Curious to know which of my followers is on BookBub. If you are, I would appreciate it if you would add me to your following list. It’s another platform that I use to notify readers of new books and also give book reviews.
You can find me by clicking on this link: Andrew G. Nelson BookBub Page
Thank you.
I just wanted to address an issue that has been brought to my attention, regarding my latest book: NYPD Cold Case Anthology.
When you visit the Amazon webpage, you will see that this book is being offered for $21.10. Please know that this is NOT my list price. This book was supposed to be sold for $10.99, however, upon publication, the price rocketed to nearly twenty-three dollars. I contacted Amazon, but so far there has been no viable explanation for the discrepancy between my list price and what they listed it for.
It surrounds counterintuitive, but I am asking you not to buy this book until the issue has been resolved. I have always tried to keep my books at the lowest price possible and I am working diligently to address this issue.
Thank you for your patience.
Back in 2013, when I completed my first novel: PERFECT PAWN, I remember sitting there smiling or a moment and then the realization hit me: Now What? It seems funny to me now, as I look back on those dark times, but for me that was the moment when the creative rubber truly hit the literary road.
As I sit here formatting the print version for my soon to be released COLD CASE anthology, I realize a lot of you might be in the same ballpark I was in 2013. Despair not, you've got this.
When your book is complete (it really isn't) you're left with two choices: Pursue a traditional publishing course or opt for the indie road. If you choose indie, you have a helluva road in front of you, because you will have to embrace the roles normally filled by the staff at publishing houses. So what does this mean? Well, here is what you can expect to do:
1. Write Book
2. Edit Book (Then edit it again, and edit it again after you get reader feedback)
3. Format Interior Book (At least 2 versions: Print & eBook)
4. Design Cover Graphic (Both full-size and thumbnail)
6. Submit to Publishing Platforms
7. Design Social Media Engagement
8. Advertising
Still want to be an author? Good.
These might seem like monumental hurdles to overcome, but I assure you they are not. Having just released my fifteenth book I can tell you that you can learn these skills. Are they easy? No. You might master one area and feel like you are slogging through quicksand for the others. But each book will become easier if you commit yourself to listening and learning. I think every indie author owes it to their craft to help others. I’m a firm believer in the old adage: A rising tide raises all boats.
Of the eight things I listed above (you might have more), the most important are 1-4 and 8. To me the first four are crucial, because if you do not have a solid book, nothing else matters. Obviously your writing is paramount, but without an attractive cover most books will get passed over. Too many authors take a pass on this, opting to use templates and are left wondering why their books get no traction. You only get one chance to pull a reader in and the cover does it. If your book uses a stock template cover, readers may be less inclined to take a risk.
Once you’ve overcome that hurdle, and you have piqued the curiosity of the potential reader, you have another one to consider. When a reader looks inside the book, they expect yours to look EXACTLY like every other book they read, meaning it should be formatted like existing books. Open a book from a well-published author and copy that interior. You might think that edgy font looks cool, but have you ever considered that some readers have reading issues. Clear fonts should be the standard. It’s a book and should not be as difficult to read as ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The other important thing is advertising, and I cannot stress this enough. It sounds counterintuitive, but if you want to make money, you have to spend money. I know that is hard for someone on a limited budget, but it is the truth. Don’t believe me? Here is a graph for my debut novel. I think you can figure out exactly when I started aggressively advertising. This is also the part where I humbly admit my wife was right when she advised me to advertise sooner.
Now, should you do this right away? I don’t know. Personally, I would save this one until you have 2 or even 3 books under your belt, because advertising will correlate to sales over your entire span of works. Readers are much more eager to try a new author if they have several books they can read after the first one hooks them.
I hope this helps you to understand where to go next. These are the areas that I have identified, but you might have others. The important thing is to keep writing and embrace your craft.
I hope you enjoyed this post.
Breaking News: “Social media platform suspends Greek philosopher Aristotle for perpetuating the dangerous belief that the world is round, risking the lives of countless sailors.”
