My Journal #2

4/18/2019 TWO Books on AMAZON

I have two books on Amazon
The first is a republish, the second is a new publish. 
I republished Vanishing with iUniverse. I wanted to get it back on the market and they put it together for $900.00 A new cover and a little editing, but I had to do most of it. It was their basic package.  Its been out a month and I got a call from a VERY high pressure salesperson to purchase a video package for (orig$4,000) but she could get it down to a mere $2,000.  When I was hesitant she got very pushy telling me I didn't believe in the book or I'd jump on this opportunity to get a video made and have it put out to Hollywood producers and directors or anyone who chose projects. Did I know the movie Still Alice? That was one of their publications. I asked her to give me an average of the number of people who bought these packages and how many were made into movies? She didn't know. {eye-roll from me}  Anyway I put the hammer down and said no. She got huffy and said I should spend $300 and buy the Press Release option. It would go out to 500 contacts to possibly order the book for their stores or promote on their websites, and request a free book for a review. 
I told her I'd just had my other book published and I got the same thing for free!  She said so the answer is no and you're going to just let the book sit there and do nothing. I said "YEP." She signed off and went away.
To be clear, she had no idea the book's history. She'd read the blurb and said she read a couple of pages and she would probably buy it for her own reading. (Liar) I have already published this book once and did quite well with it. It isn't a best seller yet, but for my first book I am pretty pleased with the response to the story. I've already sold 3 that I know about.

SILENT RIVER by C.M. Weaver was hot yesterday (4/17) and the paperback will be available today or tomorrow I was told.  italics Publishing is a tradition publisher of small press. I didn't pay anything, but I have a long term contract with them (7years) I'm new to all this. The fact that it's on Amazon and they are invested in promoting it is fine with me. I know I won't get a lot of money from it, but when you're a new published author you need to get a following and if that's what it takes, so be it. 
I have a nice size platform. It's a little heavy on experienced readers and some are of the conservative nature. I don't know if they'll read a crime novel, but it's okay, they'll love the next two books. For this reason I wrote this book under CM WEAVER. Now that I think about it I should have picked a different name so they aren't so close on the author listing.
I found this publisher by just going through the internet listing for publishers and looking at any who looked like they might be open to submissions for crime and true crime novels.  I already had 3 sales of people I knew who'd read the first book and one's in England. I was told by the publisher there had been 4 sales within the first hour or so. I hadn't even put it on my FB or TWITTER yet.