A.K. Silversmith's Blog

Right, I should have written this quick post months ago, but following a few queries as to how I managed to get Bite No.1: The Old Man at the End of the World permanently free on Amazon, I thought it was time to jot the process down.

After reading countless forums and continually trying the Smashwords price match method (publishing ‘permanently free’ on Smashwords and then constantly clicking, and asking others to click, Tell us about a lower price on Amazon) I became a bit… frustrated. I’m not a very patient person.


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Also, it was taking weeks for Smashwords to accept Bite No.1 into their Premium Catalogue, which meant that it wasn’t published with B&N and Apple – two platforms I wanted it to be available on. Weeks was too much for me. Did I tell you I’m not a very patient person?


So, here is what I did…

1. I pulled Bite No.1 from Smashwords

2. I set up an account with Draft2Digital.com and listed Bite No.1 with B&N, Apple and Kobo

3. Twenty-four hours later Bite No.1 was listed on B&N for free.

4. I emailed KDP helpdesk with a link to the B&N free listing (on the KDP platform click Help>Contact Us. Click on Book Details>Pricing Your Book).[image error]

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5. I filled in the form as below

Hi,


 Could you please price match my book Bite No.1: The Old Man at the End of the World (ASIN: B06WVDWDH6) to the price now available at Apple/B&N/Kobo of Free?


 
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bite-no1-ak-silversmith/1125861635?ean=2940154290033


 
Kind regards,
AK Silversmith

6. A chap emailed back noting that Amazon retain all the rights to pricing etc and they would look into it over the next three days or so. It all looked very automated and I wasn’t filled with confidence.

7. However, I emailed straight back saying thank you – it turns out you really are dealing with real people at this stage. I think this may have been the clincher. He went ahead and price matched the book on all Amazon sites immediately.

And, voila! Bite No.1: The Old Man at the End of the World has been permafree for two months. During that time I have re-uploaded the manuscript, changed the categories and fiddled with the keywords. The permafree status has held.

A couple of things I should finish with.

Firstly, you cannot use this method if you are part of the KDP Select programme as you must be exclusive to Amazon with that particular book. However, let’s say you have published a series with KDP select you can pull the first book of the series out of the programme (once your 90-day enrollment has lapsed) and list it free on Draft2Digital then follow the method above.
Secondly, I offer no guarantee this will work! But I will say that it has worked for me and several other authors who have been trying to get their books permafree for months.
Thirdly, you’d be best off having at least a couple of books out if you are going permafree on one – I can speak from experience! Obviously it’s… erm… obvious. But I like giving Bite No.1 away and am getting a tonne of emails asking for the second one. So that’s a bonus nevertheless.
Finally, good luck and I wish you all the next bestseller!

Rosie Amber

Today’s team review is from Judith W, she blogs at https://readandreview2016.wordpress.com/

Judith has been reading The Old Man At the End Of The World: Bite 1 by A K Silversmith

THE OLD MAN AT THE END OF THE WORLD by AK SILVERSMITH @AkSilversmith#BookReview #Zombie

Title: The Old Man at the End of the World: Bite No. 1
Author: AK Silversmith
Published: 2017

Started: Wednesday 22nd February 2017
Finished: Friday 24th February 2017

The Old Man At The End Of The World is a short story, and the first instalment of a zombie comedy series by AK Silversmith. The plot is simple: 87-year-old Gerald Stockwell-Poulter was simply tending to his allotment when his neighbours, who have been turned into zombies, attack. The ‘zompocalypse’ – that’s zombie + apocalypse – has begun.

I thought this little story was brilliant – there wasn’t too much description to weigh down the…

View original post 393 more words

ReadandReview2016

Title: The Old Man at the End of the World: Bite No. 1
Author: AK Silversmith
Published: 2017



Started: Wednesday 22nd February 2017
Finished: Friday 24th February 2017

The Old Man At The End Of The World is a short story, and the first instalment of a zombie comedy series by AK Silversmith. The plot is simple: 87-year-old Gerald Stockwell-Poulter was simply tending to his allotment when his neighbours, who have been turned into zombies, attack. The ‘zompocalypse’ – that’s zombie + apocalypse – has begun.

