It’s great to see Randall Dale standing at number one in THREE categories. This hot new Western is the first in a brand new series. The second book in the series is also available.

About The Book:

This new series opens with an attempt on Marshal Hawk’s life by an unknown gunman, along with a mysterious telegram from Wichita, written to the would-be killer, along with a second telegram with the name of Hawk’s sworn enemy, Deputy James Cartwell, on it as another target for assassination.

Wichita holds memories for both of the targets of the “hit,” and even though they hate each other, they reluctantly join forces to hunt down the person who ordered the hit on them.

Their pursuit takes them on many adventures together, occasionally getting sidetracked to chase down bank robbers and murderers such as Blackjack Parmeter. The result is that their dislike for each other turns into reluctant respect, along with some surprising Wichita connections to their past lives and families.

This new action-packed adventure has everything a Western reader could want, or need. Gunplay, mystery—and much, much more!

Reviewers Said…

“Make sure you have the time before you start reading because it is hard to put down. The writer captures you and won’t let go till the end and leaves you wanting more .Great story teller can’t wait to read more of his books.”

“Really good entertaining book while both interesting and exciting. Well written and edited witness an interesting plot. A fine Author.”

“I love a good western, in movie or book. This was a good clean read. I enjoyed it very much. I will be reading more westerns from this author!”

The sequel to the number one bestselling Western adventure from Randall Dale! This is the second book in the “Branson Hawk: United States Marshal Western Series.”

Branson Hawk agrees to assist a beautiful woman retrieve her dead brother for burial back home, but the accidental death begins to look suspicious because a fortune in gold is missing. Hawk is thrown into a covert investigation with multiple suspects and danger at every turn. The deeper into the mystery he delves; the more he realizes that no one can be trusted. And the beautiful woman? Well, this is a story about U.S. Marshal Branson Hawk. He always gets his man, but will he get the woman?

Grab your copy today by clicking here!

(Read original press release here)

Randall Dale, one of the most acclaimed Western authors, broke all existing sales records for his product—with over a quarter of a million pages read in a month and the number one chart position in the United States.

This new series opens with an attempt on Marshal Hawk’s life by an unknown gunman, along with a mysterious telegram from Wichita, written to the would-be killer, along with a second telegram with the name of Hawk’s sworn enemy, Deputy James Cartwell, on it as another target for assassination.

Wichita holds memories for both of the targets of the “hit,” and even though they hate each other, they reluctantly join forces to hunt down the person who ordered the hit on them.

Their pursuit takes them on many adventures together, occasionally getting sidetracked to chase down bank robbers and murderers, such as Blackjack Parmeter. The result is that their dislike for each other turns into reluctant respect, along with some surprising Wichita connections to their past lives and families.

This new number one success comes as Dusty Saddle Publishing and Outlaws Publishing hold a monopoly on Western bestsellers with Mike Mackessy (Broken Dog Ranch), Gary Church (Good Man—Bad Enemy), Paul L. Thompson (Kill Every Witness), Jim Burnett (Persistent Justice), Scott Harris (Stagecoach Willy: 600 Bloody Miles), C. Wayne Winkle (The Searcher), William H. Joiner, Jr. (The Legend of Jake Jackson), Gene Turney (The Little Ranch in Texas), C. Emerson Law (Frontier Marine), Robert Hanlon (Timber: United States Marshal), and many others already at, or heading toward, bestseller status.

The new hit in this Dale Western series will be released towards the middle of July and will likely have readers sitting on the edge of their seat. “I just know that when I get started, I don’t know where the story will go,” Dale explains. “The characters do all the work. I just keep the pushing the keys.”

You can purchase your copy of “Branson Hawk: U.S. Marshal,” from Amazon.com. You can also learn more by emailing Nick@nickwale.org. (Read original press release here)

It’s fantastic to see Randall Dale hit the number one position in America. His book “The Witchita Connection” was one of the big summer releases– we all knew it was a hit– and now we know readers agree!

