feel free to go to the site where you buy ebooks and reserve your copy. It'll be auto-delivered to your inbox on the morning of the 14th and then you can start reading. And being entertained.
Our catch phrase has been "Fall in Love this Christmas"
Links at the bottom for sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

I wrote a brand new novella with never-before seen main characters but borrowed Pepper from my Dream Jumper series as a best friend. My holiday romance is set on Maui and occurs during the evacuation of a community in the path of approaching lava from Kilauea's volcano. Two people end up on Maui at a mutual friend's house for Christmas and find themselves perfectly matched.

I like to write about people who've hit bottom and are trying to pick themselves up to make something of their lives.

Here's a sneak peak from the center of my novella, Maui Kalikimaka:

 ****

He’d just slipped in to the steamy water of the outdoor hot tub when Lena came around the corner in a turquoise one-piece swim suit. Even though Lena probably looked great in a bikini, she looked breathtakingly beautiful walking across the deck to the hot tub in a one-piece suit. Kalani was a sucker for long legs. She’d pinned her long hair up and carried a towel at her side and walked like a model on a runway. He had to stop himself from whistling. That would have been the old Kalani, the one who used alcohol for bravery, like a shield. The new Kalani realized he didn’t have the right to openly judge a woman’s physical appearance with his cat calls and whistles. Still, he greatly admired Lena’s physical appearance.

She didn’t make eye contact with him but slipped quietly into the steamy water. Even though the outside temperature was the low-seventies, the hot water was a nice contrast and judging from Lena’s sigh as she sank into the bubbling water, she thought so too.

“Are you one of those people that like to go from the hot tub to the pool?” He tried to not stare at her look of sheer relaxation and pleasure.

“Probably not,” she smiled. “I haven’t had enough to drink for that.” Lena looked over to him. “I’m not sure if that kind of humor is distasteful to a recovering alcoholic. I’m sorry.”

The world was so full of references to drinking alcohol, Kalani hadn’t really noticed. “Not to me. I only know that I can’t drink alcohol any more, but, like a lot of alcoholics, I have no problem with other people drinking.”

“Was it hard to give it up?” Lena swept the water back and forth in little waves towards her chest, sending ripples over the tops of her breasts.

“Yes, and no. By the time I realized that I was on a destructive path and had lost some very important people in my life, I’d hit rock bottom.” He remembered the morning he woke in a strange tourist woman’s bed at a Kona coast hotel, with no recollection of how he got there, or where his dog was. The feeling of having hit an emotional brick wall, told him he’d gone as low as he ever wanted to go. “Drinking was slowly ruining my chances for having a great life and if I wanted to make something of myself, it would have to be without alcohol. I went cold turkey, started going to meetings, and haven’t had a drop since that day. It happened two days after I told you I was hot stuff in bed, if you need a reference.”

Lena smile at him kindly. “I knew you’d had a lot to drink that night we met, but I still found something about you that was sweet.”

Their eyes locked and then Lena looked away.

*****

I wrote Kalani as a recovering alcoholic because it's a theme of interest to me and shows great strength by overcoming an addiction. Strangely, a review on our Amazon site asks what this author (me) actually knows about alcoholism. I was married to an alcoholic, my two best friends are in the program and family members go to regular meetings. I think I have a pretty good understanding of the disease.









If you're reading this and would like to experience that feeling of falling in love at Christmas, you'll get a copy of Romancing the Holidays. I hope you feel thoroughly entertained and pampered when you read these stories!

12 Novels, 13 Bestselling Authors, plus Christmas Recipes

A portion of the proceeds goes to the Breast Cancer Research Fund

Here's where to find the Box Set of Novels - Romancing the Holidays

KOBO

Nook 

Amazon

Apple 

Happy Holidays, Everyone!

KIM HORNSBY is an Amazon #1 Bestselling Author who lives in Seattle, writing Suspense and Romance. Find her on Amazon to see how she opened shows for Jamie Foxx and The Smother's Brothers in Hawaii, then became a novelist.

Sign up for Kim's Newsletter to get info on FREE books, new book launches and Kim News!

www.bit.ly/KimHNews

Box Sets - Hitting the USA TODAY Bestseller List!

Is it better to say 'box set' or 'boxed set' ? because these are the things that keep me up at night while I worry about my boxy set that's for sale on Amazon.
Last week we hit 269 in Paid Amazon Books, which our group thought was GREAT and we're still at #1 for Mystery Anthologies even though we are pushing 2,000 ten days later in Amazon books.

