It’s my birthday! My wish for this year is to give back to the writing community here on WordPress and all over social media for all the support you’ve given me over the past year.
To celebrate, I’d like to propose that if you’re a self-published, independent author, drop a link (Amazon only, please) and a sentence or two about one of your novels in the comments here, especially if it’s on sale today.
And if you’re a reader and you love to escape into the magical world of books, consider buying indie! Find the links (mine included) in the comments.
And don’t forget to please share this post!
Thank you, from the bottom of my little writer’s heart. ❤
It was a tough race to the finish. I was behind by 13K words coming out of the weekend, but I was fiercely determined to finish my novel by November 30th. I had a week to write 21,461 words.
So I devised a method. In a ten-minute sprint I can write 300 words. If I could just do two of those an hour for the seven hours Alex was at school, getting to 50K by the end of the month would be a piece of cake.
And guess who’s going to the store to buy cake? (And all the groceries I’ve been running out of all week.) ME!!
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This Black Friday, as traditional publishers are throwing millions of dollars into advertising, a lot of us indie authors are finding ourselves swept under the proverbial rug.
So to give us all a boost, I’d like to propose that if you’re a self-published, independent author, drop a link (Amazon only, please) and a sentence or two about one of your novels in the comments here, especially if it’s on sale today.
And if you’re a reader and you love to escape into the magical world of books, consider buying indie! Find the links (mine included) in the comments.
And don’t forget to please share this post!
Thank you, from the bottom of my little writer’s heart. ❤
At the risk of bringing the ire of ‘Zon upon myself, I’d like to enlighten you on how much better the Kobo experience is, no matter where you are in the world.
Yes, I might be a tad biased since Kobo is a Canadian company, but having dealt with them longer than I’ve been publishing books, I can honestly say I’ve always had a great relationship with them, any time I’ve needed to contact them.
They’re an organization of human beings who care about what they do. This is their mission statement, copied from their career page:
Our Mission
We are a company built by booklovers for booklovers. We believe people should be able to read anywhere in the world, on any device, and in any language.
With a growing catalogue of millions of titles in 97 languages, Kobo is a truly global eReading service for booklovers of all kinds, in every part of the world.
Things you might not know about Rakuten Kobo:
You can buy Kobo e-readers and e-books in Walmart
Their five million titles are available in 190 countries
They give points when you buy, which you can accumulate to get free books
Membership is free
Their reading app is free, so you can read on any device
Their interface is very simple, making it easy to get a book at the click of a button
Rakuten owns Overdrive, so most books that are available on Kobo can be requested from your local library
They’re good to their authors!!
I could go on and on about what’s wrong with Amazon right now, but I won’t. What I will tell you is that more and more I’m seeing authors go wide (removing their titles from KDP Select, which demands exclusivity to Amazon), and moving to Kobo, among other e-book retailers.
I’m not being paid to post this article–I’m writing it because I truly believe in Kobo and what they do.
If you love reading, and you enjoy being able to grab your favorite author’s novels at the click of a button, why not sign up with Kobo?
ON FIRE is a collection of short stories, published by Transmundane Press, all with the theme of fire; how it warms us, frightens us, and sometimes consumes all we care about. My own story within the anthology, entitled The Flame of Lick’s Island, is a spooky tale of a couple who inherit a house on a secluded island.
Today is the final day to get the Kindle edition of ON FIRE at the special new release price of 99¢. From December 4th to the 5th you can buy it for $2.99, on the 6th and 7th it goes on sale for $4.99, and on the 8th of December it will go up to the regular price of $9.99.
So get it today! And enjoy my story along with those of many other talented authors. Just click on the photo to go to the Amazon.com page.
I had the distinct pleasure of collaborating with fantasy romance author D. Lieber on a special project in which our main characters met and had a chat!
A little about D.:
D. writes stories she wants to read. Her love of the worlds of fiction led her to earn a Bachelor’s in English from Wright State University.
When she isn’t reading or writing, she’s probably hiking, crafting, watching anime, Korean television, Bollywood, or old movies. She may also be getting her geek on while planning her next steampunk cosplay with friends.
She lives in Wisconsin with her husband (John), retired guide dog (Samwise), and cat (Yin).
Her book, The Exiled Otherkin, is set to be released on November 2nd.
Our scene between Ember, the protagonist of The Exiled Otherkin, and Stephen, the main character of The Magician’s Curse, takes place quite by accident. Enjoy!
Stephen and Ember Meet
SETTING: In the catacombs of Rome, a Fae refugee marketplace thrives. Ember has just purchased a replacement boot dagger. As she is leaving the stall, she almost collides with Stephen.
