It’s finally here! The inaugural day of the inaugural year of a seriously funny event. Hard to believe that two months ago it was just a vague idea – fast forward to today, and we have …
Category Archives: Shizzle, Inc.
Marketing Matters: that all-important last page of your ebook
UPDATE: I have decided to exclude picture “buttons”, as they did not embed in the text. Someone with better skills may be able to advise why, but for now, I have just included the hyperlinks. Also, I chose to include only two – a link to Amazon reviews, and one to my mailing list.
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As I’d mentioned (read: whined about) before, I have just finished re-editing Shizzle, Inc
Along with the commas, the all-important last page was missing from the ebook. I’ve read countless blogs and testimonials beseeching me not to waste this valuable real estate and finally decided to beseech my readers to leave a review. This is what my last page now looks like:
I have not yet uploaded this new version, so would love to hear what you think. In case you’re interested in how I did the buttons, those are just images with hyperlinks. For additional safety, I’ve added hyperlinked text below the buttons (I’ve read that image hyperlinks don’t always work).
As the text suggests, I will include the first chapter of Indiot after this page, with a hyperlinked “Want to read more?” at the end.
What do you think? Have you seen something else savvy authors do at the end of their books? If so, please don’t be shy – share with everyone!
Thank you, all.
Filed under Self-publishing and marketing, Shizzle, Inc.
Review – Shizzle, Inc.
Nothing better than waking up to a good review…thank you so much, Drew!
Filed under Shizzle, Inc.
Can’t afford $399 for NetGalley? How does $50 sound?
By now I’m sure you’re familiar with my Most Super-Duper, Exhaustive, Comprehensive, and Current Listing of Free and Paid Book Advertising Websites and Ideas, and if you’re not – have a look. It’s not only a list of promo websites that I’ve been compiling for many months but also a diary of my experiences with some of them.
If you’ve seen it, perhaps you’ve noticed the listing for NetGalley and my lamenting about its price – or maybe you’ve heard of it through other channels. It’s a free service for any blogger, reviewer or librarian to request titles for review before they’re published. It’s the authors and publishers that have to pay. A lot. $399 just to list one book – you can understand why I’d never tried it before.
It’s an industry standard and a great service – this is how you could get those early reviews for your book, to give it an extra oomph on launch day. So imagine my delight when I came across a mention of “NetGalley co-op” on KBoards. I looked into it, and guess what – it’s an independent press with a subscription to NetGalley, who are willing to sublet listings for as little as $50 a month! Author after author on KBoards are singing its praises and I’m going to list both Shizzle, Inc and Indiot with them, for 1 month and 3 months, respectively, starting in July. I will be posting a review and a comparison of results for 1 month vs 3 months in October, but I just could not keep this secret to myself.
You’re welcome.
Filed under Shizzle, Inc.
Video of my podcast with Drae
Hi, everyone – sorry to hear that not everybody was able to access the live podcast. This was the first time I’d used Blab (thank you, Drae for introducing me to new technology!), so I’m not sure what might have gone wrong. There is, however, a video to forever record my very first live interview:
https://blab.im/drae-shizzle-inc-the-book-launch-with-ana-spoke
Hope it’s of interest, and as usual – please ask any questions you may have!
Filed under Self-publishing and marketing, Shizzle, Inc.
Live podcast on Shizzle, Inc launch in just one hour!
Hi, everyone,
Just a quick note to let you know that I will be doing a live Blab podcast with Drae on the launch of Shizzle, Inc in one hour – whatever that may be in your time zone. Join us at this link – you can even ask questions live!
You don’t need to sign up for Blab, but I don’t know much more than this – the interview will be unscripted, so wish me luck!
If you don’t get to see it live, I will update this page soon with the link to the YouTube video.
Filed under Self-publishing and marketing, Shizzle, Inc.
Give it away, give it away, give it away NOW!
How you guys doin’? I’m flying high – not only cause life on [read: near] the beach is sweet, but because my latest promo is doing even better than I expected. In my last post, I bemoaned the lack of sales, which was all my fault, anyway. All writing and no marketing makes Ana a poor-selling author. I didn’t moan for very long, though, before I decided to do something about it, namely stage a massive, promoted free giveaway.
The last time I made Shizzle, Inc (Isa Maxwell escapades Book 1)
This time around, the sequel is so close, I can smell it. Okay, so it still smells a bit raw, but at half-edited 63K words, I’m very close to the finish line. In fact, the plan is to pre-release it in just about a week! So I’m now ready to do what a bunch of authors have done before me – give away the first book in the series for free. I will make it permafree as soon as Indiot is available, but for now, I tried a KDP 5-day free giveaway.
I didn’t know what to expect, so I made an arbitrary goal of giving away 3,000 books over the whole period and sneaking my way into top 100 Free in Kindle store. I advertised it as follows:
11 April: Reading Deals – $15.
12 April: Kindle Nation Daily – $99.
13 April: eBookasaurus – free; Manybooks – $25; AskDavid – free.
14 April: AskDavid – free (they tweet multiple times).
15 April: none.
So what did I get for my investment of $139?
