Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

Blog Changes

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on December 12, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I attended a webinar yesterday evening about creating successful author websites. I haven’t begun to internalize all the information, yet, but I’m starting to plan some changes to this blog. Some things covered in the webinar won’t work for me. In the first place, this is a blog, not a full-on website. Still, there are things I can do better.

The first change is planned for next week. I bet a lot of you hadn’t discovered some of the other pages on this blog. (In fact, WordPress’s stats tell me this is true.) If you look up at top, you’ll see that there are other pages. One has just been retitled “Free Stories” (used to be just “Stories”). Okay, right now, there’s only one story there. I was already planning to put another one up next week, anyway. (Just in time for the end of the Mayan calendar, next week be on the lookout for “Apocalypse Cruise”.)

Now, I’m trying to plan a bit more than that. I’m going to look into (and I’m not sure yet how well WordPress supports this) providing a couple of download buttons for those stories (Kindle and ePub). That way, even though both stories are short, you don’t have to read them on my blog. I’m also going to experiment with that audio file thing again. Precisely because these stories are short they may be a really good place to start. And, again, I’m not sure how well WordPress supports making those audio files downloadable.

There’ll probably be some other free stuff from time to time as well.

Updates will still be Wednesdays and Sundays, though. That schedule seems to work pretty well for me.

Read Full Post »

“Becoming Lioness”

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on December 9, 2012| 2 Comments »

“Becoming Lioness” is now available at Smashwords or Amazon for $0.99. It’ll be available on other sites as soon as it gets into Smashwords’ premium catalog.

Living among a people who distrust magic in any form, Kiara has a secret. She can sense magic in others and she’s maddeningly sure that she has the potential for magic, too. She just can’t quite reach it. Considering the way her people react to magic, that might be just as well. 

When her people are threatened, Kiara must make the choice whether to reveal her hidden talents in order to save them. And to trust the one man who can help her learn to use her magic–the same man who betrayed her trust once before.

 

Read Full Post »

Cover Reveal for “Becoming Lioness”

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on December 5, 2012| 2 Comments »

My novelette, “Becoming Lioness” will be e-published next week. Here’s the cover:

h

 

And the blurb (subject to editing):

Living among a people who distrust magic in any form, Kiara has a secret. She can sense magic in others and she’s maddeningly sure that she has the potential for magic, too. She just can’t quite reach it. Considering the way her people react to magic, that might be just as well.

 When her people are threatened, Kiara must make the choice whether to reveal her hidden talents in order to save them. And to trust the one man who can help her learn to use her magic–the same man who betrayed her trust once before.

By the way, this story takes place in one of the worlds you can find on my “Worlds” page. Look for the Dardani for some insight into the background of this story.

Read Full Post »

Audio Books, Part 2

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on November 28, 2012| 2 Comments »

Well, I promised to share a part of my first attempt to record my novelette, “Becoming Lioness”. Here it is:

Becoming Lioness, First Try

It’s a long way from perfect, yet. There are still a couple of places where you can hear me stumble–over my own writing. That can be fixed with some editing. (Another skill I’m going to have to master if I intend to do this.)

Also, the last third or so of the recording you can hear my voice starting to get hoarse again. Don’t know quite what I’m going to do about that. Frequent breaks, probably. Or recording in small bursts several times a day. That’ll be interesting. I’m not sure how many times a day I can make the house quiet enough for that.

It’s a good thing I’m starting with something relatively short, before I attempt a full novel.

Read Full Post »

Audio Books

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on November 25, 2012| 2 Comments »

One of the things I’ve been considering for a while now is audio books–specifically recording audio of some of my stories, building up to a full version of BLOOD WILL TELL and eventually BLOOD IS THICKER. It’s a great exercise for finding flaws in the writing, as well.

I have some recording equipment. I could do it. Mainly, I’ve been waiting for allergy season to end so I won’t sound nasal doing it. In fact, I was going to record a short section of the next story I plan to e-publish, “Becoming Lioness”, and include it with this blog. It’d be a good place to start. The story starts with action. It’s not too long (just over 10,000 words). And It’d give me a chance to use the technique of reading aloud–and listening to the recording–as a final edit on the story. Unfortunately, the experiment proved that I’m not in good voice today. I kept getting hoarse in the parts that shouldn’t be. When I do get a decent recording, I promise to post part of it. I’ll keep trying, as I want to do the read aloud anyway.

