How to Use Keywords and Tags on Amazon

I'm linking to a post that those of you who are indies/self pubbers - like me - might consider a simple way to try to get more people to find your books on Amazon.

The author of the post self pubs historical fiction, so although the categories, keywords, and tags she picks might not be the same as what you write, you'll get the gist of it. And she gives out more help in the comments.

Demon Daughter Now Available!

I've uploaded the 3rd (and last) in the series today, and it's available on Smashwords:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/117757

ETA: And it's available on Amazon now too:

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Daughter-Haven-Jersey-ebook/dp/B006QQ0CZA/ref=sr_1_6?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1325093065&sr=1-6
Here's the blurb (which sucks, but the great thing is, I can change it if I want):

Trust and fear and demons don’t mix.


Tessa Palmisano loves her husband, Bert Gaston, a djinn. But she can’t trust him with her secret: He might not be the father of her baby, and the baby might be more than he or she appears to be.

Tessa confronts Jane, her landlady’s daughter, in Hades, Jane’s home turf, as Tessa guessed years ago Jane was a real demon. Tessa only has to massage the information out of Jane and offer it telepathically to a magical Elder (her landlady). Yeah, right. But Tessa is determined to end this here, to destroy this demonic daughter, and get the hell out of Hell.

Hope everyone had a nice Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, and whatever else is celebrated at this time of year. :-)

Have a happy and SAFE New Year!

Demon Daughter - The Last in My Fantasy Novella Series

So the editing is almost done; I'll be doing most of that today.

Already have the cover in place (see below), and I'll be uploading no later than Saturday morning. Yes, that's Christmas Eve, and my family has traditionally held the Christmas get together on that day; it goes back to the late 50s and early 60s, when my mother and aunts started having babies: How were they supposed to go see people on the other side of the family.

That's why we have it on Christmas Eve.

However, we won't be leaving until noon or so, which will give me plenty of time the day before and the day of, if need be. I'm shooting for no later than Friday night, because I know it takes Amazon 24 hours to do their thing.

And now to the blurb, which may or may not get changed (what I like about self pubbing - if something isn't working, I can change it):

Trust and fear and demons don’t mix well—just ask Tessa Palmisano. She loves her husband, Bert Gaston, a djinn, with all her heart. But she can’t yet trust him with her secret: That Bert might not be the father of her baby, and that the baby might be more than he or she appears to be...


Her landlady’s daughter, Jane, has been a bug in Tessa’s ass ever since Tessa has lived in the apartment house. She’s convinced that Jane is a real demon. With Bert and his brother acting as back up, Tessa confronts Jane in Hades, her home turf. All she has to do is massage the information out of Jane and mentally send it back to the landlady (a magical Elder). Yeah, right. But Tessa is determined to end this here, to destroy this demonic daughter, and get the hell out of Hell.

Even as I was getting ready to put that up, I tweaked it some more. I also have other versions, including a really short one (for Smashwords, where they don't give you a hell of a lot of room to work with).
 
I'll tell you, though, this was a tough one to get through, even though I had a general idea of the beginning and ending; the middle is what got me :-). But I let it rip, and came up with some things that helped clear up something that was bugging me about the storyline.
 
It's also been tough because I've had some personal things to get through, that are resolved - for the moment. I'll see how that shakes out in the not-too-distant future.
 
So Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice and merry/happy whatever else is out there! Have fun and be safe these last two weeks of 2011!
 

Stuff You Can Get For Free - For $12?!

http://robinhobb.com/2011/11/caveat-emptor-hephaestus-books/

I read Dean Wesley Smith's blog on a regular basis (you should too; it's full of lots of good stuff :-)), and he alerted his readers to the above blog post by Robin Hobb (she of the Farseer series and other books).

Apparently, Hephaestus Books is repackaging wiki articles (public domain) on Robin's and other writers' books - but they aren't the books themselves. The title, though, makes it sound as if the buyer is getting the books.

At only 42 pages, buyers, um, are not. Again, these are articles about Robin's (and others') books.

Can you imagine paying $12 for 42 pages of articles? Maybe a buck or two, at the most. Sheesh, most indie novels are in the $4.99-$6.99 range.

And all these folks offer are a bunch of articles for an exhorbitant price.

Nice. Not.