Here's the story of a bunch of authors who came together to rival the big romance names for a few days.
Passion & Danger

Originally posted in May 2015

The only thing that the Tant Ten authors had in common back in March was me. I emailed a bunch of authors I like who might want to give me their first in a series book to practically give away to gain readers and possibly hit the USA Today List. All of the authors wrote suspenseful stories with romance. Some were straight Romantic Suspense, some were police procedural with elements of romance. Miraculously, nine of them did give me their books and I got busy making a box set with the theme Passion & Danger in common.
We're still waiting to see the USA TODAY Bestselling list this week but I'm not holding my breath. We didn't even come close to the success of a Contemporary Romance box set or the Erotic box sets that released the same week. (Only the Contemporary one listed, as it turned out.)

Here's a list of some things I believe I did wrong, followed by what I did right, keeping in mind that I'm not a well-known romance author, don't have a huge following in Romance, and am a confused publisher at best.

* I assembled writers who turn out quality work-- first requirement. Most of us are not necessarily the most prolific romance authors but writers with great storylines, characters and something to offer. I'm kidding about doing this wrong.
* I didn't know as much about publishing on sites other than Amazon as I should have
* My enthusiasm and confidence superseded my knowledge of this game
* I didn't ask each author for $100 for promo, I was just amazed that 9 authors said yes!
* I did not employ a promo company to do all the ads and marketing
* I should have set up more marketing during the 5 weeks of presales
* I used Smashwords for those sites that Draft 2 Digital didn't have (but I had to)
* I fumbled around on Google Play, trying to understand how to publish
* We went for 'James Bond' classy and used a 1/4 naked man on the cover, not 1/2 naked
* Major promo stopped after the first week of release
* I didn't play up the Sizzling, Sexy, Hotness angle -- that seems to sell books like crazy these days
* I assumed we'd hit the USA TODAY Bestseller List
* Not sure if this hurt us or not but we have books from Sweet to Sizzling, Humorous to Thriller
* I Should have approached other box set authors about Cross Promo earlier
* Many of us don't have newsletters or large email lists and that would have been helpful
* With more money, we could have gone to RT in Dallas to promote (The conference was on opening weekend for us--built in hundreds of sales!)
* We did not have a Facebook Release Party with prizes, and that might have been a mistake
* I should have included the cost of the cover in with the initial group funds, not taken it out of our first paycheck.
* I should have tried to publish to Smashwords Premium Catalogue 3 months before release to allow for all the problems and hold up.
* We should have published two weeks earlier and missed competing with 2 other blockbuster box sets.
*We offered books in the set that had been out for years, not new material
* We did not focus on Nook, Apple, Google, Kobo etc and might have lost sales there.
* We could have done blog tours to get the word out but didn't tap that as much as we could've

We might have used a photo like this instead, eliminating the woman, showing a full chest and suggesting more heat in the set.

What I believe we did right

* I chose authors who would really care if they hit the USA Today list, not those already on it. Hunger is a big motivator.
* We attached not one, but two worthy charities to the sale of books
* I got a USA TODAY Bestselling author Alexa Grace to do this with us
* I scored Toby Neal, not a romance author per say, with a huge following!
* I assembled a group of wonderful, diverse novels all with the common theme of Passion & Danger
* We used a wonderful cover artist The Killion Group to do the cover
* The cover turned out beautifully. Hairy vs Slick, Shiny Chest? Not sure
* With our limited budget of $300 we chose our ads carefully according to most bang for buck (list of sites next week's blog)
* We chose categories and key words strategically on publishing sites
* I got Amazon to price match because we had a large file with photos and wanted .99
* I used Draft 2 Digital for everything I could, not Smashwords
* On Author Central I played with description and Editorial Reviews sections to get larger print and I listed book descriptions here
* We printed postcards and chocolate coins to give out at RT (they arrived too late)
* We eventually set our sights on having fun with this, not worrying about listing
* We created a Google document for texts, FB posts, ad information etc
* We made a private FB page where we could talk, rather than emails
* We gave ourselves a cute name :)
* Everyone contributed in different ways-- some with marketing, some with editing, some with formatting, some with making ads, a book trailer, teasers!
* Everyone pitched in $43 for ads
* As the publisher/marketer I dropped everything for 2 weeks and sat at the computer obsessively watching sales and tweeting. I stopped writing and promo'ing my singles and sales suffered there but I believed in the long-term effects of this set for all of us.
* We eventually got a few reviews up there. Phew!
* I tried to model our page after one that was preselling like CRAZY! Even though it had all NY Times Bestselling Authors.
* After release, we contacted authors from the other box sets with crossover readership and tweeted for them.
* We launched on a Sunday, which I l believed was the USA Today List first day to count sales (it's a bit of a mystery)
* I made a trailer, which probably helped sales 

www.bit.ly/TantTen

                                                               Passion & Danger

I'm still not sure why our readers bought the other box sets and very few of their readers bought ours. Maybe because we weren't represented at RT, maybe because we aren't NY Times Bestselling Authors, maybe we missed some list or something, but that still baffles me. The first week we did not get their readers, but they got ours. Hmmm???

