Tag Archives: Eldritch Black

Announcement, e-Book, Let’s Bake Cookie Squares and Biscotti, Permafree, Product, Self-publishing

Wild Day for My New e-Book!

January 5, 2021 BiscottiDon Leave a comment

A year ago I started work on a free-sample e-book. Life happened, Corona Virus quarantine stuff happened, priorities shifted and I wasn’t able to immediately finish the project. 15December2020 my permafree e-book “Let’s Bake Cookie Squares and Biscotti!” … PUBLISHED!!! Since then, thing have been so busy I haven’t even had time to list the e-book on my site.
(Bear in mind, I also published a book on November 22nd and have been busy promoting it, too — find out more on BagpiperDon.com.)

The Patriotic Piper, Vol. I — The other book I published

This morning I woke to a message from my friend, Eldritch Black — another author here on Whidbey Island. He has far more game than I do when it comes to the book-business world. Lacking all possible caffeine in my system, I understood his message to say that “Let’s Bake Cookie Squares and Biscotti!” was listed on FreeBooksy. I thought to myself, “What’s it doing on there — I didn’t list with them?!?” Eldritch went on to say that it was registering at 48 in Amazon’s Top 100 and that I really needed to go take a look.

Saving you details of my sleep-tussled hair and long drawn out drama involved with getting out of bed, I finally got to my laptop and started examining data. Over the course of today I watched the results from my author-interface on Amazon.com. FreeBooksy’s free promotion Made Things GO NUTS!

Before I give you the end-of-day numbers, understand a few things first …

“Free” technically has a dollar amount — it is $0.00.
When someone buys a free e-book it counts as a sale.
My previous best number of sales in a day for Let’s Bake Cookie Squares and Biscotti was 104 copies on its second day of publication. I’ve been proud of that number because most of those came from my work to promote it using my Twitter profile.

By the end of today,
my free-sample e-book achieved…

#35 Free in Kindle Store (Top 100)
#1 in 45-Minute Cookbook, Food & Wine Short Reads
#1 in Dessert Baking (Kindle Store)
#1 in Cookie Baking (Kindle Store)

And my little-ebook-that-could reached a new Record Sales In A Day rank …

2,822 Copies

It’s been a wonderfully wild day for Let’s Bake Cookie Squares and Biscotti!

Let’s Bake Cookie Squares and Biscotti is free and I intend for it to remain free. It is also available at Smashwords, B&N, iTunes, Kobo, and …. well … pretty much everywhere. Free. Look for it on your favourite e-book retailer’s site. Also, please inform your local library that all of my e-book titles should be on Overdrive and are available to libraries for FREE — ask that they add these to their collection. The recipes and writing in this book are directly out of Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies. If you like these recipes please consider a copy for your kitchen collection. And as always — your book review on Amazon and GoodReads helps to support the author, other readers, and is greatly appreciated.

e-Book, Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies, Permafree, Progress

From Thursday … and BEYOND!!!

December 9, 2019 BiscottiDon Leave a comment

April 2019 an idea popped into my head! One of those ideas that hits you like a two-ton heavy thing — it’s clear as day and stops you in your tracks unable to say pretty much anything other than “Oh … WOW!“ What was this idea??? To write an e-book using the four free recipes already available on my site for you to download.

My plan was to publish this free e-book on certain online places that get more web-traffic than my lil-ol’ WIBC site — all intended to gain more attention to my book, Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies. In the book-biz this is called “permafree” — an e-book you publish and ‘sell’ for free, making a sample of your writing available to grow your audience. In two weeks time I banged out this e-book — content, cover-art — the works!

The Book Of Kindly Deaths — Just an average day for Eldritch Black

I was All Set To Go! I had my project uploaded to my target site and went to hit publish …. but then I found out they wouldn’t let me sell my book for $FR.EE (/sad face). OKAY — FINE — I went to another site. They wouldn’t let me publish an e-book that was for the purpose of advertising for a book I’m selling (you know, for money).

This past Thursday, while talking-shop and sharing-grumblings with author Eldritch Black this project came up again. He impressed upon me the value completing it now instead of after my current publication project.

So, I’m BACK TO WORK
on my permafree e-book!

I have been back to work on this permafree-project since Thursday evening and made quite a bit of progress! Instead of publishing 1 e-book with 4 recipes I may publish 2 — one featuring cookie squares, the other focused on biscotti. Keeping in mind December holidays, my guess … this endeavour will be launched around the end of the month. Maybe sooner, maybe later.
(BTW, here is Eldritch’s permafree book — The Night of the Christmas Letter Getters)

ALSO TALKING WITH Eldritch Black …

While Eldritch has been writing spooky tales to scare children since 2014 — which is ghastly, and we’ve pleaded with him to stop — for all his quirks he is not entirely without merit. Among other things he is rather well-studied with regard to book marketing. During our most recent meeting he tactfully pointed out that the cover of my book is only So-So as market effectiveness goes. Although I had this notion already, his feedback was invaluable! The pictures used for the artwork were ones I had &/or were taken shortly before I was ready to publish (er, the 1st time). Eldritch and I are going to talk in January — after all the holiday hub-bub — about getting a new design for my book-cover. New artwork has the potential to improve the marketability for my book — and I’m all for that!

