Wanted: Two Indie Authors Who Want to Become Bestsellers.

If you're an independent author, and published on Amazon, I want to Talk to you.

I am going to experiment with two authors who've published no more than three titles, received rave reviews, but are still having trouble selling. If you fit that description, I want to teach you the principles in my forthcoming book, The Indie Author's Guide to the Universe, and help turn your ship around.

The book has 229 pages of motivation, encouragement, marketing, pricing, platform building strategies, and advice from over 20 bestselling independent authors like Blake Crouch, Scott Nicholson, Robert Bidinotto, Bob Mayer, Joanna Penn, and more. The principles I use in this book have helped me and a few other authors rise to Amazon's top 100 and I think they can help you, too.

I'm accepting two motivated authors who have published a book on Amazon in the last three to six months, and have ten to twenty reviews with no less than a 4-star rating. I will choose the authors with the highest ratings.

Here's what I am offering:

1. A free book cover makeover if needed. 
2. A free copy of my book, The Indie Author's Guide to the Universe.
3. A free over the phone training session after the participant reads the book.
4. Coaching through my marketing and pricing strategy.
5. We will enroll your book into KDP Select (if not already a member) and schedule a two to three day promotion that will utilize all of my marketing strategies.
6. I will give you a free "Twitterlicious" promotion through The Kindle Book Review, and participating book sites like digitalbooktoday.com, worldliterarycafe.com and pixel of ink.
7. I will take you through the same steps I suggest to get your book as close as possible to Amazon's Top 100.

Here's what you must do in return:

1. Agree to the above terms.
2. Follow ALL of my instructions to the "T".
3. Blog about your experience, journaling every step you take on your path to becoming a bestseller.
4. Link to my book when writing your blog posts.
5. Invest in one paid promotion ($139 to Kindle Nation Daily).
6. Write about the success of this experiment on your blog.

If this sounds like something you'd like to try, simply comment below. Leave your name, book title and link to your Amazon page. I am that confident that if your book is excellent, we can overcome the other obstacles and make you a bestseller. May the best author win!!! 

Please share and tweet about this. And be sure to follow The Writing Bomb blog if you haven't already.

Jeff Bennington is the author of Reunion, Creepy & Twisted Vengeance

An Excerpt from a Chapter of My Life

I've never been one to share the details of my life. I'm quiet. I'm shy. I tend to withdraw when life gets tense. If you met me for the first time, you'd never guess that. You'd never profile me as a serial thinker. In fact, I'm pretty good at acting dumb, while packing mental heat at the same time.

It's not the best way to live, bottled up feelings and all. I get that.

Today, I'm breaking the mold. I'm breaking the ice. I'm going to share with you what it's like to be me. I'm going to write an excerpt from my life.

To begin with, my wife and I have four children, ages 16, 14, 12, and 10 (3 boys and 1 girl). We have been married for almost twenty years and are still dating. I take her out twice a week. As you can imagine, my wife needs to have adult time. We both do. We home educate all four of our kids, including two other boys who we've sort of adopted. Our life, as you can imagine is full of odd smells, loud noises, wrestlemania and food… lots of food and dirty dishes.

My wife is an amazing person. She works extremely hard, is a wonderful teacher, mother and friend. She takes on the brunt of our craziness.

I, on the other hand, am a writer. My mind is occupied with a million dreams. I think of new ways to create characters and twisty tales and how to package those ideas into something coherent. I have two blogs to manage. I wake up in the night and jot down my nightmares, or write a blog post to relieve some of the mental pressure. Sometimes, if I wake up to get a drink, I'll pick up my phone and check my sales when I should be sleeping.

Pathetic.

Don't get me wrong, I make every effort to spend time with each of my kids every day, asking them questions and listening to them, putting my arm around them, and observing their growth and silly, sweet things that they say. But sometimes I let this writing thing, this platform building stuff get out of hand. Sometimes I think it's too much. Sometimes I want to unplug it all and never look back. On occasion, the best thing to do in this hectic writer life of mine is to just grab an xBox controller and play call of duty for a couple of hours with my 12-year old son.

If you're a writer working a day job, and you want to be involved with your family, I'm sure you understand the pull. It's very powerful. The force will wear you down if you let it. And to be honest, I'm teetering on the brink of to-the-bone wear down. I've been feeding The Kindle Book Review Miracle Grow, I just released Twisted Vengeance a month and a half ago, and I'm about to embark on the release of The Indie Author's Guide to the Universe. That's two books in two months.

That's too much.