We went in to Launch Day with 600 presales on Amazon to dump on the first day. After the first week, we'd hit #1 on Mystery Anthologies, which looks good to have that badge at the bottom, and had 2,000 sales from all sites. The set reached 269 on Amazon books and held below 500 for most of that first week. At 2,000 sales we fell short of our 7,000 sale goal to hit the USA Today list, but we felt like with all the box sets out there this week, that was pretty dang good. There were some VERY heavy hitters in our genre! And some single titles/ single authors in Anthologies which is unfair.

For a bunch of non New York Times bestselling authors offering books that had been around the block more than once, I realized that we did GREAT!
Put some PASSION&DANGER into ur Life! http://amzn.com/B00VZ8XL48 10 books for #99cents Bestselling authors! #indieauthors RT pls

Using what I learned, I'm thinking of doing a box set of new novellas if someone doesn't ask me to be in their set before then.
Hey, if no one invites you to the party, have your own party, right?

Update: December 2015
We did not list, made some money and were able to donate over $1,000 to the Foundation for Thymic Cancer and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. For us, that made everything worth it. I put in about 200 hours on this project and don't regret a minute of it.

No one asked me to join a box set, so I published another one late November. This time, I assembled Suspense Holiday-themed novellas, which isn't an easy thing to sell. Suspense doesn't thrive at Christmas BUT Criminal Christmas is doing really well in sales. We keep just inside the top 100 Holiday Kindle category and figure we're gaining new readers. As the publisher, I did not go full out for hitting a list. If I ever do a box set again (and I'm really too burned out to do that as the publisher!) I will definitely take a cut of the profits as the publisher or ask for scads of money up front. It's sooo time consuming.
Criminal Christmas is a set of 8 stories, 6 Novellas (4 BRAND NEW!) 1 Short Story, and 1 Full Novel. Only .99 and the set features Alexa Grace, Ann Charles, Misty Evans, Adrienne Giordano, Jacki Delecki, Lori Leger, Alicia Dean, Amara Draska and me, Kim Hornsby.

Criminal Christmas Available at Amazon Kindle

Kim Hornsby is the Bestselling Author of THE DREAM JUMPER'S PROMISE and NECESSARY DETOUR. Her books are mostly available at Amazon because she believes in shopping local.
www.kimhornsbyauthor.net
Sign up for her newsletter at her website or add her blog to your favorites!

USA Today Bestselling Author Goal!

Box Sets and Hitting Bestseller Lists!

Box Sets are the new Biggest Thing! And you know why an author would offer a book that took her 2 years of her life to write for only 10 cents? To hit the USA Today Bestselling List. Or any other list would be nice too.
That's the main reason authors are banding together in bunches of 10 to offer a book, but the other reason is almost as good--To cross market with other authors, gain readership through them, and get people hooked on their series by offering the first book virtually free.

I'm no different. I saw the Box Set train leaving the station and jumped on board!

KOBO

https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/passion-danger

Barnes & Noble
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1121719397?ean=2940152175356

Amazon
Available on Most other ebook etailers!

Two months ago I researched these anthologies on Amazon, read blogs on them, studied covers, titles, and talked to authors who are already involved in a box set. I already was a year behind, seeing I wanted to get in a set last year this time. Feeling behind in anything always drives me to maniacal productivity.

I contacted a bunch of authors, whose books I loved reading, whose writing I respect greatly, and who write in a slightly similar genre as me. While waiting for these authors to think about my proposition I worked on a title.
In terms of search engines, I decided on the title Passion & Danger, having seen a lot of romance books starting with the word Passionate and knowing we would pop up in a reader's search. All the books I planned to have in the set had these two aspects in common. Passion and danger.
I was turned down by a few authors who either couldn't give me the temporary publishing rights, didn't have anything that wasn't already in a set, or didn't see themselves fitting in with the group. I appealed to my chosen few writers by asking them if they wanted to become a USA Today Bestselling Author. If they did, here is my plan. (insert my email here.)
Only one of us holds the title of USA TODAY Bestselling Author and she said yes even though her book has thousands of reviews on Amazon and might not need to join us for any particular reason.

Alexa Grace is a superstar of Romantic Suspense but also savvy enough to know that you can always reach more readers through cross networking. We had our star author for the first book!