If you read that article today, you’d think it was from The Onion, yet the sad reality is that we are living through events future historians will judge harshly. As of yesterday, Twitter has suspended the President of the United States. Some may bemoan this while others cheer, but I see it as the start of a terrible precedent.
The reason I am writing this is that I am an author and I feel the need to take a stand against the insanity that seems to rage around us in the form of cancel culture and censorship. In a way, I feel that I am fortunate that I am on the back end of life, because those who are just starting out will have a bleak future if this madness continues.
I grew up reading in one form or another; comic books, magazines, and books littered my room. Okay, truth is they were all neatly arranged in chronological or alphabet order, but that is a topic for a different day. The point is, I read a lot. In fact, many of the books I read in school are now being banned. Classic reads such as To Kill a Mocking Bird, Of Mice and Men, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, and Animal Farm. The latter I can appreciate, as it is a warning of the dystopian times we currently live in and we can’t risk people waking up to their own demise.
How long before The Great Gatsby, Catch-22, or 1984 make the list?
Oops, just checked and 1984 is banned. Life comes at you fast.
As an author, I am appalled at the growing calls for censorship, especially when it comes from those in my field. At what point do we wake up and see the folly of our actions, or will we? When the mob gets done with the low hanging fruit, those things we seem to find easily objectionable, will they then pursue loftier goals? Will orders come from on high that quantify what we as authors can write? Will authors who write about a different gender, race, or creed be ostracized for having the audacity to write outside their lane?
Don’t think this will happen? Think again. I belong to several substantive industry groups, and this subject has already reared its ugly head on several occasions. Heated debate has risen on what some authors should and shouldn’t do. It seems farcical, but how long before it gains traction and becomes mainstream thinking?
My principal character in the James Maguire series is a man of Irish descent and a member of the NYPD. I should be safe with him, but what about Alex Taylor? Will I be banned from writing any future stories because she is a female and I don’t meet the gender threshold? How about Angelo Antonucci, since I’m not Italian? I guess I’m really screwed with my latest book, Awakening, which is a vampire saga.
The point is, censorship, in any form, is wrong.
Years ago, I read Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. I did so as a historian who wanted to understand the inner workings of the man who brought so much pain and death into the world. You can also add Otto Skorzeny, Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler, and others. I’ve also read books on several American luminaries such as Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Complex men who may invoke equally complex feelings depending on what side of an issue you find yourself on, but isn’t that what a book should do? To make you think?
As an author, I feel it is my obligation to make you feel something when you read my books. I want to take you to a place that causes you to think. One of the greatest compliments I ever received was when a reader told me she had cried over a character. What’s that you say? You cry over characters all the time? That’s awesome, but did I forget to mention that this character was a terrorist?
Life is complicated and we do ourselves a terrible disservice when we try to sanitize it. Echo chambers are not healthy, nor do they stimulate thought and reason.
The actions being taken today, under the seemingly benign guise of tolerance and diversity, do not differ from what the aforementioned Hitler did. It’s ironic that those screaming ‘fascist’ the loudest are engaging in the same fascist actions they apparently abhor.
Mark Twain famously said, “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open your mouth and remove all doubt.” I would argue that it is better to open one’s mouth, and let others judge you for the content of your argument, than it is to keep your mouth shut just to appease the intellectually stunted.
Sadly, many in my field disagree with that sentiment, and that should worry you.
We often take the literary genre of Satire for granted. Historically, it has satisfied a need to debunk or ridicule those in politics, religion, and other figures of power. Some of you may have even read the book ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes,’ by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, but did you know he wrote another book called ‘The Swineherd’? Both of the aforementioned books were satirical. The former pointed to the courtly pride and intellectual vanity of the king who’d been fooled by two weavers that gave him invisible clothes. Everyone went along with the charade, because he was the king, except for a young boy who could see he had no clothes. In the latter, a poor prince is rebuffed by a princess and takes a role as a commoner who provides the princess beautiful gifts in exchange for kisses. When her father the king finds out she is kissing a commoner, he throws her out. The prince then washes his face, puts on his royal attire, and spurns her. In both instances, the high and mighty receive their comeuppance, but there is more to the story.
