My Bookstore

November 18, 2013November 18, 2013 ~ jackewilson ~ 4 Comments

Okay, Borders has gone under. Barnes & Noble is struggling. Independent bookstores have been embattled for years.

I’m a fan of Amazon (and used to work there! they’re good folks! they paid my wages!). But I’m also a nostalgic person. If I can be misty-eyed about the end of Blockbuster, I’m certainly allowed to think fondly about all the time I’ve spent in bookstores. Out-of-the-way bookstores. Corporate behemoth bookstores. Waldenbooks at the mall. Airport “bookstores.” Antiquarian book shoppes. Garage sales. Library basements. Mystery-themed bookstores. Waterfront gift shops with a shelf of books about ships. Anything at all!

So maybe there’s no presently viable business model for a brick-and-mortar store. But there’s a hunger! And where there’s a hunger, there’s a fool ready to supply it.

Here’s what I would like:

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A Self-Interview with the Author, Jacke Wilson

November 11, 2013November 11, 2013 ~ jackewilson ~ Leave a comment

Today’s self-interview is with the author and sole proprietor of this blog, Jacke Wilson. Jacke’s novella The Race is available now at Amazon.com.

Q: Thank you for sitting down with me today.

A: It was no trouble at all.

Q: How long have you been writing fiction?

A: As a serious endeavor, approximately 18 years.

Q: Wow that’s a long time. How come no success?

A: Great question. I would give at least three reasons –

Q: I actually don’t think our readers will be interested in any of them.

A: Oh. Um… Do you still want me to answer?

Q: Listen, I’ll ask the questions, Jacke.

A: Right, got it.

Q: Your first book The Race was about politics in America. It uses the phrase “wayward pecker” to describe the body part of a Wisconsin governor who was caught up in a sex scandal and is now running for Congress. Did you ever think about calling the book Wayward Pecker?

A: Yes.

Q: How about Wayward Peckerhead?

A: No, never.

Q: Governor Peckerhead!

A: Is that a question?

Q: You missed a chance with peckerhead. It could have been a tribute to the Richard Pryor routine where he –

A: I’ll check it out.

Q: How about Members of Congress? Get it? Get it?

A: You’re making me glad I stuck to my original title.

Q: Because you don’t like selling books?

A: Are we almost done?

Q: I said I’ll ask the questions!

A: Sorry.

Q: We’re done.

A: Thanks.

Q: You’re welcome.

Readers, check out Jacke’s book The Race: The Ballad of Governor Peckerhead at Amazon.com. Free samples available. Jacke also has free review copies available for distribution and is seeking beta readers for his work in progress The Promotion: Peckerhead Goes to Biglaw. Contact him at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or by visiting this page.

The Race: A Novella

Available Now at Amazon.com

Self-Publishing Literary Fiction – A Ray of Hope

October 24, 2013October 24, 2013 ~ jackewilson ~ 2 Comments

Oh, it’s hard times for literary fiction in general, I know. (People don’t read it any more!)

And for indie publishers, there is the stigma. (Who do you think you are? You need to have someone else decide whether your book should be available to readers…)

But there’s hope! As David Gaughran, guru of marketing indie books on Amazon, points out, one of the problems in the past was that readers of literary and historical fiction couldn’t zero in on what they were looking for:

The problem with historical and literary fiction was that, until recently, there were no sub-categories for those genres. This meant that authors had to be selling 50 or 60 copies a day to even hit the back of the respective Top 100 – which most authors might be able to achieve during a promotion or new release, but would struggle to maintain outside of that on a single title.

The good news is that Amazon’s new subcategories make it easier for readers to find literary and historical fiction that interest them:

Well, Amazon has delivered. Historical fiction now has twenty-five subcategories and literary fiction has sixteen (see the left-hand sidebar)…. This is fantastic news for authors and readers. If you write literary fiction or historical fiction, life just got a hell of a lot easier. And it’s a big boon to readers too, who have sub-categories that reflect their interests, and who will, as a result, see a lot more churn on those lists, introducing them to new books instead of the same old stuff.

This is great. Now I can categorize The Race as contemporary, humorous, and suspense. Not as clear a genre as Sci-Fi, Romance, or Fantasy, but it’s a lot more meaningful than just “literary fiction.”

Jacke’s new credo: managing expectations, one reader at a time.