DAILY BLOGGING from MAUI!

Aloha~

I'm headed to Maui on Tuesday evening and plan to write my daily escapades on the blog starting Wednesday!
I do this every year, but this year things will be slightly different. I will also do daily Vlogs, video blogs, to show you where I am, what I'm doing, and how lovely Maui is.

If you're interested in tuning in, make sure you follow this blog (Click FOLLOW on the sidebar) and make sure you are a Beach Club member on Facebook over here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/188081488503196/




This is a group of people interested in my books and me as an author. I'm always looking to add more people to the Kim Hornsby Beach Club. Even people who have just met me. It's a big beach where everyone looks fantastic in their bathing suit!

I'll show you some locations on Maui where The Dream Jumper's Promise (my optioned for film book series!) takes place. And take you with me on a ferry to Lanai, the pineapple island to cruise around with my friend Bill. Then I'm off to sign books at Maui's Barnes & Noble!

It's Humpback Whale season so I just might have some whale footage too.

I hope you'll join me on Maui!





KIM HORNSBY is an Amazon #1 Bestselling novelist who lives in the Seattle area and writes books about women in dire circumstances rescuing themselves. She tweets her dreams most mornings on Twitter under the hashtag #StrangeDreams
www.twitter.com/kimhornsby

Newsletter Signup for Book Releases & Free Stuff www.bit.ly/KimHNews

Kim's Website https://kimhornsby.godaddysites.com

Or find Kim's AMAZON books' site www.bit.ly/kimamzn

Palm Trees, Barnes & Noble & Gnocchi

Woke to a calm ocean yesterday and I was wondering why we didn't go snorkeling. Cresty was playing tennis and I was blogging though.

I worked on the deck, staring at the ocean. A man walked down the street strumming a ukulele. Not something you see everyday. There is also a bike rider in Lahaina who carries a fifteen foot white cross on his shoulder. We've seen him five times, balancing that crucifix. And a guy who roller blades the highway in only black shorts, his roller blades lit up.

I picked up my friend Bill at the Lanai ferry, we had a lunch on Lynn's deck and headed off to my Barnes & Noble book signing.

I set up my big, honkin' retractable poster and immediately started selling books twenty minutes early. Over the next two hours, I talked to such amazingly interesting, lovely people including a guy named Jim who had a photo of a ghost. It certainly looked creepy and real. And a couple who just got married--her a writer named Holly and him a literary agent. And a retired couple named Rose and Craig who have 4 weeks of timeshare and are waiting for their child to join them on Maui from Israel.

Wonderful people end up in bookstores.

After the books sold out, we went grocery shopping for ingredients to make Italian gnocchi--something Lynn loves. Back at the house, the potatoes started baking, the wine got opened, the conversation flowed and the four of us eventually prepared dinner.


There is something so decent about a candlelit dinner on a deck overlooking the ocean with good friends. Gnocchi, Salad, Chicken, Wine, Friendship, Laughter...

After cleanup in the kitchen where the dog let us feed him chicken, we had a round table discussion in the living room around the coffee table about world affairs, Bill playing Santa Claus every Christmas at the Lahaina Sugar Cane Train, Lynn's garden, and vaping! Bed came early for the girls while Billy watched golf on the couch.

Another amazing day.










KIM HORNSBY is an Amazon #1 Bestselling novelist who lives in the Seattle area and writes books about women in dire circumstances rescuing themselves. She tweets her dreams most mornings on Twitter under the hashtag #StrangeDreams
www.twitter.com/kimhornsby

Newsletter Signup for Book Releases & Free Stuff www.bit.ly/KimHNews

Kim's Website https://kimhornsby.godaddysites.com

Or find Kim's AMAZON books' site www.bit.ly/kimamzn

Book Bub Featured Deal Ad - Yay or Nay?

After 36 tries, I finally was accepted to advertise one of my Indie books on BookBub. 
My practical husband said "You have to be accepted for a paid ad?"
Yes, yes you do.

Book Bub is the tried and true nirvana of book advertising. I've submitted dozens of times with almost all of my books, getting the same rejection letter whose second sentence begins with "Unfortunately." That letter makes me pretty much cry in my soup about not being good enough like some teen trying to get in the cool crowd at high school. But, I keep trying. I liken my tenacity to Sue, a character on the TV show, The Middle, someone with the sunniest attitude I've ever seen (even if she is fictional.)
Indie Authors aren't always chosen first. The famous authors who are NYT Bestsellers are going to be way more appealing because they will definitely keep Book Bub's street cred up there. Readers will sign up to get the daily notice in their inbox because hey, they let you know when Obama's book is only .99.
Today, for example, they have the Neil deGrassie Tyson book, Rick Riordan, Alice Munro and Heather Graham. 
I understand. It's a gamble with an Indie author trying to compete with Alice Hoffman, Stephen King, Nora Roberts. BUT, so many of my author friends get these ads, it's hard to take it personally.

