Increased book sales! Why? How?

  Recently, beginning around mid January, sales of ‘FORGIVEN’, the first case in the series of ‘The Mystery Maxims of Jake Spade’  have increased substantially for some unknown reason. How did it happen?

  I’m not complaining mind you…far from it. I just wish I knew if there exists some media exposure causing this increase in sales…where is the uptick coming from?  Is it something that Amazon is doing? Sometimes they post ‘new releases’ alongside the best sellers listing. Not the total best seller listing, but the ones that are genre specific, the sub-listings, like: Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Private Investigators. I’ve looked at these new releases for some time now but have yet spotted my book being offered there. WTH!

  If this extra exposure could be located, maybe I could influence it more with my comments (like on a blog). Or, maybe someone has said something about FORGIVEN on Goodreads? Hard to tell, I don’t surf Goodreads much. Researching where this uptick is coming from could take incredible amounts of time. Time I don’t have. Time away from writing, adding more content (and mystery twists), to the second case, ‘ABANDONED’, currently taking more time to complete than I would like.

  It’s just, you know, nice to see sales of your book increase even though you have no idea what caused it. Hopefully, those extra sales will turn into reviews. ‘Reviews,’ from everything I’ve read about the subject of reviews, help alleviate some anxiety from the book purchase. Consequently, when a book has a decent amount of reviews, sales seem to go up. Good or bad reviews, no difference. Potential readers love to peruse both the 5 star and the 1 star reviews for some unknown reason. I prefer 5 star…but that’s just me.

  If you are one of the recent buyers of my book, Thank You. You’ve made my day and month, and year. Just to remind you, FORGIVEN is the first in the series of many others to follow. It’s a shorter book (novella), so it doesn’t take much time to read. And, it’s NOT a gruesome, murderous depiction of a mystery…it’s a investigative-type piece, with twists and turns with unique resolutions to unique quandaries. Most people find it touching in its final pages. The final resolution might be something Holmes might do…except it comes from Jake, his great-great-great grandson, 120 years post Sherlock.

  It’s always a pleasure to correspond with readers about whatever it is they want to talk about; the book, where they can get it, maybe a writing or publishing question, whatever. Leave a comment here on the blog or PM me at FB, or email me at: garrymgraves at gmail dot com.

  Regards, Henry H.H. Hittlebloome, Author.

Pictures or Not?

  The residence of Jake and his associate/chronicler, Clarice Darby, is 666 15th Street, in Detroit, Michigan. Having the address expressed in the storyline sorta picks up on Sherlock’s 221B Baker Street address premise. At least, that is the thought process the reader should glean from the Jake Spade narrative.

  The picture pasted here is the actual address of the ‘nondescript building’ portrayed in ‘FORGIVEN,’ the first case in the series. It’s located in the bowels of inner-city Detroit, near the Ambassador Bridge and the river where Jake swims on occasion. The surrounding area is rugged, nasty and dangerous…just the way he likes it.

  Have been wondering whether or not to include any, maybe a half dozen or so, pictures into the narrative of the book. It’s not done much (putting pictures in a novel), but, it would break the reading up, as there are no chapter’s in this novella length book (novella = what they call something less [in word count] than a novel, but more than a short story). Anyway, the pictures would be grey-scale, like this building picture.

  What do you think? Include pictures or not?

Regards, Henry H.H. Hittlebloome, Author, The Mystery Maxims of Jake Spade.  

Jakes favorite tool…

  The MPA30SST 9MM ‘ghetto gun’ is Jake’s favorite power tool. He likes the attention it gets from the criminal element, ‘it gives me the professional gravitas so important in our industry,’ he boasts.

  An understatement, agreed?

  ‘The Mystery Maxims of Jake Spade,’ contains a scene where Jake brandishes his tool among four perp’s being detained for an interview. Naturally, he has their full attention. Jake avoids extraneous accessories (suppressors, laser pointers), attached to his tool, mainly because he likes positioning the short barrel into the interviewee eye socket…assuring their focus. It works great!

  The first case in the series, ‘Forgiven,’ details Jake’s, his partner Clarice Darby and the irregulars (four adventurous techies) work in solving a mystery of missing money – from the Detroit Police 2nd Precinct’s evidence holding room. Readers will enjoy twists, turns, astute deductive reasoning, all wrapped inside a modern-day technological skin (much like Chinese mystery eggroll). It’s delicious!

  The book will be of novella length, approximately 20-25 thousand words and will sell exclusively on Amazon in ebook format, for $0.99. Release is tentatively scheduled for May, 2013. Should you want a pre-release snippet, please leave your email address in the comment section of this blog post.

  Thanks for supporting ‘New Independent Authors.’

Regards, Henry H.H. Hittlebloome, Author