Category Archives: Book Release Info

Paperback and Progress

I feel like I have been playing catch-up lately, and it has been forever since I have done a general status update, so here is all the stuff that I have not shared since the holidays began!

Holidays

I spoke before about seeing family for the holidays, which was great. I also received some great gifts from everyone. One was a cool cover for my ReMarkable2 notepad that can support it in different positions. It makes me feel better knowing it has something to protect the screen when I’m not using it. I’m currently wearing a blanket/poncho thing my parents gave me. Big Cat enjoys it as well for his lap time. A third thing I’m excited about is my new minimalist wallet arriving in the mail this week. I purchased it with a gift card received to pick one I liked. 

After Christmas, I was cat-sitting for my parents during their visit with my brother and family in Florida. That mission was complicated by the week of snow we had in the area. They live within walking distance, so I made the trip every day. Footing became a bit treacherous on the ice and more effort than usual tromping through the snow, but the cat was not without company. 

Going without trash service for three weeks during that period due to snow and ice became a bit more daunting. We don’t usually have too much trash, but a mix-up on recycling dates a month earlier meant we were already two weeks behind on that pick-up. Boxes were piling up in the kitchen with recyclables. When the bin emptied this week, we immediately filled it again. Hopefully, this catches us up for good this time. 

Business

You may have noticed some picture changes on the website already. If you did, you may already suspect I had some professional pictures taken, and you would be correct. I contacted a photographer to take a handful of “casual, professional headshots” for my author materials. A couple of the pictures are on the website, I changed my Facebook profile photo, and one is on the back cover of my paperback. 

This one is on another page, but Big Cat wanted to make an appearance here too!

That’s right! Hidden Memory is also out in paperback as of this week! I ran through a couple of author proofs to make minor formatting adjustments, and my first few author copies are on their way—probably still in the printing stage—now! If you signed up for my newsletter, you should have seen it in your inbox earlier today, and it includes a chance to enter to win a signed paperback! If you did not sign up in time for this giveaway, do not lose hope. There will be more in the future, so go to the home page and sign up now so you don’t miss out!

With the paperback complete, I’m focused on finishing up the current draft of Hidden Promise. I will pass polished chapters to my alpha readers and then revise Hidden Sanctuary in preparation for beta readers. On the business side, I’m learning about advertising on Amazon and hoping it does not cost me too much for the education!

I will end on a celebratory note this week. It has been just over a month since the book was released. I had a relatively successful launch, thanks primarily to word of mouth through my friends and family network to their networks. My advertising has resulted in eight additional sales. I have five reviews on Amazon, and I have two preorders for the next-in-series! Thank you all for your support!

Published Author

As of this past Tuesday, I am officially a published author. It has been a year since I decided my work was at a place I wanted to consider pursuing publication, and I started my website and blog back in February. There has been researching, revisions, and frustration along the way, but I achieved my goal of publishing before this year was out, and I did it in a way that did not compromise quality.

At midnight Tuesday morning, my book went out to all 21 people who had preordered it, and I officially had my first sales. On Tuesday, I posted all of the social media images I created last weekend for the launch, and I am up to 33 orders total. I am excited about this, as only about 15 are from close friends and family. That means between the additional orders and ARC readers, more than 20 others will find a source of entertainment in my work.

New author, new series, great support!

Out of all the social media platforms, Nextdoor.com came in as the surprise winner for introducing random people to my book. The neighbors on the site jumped in with congratulations, the ones who enjoy fantasy checked out the link, and many bought it. That level of local support is incredible, and I was overwhelmed by all the people reaching out. There are still many people in my various circles, including this one, asking about the paperback version. I will reach out again when that is finally available.

Still Work to be Done

I am actively working on the paperback formatting, and on Thursday, I had some professional photos taken so I could use something other than a Facebook picture on the back cover. The photoshoot also marked the end of my publication buzz. For a good 36 hours, I was riding a wave of giddiness, grinning, and dancing around the house. Then it crashed.

You know it will probably not happen, but a part of you still dreams about magic, instant success. When it does not work out that way, the part of you that dreamed is disappointed, and you have to rely on your logical side to continue celebrating the small wins—did I mention 33 orders?—and remind yourself that you planned for this and know what to do.

I have an Amazon-sponsored product ad running. It is generic, so I’m trying to use it to see what keywords I might target or avoid targeting. So far, I have had a 0% conversion of clicks to sales, which does not help with any decision-making as far a keyword goes. However, that 0% is on a total of only six clicks, so I will not worry just yet. I also know that I will likely have a greater chance of conversions once the second book is out. Many people are reluctant to start a series this early into its release schedule.

