Here’s an update on Curtis Corey’s books. He’s an author friend of mine – I help him with his publishing.
We’ve just finished reloading all 8 of his fairy short story ebooks. We’ve also reloaded both of his compilations in both ebook and paperback format. The first compilation contains tales 1-4 and the second contains tales 5-8.
You can see these all on Amazon on Curtis’s Author Central page. Please “follow” him here – it gives Amazon incentive to give higher visibility to his books, if Amazon thinks lots and lots of people are interested in what he is publishing.
It’s important to regularly update and reload your books. Here’s a few of the things we did when we did this edit and reload.
First, we made sure the end of every book *right after the story ends* shows the next cover in the sequence and has a clickable link to that next book. We couldn’t do that until the next book was written and live. So this is usually something you “go back and do” as part of your update cycle. That visible cover and clickable link are both key to sucking readers along to keep reading.
Next, we made sure that end area of each standalone story also linked to the compilation book. That way we encourage people to read the compilation books.
We also updated the “all books by this author” area to include his Claus books, his fairy compilation books, and his Bigfoot Vella series. You want your “books by me” area to contain as many of your books as possible. You never know which one will catch someone’s interest. So it’s often worth it when you come out with a new book to go back and edit your other books so they help promote your new book. This of course depends on how many books you have. There’s no way I’m going back through all 450 of my books every time I add a new book, just to mention I have a new book. However, if I have a 15-book medieval series and I add a new book to that, I do consider updating all of my medieval books to make sure they now include that new book in the pages that talk about the series.
Curtis’s next step is to create accounts on Draft2Digital and Smashwords, so we can put fairy book 1 free on those two platforms. Once book 1 is free on those platforms, we can ask Amazon to price match it to free on Amazon. That should then drive tons of readers in to read book 1, hopefully enjoy it, and then read books 2-8 and be hooked. The free initial book is often the key to driving strong interest in a series and getting in lots of reviews.
Ask with any questions! And congratulations, Curtis!
It’s worth noting that at the same time as we worked on this, Curtis is also writing more episodes in his Bigfoot Vella series. He’s planning a spin-off series featuring Bigfoot’s daughter. He’s working on a “Little Gardener” book about his (at the time) four-year-old son. He’s also finished illustrating a new children’s book featuring two gnomes roaming the US on motorcycles, based on his parents’ adventures. So he is very busy and quite prolific!