In Meritropolis everyone is assigned a numerical Score
that decides their worth to society and whether they live or die. After a young
boy is killed because of a low Score, his brother plots to take down the
System.
Sounds good, right? Well, this exciting YA Dystopia is on
sale for just 99 cents Thursday, November 27 through Monday, December 1. You can pick up
your copy on Amazon.
To celebrate, we are offering a giveaway for an
autographed copy and a $100 Amazon gift card—hooray!
Check out this interview with Joel Ohman, the author of
the book critics are calling, “The Hunger Games meets The Village with a young
Jack Reacher as a protagonist”, then scroll to the end of this post to learn
more about the giveaway. Happy reading, and good luck!
Interview with
Joel Ohman
Other than an author, who are you?
My name is Joel Ohman. I am 32 years old, married to my
best friend, Angela, and have 3 kids, ages 5, almost 3, and 6 months. My
writing companion is my 130lb Bull Mastiff, Caesar (who's asleep on the job
most of the time, to be honest). I am a Christian who likes to talk about the
good news of Jesus Christ. I do volunteer work with the Fellowship of Christian
Athletes and also with my church in Tampa. I am a serial entrepreneur, having
founded a number of different startups in the web space. I am currently the
President & CEO of 360 Quote LLC and Real Time Health Quotes LLC, and we
own a lot of different web properties, one of the most popular ones being our
workout website/iOS App/Android App for WeightTraining.com. You can learn more
about me at JoelOhman.com.
What is the most surprising thing you learned while
writing?
One of the most important things I learned is maybe not
all that surprising, but definitely important—the value of an editor. I worked
with 3 different editors while writing Meritropolis. Each of them
provided extremely valuable feedback and advice that was instrumental at
various stages of the book writing process. The book that is available for
purchase now is a much better book than it would have been without the expertise
of my editorial team.
What are you doing to market your book now?
Right now I am concentrating on getting my book in front
of as many of the awesome book bloggers and book reviewers out there as
possible. Meritropolis is fortunate to have received a large
number of 5-star reviews on both Amazon and GoodReads, and I am definitely
hoping this trend will continue. I also recently started working with Emlyn
Chand over at Novel Publicity,
and she has been great, so I am excited to see what she can do!
What are your views on marketing your book through social
media such as Twitter or Facebook?
I believe that social media can be an effective marketing
technique if done the right way. The key is that social media is primarily
about building relationships and about delivering something of value. We all
know those Facebook friends who incessantly clog up our newsfeeds with pleas to
join their health and wellness MLM—don’t be that kind of author! That being
said, I do think that Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, etc. can be a great way to
meet other readers and authors and discuss fun and interesting things.
Hopefully that will lead to more exposure and more book sales, but coming
across as too salesy or pushy is something that I definitely aim to avoid.
What are your thoughts on getting bad reviews?
Everyone has different tastes in what they like to read,
so I don't let bad reviews bother me too much. No matter what your favorite
book is, you can almost be guaranteed that it will have many bad reviews on
Amazon from people who just didn't get out of it what you did—that'sfine. I do try to stay objective and see if there might be
something I can learn from the criticism to become a better writer, if not,
then I just move on and don't worry about it.
Any advice for aspiring authors?
Take the first step! Just do a little at a time. If you
decide writing is important to you then make time for it, be consistent, and
read a lot.
Do you have any advice for authors who are considering
the self-publishing route?
I am not one of those authors who will say that
self-publishing is the best choice for every single author, but I am absolutely
glad that I went this route. I love that I can fully control and fully own my
work, but I would encourage anyone who self-publishes to try and adhere to the
following advice:
Don’t be a cheapskate - be willing to pay for a
professional editor, a professional book cover designer, etc. It boggles my
mind that people will spend hours upon hours writing their book and then just
take a few minutes to throw some clip art and stock photos together to “design”
their book cover. Don’t. Just, don’t.
Work with professionals - by this I simply mean to
not overly rely on friends, family members, and co-workers, all of whom will
likely just tell you what you want to hear. You need someone who is not afraid
to point out the problem areas in your book and provide an honest critique. You
already know that your mom is going to say she loves your
vampire-Scottish-Highlander-billionaire-love-triangle-in-space book that you
wrote, so don’t even bother asking her for feedback. Instead, pay
someone who does that kind of thing for a living...
Sell, sell, sell - If you are a self-published
author and you are not actively involved in sales and marketing for your
book—which is essentially your mini-business—or you are not paying
someone else to be actively involved in the sales and marketing of
your book, then you are not maximizing the reach your book can have. As uncouth
as it might be to say this, writing is only half of what is required to see
success as a self-published author. Yes, you need to write a good book, but you
also need to effectively market and sell your book (either by hiring someone, or
doing it yourself, or both).
What books would you would recommend to aspiring
authors?
Here are some books that I highly recommend for all
authors to check out:
Wordsmithy -
Douglas Wilson
Bird by Bird -
Anne Lamott
On Writing -
Stephen King
The Anatomy of
Story - John Truby
The Fire in Fiction -
Donald Maas
Don’t forget!
Meritropolis is marked down from its regular price of
$5.99, but only for a limited time. Feed your Kindle by
picking up a discounted copy for just 99 cents, but make sure you do
it before December 2!
Now enter the giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