Well, it’s not even finished yet, but I’ve already given away 3,100 copies!
Of course, a lot of people just stuff their Kindles with freebies, so I’m gonna assume that most of these copies will never be read. Of those that will, some will probably not get it and hate it – that’s just the risk I have to take. But then! There will be others, who will get hooked on Isa’s escapades and will buy the next installment at the full price of, say, $2.99. If it’s 10% of the above, I would make my money back, and then some. Will it work? I will let you know, of course…
And how about the rankings? I have a new addiction, a tracker tool supplied for free by Kindle Nation Daily:
You can see that Shizzle, Inc (Isa Maxwell escapades Book 1)
I know that some of you are against giving your work away for free, and I completely understand why – common sense tells me not to give away something that cost me $3,000 and two years to make. But I slap it back down because the big picture demands that I do just that. Time will tell if it will pay off.
Hey, Ana Spoke from September 2016, what do you think? Have I made the right choice?
Filed under Self-publishing and marketing, Shizzle, Inc.
Demystifying Amazon Giveaways
Of all the marketing tools, Amazon giveaway is one I have not yet tried. One of the reasons for it was that at the time I last checked, you had to give away a physical copy, and I doubted that the ROI would be worth it.
Turns out that you can now give away a Kindle book – and not only that, you will get the royalties back! Read on for the step by step details…I know I will be trying it as soon as my current Free Days are over.
The real one bounces
Amazon got into the “giveaway” business about a year ago, and they have been tweaking and tuning and changing them ever since. As a result, any research you do on whether they are a good promotional tool is going to turn up a lot of outdated information. If it isn’t Spring 2016 as you read this, then consider this post outdated too. Go look for a better source.
One of the recent changes was allowing you to give away Kindle books. That seemed like an interesting new approach to raising awareness. If you follow this blog, you know awareness is the only problem you have as an author promoting your books. But there are so many questions! So for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been sciencing the fuck out of these giveaways, to try to get some answers.
How an Amazon Giveaway Works
You start…
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Filed under Shizzle, Inc.
How to Get Amazon Reviews Before your Kindle Book is Published
Aaah…a loophole around screwy Amazon rules…good to know for when I launch Indiot.
Coming on April 20, 2016!
I screwed up. I admit it. But sometimes screwing up turns out to be a great thing. Like when Alexander Fleming screwed up and accidentally invented penicillin. My screw-up wasn’t that important to humanity, but I bet a lot of authors and small publishers will be really excited to find out what I did, and how they can screw up exactly the way I did!
First, some background. Last year I wrote a book called Entropy, that has done pretty well. And since late last fall, I’ve been working on a sequel, called Duality. (Click that to pre-order for Kindle.) As with the first book, I’m using CreateSpace to do a print-on-demand paperback version that is to die for. I absolutely love the quality of these CreateSpace books. And I’m using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to make the Kindle version. I’m not doing…
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Filed under Shizzle, Inc.
Out of writing shape
Is happiness a good enough excuse for not writing as much as you thought you should or could? I was kind of depressed a couple of weeks ago, and then really happy last week. The end result is still the same – falling behind the plan. The bad news is that my tracking spreadsheet looks like this:
The good news? After two weeks of editing and cutting frustration, procrastination, relaxation, and a whole bunch of other flatlining activities, I finally wrote 3,000 words today. I feel both exhausted and hopeful because something occurred to me.
I’m just unfit.
Not physically, although that one also needs work – I’m out of writing shape. After finally lifting 3,000 words off the ground, I know that I can do it again. I have the vision of what it might feel like to be “writing fit” – to have the discipline and confidence of sitting down and writing a few thousand words without feeling out of breath or close to a stroke. It’s just like exercise – you have to start somewhere, and then do a little more every day, until it comes naturally.
I know I can do it because I had a similar epiphany with physical fitness. I used to be all soft and pudgy when I moved to Australia from the US almost eight years ago, your typical office worker. I frequented all you can eat buffets and worked out by reading while pedalling on the stationary bike. It was not until I started lifting weights that things began to change. I remember the first time I noticed muscle definition in my arm one morning while brushing my teeth. The first time I ran after a tram and caught it, and the first time I felt the “corset” of the core muscles working even as I walked. Then there was a huge mental leap, too – to accept that I was not genetically fated to be pudgy, that the body I had was the result of my choices, and that I could be an “antelope” as I liked to think of myself.
A lot of people don’t know what it feels like to be fit, and I now accept that I simply don’t know what it feels like to be able to write two or three thousand words every day without fail. All I can say is that I had one hell of a writing workout today.
Hope to see some definition in my writing arm tomorrow!
Filed under Shizzle, Inc.
Ana Spoke, author 