Big Week

We have a big week.  Writing will have to take a back seat.  The baby of the family (age) is getting married and every one is in a tither. She also is getting married 500 miles away so...road trip and off we go to the Ozarks for a Mountain top wedding.

Our novel on Amazon, A Game of Death: The Interstate Murders is selling well and our business niche Food Concession how to book on eBay continues to amaze us with steady sales. We have other works gathering dust getting a going over and hope they will be on-line in the near future.  So I hope you will be ready for some small town Midwestern humor when "Notes From the White House On The Prairie" is released in the near future.  Its new life for those works that the big boy publishers rejected.

Soon we will be blogging  about some of our memories and experiences in the broadcasting business and as well as my own  former garage band rock legend days. We will walk down memory lane with some folks we have rubbed shoulders with in the broadcasting and entertainment business and plan on making that regular feature.  If you never heard of Rob & The Rest you will.

I wrote about a local gal here in Austin, MN in my last blog, Amanda Hocking who has become a writing superstar/self publisher on Kindle.  She now has been name to  a top 100 list in the publishing business. 26 years old and she was making $18,000 a year. Now she is making thousands a week. Just Google her and see what a phenom she is  This self-publishing business is really coming of age and folks like Amanda are going places.  eBooks are here to stay.

So we will keep it short and hope you will come by soon. We have some great  stories that will be told on these pages.

Also hoping for a Trifecta this weekend with big wins by  Milwaukee Brewers, Wisconsin Badgers and The Green Bay Packers

ROB BOWE'S From My Church Pew: Ya Gotta Promote!

ROB BOWE'S From My Church Pew: Ya Gotta Promote!: Someone complained in a chat room I visited about it how tough it is getting to be to get a sale on the Internet. Well if your a writer, ...

Ya Gotta Promote!

Someone complained in a chat room I visited about it how tough it is getting to be to get a sale on the Internet. Well if your a writer, you know what it is like to get mailboxes full of reject letters, and other baloney...and then suddenly 15 years ago the self publishing business started to emerge. So I dabbled in it. I have also dabbled selling a variety of items including some of my works on eBay, Amazon, my own website for years and success comes only from perseverance and promoting what you have for sale.  Then along came Kindle, Nook, Ipads, Androids, Smartphones and the like. Of late, I published a novel on Kindle. A Game of Death: The Interstate Murders. 

 It takes time to get things going on eBay, your own site or Amazon whether it’s Kindle, merchandise, used books, new books or other store items   I have had Amazon store items and that took a year to get those widgets to see in decent numbers, but now my listings are selling.  I didn't have much luck but then I started to do on Amazon what I did on eBay. Promote .Why? I guess its part of the old simple concept  you gotta blow your own horn sometimes to get noticed.  So I promote wherever and whenever I can, especially on the Internet.

 I also wrote a niche business book on food concessions, Everything You wanted to know about the Food Concession business which I sell currently only on eBay and currently formatting for Kindle. It’s a $20 item but in 3 years it has sold 3,000+ copies. Do the math. The reason it sold is it filled niche and I promoted it.  I had spent 20 plus years in broadcast production,  promotion, advertising and now, some of that experience has paid off for me.  I promoted that book using what I learned.

Now on the other hand as I mentioned I have put one of my murder thriller novels on Kindle ( My first on Kindle) and I am getting some sales, slow but sure, and its growing but we know we need to promote it and get our name out there and so we are utilizing social media.

I bought John Locke's Kindle ditty How I sold 1 Million e-books in 5 months , a simple but fascinating story detailing how he became a top-selling author on Kindle. I am using some of his game plan and have incorporated it with my business plan.  Time consuming yes, but you must promote yourself and your wares. Other wise what you have to sell will not move off the shelf.  Obviously,   I would never have sold $60,000 in books on the web through a non-book store site if I did not promote.  I also will not sell $60,000 worth of books through Amazon if I don’t promote.

I also really have to promote lower priced Kindle books to get that kind of paycheck and I intend to do it. So here is where social media enters.   Currently we are making our selves known on the Amazon boards, utilizing Facebook and Twitter and what’s great is we are making new friends and reconnecting with others

Twitter fascinates me, because I can see the phenomenon that it is but I also see the value of following the timelines, for trends and attitudes among a lot of  potential customers in niche areas that I would not have thought  of trying to sell too..   Now the Trick will be to emulate and try to capture as well cash in on the successful methods others are using.  The other benefit is when you promote others, they will promote you in return.

 In some ways, that is hard to comprehend or even explain, but the bottom line is either the light bulb goes on in your head and you get it or you don’t  So keep trying to figure it out and research, but every tweet has the potential to earn you some money.  So be confident in what you write, in what you sell, be fair, and promote what you sell.

Then occasionally if not often rework your copy and promotion techniques and “damn the torpedo's, full speed ahead.”

A couple other notes on promotion, I  live in the same small city as another Kindle Star*, up and coming writer Amanda Hocking.  This gal is just a young writer, in her mid-twenties, who has built herself into a star, by promoting herself and now some of the big publishers are starting to take notice. 

I also learned a long time ago to look for the freebie advertising, but use it wisely.  I use press releases a lot back when I was a TV promotion director.  Follow a professional type format and send them out, some get picked up and some don’t, but any one that does is worth the stamp it was sent with and with email, now many of us use that medium to advance.  I sent a email press release out recently and a Chamber of Commerce in a City of 100,000 put it right on their new letters front page front page as I am well know at their local festival for the food I vend.  They sent that all over the country and I sold a few books because of that, both on eBay and Amazon.  They even put a color picture of my novel’s cover on the front page of that newsletter. That was neat and was well worth it.