EMBER: (pulls her hat lower) Excuse me.
STEPHEN: My fault entirely. I’m a bit lost.
EMBER: (peeking up at him) It’s my first time here as well, so I doubt I will be of any help.
STEPHEN: If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t (clears throat) look quite as out of place here as I feel.
EMBER: Is he human? (squinting slightly) How did you get here?
STEPHEN: (smiles) I’m actually not quite sure. I’m looking for a set of knives. I mentioned it to someone in a bar, and the next thing I knew I was climbing down a ladder. The gentleman disappeared after that.
EMBER: (excited over her new purchase) I just bought an excellent dagger from that stall (points). Do you want to see it?
STEPHEN: (nods) How kind of you.
EMBER: (pulls her dagger from her boot sheath) Check it out. You see these two jewels? If you slide this one (slides jewel), and then press this one … (points dagger at a wooden sign above a tavern, then presses the second jewel. The dagger blade shoots out of the hilt and into the sign. Grins at Stephen.)
STEPHEN: (laughs) That’s a little more dangerous than I have a need for. I’m looking for something I can juggle, not kill my audience with. I’m a magician on stage. (looks up at the blade in the sign) Would you like me to get that for you?
Have a blog? Want to win? All you have to do is sign up to share the cover reveal of the new anthology by Transmundane Press!
ON FIRE is the newest upcoming release from the same publisher who featured my story, Alice on the Analyst’s Couch, in the anthology called, AFTER THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER. I’m pleased to announce that I have a short story coming out in the new anthology also.
The sign up form to help with the cover reveal for the new book is here: CLICK! The reveal date is set for October 31st, and I can assure you, the cover for the ON FIRE anthology is awesome.
Enter for your chance to win the $25 Amazon gift card now!
There’s a discussion going on in one of my Facebook groups and I’m having a very hard time staying out of it. So lucky you, you get to hear the side that’s going on in my head.
The complaint was a misused word. The sentence they are “Ugh!”ing over included the phrase, “something worst.” The original complainer called it a grammatical error. I pointed out it could have been a typo, and asked if it was one of many. She said it was the only one she’d found, so I said it was understandable: even a spellchecker wouldn’t have picked it up, to which she replied, “True probably self published.” Note the total lack of grammatical issues with her reply. (Sorry, I get sarcastic when I’m pissed off.) What I wanted to say was that even had it been edited and proofread professionally by a traditional publisher’s editing department, they hire humans. And humans are fallible.
Oh, but this isn’t the worst of it all. Someone in the group actually had the gall to say that with cheap, self-published books, you get what you pay for. First let me say that we self-published authors, no matter how much effort we put into a book, have to stay competitive. That means charging less than the big publishers do, because we don’t have the fan base who will buy anything as long as it has our name on it. That means, yes, undervaluing our work much of the time. But even so.
Name one profession other than writing where you can pay the person producing the work under five dollars for five thousand hours of work. Think about it. How long does it take you to read a three hundred page book? Do you think the writer wrote and edited it faster than you read it? Did you pay minimum wage for the number of hours it took you to read it? I don’t care who you’re reading, you’re getting much more than you paid for, and chances are if it’s a self-published author, you’re getting a lot more of their blood, sweat, and tears than you are of an author with a team of editors and marketers behind them.
C’mon, friends and fellow Bloglanders! I’m only ten votes away from third place in the Cover Wars competition for the week’s best book cover. I can do this, but I still need your help! The poll closes tomorrow night, which means you can still vote twice if you haven’t in the last 24 hours.
Help me out! Go here: http://authorshout.com/cover-wars/ to vote for this beautiful cover by my lovely and talented cover artist, Belinda Borradaile.
And if you’d like to buy All Good Stories, just click on the cover here or at the voting site. It’s sure to make a fun holiday read. All the reviews say so!
I want to express my deepest gratitude to all who have bought and shared my novelette, All Good Stories. I’m truly grateful for this WordPress community, and I’m humbled by the outpouring of love and caring I’ve found here, from friends and strangers alike. Since I posted my plea for help, I’ve sold 79 copies and gone from #1,600,000 on the Kindle Paid Best Seller List to #14,376, which is awesome. More importantly than that, I’ve doubled the number of reviews on Amazon.com to six. Only 19 to go to reach that magic number where Amazon begins to promote my book!
I’m still hoping to reach $100 in royalties, which means 350 sales; Amazon only pays me 35 cents on a 99 cent book. It seems an insurmountable goal, but maybe it’s not. If you haven’t shared this post yet, please do so. Any social media will do. And if you have read the book, please take the time to write a review. Just five minutes of your time is invaluable to me. It only needs to be a sentence.
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