This new series opens with an attempt on Marshal Hawk’s life by an unknown gunman, along with a mysterious telegram from Wichita, written to the would-be killer, along with a second telegram with the name of Hawk’s sworn enemy, Deputy James Cartwell, on it as another target for assassination.

Wichita holds memories for both of the targets of the “hit,” and even though they hate each other, they reluctantly join forces to hunt down the person who ordered the hit on them.

Their pursuit takes them on many adventures together, occasionally getting sidetracked to chase down bank robbers and murderers such as Blackjack Parmeter. The result is that their dislike for each other turns into reluctant respect, along with some surprising Wichita connections to their past lives and families.

This new action-packed adventure has everything a Western reader could want, or need. Gunplay, mystery—and much, much more! You can grab your copy of this great number one bestseller by clicking here.

Many people have been asking about the continuing success in sales and success from John D. Fie, Jr. Especially after the news hit that he has moved over one million pages of his series so far this year. Everyone knows that in 2018 he was one of the leading sellers, but how did he maintain that sales pressure and continue his growth in 2019 with a brand new five-book series—his biggest series yet? How can you do the same with your budding Western series?

By the end of 2018, it was clear that John needed a new series. It was decided he would write a series about a gunfighter hoping to hang up his guns and live in peace. “Gunfighter: Morgan Deerfield: Quest For Peace” was the first book in the series—a strange name. Would it sell? How would readers take to this new character?

We knew a number of diehard Fie readers would give the book an advantage to begin with. Those readers would buy anything he released—so we knew we had a limited window to use to propel the series to the top. The book was positioned carefully with the right categories, keywords, forewords and released with very light advertising.

As soon as the book hit the top fifty on the Western bestseller chart, the second book, “Gunfighter: Morgan Deerfield: Turbulent Times,” was released.

The second book held the same categories and keywords but had heavier advertising attached to it. It overtook the first book—and created a situation of competition where the two books were selling off the backs of each other. If “Quest” was higher in the morning, “Turbulent Times” would be higher in the afternoon.

This is where timing becomes very important.

The third book came out and hit the charts. Advertising was increased on “Gunfighter: Morgan Deerfield: Quest For Peace,” and soon we had the first and second books in the series in the top twenty. “Quest” eventually made it to the top ten at #9.

With three books on the market, it was a case of bouncing the three books in the series (so far) off each other by using alternating budget strategies on the three books. Monday would be a higher budget on one, Tuesday would be another, Wednesday would be another to keep the books even in sales. Like cooking a side of beef, the advertising had to be even, otherwise there would be a drop on one product in favor of another.

The fourth book came out, and we didn’t run any advertising on it to begin with. It was important to continue to push the first three, causing people to naturally move to book four. This is where the series page became very important. Those three peaked—and then with careful timing, the advertising, categories, keyword and inter-author promotion started on number four, just as it became less effective on the first three books. Saturation point.

The first three books were starting to run their course, so we switched over to pushing the latest book with an eye toward releasing a box set of the first three books in June. The fifth book came out, the box set soon followed, and now the strategy will be to bounce the box set over the head of the latest book in the series, “Gunfighter: Morgan Deerfield: Cast A Dark Shadow,” to always make sure the first three books in the series are riding high, whether alone or in box set form.

The key to this strategy is:

1. Recognizing the importance of the first book in any series. This is the sales anchor.
2. Understanding that a second book must be released fairly quickly after the release of a first.
3. A third book must be released, and all three books must be promoted evenly before the release of a fourth.
4. A box set is likely a useful tool when the fourth or fifth books are released.
5. A series page can make the difference between life or death for your series.

Now, why don’t you try a strategy like this? You could easily do it. You don’t need no Fort Knox gold. All you need to be able to do is time things. It’s like poaching an egg—plop it in, set the timer, and wait for that golden yoke to rise. As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to drop them to me below.