Audio books would be another way of getting my stories out to readers (or listeners). Even a way of connecting, since it would be my voice in the recordings. Unfortunately, if I can’t get through a 10,000-word novelette (and I didn’t even get through the first scene this morning) I don’t stand a chance of reading an entire novel ten times that long aloud. I’ll have to keep working on that.

 

Read Full Post »

Reviews

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on November 7, 2012| 2 Comments »

There is so much to say about reviews.

In my continuing quest to figure out this marketing thing, I’ve come to almost a full stop at reviews. They make a huge difference to people actually buying books these days, especially self-published e-books. This, I think, is the next nut I’m going to have to crack. I’m going to have to actually try to get some reviews from independent book bloggers, etc. Eek! Why is that almost as scary as the first time I submitted a query to an agent?

Reviews are so important that some authors have even resorted to paying review mills to put up good reviews of their works. Once again, I’ve lost the link, but this was a big deal on the web–at least among writers–a couple of weeks ago.

The reaction to that is another story I saw in the last few days that Amazon is now deleting reviews by authors of other authors work. That’s unfortunate on so many levels. There’s a long-standing tradition of authors writing blurbs for others’ novels in traditional publishing. Why should it be any different for e-books? 

I’m not even going to mention the trolls who seem to enjoy writing bad reviews just because they can. This new Amazon policy does nothing to address that. How about, instead, blocking people who only seem to write either disproportionately positive or negative reviews? I’m pretty sure their database could handle that.

But that’s only part of what I want to say about reviews today. Some author–and I’m sorry that I’ve lost the link–proposed an alternative to NaNoWrMo this month. Instead of trying to write a novel in a month, help fellow authors out by writing a review for a book every day in November. What a great idea!

I’m not taking part in this mainly for two reasons:

  1. Lately, it’s taking me a lot longer to finish books because I just don’t have the time to devote to reading. I love to read. But sometimes it comes down to reading or writing. I can’t always do both.
  2. Frankly, and unfortunately, I just haven’t loved most of the debut novels I’ve read this year. Not that the only novels worth reviewing are debut novels, but that’s where the reviews probably make the most difference. For the record, the big exception for me this year is SERAPHINA by Rachel Hartman. That one I loved. And I wrote a review saying that I loved it on Goodreads.  (As a matter of principle, I’m not going to tell you the ones I didn’t.)

If you want to help an author–and you really did like their work–write a review somewhere that will be seen.

Read Full Post »

More New Cover Art

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on October 14, 2012| 2 Comments »

As long as I’m on a roll, I updated the cover for “Heart of Oak”, too.

Is that image perfect or what? 

Now I have to change the trailer and get both of them uploaded.

I like the new cover art, but now I really have to get back to work on the revisions for BLOOD IS THICKER (sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL). It’s just that the rough draft for that is so rough, that I’m having trouble keeping my enthusiasm up.

I only have another ten days or so before the month is up and I’m going to drop it again to work on the revisions to THE BARD’S GIFT, which should go much more smoothly.

Read Full Post »

New Book Cover Revealed

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on October 10, 2012| 4 Comments »

Well, I got an inspiration and went an entirely different way with the new cover for BLOOD WILL TELL. I’m not sorry. Without further ado, here’s the new cover:

I love it!  I finally broke down and ditched my everything-for-free ideals. I bought the right to use the background image quite reasonably on www.Dreamstime.com. This image, with the sapphire blue night sky and the full moon just limning the clouds just screams magic to me. I had to do a little work to get a dragon image I could add to it. (For some reason, the original photo didn’t have a dragon flying across the moon.)

For the record, it’s very easy to change covers on Smashwords, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble PubIt. You do have to remember to resubmit through their approval processes, though. Goodreads is a whole other issue I won’t go into right now. Just don’t upload your book to Goodreads if you think you’re going to want to change the cover.

I’ve also updated the trailer to include the new cover. Now I have to go find all the places where I uploaded the old one and replace it.