And how about my favorite Green Bay Packers…they have promotion down to a T.  The Packers have a heritage of many super stars, NFL and Super Bowl trophies and now Aaron Rogers and teammates just won a big one over New Orleans plus last year’s Super Bowl trophy.   Talk about promotion! Not to mention a waiting list of 87,000 loyal fans  for season tickets.  Wonder what the Minnesota Vikings have on their season ticket waiting list? 

Well, I wrote a ditty that is pretty much what the last paragraph is on twitter and guess what?  The Vikings ticket office is now among my followers on twitter.  I guess they want to sell me some tickets…for the Green Bay game.

So good luck and let me promote one last thing 

 You might give me a try:

  Cheap price Good read

A Game Of Death: The Interstate Murders

 

G'day
Robbo

My big Week! Three Dog Night My Family, Florida, My Team Wins!

Well, I had a big week. Two Three Dog Night concerts, one at the legendary Surf Ballroom (The last venue Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and Big Bopper played at before their plane went down) and the other at The Crystal Grande Concert Hall in Wisconsin Dells, great shows and chance to see for few friends.  By the way Three Dog Night has anew song Called "Prayer For the Chidlren" A heart felt poignant how stopper!  Check it out at Prayer For The Children

 Then it was on to Milwaukee to see my son and his family, followed by a visit to brother and his family, then a stop on the way home to see my sister.  It was a 700 mile round trip and power visiting at its best.  Then I was off for some R & R and the beach in Jacksonville, Fl.  Even going to try and write...something?

The trip got off to a less than sterling start when I discovered, after we checked into the hotel we park and fly out of, that I had left my prescriptions sitting on the bathroom sink back home.  So at 10 PM we were on the road back home to fetch them, instead of relaxing in our hotel room. So after a 200 miles roundtrip, followed by 2 hours sleep and up early to catch the early bird flight to JAX.

Welcome to Jacksonville.  Nice airport and getting our rental car was a breeze so we headed to the beach   We had a great meal at the Sun Dog  Grill & Bar at Jacksonville Beach,  Then it was off to the city fishing pier to watch the surfers ride the waves that Hurricane Katia was stirring up 400 miles east and creating great surfing conditions . Definitely cool to watch the boarders ride that wild surf...

Before we left on this road trip my son and my brother ganged up on me during my visit mentioned previously and gave me royal hell over my need to get in shape!  Seems my formerly large   brother, (who has lost 60 lbs and is now a lanky fairly fit fellow) and my Tri-athlete son (who did a 70 mile bike ride that day) failed to recognize the fact that I actually had lost a whole 7 lbs over summer and had committed to myself to get off the duff and get the rear in gear.

So I started out my day (today) in Jax today with a long walk…I also discovered what happens in a state with no income tax and counts hanging chads.  I was so few other unique things I have not seen in the upper Midwest where I live...

1. No sidewalks or curb and gutter in most residential areas.  Also no one in this part of Jacksonville mows there lawns in the residential areas or does yard work.   A for rent sign said $2,000 for what appeared to be an average 1 story 3 bedroom house.  The lack of yard work (in what appears to be a pretty fair residential neighborhood) was a far cry from the Melbourne, Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa/St. Pete, Sarasota areas I have visited and even other parts of JAX.
2. In the business area where my hotel is, the side walk is only on one side of the street.  The side across the street from my hotel.  You have to walk a block in weeds along the road to get to the intersection to cross to that sidewalk. 
3. The street that runs along the side of the hotel would not make a good alley back home, narrow, no curb, no sidewalk and it is in fact is a busy a two way public city street.

.

School buses are all over and they are all doing 45 to 50 MPH ion areas with 25 MPH speed limits.  Elementary kids are on their way to school around 7:45 Am, but I see the high school students waiting for buses and walking to school at 9:15 Am., so I am guessing they don’t start until?  A bit different than what we would normally see in the northlands.

4. Jax public works recently put in street bridge over a stream in this neighborhood and there was in fact a new sidewalk for a block before and a block after the bridge on one side of the street.  At the bridge, there was no sidewalk on the side that connected to the sidewalk on the other side of the bridge...   Now, there was a sidewalk across the bridge that connected to nothing.  Go figure! Who approved that project?  Definitely a fubar/snafu.

5. Then there was a Native American Operated Reservation tobacco shop, on a major street, with a big sign that said “All brands $28.50”.  Wow! Almost made me want to start smoking again! Right now in Minnesota the price of a carton is about $58.00. Oh, the place had a drive-thru

We spent the evening glued to the motel TV and slept like a log after our Green Bay Packers outlasted the New Orleans Saints.  What a shoot out. 

After the lights were turned off, I lay in bed and it crossed my mind this southern big city was not too bad, but as I lay there I reflected why I live out in the country surrounded by soybean and corn fields.  The first I thought that popped into my mind was, I can walk to my mail box in my underwear and no one would care…or see me.  Can't wait to get back home and make a mad dash to the mailbox!

OH yeah, tweet me on twttier @robsfamous   Follow me and I'll follow you

 My New Book Game of Death: The Interstate Murders