By Bob Kern
Welcome back from Friday to my Part Two blog post on "How I Write." To date, book two has
been a finalist for book of the year with one association, a finalist for eBook
of the year with another, received a bronze award from the Nonfiction Writers
Association. It was just selected as a finalist for Nonfiction History book
with the Independent Authors Network with the book of the year winner to be
announced on August 15, 2016. The book has also been accepted in four
other contests and awaiting results later in the year. The book also was
the bestselling Cold War book on Amazon for five weeks.
Most of book two's
success and 4.7 rating can be attributed to my involvement and promotions in
the specific Facebook groups, which is up to about forty Cold War groups.
I am very fortunate to have developed a great bunch of people who follow
me and re-post my books to their walls helping promote the books.
I released book three on
July 6, 2016 without offering it for free. Instead, I ran a five day free
book promotion on book one, giving away one thousand three hundred and
twenty-eight books. I had a great first month with book three and saw a
nice bounce in sales for the first two books all month as well.
During July, all three
books hit the top 10 in Amazons Cold War category at the same time. Book
three hit number three in the top Military History category for top new
releases on one day and was the top Military History/ Korea book for one week.
I am convinced that for
nonfiction publications like mine, involvement in Facebook groups for the
particular subject is an easy way to have success with your book. Once
people get to know me, my commitment to this project on behalf of all Cold War veterans,
they want to see me be successful and become an extension of my marketing
efforts.
I am attending an
association meeting in September for veterans who served in Korea during the
Cold War and plan on running the five-day free campaign just prior to the event
to kick up interest. I am confident the other two books will do well
during this promotion.
I have used a bunch of
paid and free advertising sites with very few of them standing out. Book
Gorilla seems to be the only one that always gets me a bump in sales. I
also like the Fuzzy Librarian. I like Books Butterfly since they
guarantee results and plan to try them soon with book three. I have a
huge list of free promotional sites for free eBooks and I’m going to use them
all when I run book three promotion for free downloads.
As for my writing style,
it is probably very different from everyone else. I have each person I am
featuring in the book complete a basic questionnaire so I can have the
foundation for their chapter in place. I then call each of them and visit
for an hour or longer, writing notes and visiting to get to know each other
better and get the particulars of their service and any unique stories they
have. I then put each veteran's questionnaire in chronological order of dates
of service for my timeline. I do some general research on the country and
military history before writing and create a folder of bookmarks to sites with
information I might use. I also do a deep online search for any
unclassified documents I can use for the book. I don't research anything
on each veteran until I begin writing their chapter. This allows me to
research specific subjects from their careers and created the proper footnote
at the time I actually write about it.
Once all the chapters
are done, I send each veteran their chapter to fact check it, make sure I
didn't add something that wasn't relevant to them, and to toggle their memories
for additional information I could use. When I get everyone's chapter
back, I make the appropriate edits. I then put each of the chapters
together to form the complete book and do a complete read through and edit,
making sure chapter’s transition and information isn't duplicated. Once I
am happy with the edited book, I separate it by chapters once again and send
them out to the veterans for one final look and approval before submitting the
book to be edited.
This is probably an
unorthodox way to write a book but I do what seems to work for me.
______________________________________________________________________
Bob Kern is an award winning author for his We Were Soldiers
Too Series. Book 1 was a finalist for Nonfiction Autobiography Book of the Year
in 2015 and has been nominated for Best First Published Book of the Year in
2016.
Book Two was named a Finalist for Nonfiction
eBook of the Year and Finalist for Nonfiction Military History Book of the Year
in 2016. Bob was in the US Army for
almost 8 years in the 1980's and during those years he was quickly educated
about the military life that civilians never see or hear about. He decided to
write and publish the story of his military career so that others may have an
inside view of what it was like to be in the military at that time. Due to the overwhelming support and response from
other Cold War Veterans, his first book has been turned into a Cold War
documentary series telling the history of the Cold War from the perspective of
the veterans who served during this critical time in history. Bob is the father of five children - Natalie, Bambie,
Amber, Bob, and Rob. He resides in Bedford, Indiana with his wife Marsha and
his three granddaughters; Sage, Jade, and Harmonie. Bob
enjoys connecting with US veterans and sharing his stories with others. Bob’s social media links are: https://www.weweresoldierstoo.com/ https://www.facebook.com/bobkernauthor/
