I’m taking part in another box set, this one with 21 paranormal romances bundled together for the low price of 99 cents during preorder. One of our big goals this time around is to hit a bestseller list, and I thought you might be interested in some of the tips I ran across as I researched lists.

There are two big lists indie authors are eligible for — the USA Today bestseller list and the New York Times bestseller list. In either case, the best way to aim for a list is to have a long preorder since all of the preorders (at least those from within the U.S.) count toward the launch week’s sales for these lists. However, you really have to choose which list you’re going for up front since it’s best to have your preorder go live on a Monday to hit the NYT list, versus on a Tuesday to hit the USA Today list.

The latter is a good choice if you’re not sure of your marketing prowess since USA Today lists 150 bestsellers each week. At a low time of year like this, indie authors have been known to hit the USA Today bestseller list with as few as 5,000 U.S. sales. On the other hand, you may need as many as 8,000 sales during the post-Christmas season to hit the list.

The rub is that you have to reach a certain threshold on a non-Amazon retailer before you’re eligible for the USA Today Bestseller list, and some people think that threshold is 500 on Barnes & Noble. This is hard and I suspect is what holds many indie authors back from hitting the USA Today bestseller list. So if you’re intent upon list-hitting, it’s worth putting some effort into reading a nook-specific readership. (If you want to help us along in our goal of reaching those all-important 500 nook sales…while filling your ereader for a long winter…you can preorder here.)

Of course, list-hitting isn’t the only benefit of a multi-author box set. My experience with our previous box set (on sale at 99 cents starting November 12) showed that these collaborations are an awesome way to reach new readers and boost other books in the series. Plus, they’re a great asset to the indie author’s bottom line all on their own. Proof positive that even if you try for a list and fail, there’s value in the effort.

(Originally posted on www.authorjasonlink.com)

Words can function like an x-ray machine. They can reveal what is inside of us—our thoughts and emotions—and identify what is broken.

In this way, words help us heal from our pain.

When we name the pain in our souls, we bring it out of the darkness and into the light. Then, seeing our pain for what it is, we can address it appropriately.

This is the amazing power of knowing the words.

Consider the story of the woman indebted to a crafty imp. It was only after she journeyed through the woods at night and learned the imp’s name—“Rumpelstiltskin”—that she was able to be freed from the debt she owed.

While this may be just a fairy tale, it holds a certain measure of truth. We need to journey deep into the dark recesses of ourselves if we are to learn the name of the pain that dwells there. And when we learn the name, we find freedom and healing.

Robert Juarez, a mentor at Homeboy Industries and a former gang member, has walked this journey. He is living proof of how putting pain into words can bring healing to a broken and bloodied past.

Neglected by parents and growing up in a rough neighborhood, it was only a matter of time before Robert fell into gang life. As a witness to excessive death and violence, he didn’t expect to live past his 25^th birthday. Therefore he gave himself over to sex and drugs and waited to die.

It wasn’t until he went to Homeboy Industries for rehabilitation that his life took a change for the better.

He speaks about that change:

I was able to see myself again. I started breaking down that façade and breaking through those layers and started to see the child that was hurt….My first class [at Homeboy Industries] was a creative writing class. And that creative writing class—it showed me words….And from then I was able to define my pain.

And just like an inmate when he serves a sentence and he’s released to the public, once I served that sentence and put that period on it, I was able to release it to the public. And a little bit of my pain was gone. And the more I did it, the less I felt that pain. It took me many years, and the journey doesn’t stop.

So it is with all of us. Many times we are at a loss for words when it comes to naming our pain. Yet the poetry and stories are inside us. It is only a matter of journeying within and pulling the words out.

The work may be difficult and many of us might not consider ourselves to be poets and storytellers. But this is why we undertake the journey in community.

Others have gone before us and learned the language of the soul. They lend us the words when we struggle to find them ourselves.

We rely on poets and storytellers to “see the despair and heartache as well as the beauty and miracle that lie just beneath the thin veneer of the ordinary, and they describe this in ways that are recognized not only in the mind, but more profoundly in the soul.”[1]

In this way, we learn the words together and hold power over the pain.

Can you think of a time when someone helped you put your pain into words? What was that experience like? Please share in the comments.

[1] M. Craig Barnes, The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 17.

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A review of a guide to free stock photos

Source: How to Find a Wealth of Free Stock Photos

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