I'm not complaining. I know what I'm doing. I manage my time and make every moment count, but doing so takes so much focus that it's physically and emotionally draining. Strange thing is, I think I thrive on the madness.

That's me. That's my life.

Now it's your turn.

Are you familiar with the insanity? If you're new to indie publishing, let me warn you; as rewarding as it can be, writing and everything that goes with it can consume you. Indie publishing has the potential to occupy your mind like moss on a fallen timber, slowly enveloping your mind until you and the soil below are one.

It's the nature of the beast. It's a mental thing. It's a monster thing.

Fortunately, writing blog posts like this remind me that I am the ruler of this animal, and why I've had this longstanding love affair with the trade. The beast is mine to control even when I've lost my grip of the leash. His teeth may sink into my flesh and begin tearing, but I can always break its neck with my words and a few quick strokes of my pen.

So there you go; I've bared my soul and spilled my guts. I'm weak. I'm faulted. I'm a writer.

~Jeff Bennington
Bestselling author of Reunion, Twisted Vengeance & Creepy
Look for my forthcoming non-fiction, The Indie Author's Guide to the Universe.

What does it take to be a REAL Writer?

Are you a writer? A real writer?
Most scribes, both literary and poetic ask that very question of themselves and often come to the same conclusion. They say to themselves...

• I'm a real writer if... I'm published by a real publisher. 
• I'm a real writer if... I have an established platform. 
• I'm a real writer if... I've written a bestseller.
• I'm a real writer if... I'm a celebrity.
• I'm a real writer if... I dress nice - professional attire. 
• I'm a real writer if... JA Konrath mentions me in his blog. 

Do you believe that garbage? Are you trapped in a world of literary falsehoods and "real writer" misnomers that have defeated and squeezed the creative juices out of you? If you are, you're not alone. Writers everywhere have this false belief that something magical has to happen before they consider themself a real writer, one that ranks up there on cloud ninety-nine with Koontz and King or Rowling.

King and Koontz are exceptional at what they do, but that doesn't mean you're not a real writer!

I've written 4 novels, 1 short story, and another awesome work in progress. Yet on more than one occasion, I've asked myself if I have what it takes. Am I the real deal? And yes, at different stages of my writing journey, I thought all of the above statements were true. I have now come to believe something very different.

Here's what I think...
I think the expectations we've put on ourselves have come from a bunch of crusty old arrogant literary professionals who are more concerned about the almighty dollar and have forgotten what writing is all about. Therefore, like all things, the definition of a real writer is changing, and should change.

Here's my List of 10 Qualities That Define a Real Writer

1. A real writer is someone who writes because he has a love for words. 
2. A real writer has an innate appreciation for what it takes to create a story and put it down on paper.
3. A real writer loves books. 
4. A real writer loves creating with his right brain.
5. A real writer enjoys constructing a new story that no one has ever read and then puts his mind to it and sees the project through. 
6. A real writer sits quietly in his bed or chair or couch late at night or early in the morning or during his lunch hour penciling in the tedious details that breathe life into his or her story or poem. 
7. A real writer writes because he loves it.  
8. A real writer writes just to read his own words. 
9. A real writer jots down silly phrases or jokes or poems in a notepad. 
10. A real writer smiles when she hands her teacher or professor her paper, while the others walk away sad and gloomy, overcome by the intricacies of indenting and completing a full sentence

Without over spiritualizing, I further believe that a real writer writes because he was created to write and hears his calling. Sometimes a real writer hears the call when he or she is very young. Sometimes, a real writer doesn't hear the calling until he's older - like me. Sometimes, a real writer never paints with her #2 graphite brush, afraid of rejection. Sometimes a real writer never writes, because the message he or she hears is so unbearably oppressive, he believes that he does not have what it takes to be a real writer.

You see... real writers are the ones who love writing because they can't help it. If you don't love it - you will never be a real writer. You may have a lot to learn. You might improve with each effort, and never feel like your last work was your best. You might get bad reviews at first. But don't we all?

Writing is a journey, and in it, writers find themselves. They discover who they are and they tell the world what they know. Writers should not be judged by book sales, or who their agent or publisher is. They should be judged by their passion for the pen. And that passion, over time, will generate sweet sounding prose. Yet one does not have to be a master craftsmen to be a writer. He need only be an artful practitioner, who at the end of the day, looks at what he has created and smiles.

Do you know anyone struggling with their writorical self-image? Are you? Please comment vigorously, share your story, and share this post with all your reading and writing friends. They might appreciate the truth and learn to differentiate between real writers and those who are cherry picked by the Big 6. BOOM!