How My Book Reached #1 On The Amazon Kindle Charts

It's been a crazy couple of days. I've written a crime thriller called 'Run, Run, Run'. And in the last couple of days it's risen from relative obscurity to #1 most downloaded thriller on Amazon UK. Before I tell you how it happened, here's the blurb for the book:

‘Run, Run, Run’ is a crime thriller, a novel that never lets up, taking an ordinary couple into a life they could never envisage.

After giving evidence against a gangster in a murder trial, Dan Thompson is whisked away into the Witness Protection Scheme. But even that can’t protect him and his wife, Sally. Somebody knows their new identity - somebody who shouldn’t.

Frank Tong is an artist who finds inspiration for his paintings from the violence of his criminal life. When his brother is put away for murder he wants revenge. And he has a mole in the Witness Protection Scheme.

Dan and the pregnant Sally have no choice. They have to flee. They go on the run from both sides of the law.

They must learn to lie, steal, shoot and fight to survive. They can’t use their credit cards, cash machines, mobile phones - anything that will give away their location. They must constantly look over their shoulder. It’s living life like a criminal - a difficult task for two law abiding people.

What will it take to return to a normal life? How far are they willing to go?‘Run, Run, Run’ is a crime thriller that will have your heart racing and your mind buzzing.

…Sometimes to get justice, you have to run away from it…

That's what the novel is about. I believe it's a good book, of course. I aimed to write a thriller that had rounded characters the reader would care about without letting up on the pace.

But, as an independent author, it's my responsibility not just to write a good book but to get it out to people. It's tough to pull myself away from the gripping story I'm currently working on. But it has to be done.

When I first released 'Run, Run, Run', I made sure it was available in every online bookstore, including: the iBookstore, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords and Amazon.

Then, a couple of months ago, Amazon began their Select scheme. Subscribers to Amazon can download books for free, whilst the author still gets a fee.

If you entered your book into the scheme, you had to withdraw it from other bookstores. I thought about this a lot before deciding to go ahead.

What swung it for me was the fact that you could also offer your book for free for up to five days, as an introduction for new readers. Plus, Amazon has the largest share of the market and, I think, is fairer to independent authors than either the iBookstore or Barnes & Noble.

'Run, Run, Run' went free on Sunday 29^th January 2012 for a couple of days. That's when the madness began. Downloads of the book gradually gained momentum, starting at 600,000 in the charts. By the end of the second day it had become the #1 thriller and #2 overall at Amazon UK, overtaking more established competition.

It was a tough decision to take it off the free list. A writer's main wish is to be read, so it's a thrill to see thousands of people choosing to read your book. I can't thank those people enough and I really hope they enjoy it. But, to keep writing a writer needs to get paid. Whether the book can mirror its success now I'm starting from scratch by going back to charging for it (only a paltry sum), we will have to see. But at least people now know about the book and can judge it on its own merits.

'Run, Run, Run', a crime thriller, is available from:

Amazon US and Amazon UK

The Changing Face Of Book Covers

There is a lot of discussion at the moment about the demise of the printed book. But with the shift to electronic reading, what is the current state, and future, of the one page that first attracts us to a book – the cover?

I remember, as a child, buying my first paperback that had a shiny cover with embossed, silver lettering. There was a man running from a car, the action silhouetted against a blue tinted background. I can't, for the life of me, remember the name of the book or what it was about. But I do remember the cover. I was in awe of it.

Fast forward to life today and we are fast embracing the digital revolution. It could be argued that book covers are more important than ever.

The biggest issue concerning book covers these days is size. Even printed book covers had to exist in at least two sizes – the hardback and paperback versions. But in the electronic world, the situation is even more pronounced.

E-book covers have to look good in at least two sizes – 800x600 pixels and 90x60. And that is just cruel. Pity the poor designer who has to do this. Such polar opposites make the job quite tricky. But it can be done.

That small, thumbnail size is probably the most important as things stand. It's the image people see when they're browsing. The one epithet you want to avoid when designing a cover that looks good at this size is 'busy'. A 'busy' cover just doesn't work at this size.

