If you walk past St. Kilda Readings today, you may notice a familiar cover in its window:
No, not The Martian! Right next to it, look!
Yep, there she is, looking a little freaked out to be in such distinguished company. How did she get there, you ask?
Turns out that all you have to do is ask.
This has gone a long way to power up my batteries – I’ve been feeling a little down lately and ended up reading a few ugly articles thrashing self-publishing, one going so far as to declare that self-published authors are “neither published, nor authors”. Well – up yours, dear critic. If it looks like a book, and it reads like a book, and, gosh darn it, people like it and are willing to display it on the top shelf next to a bestseller – well, that means I’m a published author. And the fact that I did it all myself makes it that much more special.
Whew! I was quite a bit nervous when I started working on the cover for the Free Cover Design Contest winner – Amir Ghazi of The World of Horror. I mean, I love Stephen King just as much as every other person on this planet, but I can’t come up with a horrific image! Not unless it involves a cockroach in a soup or something…
I’m relieved to report that after a couple of mock-ups and a lot of back-and-forth discussion, I came up with a design that made Amir happy. Here it is, in paperback wrap and Kindle format:
And the best thing is, after the initial jitters, I had a ton of fun working on it! It was practically an addiction for a couple of days, I’ve learned new tricks, and can’t wait to start working on a final version of the cover for Indiot. Originally I was going to run this contest again in maybe six months, but now I think I might do it sooner – so if you are interested in submitting your pitch for a free design, sign up for my Don’t Miss It list.
I was working on mock-ups for Amir, the winner of the free cover design contest, when it occurred to me that I should go ahead and create a cover for my sequel, even before it’s finished. That way I can do the same thing that Amir is planning on doing – pin the cover over my desk and use it as the motivation to finish the draft. Also, you guys were amazing in helping me develop the cover for the first book, so I feel comfortable revealing the rough draft and asking you for comments.
So here it is, the mock up for the second installment in Isa Maxwell’s escapades:
This is very rough, with images I have not yet bought, so that’s why the resolution is bad and there are some remnants of Shutterstock watermark – that will improve once I buy and download full-size images. I would love for you to comment on:
Title of the book. Isa continues to be…let’s say “naive” in India, hence the “Indiot”.
The overall concept for the cover.
Using “diamonds” for title.
Making “N” in the title different. I will make it look like empty settings, from which diamonds have been stolen.
Should I put “Isa Maxwell’s escapades” on the title? I kinda like the minimalistic look and that the covers are not too matchy, but everyone seems to love series covers that look like versions of the same and tell you exactly which book in the series it is…
When fourteen-year-old Allen Foster is diagnosed with parasomnia, a sleep disorder evoking vivid nightmares, he begins journaling each haunting dream on the advice of his psychiatrist, keeping the notebook safely hidden in a floorboard — that is until a new family moves into the Maine house. When Rita, the daughter of the new owners, discovers the book and begins experiencing Allen’s old nightmares, she tracks him down in an effort to rid herself of the misery, only to find he has no memory of writing them.
Thank you again to all who have participated, either by submitting a pitch or by voting for your favourite. I will run another contest in August – if you’re interested, sign up for my Don’t Miss It list (see the banner on the right).
I now have the difficult task of reaching deep down, switching my brain from the usual jokey mode, to produce the creepiest and most striking cover this book so justly deserves.