Toby Neal is a marketing wizard, prolific author and writes fabulous, gritty crime/romance set in Hawaii. I was amazed and thrilled she said yes. Her Lei Crime Series is so popular, she has her own Kindle World! What?

Kristine Cayne has won so many awards in Romance and Suspense, that I can't list them all here. She's a top author at Amazon and her willingness to join us was another coup. Yowza!

Dana Delamar, another bestselling author, agreed to get on board with her awesome novel, which is book 1 in her bestselling series. Love her writing! And she agreed to help us with marketing, something she does as a sideline, along with editing.

Alicia Dean who was my editor for two books and writes multi-genre. She also writes for Kindle World and heads up Authors Helping Authors and many marketing groups. She is a go-getter! Alicia let us have her gorgeous novel that weaves in a paranormal aspect. Wow!

Then I asked Pat White, the Harlequin Intrigue author who got me into this kooky business in the first place and she gave us her fun romantic suspense. I read it years ago and laughed all the way through. We had our first humorous mystery. I couldn't believe my luck.

Diana Layne had huge success with book 1 and 2 in her Mafia series and was ready to release book 3. Luckily she saw this as a good way to market and we got book 1 for the set. It's a Bestseller with about 500 reviews and is a Golden Heart Finalist. Ca Ching!

Bestselling author and Louisiana writer, Lori Leger, was convinced to lend us one of her many novels and willingly offered to do the formatting, something I didn't want to take on (even if I could) and didn't exactly want to pay hundreds for someone else to take on. I loved this love affair and all the Louisiana/Cajun spice in all her books.

My critique partner, Christine M. Fairchild, is ready to release the much-anticipated Book 2 of The Goliath Conspiracy Series and let us have Book 1--An enormous Bestseller! Suddenly I had her kick-ass thriller to complete the set and I was doing the happy dance all over my house.

Add in my Award-Winning, Best-Selling Romantic Suspense, the first in the Dream Jumper series and we had ten tantalizing books of Passion & Danger.

Everyone began with a check of their formatting while I hunted for a cover photo. We had a huge decision to make that most women never give much thought to.

Hairy chest or clean-shaven chest??? This question occupied our emails and my mind for about two weeks while I polled women. I'd found an awesome photo that depicted our theme but the cover model had a hairy chest. Dare we?
In the end we decided on the picture of  gorgeous cover model, Harvey Stables with a sultry blonde, Amber, and had The Killion Group go to work on our cover.
Note: We needed a flat version too because of Apple and they supplied all the sizes and versions when it was done! See below.

We decided on a marketing budget, put money in the pot, and set to work figuring out what sites gave us the most bang for our buck.
Lori began formatting, careful to keep the file as small as possible because of Kindle's 3 KB rule for .99 books. We really wanted to offer this for .99 and as I type this I'm still not sure if we'll be able to reduce the file from 3.5 to 3. All photos of our covers had to go as well as back matter, front matter and such. Poor Lori. She was able to keep the file large for Draft 2 Digital, a new uploading service similar to Smashwords because they can take a huge file. They will also do all the converting for you and even will set everything up for CreateSpace, if you like. Having box sets in print is completely ludicrous because they'd have to cost over $100. but it's nice to know for single books.
We set a publishing date for May 17 and have given ourselves over a month to gain all the presales we can in that month. We anticipate a nice dump of sales on that day, chosen specifically because USA Today begins their weekly count on Sundays.

As I learn more about this process, I will let you know in installments, publishing along the way about the journey to USA Today Bestselling Status. One thing I learned that was disappointing is that another box set comprised of List Authors is releasing the day after us, hoping for NY Times Bestselling status. (They start their count on a Monday). We are not so lofty in our goal--USA Today is good for now.
 We have marketing set up that includes lots of sites that will advertise our book, although BookBub does not take multi-author box sets yet. We went with My Romance Reads, ENT and Kindle Books and Tips for the big ones and Awesome Gang, Indie Author News, Book Soda, Genre Pulse, EBook Booster, Choosy Bookworm and others.

 


If you're reading this, please consider buying our presale for your own enjoyment, as well as helping us realize our Indie Dream. Here's the current links with more to come:

KOBO

https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/passion-danger

Barnes & Noble
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1121719397?ean=2940152175356

Amazon
bit.ly/10for99c

And here's a photo of very embarrassed me with Harvey Stables at a Romance conference. :) Everyone lined up to pose with the generous and polite Harvey.
More later...


Kim Hornsby is an Amazon Bestselling Author of Suspense and welcomes comments to this blog.