So, I will keep writing and putting in the work. I will adjust advertising as insights emerge. I will continue to post about my books and my cats on social media.

You can find the book at this link, and it does have the “look inside” feature now that it is no longer in preorder. I’m targeting having the paperback available within a couple of months, so I plan to include a signed paperback giveaway raffle in my January newsletter. If you are interested in entering and have not already signed up, you can do so below or from my home page.

Thank you for all of your support, and here’s to many more posts and looking forward to the release of book number two!

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T-Minus 10 Days!

Hidden Memory Status Update!

As of today, December 4th, there are less than ten days until the official release of my first book. Also on today’s agenda is sending out a reminder to my ARC readers that they should be downloading their copy so they read it in time to get a review posted in that first week of release (hopefully).

For the last week, I have been looking into creating some social media images to post in advance and on the day of release. Right now, I am playing around with Canva’s free version. You can see some of the preliminary results as the cover image for this post as well as here:

Posted on Instagram with hashtags. One like from a random person? I call that a win!

I’m enjoying the program so far. It is easy to use and does a great job of providing a color palette that coordinates with any images I upload rather than making minor adjustments constantly until it is what I think looks good enough.

Paperback Version?

Yes, I am now also looking at the paperback version process, and it is just as complicated as I imagined it would be. As I don’t think I’m going wide distribution at this stage, I’m probably going to use the KDP cover creator to use my ebook cover and use a solid color for the spine and back. I might get fancy with a future release, but I have already spent a fair bit of money on this whole endeavor.

The other piece I waffled on was trim size. I usually bought mass-market paperbacks, so all of the books on my shelf were pretty small. If I went with that size, it would mean more pages and, therefore, more expensive to print while simultaneously appearing cheaper. Online guidelines are somewhat helpful, but this morning we went to the local bookstore (B&N) to see what fantasy authors are publishing trade paperbacks at these days for both trim size and price.

Based on my quick assessment, this is either 5”x8” or 5.5”x8.5” with a price range between $11.99-$21.99. The higher end of that range was for well-known or currently trending authors and series. I have decided to try 5.5”x8.5” and $12.99. We will see what the author test copy looks like once I put it all in the system and order one. I think I also need to purchase a barcode for this ISBN to put it on the cover, but that will be part of my final paperback research.

In Other News

We are going to have five weeks between the D&D game this week and our January session, so I’m in the process of setting up a little Jeopardy trivia game to play via Discord between sessions to keep info top of mind for everyone. I have set up the questions and the reward system. It is just for fun, but I’m hoping everyone finds it engaging and informative!

Our little tree is up. I wonder how long before one of the cats swipes the first ornament off.

We are hosting a little potluck for my immediate family in a couple of weeks. It is something we do every year to include my grandparents. We skipped it last year for obvious reasons. Everyone is protected now and being very careful, so we are moving forward with it for 2021. It will be good to have our little group together again.

Next week for the blog, I’m debating talking more about the imminent publication or sharing the next installment of my dream story. Time shall tell! I hope you are all having a great holiday season so far!

ARCs and Promotion

Social Media

I’m about to show how much of a social media novice I am with this next revelation, but here it goes. Do you want to know an important piece of social media exposure? The answer is hashtags. You need to include hashtags in your Twitter and Instagram posts so that more people see them when they look at or search on said hashtags. Most of you presumably already knew this, but I have never been a great social media user. My Space was “the thing” to have when I was in high school, and I never had an account. Self-promotion and sharing are not natural for me, and I am finding out new things every day. 

One (helpful) social media tip I will share from the Facebook author groups I am part of is: be cautious of the people who contact you to promote your work. When I started using hashtags related to my book, I immediately received a handful of messages asking me to follow this and DM to “promote” through them. Someone even reached out with an offer to review my book on their account. 

All of this sounded great. I’m trying to get the word out about my work and get it noticed on social media. All they wanted was $20 here or $40 there. Simple. Right?

The more I look into this, the sketchier it appears. Many of the promotion Instagrammers have followers and likes inflated by bots, and when you ask about their returns and guaranteed clicks, they get dodgy. In some cases, I have heard, they threaten to bomb your book with 1-star reviews if you don’t end up promoting with them. I am now hiding all promote or DM comments on Instagram to try to limit or prevent these.

On the reviewer side, you have to be very careful about not doing paid reviews. There are some editorial reviews where this is allowed, but this can get you banned from Amazon. They frown heavily on paid reviews, so before you pay anyone, make sure that you know exactly what they are offering, and you read all the fine print for Amazon and other distributors and sites you are on. Fortunately, I did not agree to pay anyone. 