Free Tools to Work With

Just thought I'd do a really quick post, so I can get back to my temp job and do some editing on my 2nd novella/short novel (I do have to take breaks from the temp job. :-))

I don't know where I found the link for this, but this post gives indies/self pubbers 26 free tools to work with...or not work with, as you see fit.

I decided to give the 1st Chapter thing a try. Will it bring me some readers? Who the hell knows? But it's free, and the site is supposed to get a lot of hits, so we'll see. (Hey, that rhymed! A gold star for me! :-))

Now, back to summarizing and editing and slinging tchachkis together for an event later in the week...

Because Writing and Reading Genre is Bad For You

If you haven't read it as yet, Eric Felton wrote a really silly article in The Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304584004576417602085440540.html?KEYWORDS=ebooks

If you haven't read it as yet, go ahead, I can wait. ;-)  ::taps toes::

Okay, the wait is over.

I don't know about you, but this pissed me off. Whether you like literary/genre/whatever, why is there this snobbery from those who enjoy literary novels? Do they get their jollies that way? Does it make them feel better, more superior (my guess is: all of the above).

People are going to like what they like, depending on how they were brought up and a slew of other things. You like literary novels. So? I like fantasy. So? He likes gay erotica. So? Who cares?

Readers

Do readers really need to go to the Big 6 (or whatever they are now) for their jaundiced selections as to what is printable? I mean, they buy what they like and know will (probably) sell. That's why so much urban fantasy, IMHO, looks so similar. Similar book covers, similiar stories. I know, I know; it's part of that particular subgenre. But do all of the covers have to show a dark-haired chick in tight leather? (Not that there's anything wrong with that. ;-)) It would be nice for something in that subgenre to be a little different - how about a blonde-haired chick in jeans or something, lol?

Writers

And do writers really need the gatekeepers to tell them what to write? There are small niches out there that I'm sure haven't even been touched by self pubbers. NY would tell you that it's not worth their money for them to cater to such small niches; fair enough. They'd probably lose a bundle. So what's wrong with self pubbers exploiting such a niche? Why be so condescending?

I think it's fantastic that self pubbers are writing in such niches - and finding readers.

Hey, Eric, dude: How about writing that elf detective novel? Sounds like a self pub winner to me - despite what you might think.

Lighten up, and have a Weyerbacher Quad on me! :-) (Google it, and you'll see what a potent brew it really is!)

It's ALIVE!

I always wanted to say that, lol. :-)

My ebook is now live on both Amazon and Smashwords. It was easy to upload to Amazon; since I use Open Office on my laptop, I just saved the document as an HTML doc, and had no problems.

It's so exciting to see something up on Amazon and on Smashwords.

Smashwords Can Be a PITA

If the upload on Amazon was easy beyond belief, Smashwords wasn't quite that way. It wasn't torture (altho being 1,350 in the queue can try your patience, of which I don't have much). Fortunately, I kept it in perspective and didn't pull my hair out. (I still have to upload a pic of moi onto Author Central on Amazon; how would I look bald, I asks ya? ;-))

Everything was going fine on SW, until I checked it the next day, only to find out the document didn't pass EPUB muster. That's the format not only for Nook but a bunch of smart phones/whatever. (I don't have an infinite supply of moolah coming in for a smart phone or tablet - or both.)

Anyway, SW suggested a site to get the poop on what was wrong with the document, and of course it returned a bunch of techno gobbledygook that made no sense. So I did the Nuclear Method, copying everything in the document to Notepad, which stripped out all the formatting. I also took note that SW now doesn't require you to have the cover image in the document, so I took that out. (Like Amazon, they have a separate upload just for the cover.)

This is when I noticed I made a slight boo-boo in the story; nothing major, but it irked me, so I redid the Kindle doc, uploaded the revised doc, and it's (re)publishing today.

I had the stripped doc and the original SW doc both open, so I could redo all the formatting (italicized words, chapter headings, and paragraphs), and tweaked the bio.

I reuploaded the doc yesterday, checked this morning: It worked! But SW is out of free ISBNs, so I won't be able to get into the Premium Catalog until tomorrow (when a new supply is due in).

You'll see that I already have the Kindle title up in the right-hand column; I'll be putting up the SW link sometime later today.

Onward and forward! :-) Good luck to everyone, and may you all sell a ton of your books!

It's Not Alive - Yet

Okay, so I did the Kindle and Smashwords thing today.