I thought this little story was brilliant – there wasn’t too much description to weigh down the plot and the dialogue exchanges between the characters was fast-paced. This allowed for quirky comments and sarcastic quips, which added to the humour of the overall novella.

Comedy was conveyed well, and the mix of jokes, zombies, and a stereotypical British setting reminded me very…

View original post 167 more words

Books and Such

Gerald Stockwell-Poulter couldn’t help but feel it was extraordinary just how quickly his life had changed. One moment he was earthing up leeks in the West Sussex sunshine and the next he was rooted to the spot as Rodney Timmins from the end allotment ambled towards him, arms outstretched, blood pouring from a hole in his neck and a look in his eye which suggested that he was less after help and more after a helping of Gerald.

Now, as Gerald’s life takes a quick turn for the worse, he must do things he has never done before. After 87 largely well-behaved years as a model citizen, less than four hours into the ‘zompocalypse’ and he has already killed a neighbour, rescued a moody millenial drug dealer and forged an unlikely allegiance with a giant ginger Scotsman. And it isn’t even tea time.

Join Gerald as he and his newfound…

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One of the best things about searching for people to read and give feedback on Bite No.1: The Old Man at the End of the World has been meeting the wonderful, eclectic mix of personalities who are ‘into’ zombies.

Last month, I was lucky enough to stumble across a completely intriguing article about a Professor of English and Modern Languages at Mansfield University, Pennsylvania who prescribes an indie author’s work as required reading in his class.

Not so strange, you might be thinking.

Sure. But what piqued my attention was this – Professor Dan Mason’s two stipulated texts are Night of the Living Trekkies and Night of the ZomBEES.

Yes, the day has finally come – zompoc books have made the University reading list!

Both novels are written by South Californian author Kevin David Anderson and they are truly through-and-through zombie stories. With a comedic twist. In Night of the Living Trekkies, fans at a Star Trek convention become infected with a virus that transforms them into flesh-devouring undead. Night of the ZomBEES tells the tale of a town where residents are celebrating the cause of their prosperity (the honey bee) by dressing in black-and-yellow costumes before a zombie virus is released (by none other than a swarm of mutant bees).

A far cry from Tess of the D’Urbervilles. So, you ask, what’s the relevance?

Mason emphasises that, at the heart of all good zombie apocalypse books, exists a story about survival – surviving an initial viral outbreak, surviving an altered reality, surviving the drastic change from something you know through to something totally unknown. Ultimately, Mason uses these light-hearted texts as a metaphor for students as they transition from high school to college and beyond.

So, ‘hear hear’ to the zombie metaphor and to passionate champions of the genre, like Professor Dan Mason who can see past the undead to the message beyond.

And so, without further ado: Professor Dan Mason’s review of Bite No.1: The Old Man at the End of the World…

 

Dan Mason’s review of BITE NO.1: THE OLD MAN AT THE END OF THE WORLD by @AKSilversmith #ZombieFiction #FreeBooks #BritishHumor

The problem with books about the undead is that there aren’t enough stories to go around. Fans loved Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, so they pay homage by writing their own stories that recapitulate his story about a group of people under siege by the living dead. They miss Romero’s real story which is about the people in the house in a scary, life-threatening situation. Being fans, they believe zeal is enough to make a story good.

It’s not.

There are good stories about the undead, but the undead are incidental to the story. Jonathan Maberry’s Joe Ledger stories are about a Bond / Rambo cross. In Patient Zero, Maberry tells Ledger’s story by throwing medically created zombies at him. Patient Zero is a great tale because Maberry had a story to tell and told it well.

David Moody went a different route. He had a different story to tell in Autumn. Instead of the undead spreading, Moody kills off nearly the entire human race on the first page of his book. The survivors are stunned and confused and barely beginning to deal with the event when the seven billion dead people begin to reanimate. Moody’s protagonists have to deal with each other while learning about slowly evolving zombies. Another good story told well.