ARC Readers

This is a good segway into the concept of ARC readers and how they are different than paid reviews. First, you should never pay ARC readers. That is how it becomes a paid review rather than an honest review. ARC stands for Advanced Review Copy, and is a copy of your book that you provide, for free, in advance of the release date so that reviewers can read and post their reviews in advance of or on the date a book releases. You often “provide the book for free in exchange for an honest review.” 

What this means could be a myriad of different interpretations. I have heard some authors become upset if someone who receives an ARC does not finish the book or post a review. I have done some ARC reads and reviews myself for some of the groups I am on, and I prefer the Readers Favorite approach: 

“We only post 4- and 5-star reviews. If an author receives a poor review, we provide private constructive criticism to the author instead. We were the first book review company to not post negative reviews because we are in the business of helping authors, not hurting them.”

Readers’ Favorite Website

The groups I am part of are for indie authors like me, and my goal is to be supportive, not hurtful. I will reach out on 3-star reviews to see if the author wants me to post, but for 1- or 2-stars, I generally will not post those when something is below 50 total reviews. It is my philosophy and not something I push on my ARC readers. I give them a free copy for an honest review, so I need to be okay with their choices in this. It’s the “honest review” part; it means I’m not influencing them by payment or intimidation. What a reviewer posts, is what that individual thought of the book. 

Some helpful tips and resources for ACR readers: 

ARCs are important because almost everyone looks at the star rating before they look at the description. You want as many (hopefully good) reviews posted on or around the day of release as possible. The number of reviews also matters. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but I think it is below 20 reviews readers dismiss even a good rating, and Amazon does not start promoting books outside of paid advertising until a book has around 50 reviews. So, the next time you enjoy that book you just read, take a minute to rate it for the author to give them some applause for that artistic performance.

Invitation to Action

This week I sent out my first invitation to ARC readers with their copy of Hidden Memory, and I am now going to make an offer to my early blog followers. I know some are friends and family who have already or are planning to buy the book if only to support me. I love and appreciate that support. 

If you would like an ARC copy of Hidden Memory free in exchange for an honest review, I invite you to comment below, sign up via this form, or reach out to me. You will be signed up for the newsletter to receive emails from me, but I can then send that digital copy out to you. You don’t need to follow my philosophy above, but I would ask you to reread the book description to make sure it sounds like something you would enjoy before signing up. 

Whether you sign up or not, I thank you all for your support and engagement throughout this year. Less than four weeks to go!

The Cats are Alright

Bookbub

My research into Bookbub has led me to this: it is the largest book-related newsletter audience you can find as an author. Becoming one of their hand-picked books recommended to their readers is extremely difficult, costs you a chunk of money, but is usually worth the effort and money simply due to the reach it provides. 

I was not selected for their “New Release” picks coming up. I will probably submit for their “Featured Deals” promo, but not until I have another book or two. Based on feedback from other authors, it might be worth it, but the best use of your advertising money, if you get a featured deal spot, is if you can leverage it across more than one book. I’m scheduling Hidden Sanctuary for release in August 2022, so I will probably look at offering a deal on Hidden Memory around that time. 

No website updates yet. I’m waiting on those until a) work slows down and b) the preorder for Hidden Sanctuary is also live. 

Annual Vet Visit

This week I squeezed in a vet visit for both cats at the same time. It was a little late for Big Cat and a little early for Little Cat, but close enough for everyone involved. 

I’m happy to report that Big Cat put back on two-tenths of a pound! This is exciting news after he had lost so much weight in recent years because of his stomach issues. It looks like his kidney problem has degraded a little more, but no meds for him yet. We are hoping to keep him eating right and regularly for now. He remains a super picky eater, but maybe I can sneak in some kidney-care-related food somewhere. 

As for Little Cat, the message was basically “make sure she does not gain more weight.” She is good where she is, and the vet wants her to stay there. Now I have to keep her from eating Big Cat’s food and away from the plastic. She loves gnawing on plastic like a little bunny. I’m sure it is going to give her indigestion someday, or worse. 

With the weather turning, they are both becoming lap-cats again. That is perfectly fine with me, as I welcome the heat on my legs as much as they enjoy the warmth of a lap. It is a bit more problematic when they try to sit on my husband’s lap while he is playing computer games. Everything works fine until one of them wants to move, and then everyone is just in the way. I find it all adorably hilarious. 

Photo by stein egil liland on Pexels.com

Stay dry out there if you are on the west coast of the USA with me. It looks like we are in for more wind and rain!