Here's the cover:

Once it goes live, I'll put up the all the pertinent stuff, so all you nice people can buy oodles and oodles of copies. :-) (You are, aren't you?)

Just kidding. Sort of. Heh.

As I write this, the Kindle version is in review, while I'm #512 in the Smashwords queue. So much for my idea that people in the U.S. wouldn't be bothering with this during 4th of July weekend.

Oh well.

Waiting and waiting...

Coming Soon!

The writing and editing is all done. And the cover would probably have been done today if I had remembered to bring my laptop with me.

I can be such a doofus, lol.

So it will have to wait until tonight, after dinner, for me to upload my debut, Changing Faces, which will be available on Amazon and Smashwords (which will also take care of EPUB, Sony, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera). There's some last minute formatting to be done, which is actually just setting up for Kindle. I'm hoping everything goes smoothly with the upload (crossing fingers, because you never know how things in the electronic world are going to go).

I'll have an excerpt up a little later today. Just have to figure out what excerpt - and it won't be a long one, I promise. :-)

But I'm jacked to finally be at this point! (Wanted to make sure I used the correct punctuation, because I don't want any Elaine Benes' out there telling me I should've used an exclamation point rather than a period ;-))  BTW, this will be a series of short novels/novellas, about 25,000-30,000 words each, give or take. I could've stretched it out to novel length, but I don't want to add on for the sake of adding on; why give people extra stuff the story doesn't need?

I've also got my FB author page, altho I haven't done anything with it as yet (hmm...maybe that's something I can do next, putting up an excerpt or two, and then the cover).

Another Idea to Keep Indie Bookstores in Business

I'll be honest in saying that I haven't been to an independent bookstore in ages.  The closest one is about 20 minutes away; not far, but then the car is getting old (just had a crap-load of fixes done to it), and I really don't want to wear it out.  I drive far enough to and from Ye Olde Temp Job as it is.

But that store is in a very nice area, where there's a river and an old mill; very picturesque.  (If I told you the name of the town or of the mill - it's pretty well known - I'd have to kill you. ;-))

So what brought all this up?  This particular post about what one indie bookstore is doing to stay in business.  True, Cambridge, Massachusetts, isn't as small as the little town I live in (less than 1,000 people), but the idea of printing out ebooks is intriguing.  And, yes, they do print ebooks of local authors, which is always cool. :-)  They're using the Xerox Expresso Machine to print them out

Readers Are Morons

Have you seen this post at Rachelle Gardner's blog?  (She's an agent.)

The gist of it, as far as I'm concerned, is that readers are morons.  Why?  Because unless your book is vetted by the big NY publishers, you won't know what to read!  ::gasp!::  You won't know where to find the books you need to read!  ::double gasp!!::

Please.

Is this how agents feel about us, the lowly public?  Cast aside the whole writers thing; think like a reader.  Remember that first time you read through a book and understood the story?  Remember when your mother/father/relative encouraged you to read, read, read?

So in Ms. Gardner's insular (ooo, a gold star word!) world, readers are idiots who can't find their way around books without a leash of some sort.  And she thinks that indies/self pubbers aren't going to be serving readers?  In what way?  Self pubbers are eliminating the middlemen (agents) and serving up their stories directly to readers; readers will then decide whether a writer and his/her stories are worth their time, by buying or turning a blind eye to their stuff.

The writers who continually produce crap will fade from the scene.

The NY publishing world will keep recommending "safe" books to their bosses, while self pubbers and the small independents out there will keep putting out "unsafe" books: those that NY deems unworthy of publication.  Self pubbers and the small independents will do something that NY hasn't done in a while.

They'll give the readers what they want.

Power to the people! :-)

Gift Cards as Books

I love getting gifts; I order them for myself all the time. :-)  Anyway, if you're into the indie/self pub thing, and you want to get more people to read your book for relatively cheap, why not try this:

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=4154

You might have to search around for the right print company (even check printers in your area; you never know), but if you can do some promo for little money, it might be worth it.

To summarize the above article, you can put a PDF copy of your cover (color) and a PDF copy of the back of the book (b&w) on the card, and have your first book for free on Smashwords (use those coupon codes Smashwords provides), leave the redeem period open, and (hopefully) a lot people will start to download that book...and then look for your other books.

