Salute to Goodreads

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Goodreads: Book reviews, recommendations, and discussion

One of the most wonderful sites I’ve ever found that is dedicated to readers is Goodreads.com.

The members of Goodreads are passionate about books and communicating with one another their preferences. You only have to read the reviews of a new book to realize how committed the members are to their shared passion—all things books!

The site allows inter-communications via email, members to follow others’ recommendations, and be-friend one another. Members have personal pages, and authors can build their own pages, linking their books, posting on an internal blog, and adding a review widget to their web site to name a few items.

I was able to start a dialog with many of the reviewers who showed an interest in character-driven, space-opera stories. This led to a priming-of-the-pump, so to speak, of my own novel before it was published on Amazon and has set the model for my future efforts.

To the members of Goodreads, I doff my hat. They are a superb bunch of people who care for the written word and the stories of authors.

 

“Libre”, Cover Art

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Alisha of Damon Za

Alisha of Damon Za

Alisha Of Damon Za has done it again!

Last year, I found the Damon Za web site that featured book covers at very reasonable prices. You only have to see their home page banner to see the quality of their work.

I was paired with Alisha, who created the cover for The Silver Ships. We did go back and forth for almost a month on that first cover. I created a rough design of the silver ship for her, which she transformed into the present image.

And, here’s the good part. I went back to Damon Za for the second cover (Libre, A Silver Ships Novel ) and requested Alisha for the work. After completing my order, I emailed Alisha my ideas for the cover based on a test cover she created for The Silver Ships. She nailed it the first time.

Her cover was exactly what I had in mind. Okay, so maybe my mental image was a little fuzzier than hers and maybe not as eye-catching, but you get the idea. Great job, Alisha!

“The Silver Ships” is Published!

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Published on Amazon!

Published on Amazon!

The Silver Ships was published on Amazon on  February 7th and is available in both Kindle and softcover versions. If you have Amazon Prime, the Kindle version is available for free download!

It took fifteen months from the time I sat down with my 100+ scraps of paper—character descriptions, technology and world concepts, chapter ideas, and smatterings of dialog—to write the story and work the review processes with my editor, Angela Polidoro.

At the heart of the story, I wanted to express my view that the individual counts, that an individual can make a difference. It’s a concept applied in my science-fiction stories, and it’s applied by people in the real world today!

e-Book Conversions

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 “Don’t Try This At Home”

…or so the warning goes. It applies equally well to the conversion of your finished book in Word or what-have-you into e-Book files of Mobi (Kindle) and ePub.

As a former IT professional, I intended to use a conversion program to create my e-book files until numerous Internet complaints about the software programs changed my mind. Instead, I sought professionals to do the job, and it was a good decision.

I’ve had the most satisfying experience working with Jason and Marina of Polgarus Studio. They’ve done a wonderful job of working through the conversion issues and helping me understand the differences in the e-book applications and formats. They’ve been a pleasure to work with while converting my novel, The Silver Ships. I’ll be using them for my next novel…and the next one.”

Crowd Funding

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Well, I can say that the crowd funding process for my series, The Silver Ships, was a learning experience. For me, it was not very successful, only about 11% of the target was collected. These are the points I might share:

  • Don’t use crowd funding for writing unless you have an established history as a published author.  Crowd funding appears to work best for products, inventions, software, etc.
  • If you have a large established social network, this may make crowd funding for a fiction or non-fiction novel possible to a limited extent.
  • If you do decide to launch a campaign, you will receive dozens of offers to promote your campaign. The three groups that I invested in were absolutely worthless.

Fiction Stories: Human Puzzles

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The other day, I was wondering why I was enjoying writing so much, especially since I was trying to solve a plot dilemma. Then it hit me. The story: plot turns and twists, characters and their relationships, and the unique and strange worlds is the ultimate puzzle.

I’ve always enjoyed puzzles. However, I was often unsatisfied after spending hours solving a complex one. Despite the effort, I felt nothing was achieved. It was just a mental exercise.

Creating a fiction novel, hopefully I will enjoy reading, seems to be the ultimate puzzle exercise. It’s a “human puzzle.” It’s wonderfully  complex and contains elements that can be combined in infinite variety.

The challenge is to weave the elements together in such a way as to create an enjoyable experience for the reader as the puzzle is unraveled page by page before their eyes!

ISBNs for Books

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Bowker Identifier Services

Every book requires an International Standard Book Number (ISBN). In the U.S., the ISBNs are purchased from Bowker Identifier Services. As the U.S. ISBN Agency, Bowker is the ONLY official source of ISBNs in the United States.

What shoudl be noted for all first-time self-publishers is that every version of your book: eBook, softcover, and hardcover needs its own ISBN. Furthermore, if you update the book, essentially creating a new version of the book, it requires a new ISBN.  Conveniently, you can purchase groups of ISBNs from Bowker.

M Louisa Locke’s Marketing Strategy

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I ran across M. Louisa Locke’s marketing tips on a website and thought they showed an innovative approach. There’s hundreds of ways to market your book, but the key is for you to develop the ones that work for you. As Kawasaki and Welch detailed in their book APE, you must be willing to be an Author, a Publisher, and an Entrepreneur to be successful.

M. Louisa Locke’s marketing tips for her third book, Bloody Lessons.

  1. I used Twitter, my Facebook author page, and my blog to announce the availability of my latest book, Bloody Lessons.
  2. I put the print copy of the book up as a giveaway on Goodreads.
  3. I sent out an email to all the fans who contacted me over the past three years and told them the book was now available and asked them to sign up for my newsletter.
  4. I also contacted professional review bloggers who had reviewed my previous books and offered to send them copies. I ended up with solid, professional reviews and have gotten many more positive customer reviews on Amazon.com, which I know will continue to help sell the book.
  5. On the day of the launch, I made the first book in the series, Maids of Misfortune, free for three days via KDP Select and discounted the sequel, Uneasy Spirits, to 99 cents for a week. By combining these promotions, I was able to point out that a reader could get all three eBooks in the series for under $5, knowing that this would attract readers who had not yet heard of the series.
  6. In the first two weeks of publication, I held a contest on my Facebook author page where I gave away $5 Amazon gift certificates to the first people who could answer trivia questions about the new book. I also participated in a virtual book tour that took me to seven book blogger sites. As a result of all these marketing strategies, Bloody Lessons has continuously shown up on the bestseller lists in multiple categories.

CreateSpace vs. Lightening Source

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Originally, I thought I had a solid choice between Amazon-CreateSpace and Lightening Source. But, I’ve come to realize that for first-time, self-publishers, there really isn’t a choice. While Lightening Source, via Ingram Spark, represents an opportunity to publish on an international scale, across e-books and paper copies, the predominate  opinion in the industry is that the retail stores and major outlets will not purchase an indie paperback. They want to contract with a company, a traditional publisher. Amazon’s pricing model is also at odds with traditional publishing prices, which creates friction between the two approaches to the industry. (Follow the Hachette-Amazon court suit.)

So, as a self-publisher, trying to get noticed, your best bet is to stay with the “big dog,” Amazon. You can add your paperback versions through Amazon’s print-on-demand (POD) company, CreateSpace.

I believe that your pathway should be to start with Amazon and get noticed. Once your marketing has built your customer base sufficiently, you might receive offers from a publishing house, who can distribute your book through the major retailers. It will take time—marketing and patience.