So, having made a cover I’m much happier with, watch this space for a new cover for “Heart of Oak”, too. I’ve got my eye on an image that’s so perfect it’s uncanny. The current cover for “Heart of Oak” isn’t hateful, but it’s not great either. The main problem with it is that it doesn’t read at all well in gray scale–like, you know, a whole lot of black and white e-readers out there would show it.

 

Read Full Post »

Marketing and Book Covers

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on October 3, 2012| 2 Comments »

My main goal in e-publishing some of my stories has been to get a feel for marketing–on a shoestring (as in free and I-can-do-it-myself are essential). I’ve tried my hand at making book covers and trailers. The good new there is that at least I’m getting better at those. I’ve still got a long way to go on twitter and my facebook author page, but at least I’ve put a toe in the water there. And I know myself well enough to know I wouldn’t have without some skin in the game.

Almost everyone agrees that the cover is the most important thing in marketing a book. Well, my early covers leave something to be desired. The cover for “Heart of Oak” isn’t bad–until you try to view it in black and white. Then it’s just blobs. I’ll have to redo that one soon. The cover for BLOOD WILL TELL is . . . well, it’s busy. And the lavender background is somewhat questionable. I’m pretty happy with the cover for “The Music Box”.

So, task one is covers. I’ve got a pretty good idea what the cover for my next story “Becoming Lioness” will look like:

I also want to redo the cover for BLOOD WILL TELL. Here’s what I’m thinking about so far:

Much simpler. (The gold foot print on the right is meant to be a dragon track. Needs more work.)

Two other things I’m considering working on in the near future:

Voice recordings–I have the equipment to record myself reading part or all of these stories. Now that allergy season is fading, I need to get back on that. Worst case, I could use it as a marketing tool. Best case, maybe add audio books to my portfolio.  We’ll have to see. Maybe I’ll try that with “Becoming Lioness”. That’s one that would lend itself well, I think.

I’ve also heard the advice to keep putting out more work. “Becoming Lioness” will probably be e-published in November.

I’ve started work on revising the sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL, but that one is likely to take a while. Probably not until next year. Originally, I’d hoped to have it done by now, but the first draft of THE BARD’S GIFT took longer than I expected. That’s okay. Maybe that’ll be the one that helps me break into traditional publishing.

Read Full Post »

Learning Process

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on July 22, 2012| Leave a Comment »

A discussion on one of my onling writers’ groups this week prompted me to think about this.

Sometimes, if you stack up all the rejections–and you will get rejections in this buisiness, even the pros do–it’s easy to think that it signifies failure.

Maybe I’m a cockeyed optimist, but I prefer to think of it as steps along the learning process. There’s a lot to learn and not just about the craft of writing well and telling a great story. That’s a great start, but then you’ve got to brace yourself and send your work out into the world. That means learning to write query letters and synopses–a whole other kind of writng craft. It may mean learning how to e-publish some of your work. It means learning how to market your stories. No matter how far you go, there will always be more to learn. That’s actually a good thing. This will never get boring.

So, yes, if i just look at the rejections, I might get depressed. I prefer to look at it another way. From each project that has fallen short of my hopes, I’ve learned something. And each project takes me a little closer to my goal. If I just keep on doing what I’m doing and learning with each step along the way, I will get there eventually.

My motto has always been, “Never give up. Never surrender.”

Apart from improving my craft, things that I’ve learned so far on this journey:

  1. Don’t send out a story too soon. This is a big one for me and I’ve sabotaged myself more than once this way. The old saying is true for stories as well as people: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. I just get so excited about my stories that I want to share them. I’ve instituted a new rule. After I finish the “final” revision, I allow a story to sit for about six months before I send it anywhere. At least, that’s what I’m trying to do.
  2. This applies to query letters, too. When I think it’s perfect, it’s probably about three months away from good enough. That means I’m going to have to start working on them earlier.
  3. Some stories may just not fit the mold of traditional publication, by the nature of the story or its length. But we’re very fortunate to live in a time in which we have the option of e-publication for those stories.

There are plenty of things I still have to work on. Marketing is a big one. I’ve done a little more work on book trailers. Here’s the trailer for BLOOD WILL TELL. The audio is not quite perfect yet.

Never stop learning.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »