Stephen Carpenter – Entertainment Weekly calls Killer an "ebook blockbuster"
Stephen Carpenter has worked as a screenwriter on movies such as Ocean's Eleven, Blue Streak, The Man and Dean Koontz's Servants of Twilight. When I interviewed Stephen, he had begun work on a one hour mini-series for NBC. He has since released his new book, Killer in the Hills, which is the next book in the “Killer” series on Amazon. His book, The Grimm Curse which was the basis for the NBC series Grimm, is also available.
In this interview, he spoke about his adventures in ebook publishing.
Darrell - You studied screenwriting at UCLA. What made you decide to be a storyteller?
Stephen - I was an obsessive reader when I was a kid. I wanted to be a novelist as a child, before I discovered the movies. Then, once I got interested in filmmaking, I started watching movies constantly, the way I used to read. I gravitated toward screenwriting because the movies I loved most were the ones with truly remarkable writing--the Godfathers, Chinatown, Don't Look Now, etc., etc. I was a very annoying moviegoing companion. I was always picking up story holes and weak characterizations. So I just started reading screenplays and eventually started writing them, on my own. Movies are expensive to make, but it costs nothing to write a script, so I felt I had nothing to lose by trying.
Darrell - You've worked both as a screenwriter and a director. How does your knowledge of screenwriting influence your novel writing?
Stephen - Screenwriting is all about story and character. There's little room for prose. The story's the thing. That discipline made me brutal in pushing the story along in a novel. My first drafts are usually very short--just story and character. The detail comes later. My heroes are writers like Robert Parker, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, James M. Cain, etc. All writers whose prose is very spare and, not coincidentally, all of them worked at some point as screenwriters.
Darrell - Killer has been sitting in the top 100 Kindle books for some time now. To what do you attribute your success?
Stephen - Good timing, Amazon's amazing promotion machine, and the customer reviews. People who love to read are flocking to the ebooks under $5, so any decent book under five bucks will at least get a fighting chance.
Darrell - What sort of marketing do you focus on for your books?
Stephen - None whatsoever. I published Killer on Amazon as a lark and Amazon did the rest. I set up a blog but I think I've had a total of five visitors. My best guess is that there must have been a lot of word of mouth about the book. I was surprised when sales kept rising, and shocked two weeks ago when I saw a blurb in Entertainment Weekly calling Killer an "ebook blockbuster." A lot of my friends didn't even know I had written a book.
Darrell - Can we expect to see Jack Rhodes (from Killer) or Jake Grimm (from The Grimm Curse) in any sequels?
Stephen - You bet. I am halfway through the second Killer book, and Jack is already in big trouble. My goal is to continue the Killer series for as long as Parker's Spenser series. Screenwriting gave me a tough work ethic, so I think I can write two books a year, give or take. I plan to publish the second Killer in June.
Darrell - What advice would you have for someone who has just self-published their first ebook?
Stephen - I certainly can't give any marketing or promotion advice, since I've never done any. I would say be open to revisions, even after you have published the book. After Killer had been on Amazon for a few weeks, I noticed some customer reviews that referenced some criticisms of certain aspects of the book. So I un-published it, worked on it for a couple of weeks, then re-published it and the reviews improved. It's a remarkable advantage for e-authors--to have a completely objective, randomly selected group of readers who freely offer what amounts to great editorial advice, even if it's sometimes hard to hear. Believe in your work but be prepared to be brutal with it.
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