After writing those satirical works, Anderson purportedly received a gift of a ruby and diamond ring from the Danish king. After receiving the ring, he never wrote another satirical story. In fact, he went on to pen The Ugly Duckling, a transformative story that many consider to be analogous to Andersen himself. Some suggest the ring was a successful attempt to curb Andersen’s political satire and successfully bring him into the royal fold.
Is that what we are seeing today? I believe so.
Those in the creative arts, whether writers, actors, comedians, have always been at the vanguard of not only entertaining us, but making us uncomfortable at times. Lately, this group seems to grow more angry and inclined to demand that you conform to their world views. If you do not, you subject yourself to cancel culture. This is a very scary place to be. If we can’t write what we are motivated to, what is the point?
Consider what happened to literary titan, J. K. Rowling, last summer. Ms. Rowling tweeted something which was deemed to be anti ‘LGBT’ and the cancel culture mob immediately descended on her. Interestingly enough, two of the people leading the charge were Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, the two actors who achieved incredible success playing characters from Ms. Rowling’s books. Let me say at the outset that I am not a fan of Ms. Rowling, and I have found myself in disagreement with her positions in the past, however I respect her work as an author. I feel no need to cheer for her opponents and no desire to cancel her for her opinions. It’s called being an adult. If I find something to be distasteful to me, or something that goes against my beliefs, I simply do not support it, but I certainly don’t go out to the village square and demand that everyone else conform to my positions or else. Yet that is what we are currently seeing in our society.
I am merely an entertainer; my opinions and positions are no greater, nor any less, than yours.
Yes, my books contain positions and topics that often coincide with my own, but they also contain elements that go against some of my beliefs. I push myself as often as I hope I push you. I will never write what is safe. For me to do that, I would simply have three blank chapters in every book: The Beginning, Things Happened, The End; and you would be left to fill in what you preferred to read. Not exactly an edge-of-your-seat thriller.
Maybe it’s time that we all just go back to being examples of courtesy and respect, instead of being harbingers of our own demise.
I’m pleased to announce that my latest book, Awakening: The Crystal Coven Saga, is available for PRE-ORDER on Amazon and will be officially released on July 31st.
This is a story I have been working on for a while now and I am so happy to finally release it. Up until now, the majority of my fiction books have fit into the traditional police procedural genre and this one will as well, with one exception. Awakening crosses over from the mortal realm to the supernatural and introduces a new protagonist, NYPD Detective Karl Sigurdsson.
When the body of an elderly man is discovered in a local park the unsettling clues point to something much more nefarious than the street-wise detective is accustomed to handling. Soon, he begins to see an unsettling pattern begin to emerge, but is the killer homicidal maniac or something even more terrifying?
Sigurdsson soon realizes that the criminal justice system is the least of his concerns, as he is drawn deeper into the labyrinthian world of vampires. As a power struggle brewing in the immortal world threatens to boil over into the mortal realm, Sigurdsson is forced to confront the fact that he could soon turn from being the hunter into the hunted.
The origins of this novel reside in a song called ‘Make me Wanna Die,"‘ by The Pretty Reckless. I’d heard it one day while I was at the gym and I thought it was an interesting premise, especially if you put it within the supernatural realm. It turned into the premise for Awakening: How far would you go to save the woman you love?
Karl Sigurdsson is about to find out.
You can pre-order the e-book now and it will be delivered to your Kindle on July 31st. The print copy will also be available on that day as well.
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Andrew G. Nelson - Best Selling Author & Speaker
Chronological Book Progression
Perfect Pawn (Maguire Series)
Queen's Gambit (Maguire Series)
Small Town Secrets (Taylor Series)
Bishop's Gate (Maguire Series)
Cold Case: Katherine White Murder
Little Boy Lost (Taylor Series)
Knight Fall (Maguire Series)
Brooklyn Bounce (Taylor Series)
Cold Case: Rosary Bead Murders
Glass Castle (Maguire Series)
Cold Case: Crazy Eight Cowboys
The Killing Game (Taylor Series)
Shadow Strike (Maguire Series)
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