Joe McKinney tells the story of a police officer on duty during the first night of a zombie apocalypse. Officer Eddie Hudson has to find his way across a devastated San Antonio to rescue his family. McKinney had an interesting story to tell and also told it well.

As I noted, there are lots of good stories, but the undead are incidental to the stories. Alfred Hitchcock called such phenomena MacGuffins. They are the reason for the story, but they’re not the story.

Now another author has entered the scene. AK Silversmith has her own story to tell. She asked herself, “What would happen if an 87-year-old proper Englishman, a giant potato-smuggling Scotsman and a young English drug dealing vegan were to team up accidentally to survive a spreading undead nightmare?”

The Old Man at the End of the World is a funny story told well. Silversmith has a clear voice and a good grasp of the absurd. Each of her characters has his own strengths and weaknesses. Her writing allows the reader to experience the thrill of being trapped by the undead while balancing on the cusp of laughter. It remains to be seen how Gerald, Ham and Finnbar Phipps, who knows a lot about drugs and the undead but not much else, will mesh in the long run, but Bite No.1 has enough story to make me willing to try the next in the series.

This review will be published in the Sun-Gazette in April 2017.

BITE NO.1: THE OLD MAN AT THE END OF THE WORLD IS NOW FREE ON AMAZON!

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Rosie Amber’s recent post [Ten reasons your book is not getting reviewed (by #bookbloggers)], which I am reblogging today, has resonated with many reviewers and authors alike. As a very-early-stage-fiction-writer, I am guilty as charged of putting out a piece of work with errors and issues. And I regret that. Bitterly. I’m in good company, as Nick Miller recently admitted his first novel, Z Is For Zombie, that he had spelt the word “rhythm” incorrectly 38 different times before someone pointed out his unfortunate error. Luckily, on the feedback of reviewers, for which I’m immensely grateful, I have formatted and fixed numerous mistakes in my published (gulp) work. I was lucky; such feedback is totally outside the remit of a reviewer and is completely unacceptable from a submitting ‘author’.

However… I would ask reviewers, the majority of whom have written and released books, to cast their minds back to the beginning of their own self-publishing journey. You are a wife, a father or maybe a well-known member of a small community. You’re writing a little something outside your stereotype. And, perhaps, you’d prefer to write incognito, either because of your subject matter or simply through lack of confidence. So, who do you tell? No one.

In this case, getting reviews is tough. No friends and family to bounce off. No feedback before you begin your journey (yes, I tried writers’ forums, where everyone will assure you that you’re brilliant, assuming you reciprocate with a similar sentiment…).

So, aside from #RBRT, I have reached out slowly, one-by-one to:

1) individual reviewers from similar genres on Amazon [those few who reveal contact details] and;

2) reviewers of my genre in print form – I have been in touch with some wonderful people who define themselves as ‘dinosaurs’ and only read something if it is ‘printed on a dead tree’. Yet, they provided valuable feedback on my novella and some even reviewed it on Amazon – a first for them, and consequently, I hope they will start reviewing other works on the platform.

It is far too easy for all of us (myself included) to regard reviews as solicited without understanding the time and pain gone through to obtaining them. I approached people by emphasising I would appreciate their honest and impartial feedback, nothing more. If my writing is a complete waste of time, it is far better I know immediately than trying to push on in a genre/style that simply doesn’t work for me. I have lots of other things to be getting on with if that’s the case!

So, to reviewers everywhere, I offer a heartfelt thank you for your time, effort and knowledge. It takes real guts to review honestly and also to say, “no thanks, this book isn’t for me”. Without you, where would the Indie writing business be? But, please try to give the benefit of the doubt, even just occasionally; a misplaced comma, a typo, a review you’re suspicious of. Are they really the be-all-and-end-all? Or can you find a great story to lose yourself in?

It is, after all, what reading is all about.