Certain categories are busier than others. For instance, our Romance Box Set of 12 books for 99 cents tried twice and we were told the category is super-competitive at Christmas leading us to think that we did not win something. Had we included Nora Roberts in our set or Catherine Bybee, we might have gotten the ad. As it was, we had one NYT Bestselling Author and 7 USA Today Bestselling Authors in the set. 
However, looking to the Deals site today, I see a cozy mystery that has only 8 reviews in that many years of being published and has very little success, so the skeptic in me wonders if she knows an editor at Book Bub or slipped in there with luck on her side. I'm rooting for her.
An author can try once a month to get an ad for each book and I'm getting ready to try again for Romancing the Holidays. It was this process and thinking that caught me unaware and without $748 extra dollars last week when Book Bub sent and email that did not have the word "Unfortunately" in it.
And tomorrow, I have my Complete Dream Jumper Series going live on Book Bub. How did the heavens open up and my luck change?
On the advice of Romantic Suspense superstar Kaylea Cross, I put the set at $1.99 and they accepted my offer to pay $748. to have it in the Supernatural Suspense category. (I actually had to borrow the money from a faithful and generous friend!) 
I got an acceptance email and jumped at the opportunity like a hungry puppy.

In order to make the money back, I need to sell about 1,000 books which, according to Book Bub's projections and numbers, I will. They estimate between 1,400 and 3,000 sales. I'm sending a message to the Universe that I want that last number please.
Getting ready for tomorrow's promotion, I rechecked the manuscript for formatting, added the link to signup for my newsletter, and asked readers to follow me on Book Bub. I added a list of my other books, fixed one typo, and changed the cover to look cleaner. I had the individual book covers above the titles on the side of the 3-D image and thinking that looked messy, I asked the cover artist, Novak Illustrations, to remove them. 
I have all my other books priced to make the set look particularly attractive, mentioned the books in the set are optioned for film in the description and am trying to see my book set through strangers' eyes to insure a sale.

The thing I'm worried about is that the set is multi-genre. It's Mystery/Suspense/Supernatural/Romance/Thriller/Travel/Action and appeals to readers of many genres, not just Supernatural Suspense. I want anyone seeing the ad to think the books will appeal to them if they read the above categories that but I guess beggars can't be choosers. I'll take what I get. I fixed the AMAZON description to include better wording and am keeping my fingers crossed.
Tomorrow, I will update this blog to include info about the sales and will continue to update for the few days after the ad, if you're interested in knowing how it did.
As a means of comparison, the box set has had 4 sales in the month of November and all of those happened when I reduced the price yesterday in anticipation of the ad and posted on Facebook. 
Follow this blog to hear updates.

Out for now...       BookBub Deals Here

UPDATE: The ad was Friday and this is Sunday at noon. So far I've sold 1100 books, which is fantastic but I need 1232 sales to break even from the $748 ad. Yes, I'll gain new readers probably and the exposure was wonderful (check me out on twitter to see my photos - www.twitter.com/kimhornsby) and I took pictures of reaching #1 in several categories but I also needed to break even. I'm not so successful that I could take a hit here. I'll have to keep the series at $1.99 for another few days, I guess to catch the stragglers.
More later...

3 Weeks Later
To date I've sold $880 worth of the book which pays for the $748 ad, thank goodness! I wouldn't say it was the windfall I've heard about though.
I wonder if the problem was the $1.99 price point which isn't as attractive as $.99 or even $2.99 according to studies, or if it was the strange cover, or the strange category - Supernatural Suspense, at a time when readers are buying Christmas stories. I'll never know.
Would I do Book Bub again? Yes but with lower expectations. For my first time with a Book Bub ad, I really expected to sell thousands of books. I only sold 1500.

Still a win, though.



KIM HORNSBY is an Amazon #1 Bestselling novelist who lives in the Seattle area and writes books about women in dire circumstances rescuing themselves.

Newsletter Signup for Book Releases & Free Stuff www.bit.ly/KimHNews
Kim's AMAZON site www.bit.ly/kimamzn

Secrets and Lies on Maui...

Do you dream? Do you remember your dreams when you wake?

I write novels that always have three themes -- Dreams, Suspense and Romance. I also have rescue dogs, beer drinking and travel but let's talk about the bigger themes, shall we?




Because I am a prolific and avid dreamer, I use the dreams of my book's characters to define them, deepen their relationship with the reader. Dreams are strange.
The Dream Jumper Series is about a man who has the uncanny ability to enter other people's dreams. This man, Jamey Dunn, also has what he soft-peddles as "Hyper-Intuition." He's a psychic. But it's an unpredictable ability, coming and going, never fully predictable.

With three books in the series, I believed I was done with Tina and Jamey, but one day while driving my teenager to school, I had an epiphany. I would write a prequel to the series, highlighting the love story that originally brought a Seattle cop and a much younger Maui scuba instructor together. A story to explain why their love affair had a ten year hiatus.

Girl of his Dream is a half book, or novella, as they are called in the publishing industry. The book is a four-hour read, starting with a situation where James (as he's called in the early years) uses his ability to detect a drowning child in the Maui Hyatt pool. At the same time her pulls the little girl from death, Kristina Greene discovers a horrific scene at the house of her boyfriend.

The story is the evolution of their relationship, each person with a secret that must be kept from each other. James' motivation to remain tight-lipped is selfish, Tina's is to protect someone. Both see that they'll have to tell their secrets eventually to each other, but mistakenly believe they have time on their side.

Girl of his Dream is a love story. It's sexy, Be warned. Jamey and Tina are in their prime of life, attracted to each other with wild abandon.
If you like Romance, Suspense, Maui, Supernatural, or any combination of these in a book, you'll enjoy Girl of his Dream.

It ends in a cliffhanger. Be warned. You'll want to read the next book in the series, The Dream Jumper's Promise, which just so happens to be an award-winner and cheaply priced.






Happy Reading!


Kim Hornsby is the Author of Award-Winning The Dream Jumper's Promise available on Amazon Books. She is a Bestselling Supernatural Suspense Author who lives in the Seattle area where she writes during the rainy months.

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
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