Yeah, I LOVE getting gifts.  Sounds like a cool idea. :-)

A Step-by-Step Guide to Formatting Ebooks

Just Write! with Anne Marie Novark Romance Author: How to Format Ebooks

The above is a post is one that will help simplify formatting your ebooks. This is especially true if you're afraid of computers or just aren't convinced you're that good with Word, etc.

Not me.  I am a computer goddess.  (I'm also quite modest. ;-))

Although Guido Henkel has a similar guide for the same thing, it's spread out over several posts; he should probably put up an ebook just on that, because I'd probably buy it just to have it all in one spot.  (Still is worth a look-see, though.)  This is succinct, and it really does step you through what to do.  Just be wary that she uses a Mac, so her menus, etc., will be different.

Ms. Novark says it took her a while the first time through, but it's gotten easier each time she uploads.

So don't be afraid to try and do it yourself.

Finally...

Slowly I turn, inch by inch...

Oh, sorry, that's an old comedy routine (probably made most famous by The Three Stooges).

Anyway, I finally set up a separate checking account for my own publishing company (lol), March Winds Publishing.  It's with a local bank.  The lady at the bank was very polite and helpful; it's truly free checking.  No minimum that you have to keep in the bank or you get fees - nothing like that.  And I get a debit card with it, too; for me, that's necessary, in that I need to upgrade my laptop very soon.  (I'd like to get it before the Amazon Prime trial runs out.)

Now I've just got to get out of editing the first book, which I'm hoping is the end of this month.  I've already got the idea for the cover, yadda, yadda, yadda.  So many things to think about, but it's fun despite all the headaches. :-)

I'm shooting for my late father's birthday (June 1).  We'll see.

Some Thoughts on Writing

Well, I finally did it.

I decided to register a trade name (fictitious name) with the county I live in.  I paid US$52 to register, was in and out of the County Clerk's office in about five minutes.

Easy.

The name I chose is a slight twist on my maiden name (if I told you what it is, I'd have to kill you ;-)).

March Winds Publishing.

I also have an idea for a logo.

I might make a little.  I might make a lot.  I might not make a damn thing.  All of that is okay; I've chosen my path after taking into account a lot of things, namely my age (I'm pushing 50, even though I don't look it, so says my hubby and others :-)), my health (I had a brain aneurysm three years ago; my left kidney isn't in the greatest shape), and I'm a personal control freak.  I love learning new things, always have, always will.

Again, as I said in previous post, I have nothing against people going via the legacy/traditional route.  Or the e-publisher only route.  As long as people know what's involved and can ask themselves honestly what the best route is for them, then what's wrong with that?

Write to Publish: Why does it have to be one way or the other?

Write to Publish: Why does it have to be one way or the other?

I couldn't agree more.

Blurb For Changing Faces

Using Absolute Write's query help in the Share Your Work section as a guide, I've come up with a blurb that I think encapsulates the paranormal suspense I'm working on.

If anyone wants to comment as to whether it's good, so-so, or it sucks, feel free to do so.

Indie Pubbing Can Get You a Trad Deal - If You Want It

I'm not going to send it's a trend - or at least, not a huge trend - but there have been a number of indie authors who've gotten noticed by trad publishers.

And not just noticed, but received some nice deals.

My Writing and the Indie Scene (such as it is)

This post got me thinking about a lot of things, mostly writing related.

Of course, I've been thinking about my writing, which, BTW, now includes another WIP, a paranormal suspense, that's actually based on a short story I tried to submit mucho years ago.  It was rejected by a few different ezines and print zines, and I let it slip by the wayside.

Author Solutions Adds Another Company to Its Suite

Hunh? So who/what is Author Solutions? (For the really big scoop, go to the Writer Beware post here.)

What the Heck is Author Solutions?

Author Solutions owns a suite or stable of self-publishing venues: iUniverse, Xlibris, AuthorHouse, and, its most recent acquisition, Trafford.
More...

Complaints On the Way--Or Not?

According to the Writer Beware post, iUniverse and Xlibris had minimal complaints until being acquired. Is Trafford headed for the same level of complaints as AuthorHouse has had?

As Victoria noted when Xlibris was bought out, this lessens the self publishing field, and that's not a good thing. Competition is good for business because it helps to keep prices down, or at least at a reasonable dollar amount. (You don't like the prices at one car detailing place, you go to another and another, etc.)

Only time will tell if Trafford will suffer the same fate.

And, of course, the writer will be the one suffering the brunt of this.

Oy vey.


Love and kisses,

~Nancy Beck