It’s always wonderful to see a Western author smash their way to success. Yesterday it was announced that William H. Joiner, Jr. had broken ahead with a record sales month. With eight Westerns in the top one hundred and pages read numbers going through the roof, it’s likely that “The Bill Who Kills” (as I like to call him) will grow into one of the most popular Western authors of today.

But How Did It Happen?

I received several emails from authors wanting to know the secret to his success—so I decided to write this blog to try and give an overview of the strategy used to promote him. It’s a strategy that has proven itself successful over and over, and took an author with very few sales to the point of a quarter million pages read.

The Catalogue

It all starts with catalogue. William H. Joiner, Jr. had been writing for some time and had sold books before. He had several Westerns, and all had been reviewed well by the readers who had read them. When we first started talking, I liked the look of “The Legend of Jake Jackson,” and we decided to go with that one as the anchor.

The Anchor Is Key

With all book promotions, it’s important to have an anchor to hold the strategy in place—one book that pushes the rest of the catalogue. In this case it was “The Legend of Jake Jackson.” We re-released the book, picked the right categories and used inter-author promotions to drive readers to the book. It soon found its feet and hit the top one hundred.

Categories

Picking the right categories on Amazon for your Western books is incredibly important. Not only will you have to face competition from across the genre—you will have to displace books that are already highly visible to readers. Pick your categories very, very carefully. They will be half the battle.

Filling In The Gaps

What’s the worst thing you can do when you’ve got a burgeoning hit on your hands? Easy answer—sit around watching the hit unfold. Almost immediately, Bill went to work writing a series of books about a marshal. We started releasing those books, and soon they started making the charts alongside his anchor hit “The Legend of Jake Jackson.”

Capitalization

By the end of the first month, we had several books on the bestseller chart, with “The Legend of Jake Jackson” inside the top fifty. Now it was time to capitalize. The first of these projects was a box set of the first three books in the series, and the second was a box set of other William H. Joiner, Jr. product from his catalogue. Both were very solid sellers and helped cement Joiner on the bestseller charts.

Growth

Now at the end of a record-breaking sales month… the question is what to do next? There will be another book in “The Legend of Jake Jackson” series for sure, more Morgan Porter books—and a tribute release. More box sets. More releases. If you find a winning strategy, don’t change your mind and stop the sales coming in.

Overview

Understand your catalogue.

What have you written already?

Position the book with the right categories!

What is the book that is most likely to be your anchor?

Once you have your anchor—what do you do next?

What do readers want from you?

Those are the key factors that made William H. Joiner, Jr. a popular Western author. The ability to turn around with a product and say, “That’s the hit. That’s the anchor.” The ability to re-release the book and make it visible using categories and promotions. Concentrating on your anchor but also making sure you have product on the way, and capitalizing on the moment.

There’s nothing in this blog article that you can’t do—there’s no million dollar advertising campaign or billboards in Omaha. There’s just common sense. Pick a good product. Release the product. Position the product. Create more product.

Give it a try—and don’t forget, if you have any questions, you can email me using the contact form below.

The wonder of books is that there’s always something new coming onto the market. Be it a brand new story, a reissue of an old favorite, a box set or some other kind of product. Western readers today have the greatest choice of product—greater than ever before. President Eisenhower, a great fan of Westerns, would truly love today’s market filled with more Westerns than he could point a nuclear weapon at.

Take for example the new C. Wayne Winkle hit, “The Searcher.” We knew readers love his work— each of his regular books and box sets have been solid top ten hits. But his latest book, “The Searcher,” exceeded all expectations, rolling from the 100,000 mark to the number one position in three days. What caused such a glorious rise?

The thing with Mister Winkle is that he consistently turns out strong books. Readers know that if they get a Winkle Western, they’re going to get something they’ll like. So Outlaws Publishing and I had that working for us. The next thing is that his last hit, “Black Buffalo,” had been extremely successful and just left the charts as “The Searcher” rolled onto shelves. The third point was that the release of “The Searcher” was timed to coincide with the release of a second volume of greatest hits, which had been charting in and out of the top one hundred. The fourth point is that the use of categories and keywords made it possible for the book to make a graceful leap.