RELATIVE TO THIS NEW BOOK COVER…

A few months ago I learned of Gorham Printing — right here in Washington! They print books like mine with one difference — they don’t charge an arm & a leg for color pictures inside of a book. I’ve seen their work and it’s nothing short of STRIKING!!! Most of the time if you want colour pictures inside your book it is price-prohibitive. While Gorham isn’t inexpensive either, they make it financially-fea$ible.

Once I have my new book cover for Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies I intend to begin ordering a small supply — 5-10 at a time. Obviously these will sell for higher than my Amazon copies. These colour copies will only be available through me — face-to-face sales or mail-order (+S&H) …. So get your PayPal accounts ready — I also have Square-Reader, I can take credit cards.

Best, Don

Author, Review, Self-publishing, Tip

Eldritch Black and Weirdbey Island

November 24, 2019 BiscottiDon Leave a comment

This fellow …

Exactly ten days ago, as you will recall from my recent blog post, I met at a local coffee shop with one Mr. Eldritch Black. A rather curious gentlemen and fellow author here on Whidbey Island, Mr. Black writes creepy books for the purpose of scaring youngsters. We’ve asked him not to do this terrible thing, however the children seem to enjoy these tomes of his, so I guess it’s all for the better. Weirdbey Island

Since becoming an author myself just over a year ago with “Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies“, I’ve had the blessing (and sometimes curse) of connecting with numerous other authors. Quite a few have kindly shared their works, most often in the form of e-books — some with audiobooks. Over the past year I have received so many of each I can’t keep up with them. Mr. Black generously foisted some of his upon me — two from his Weirdbey Island series along with The Book of Kindly Deaths.

A few months ago I had the opportunity to listen to the first of the Weirdbey Island books — The Pirates of Penn Cove. Despite Mr. Black’s purpose of scaring children, I being an adult found I rather enjoyed the story. His story of Island newcomer, Dylan, was unsettling at every turn — and the locations were written much as they are in real life right here on Whidbey! For his generosity, and whatever possibly twisted reasoning behind it, I wanted to return Mr. Black’s courtesy with my online review.

Today I started Weirdbey Island book #2 — The Day of the Jackalope — and it’s already off to a bizarre and unnerving start. Dylan is with his friends leading their own investigations into the mysterious going-ons on Whidbey Island. These books have been a delight for the sheer sake that they remind me of the creepy books I read as a kid. It is a nostalgia-blast that takes me back to the first two books of the Bunnicula series.

As time permits I will listen to the audiobook copy of The Book of Kindly Deaths … not that I really want to, I just want to make sure the children out there are safe. Weirdbey Island

This has been an attempt to write in similar style to the story-telling you will find in these first few Weirdbey Island books. Frankly, they’re a lot of fun, and I hope you and the children in your life will enjoy them as much as I have. Both of the Weirdbey Island books above are delightfully narrated by J. Scott Bennett.
~ Best, Don

Eldritch Black ~ Links

Homepage – Amazon – Goodreads
Twitter – Facebook – Instagram

J. Scott Bennett ~ Links

Audible works – Goodreads – Twitter – Facebook

Announcement, Author, Baking, Cooking, Self-publishing

Great Tips From a Fellow Author

November 14, 2019 BiscottiDon Leave a comment

coffee Early this week I met with a fellow Whidbey Island author at a local coffee shop — a curious individual we will call Eldritch Black. We wrote, we caught up, laughed, and — unsurprisingly enough — did what two like-minded people do, we talked shop. Eldritch has about a dozen kids-book titles under his belt long with others under a sobriquet, his nom de plume … or in simple terms a pen name. He shared with me from his wealth of knowledge and gave me more than a few invaluable tips! Two of these have occupied my mind NON-STOP … really, I should be charging them rent.

I’m considering starting an e-mail newsletter including a recipe-of-the-month. TIPS

Eldritch gave me the suggestion of starting an email newsletter and using MailerLite to handle the list. Their features and prices look good. I’m still weighing my options and what I might do with this. What I know is that when I start I want to begin with a plan. Sure, this may get modified as I go but I won’t be winging-it. If you are interested now in joining my future mailing list, please drop me a line and say “Please add me to your mailing list!” TIPS

Recipe of the Month

Also suggested among Eldritch’s ideas was that I start doing a recipe-a-month — DUH — that’s big! I’ve had this idea but it was put into a different perspective when it was suggested in an e-mail list. It’s also where I want to have a plan-in-place — figuring out which recipes to present in advance. I’d also love to get recipes from my readers to feature along with giving kitchen tips. All of this could also lead to its own book! (Here are a few free recipes in the mean time.)

Lastly, Eldritch showed me Draft2Digital. I was told interesting things about what this company offers — after learning more, I may publish my e-book with Draft2Digital, too! TIPS
(PSST — I’ve also started looking into a company that can manufacture my book with colour photos!)