Rosie Amber

Ten reasons your book is not getting reviewed (by #bookbloggers)

Do you keep submitting your books to bloggers, but are yet to have them reply with a ‘yes, I’d be happy to review it?’. Book bloggers do get snowed under, and sometimes state on their blogs that they’re currently closed for submissions. What if this is not the case, though, but you still keep getting a ‘thanks, but no thanks’, or no reply at all?

Do any of the following apply to you? If so, it might be an idea to have a rethink.

You’ve sent a generic request, without finding out the blogger’s name (forget ‘dear book blogger’!), having a browse around it to see how he/she reviews, and if the blog will take self-published books, or those from independent presses; some don’t.
Your request is badly written, with typos, grammatical or punctuation errors, or it’s too informal. You’re…

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In my post, The Opposite of Going Viral, I posed the (admittedly rhetorical) question of who would be best suited to play Gerald Stockwell-Poulter in the cinematic adaptation of The Old Man at the End of the World.

Our finalists are Bill Nighy, Ian McKellen and Jim Broadbent. It’s true: I’m not afraid to aim too high.

Firstly, I know what you’re thinking. These guys are going to be mightily offended. For goodness’ sake, Gerald Stockwell-Poulter is 87-years old; Ian McKellen is a very youthful-look 77 and both Jim Broadbent and Bill Nighy are 67 going on 50.

Righto, well… let’s just remind ourselves how good Robert  Gustafsson’s (the “funniest man in Sweden“) older-gent disguise was in The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared:

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A young-looking Gustafsson (photo courtesy of Music Box Films)

 became…

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Gustafsson as 100-year old Allan Karlsson Photo by Egon Andrenjy

Convincing, no?  So, without further ado, let’s have a quick look at the pros and cons of our three delightful contenders…

Bill Nighy
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Pros: Nighy has first-hand zombie experience (as Philip in Shaun of the Dead), looks good in tweed (obligatory for Gerald Stockwell-Poulter) and personifies the vintage English gentleman.

Cons: He played a vampire in Underworld and I’m not at all sure Gerald would approve of such millennial fodder.

Ian McKellen

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Pros: McKellen also worked on a zombie flick – E’gad, Zombies!; a little-known comedy short about an 18th century seaside town stricken by a zombie-like illness and so, like Nighy, he has had some zombie experience. McKellen has also liked playing the roles of an older man since his University days at Cambridge according to a recent interview with the telegraph.

Cons: E’gad, Zombies! may be being made into a full length movie (The Curse of the Buxom Strumpet – a rather fetching title!) with McKellen reprising his role and being joined by Judi Dench and Gillian Anderson. The con? Perhaps he will have have filled his zombie quota, as he famously filled his wizard quota with one (magnificent) role.

Jim Broadbent

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Pros: In the glorious movie Cloud Atlas, one of Broadbent’s characters is 65-year old Timothy Cavendish who is unwittingly admitted to a nursing home and his escape is a classic example of ‘old men behaving badly’ – good practise for playing Gerald. He’s also proven himself a dab hand at playing a gardener with his role in the 1992 British comedy series Gone to Seed – look at the DVD cover, is that a pitch fork he’s holding?!

Cons: Broadbent is probably going to be a little tied up for the next couple of years with his new ‘significant’ role in Game of Thrones, seasons seven and eight. But, hey, GOT has a sizable zombie-ish horde, so it could be classed as a warm-up for a zombie flick…

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A review of Bite No.1 from Lilyn via Rosie’s Book Review Team! Thank you – and soldier on Gerald!

Rosie Amber

Today’s team review is from Lilyn, she blogs here http://www.scifiandscary.com/

Lilyn has been reading The Old Man At The End Of The World by AK Silversmith

The Old Man at the End of the World was an amusing novella that captivated me from the first page. The characters are delightful, and the contrast between Ham and Gerry cracked me up more than once. Both of them sound like good fellows to have around, and Gerry’s crotchety in that delightful way that old folks can get.

There were a few times where the Britishisms almost lost me, but I was able to muddle along until it got back to stuff I was familiar with.

