Archive for April, 2015

Story Tracker v3.0 update now available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch

Story Tracker v3.0 is now available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Story Tracker

This update adds support for the PC version of Story Tracker. You can learn more about Story Tracker for PC from the preview post.

If you like what you see, please spare a moment to rate or review the app on the App Store!

You can learn more about Story Tracker at my website or on the Story Tracker Facebook group.

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Night Lights wide release

Night Lights - A Short Story

Now that the Amazon.com exclusivity period has expired, my second author-published short story is also available on iBooks, Kobo, Nook, and via direct sale. You can also find it still on Amazon.com.

Here’s the description:

Amelia and Robert Burke are traveling along a lonely stretch of highway in the Australian Outback, in search of the mysterious Min Min lights.

Their progress is halted by a blinding dust storm. Then Robert goes missing.

Trapped in their car and with little hope of survival, Amelia begins documenting their investigation and the horrors that lurk beyond the windscreen.

Night Lights joins my other recently author-published story, Back Again, which I talk more about in my earlier post.

You might be wondering how the Amazon exclusivity worked out? Not so great, actually. It was enrolled in Kindle Unlimited (KU), where readers who signed up for a KU subscription could read it for free. The theory was that for short stories, the current economics of the program mean it’s possible to earn substantially more per download from a KU borrow ($1 or more) vs direct purchase at 99 cents (35 cents or so), provided the reader gets through more than 10% of the eBook.

Well, there were zero borrows throughout the 3 month exclusivity period! The five free days had okay results, but those aren’t much of a drawcard since you can set the price to free on other eBook sites.

I’m not precisely sure why readers were happy to download it for free on the free days, yet not borrow when it was in KU. I suspect it’s a combination of it being a short story (gotta get your money’s worth with novel borrows!), visibility issues, and perhaps KU readers being a small percentage of the total pool of readers.

I’m curious if anyone else has had better results with short horror enrolled in KU? I certainly won’t be trying the experiment again.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the story, and look for more soon!

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Story Tracker for PC Preview

Track your story submissions on your Windows PC – Coming Soon!

Quite awhile back I announced my plans to bring my iOS and Mac submission tracking app, Story Tracker, to the Windows platform. After a prolonged development struggle, today I can finally present an early look at the interface.

While it looks very similar to the Mac version, the PC version was actually a total rewrite. I’ve had to learn a new programming language, and come up to speed with development on an unfamiliar platform.

The PC version will include much the same features as the Mac, including printing. enhanced search capabilities, and data transfer to and from the iOS version over WiFi. It will support Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1. I also plan to support Windows 10 after that’s released.

I’m planning to release Story Tracker for PC for direct sale via my website. It’ll be available for download as a free trial version, with similar limitations to the Lite iOS version. The full feature-set can be unlocked via purchase.

Development is proceeding swiftly, so I’m hoping to release the app sometime within the next 2-3 months.

If a PC version of Story Tracker sounds interesting to you, and you’d like to Beta test or just be notified when the app is closer to launch, sign-up here. I’ll also be posting the occasional update on the Story Tracker Facebook page.

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