So “The Searcher” came out with high reader awareness—a good portion of the readership was likely reading one Winkle novel or another.

But how did we capture those readers?

Using advertising, we targeted folks buying older Winkle product, the new box set, and his Buffalo novel. These readers saw the new book and converged en masse on Amazon to purchase the new book. Rising like a bullet, the book has already achieved a sales award from Outlaws Publishing, his publisher. It became hot because of that capability of educating readers about new product as they purchase still popular older product.

Keywords came into play here also, as did categories. Using the right keywords and categories we were able to position the book to make a seemingly impossible climb a fast ascent.

Now the second part of the strategy comes into play. Mister Winkle completed the second book in the series and sent it in just as “The Searcher” started to climb. This second book should hit while the first book is in the top five.

The result? A likely second number one for C. Wayne Winkle, which will likely lead to the third book being the biggest hit of the series. This, again, is all about timing—timing those releases to hit while the going is good.

When promoting books, you’ve got to look at the whole picture. Winkle is a powerful seller in our genre, but by smartly timing releases, we managed to really capitalize and energize his readership. By having quality product, we knew that readers would love the book. Maybe you can do the same thing with a little bit of timing, advertising, solid product and some muscle. I think you can! Drop a line below if you have any questions.

Outlaws were widespread throughout the Oklahoma Territories. They took advantage of the Indian police since they could not arrest the White people. They done their plundering and hid in the Indian Territories. A horrifying occurrence sent Johnny, a half-Apache, on the rampage. He gained no bounty for the men he killed, but he had one last bounty to collect — The Wild Bunch were wanted for $5,000 per head.

Things were never the same for Johnny after the terrible incident. Once he found his remaining Cherokee friends in a good place, he and his new son rode off and never looked back.

With plenty of money in Johnny’s pocket, Johnny went to visit with old friends and to show his son some of the country he once roamed. They eventually make it to Santa Fe, NM.

They happen onto Johnny’s older son and they become a family as the boys continue their education. After a few years of Johnny getting fat and bored, he takes off to live with the last remaining wild Apaches —The Sierra Madre Apaches. Click here to get your copy for 99 cents!

Let’s take a look at some very ugly truths about being an author who has chosen the Western genre, which is normally looped in with all Historical fiction even though a great many of us who write Westerns would wholeheartedly disagree with this grouping. Why? Historical fiction actually encompasses everything from European conflict history of the Middle Ages to WWII and Vietnam based fiction, while the Western genre is far more specific – generally accepted dates are from the late 1860s through around 1917-18, though there are tales that happened prior to the Civil War, and a few outstanding novels of the “Modern West” as opposed to the “Old West.”

When one starts looking for sales numbers and statistics regarding the Western genre, they are all but impossible to find, and even if you are lucky enough to stumble on some they are at best inaccurate or based on formulas developed by some bean counter at a publishing company who is pressing the numbers to bolster their company’s image. So, how do we even begin to sort all the numbers out, or analyze the statistics? Bottom line, we don’t.

All we can do is make a SWAG (sophisticated wild-arse guess) based on tidbits we can glean from various reporting sites. I refuse to name any specific site(s), as to do so would lend some credibility to them when they deserve little. Why do I say that? Because not one of them is a true non-profit, and they get paid to report their numbers and statistics. To the highest bidder goes the numbers, with Jeff Bezos well in the lead.

So, here goes with my best SWAG, boys and girls, based on my years of trying to figure it all out. Roughly 3% of ALL book sales, from print to electronic and audio, fall in the Historical Fiction genre, with a mere 27% (up from 19% a decade ago) of those in the Western genre, or .81% of all book sales. Now, before you get disheartened by the low number, consider this. In 2018, there were some 3 billion books sold in all formats, which still comes out to some 24,300,000 books sold in the Western genre.