I think it’s a fairly safe bet to say that if Shaun of the Dead amused you, you’ll find something to love in this first Bite by AK Silversmith.  The Old man at the End of…

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Yesterday, my fiancé and I had a conversation about Bite No. 1: The Old Man at the End of the World. ‘Who do you think should play Gerald in the movie?’ he asked.

‘The movie?’

‘Sure,’ he shrugged, ‘The Old Man at the End of the World: The Movie.’

‘I think you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself,’ I replied. Lovely though he is, my fiancé – shall we just call him Bob for the purposes of this blog – is great at counting chickens and all that. Once, when I write a (non-fiction) article for The Irish Times he bought twenty copies just in case the edition became a collector’s item.

It didn’t.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Bob, pointing to my laptop screen [he wouldn’t normally say things like yeah but let’s just use that for the purposes of this post], ‘let’s see the those sales.’

I pulled up the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing – the Pearly Gates of Amazon Publishing) Reports tab for my account and turned the laptop towards him.

‘Awesome,’ he said [again, awesome isn’t a standard Bob word]. ‘What’s the graph’s scale?’

‘One-to-one.’

This is what he saw:

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Seven copies. And he bought one of them (is that against Amazon law?). I bought one too. I haven’t told my mum that I’ve written a tongue-in-cheek zombie novella, so I can at least assure you that the remaining five weren’t bought by well-meaning family members. But, nine days into my publishing career and seven copies sold. Well, five really. It’s not great. The movie rights are on hold.

Two options then:

My fellow Kindlings (my new term for kindle readers) are find the book using one of my 7 kindle keywords/phrases, read the sample and think: No thanks, this is pure rubbish. OR… (fingers crossed)

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Keywords for Bite No.1 as at 26th Feb 2017

My fellow Kindlings are not finding Bite No.1 at all and are spending their time reading much more enriching material.

In the meantime, Bite No.1 has dropped from a rank of #62,000 to #160,000 in the paid kindle store.  So, these figures seem to align nicely with the accepted notion that you need to sell one book a day to be within the 50,000 – 100,000 rankings on Amazon. Author T.R. Ragan has a little chat about that in this blog post.

So, the protagonist of The Old Man at the End of the World, Gerald Stockwell-Poulter has quite some way to crawl out of the hole he seems to have got himself into. Nevermind the zombies, Gerry, watch out for those dreadful sales rankings! If I find a way for Gerald to soar, I will let you all know. In the meantime, Bite No.1 has had a few lovely reviews at Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Goodreads.  A grovelling thanks to those who have taken the time to make my day!

Back to Bob: ‘How about Jim Broadbent?’

I thought I should get into the spirit of things, even though it was all rather depressing. ‘Well… ‘ I said, ‘I suppose Ian McKellen would be a winner. As long as they don’t make him as tall as he is in Lord of the Rings.’

‘Or The Hobbit.’

‘Don’t even talk to me about The Hobbit.’ I thought about Ian McKellen earthing up leeks and stabbing zombies with a pitchfork and wondered if he might at least consider the offer, as he wouldn’t be playing another wizard.

‘How about Justin Timberlake?’

Now Bob was just being plain silly and, as I refreshed my KDP sales (still seven), I wasn’t in the mood. Sensing an impending Ice Age, Bob suggested that we take the £1.45 + $0.82 (before tax) that I’d earned from Bite No.1 and buy half a coffee.

‘Sure, we can do that,’ I said turning my screen towards him again and highlighting Amazon pay royalties for each marketplace approximately sixty (60) days following the end of the calendar month.

‘In early May then,’ he said, ‘in the meantime, I’m putting Bill Nighy on notice for 2018.’

 

Bite No.1 of The Old Man at the End of the World is now LIVE on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com and is on its way to Barnes & Nobel, Kobo and Apple. It will appear shortly on Goodreads. Thank you to everyone for the pre-release reviews and I sincerely hope that it new readers will love meeting the young-at-heart Gerald Stockwell-Poulter, the lovable giant Hamilton Montgomery and the, erm, not-so-lovable Finnbar Phipps . The countdown to Bite No.2 begins…

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