Ted Oswald Signs With Amazon Publishing, Haiti NGOs To Benefit

Some of you have seen David’s prior posts about my book and its background: Because We Are: A Novel of Haiti is a murder mystery set in the slums of Port-au-Prince with two remarkable children in the lead. It also happens to be a “nonprofit novel,” so that all net proceeds are donated to advocacy and development organizations in Haiti.

I crowdfunded the book on Indiegogo, and did a few KDP Select giveaways to modest results. David found Because We Are during one of those promotions, and he’s proved a huge help both directly (through giving advice about putting together a “Big Push”) and indirectly (through my poring over Let’s Get Visible).

I set everything in motion for the Big Push, a promotion that would try to jump start sales across retailers. I let the book slide out of KDP Select and distributed it to B&N, Kobo, and Apple via Draft2Digital; I pushed the price up to $3.99, readying 99c promotions through BookBub, Book Blast, and Ereader News Today; I prepped tweets and posts via Hootsuite during the promotion period; David featured the book on his blog. Everything was set. Read More…

Giving It All Away • Interview with Ted Oswald

Back in April, I stumbled across a wonderful novel called Because We Are: A Novel of Haiti by Ted Oswald. I think I was only half-way through when I started hunting him down on the internet to tell him how much I liked it. I don’t usually chase people across cyberspace to give them a review, but this was a remarkable book. I also knew that once you guys heard the backstory you would want to know more. After a little cajoling, Ted agreed to be interviewed… David Gaughran: For those who haven’t had the pleasure of reading Because We Are, perhaps you could kick off by telling us a little about the story and how you came to write it. Read More…