With roughly 11,000 Western authors, including the “old timers” like L’Amour, Grey, Smith, etc., contributing to the totals, that comes out to approximately 2210 books sold annually by each Western author. But when one digs a bit deeper, and sorts out the “one hit wonders” who sell a hundred or two copies of one book (mostly to family, friends and coworkers), the numbers for those of us who actually work hard at creating really good stories for the public to enjoy are considerably better than one would think.

Taking out those who publish one book, usually self-published, unedited and historically, geographically and logistically inaccurate, the number of authors who are pursuing a career (even a casual one or as a leisure activity) drops to some 8,000 authors publishing approximately 22,000,000 books (including short story compilations and anthologies). Now the number climbs to 2,750 copies per author.

Now, if you didn’t sell 2,750 copies of your books last year, don’t sweat it. Most of us didn’t. There are some 100 or so Western authors who consistently sell 10,000 to 15,000 copies of their work annually, and most of them are cranking out from half a dozen to 20 new stories every year. The rest of us fall somewhere short of those numbers, both in output and in sales.

Why don’t we write more, or sell more? Time, energy and imagination, though health often comes into play as well. Well, there is one other thing that affects the sales numbers – marketing. Those of us who have done this for any length of time at all soon realize that we are incapable of doing our own marketing and still have time to write. Nor are we capable of doing a proper job of editing our own works, as we will glaze over simple things like grammar, spelling and punctuation, logistics and historical/geographical correctness as we fail to see our mistakes no matter how many times we read and re-read our work. Human nature, plain and simple.

The answers? And yes, there is more than one answer, depending on your individual circumstance. First, I recommend you find a publisher with an editing staff and a promoter, as they will do more to make your work the best it can be and tell the world about you and your book(s) than you could ever hope to do.

But let’s say you’ve done that, and finally given up the ghost, unable to find that “perfect fit” between you and a publisher. You, instead, have chosen to self-publish, a fairly easy thing to do these days what with all the tools made available to authors by the several and various companies that publish for you – and I’m not talking about the scam artists who claim to be publishers working in your best interest for “just a thousand dollars”, promising to make you a household name, until they have milked you for every dime you could give them. Then you become just another number to them, and they won’t return your calls and letters. No, though you may laugh, it isn’t really funny as some really talented authors give up their dreams after such an encounter.

Anyway, you’re self-publishing, and hoping to break into the market with a bang. Except you don’t. Your book(s) languish near the bottom of the list of tens of thousands of other books being published in the Western genre every year. What’s missing? Primarily, marketing. So look long and hard for a promoter who will back up what they promise, making certain that they actually market books in the Western genre as their bread and butter. Check their list of represented authors, and then check the numbers of sales or the market reputations and reviews of those authors.

Or you can take a shortcut and just ask a Western author you trust who they use. You’ll find that most of us are willing to help out any author anytime we can, something not common among authors of other genres. Something about Western folks always being willing to help a neighbor in need of advice or a helping hand, or some such thing.

Now to back up a step to editing. If you can, always find and use a good editor, one who will be honest about your skills, your knowledge of history, geography and logistics, and your ability to write a good story. Again, as with promoters marketing your genre, find an editor who actually enjoys reading Westerns, but one that won’t get so lost in your stories that they forget what they’re supposed to be doing – editing!

Are there other “secrets” to being a successful writer? Sure, hundreds of them. Just ask any successful author. You see, we each have our own method and style, and no two of us will ever give you the same answers to achieving success using the same words, even though the answers themselves might end up being the same advice. One of the biggest “secrets” might be to write about what you love, not in the field that is the hottest selling genre on the market today. Above all, write, tell your stories, write some more, and then write even more. The more you do something, the better you become at it. And good luck! See you on the charts!

Cherokee Parks 

You can discover the Cherokee Parks Western catalogue by clicking here. Enjoy some of the greatest Western novels of today.