I've seen some wonderfully intricate designs with calligraphic typefaces on covers in bookshops. But then, when that design is transferred to electronic retailers like Amazon, it has no impact. What a publishing is hoping for, at this stage, is that the consumer will have seen the cover in a bookshop on the high street, and retained that memory. That's certainly an attitude that will die out.

In the future, book covers will have to work in electronic form before they're even considered for the print form.

In drawing parallels with the art world, I believe the pop artists of the 1960s would have made geat e-book cover designers. To me, that's also when graphic design also came of age. A lot of book covers used in that era had strong lines and shapes, and a bold use of colour.

But one issue that is the same for printed covers as it is for e-book covers is 'genre'. Largely speaking, people expect certain genres to have certain types of covers. This has always been one of the main challenges of designing book covers. You want the cover to be original, yet you want to assure the reader that the content is in line with the genre she adores. That challenge remains.

What about the future? That could be very interesting. I don't think any retailer has yet managed to build an interface that replicates the joy of browsing in a bookshop. I think the iBookstore comes close. The Amazon interface almost puts me off browsing. But I'm sure they'll change that, especially as e-readers haven't yet finished evolving.

In essence, a good book cover still needs to satisfy the same requirements. It needs to grab people's attention and it needs to reflect the book's content. But with a multitude of formats and delivery systems, it now needs to be very adaptable. Maybe we'll get to a point where there will be a slightly different book cover for each delivery system or interface. And browsing for books will again become a joy.

Mark Capell is an independent author and fouder of The Creative Criteria, providing digital publishing, design and marketing for independent authors.

A Future Without Books? - A Review Of BBC1's 'Books: The Last Chapter?'

The worst part of this TV programme on BBC1 was nothing in the show itself. It was the title and pre-show publicity. The title, 'Books: The Last Chapter?' embodies everything I hate in the e-books versus physical books debate.

'A book is an instrument for the transmission of ideas,' said Bob Stein, from The Institute For The Future Of Books. It's this single fact that is often overlooked by the Luddites who genuflect and predict the end of the world when envisaging a future without the printed page.

The rise of e-books does not mean the end of 'books'. E-books are books. It's not hard to fathom, it's there in the term.

Alan Yentob did a good job in presenting the current climate and putting it into its historical context. There is no global warming situation for bibliophiles, just a natural evolution.

I sniffed an interesting parallel between the present day situation and the moment when William Caxton invented the printing press. It could be argued that it was at this point in history that books as objects lost their true individuality. Before that, books were handwritten. Monks were probably decrying this advance in the same way Julian Barnes called for the 'protecting' of the physical book.

But this particular debate is about books as objects. It's not about content, which is what truly matter. As Theo Gray, of Touch Press, put it: 'There will always be people who fetishise printed books.' The show humorously illustrated this in the form of an interview with Rachael Morrison, a librarian at the Museum For Modern Art who has the responsibility of sniffing books and describing their aroma in a log.

The humour continued when Yentob interviewed three people who embodied the traditional publishing values – agent, Ed Victor; publisher, Gail Rebuck; and author, Ewan Morrison. The show sat them down in a quirky, surreal, Georgian living room, with a portrait of a rabbit with huge breasts hanging over them, as if to emphasise their antiquated trade. Their views weren't as unenlightened as the show wanted them to be. But there was an uneasy guffawing when they all agreed that they needed each other.

Books take a year to write, said Morrison. Publishers remain as curators, said Rebuck. Agents are needed to protect writers, said Victor. Now anybody involved in digital publishing could challenge all three statements. And if your name is Joe Konrath, John Locke, or Amanda Hocking, challenge them successfully on empirical grounds. In a year we could all be out of a job, said Morrison. In the upcoming age of the author-entrepreneur he might just be right.

One issue the book didn't address is the one that turned me on to the digital experience - e-ink. I don't like reading on a glaring screen. Over long periods of time my eyes tire. But with e-ink on devices such as the Kindle, Nook or Sony e-readers, the experience is comfortable - even more comfortable than reading paper.

The value of having not just 'a' book but all the books you want on you all the time was the major boon of the e-book revolution for Publishing Consultant, Mike Shatzkin. 'I have no physical sentimentality about the physical book at all,' he said. And neither did this TV show, which was a pleasant surprise.