You know what else is great? How easily I was able to sneak affiliate links into the paragraph above! Each one of these links is attributed to my affiliate account and could make me 4-6% on each sale. I was so excited about it, that I went back to my interview with Matthew FitzSimmons and replaced the links to his book The Short Drop with affiliate ones. It’s been months since that post, but a dozen people a week still find it from a google search for the author. It’s about time that interview started making me some money…and while I’m at it, why not sell Adult Coloring Book: Stress Relieving Animal Designs? It looks like SO much fun…
Okay, okay, I got it out of my system now! Back to my original promise – to teach you how to go nuts using affiliate links in your own posts. If you have not yet, read my how to create an affiliate link post first. Once you got an account with Amazon and can figure out how to get a link, the rest is easy – turns out, all I have to do is switch to HTML in the editor window – usually I just use the default “visual” setting. This is what the above paragraph looks like in visual (notice the highlighted “Visual” button in the top right corner):
…and this is what the same paragraph looks like in HTML:
Scary mess, right? Actually, not scary at all. You can write the entire post in “visual” setting, if you wish, then switch to HTML and plaster affiliate code in the right places. Switch back to visual, check that it looks ok, and voila! You’re in business. Literally.
If you want a bit more info on how to use HTML in WordPress.com, visit this WordPress support post.
So I was procrastinating today and watching my sales creep up with eReader News Today, when I noticed that they are an Amazon Affiliate. How genius, huh? Not only they take our money to advertise, they get paid by Amazon, too. Not that I mind – of all the advertising websites I’ve tried, they’ve so far delivered the most value for the money…
They also gave me an idea – I’ve decided to become an Amazon affiliate too! Cause, you know, thousands of people are clicking on the Shizzle, Inc link…well, not thousands, just 100-200 per month, but that’s a start, right? So why not make the link an affiliate one and earn 4% on whatever sales happen as a result? At least it’s an experiment and something new to learn.
First things first – sign up to be an affiliate. Because I’m already registered with Amazon, it was ridiculously easy. Took about 5 minutes and I have no problems to report, or lessons learned – just make sure to have your tax number ready. The only bugger was that I can’t get paid by direct deposit, as I’m not in the US – so I’d opted to be paid with a gift certificate.
Next it came to creating a link – all you have to do is search for a product of interest, which in my case was Shizzle, Inc:
Once I’d found it, I clicked on “Get link” and chose “text only” – to make long story short, I could not get image and text html to work and have found a work-around.
Then, I created a new “text” widget on my WordPress.com website – for more advice on creating links with text widgets see my MailChimp explained post. This is what this new widget looks like:
The tricky bit was how to make the link stand out. Previously, I’d created a link to Amazon using an image widget, which worked well and was easy to use – just click on the image and you are there. I didn’t want to have a “naked” link only and as mentioned before, when I pasted in “image and text” html, I ended up with a lot of code visible to everyone. So I cheated: I put a text widget with HTML in the sidebar first, followed by the image widget, but without title or url link:
And here you go – I now have a working affiliate link in my sidebar, which should be earning me a cool 4 cents each time someone buys a book via my website! Yay!
Well, at least I think so! What makes it so good is that it should help me solve several problems most start-up authors face, namely:
How do I get more reviews?
How do I generate pre-release buzz?
Ho do I get people to sign up to my email list?
How can I do that at low or no cost?
Are you excited yet? Do you want to know what it is? Okay, okay! It’s simple:
Create a permanent ARC list.
What’s that, you ask? Let’s start with ARC – Advanced Review Copy. If you want a detailed explanation, have a look at Between The Covers. It’s basically a copy of the book made available to reviewers before the release. Using ARCs to promote your book is a well-known marketing strategy, and other blogs, such as Savvy Writers and eBooks Online or Finish Your Book have posted detailed instructions on how to do that.
Oh, you say. So then what’s so special about your idea?
Glad you’ve asked! The one thing I could not figure out was whom should I send these ARCs? I’ve even started compiling a list of book review blogs, but it turned out that lots of them have gone quiet. It was frustrating to spend so much time looking through their posts to try and figure out if they’re active, if they have a following, and how to contact them. Then it hit me.
I already have reviewers.
I have my own group, who have discovered me, bought Shizzle, Inc and posted reviews. They’ve been asking for a sequel, which means that they are the most likely people to read and review any of my future stories. Eureka!
Get to the point, you say? Okay, okay! Here it is:
If you have written a review of Shizzle, Inc and have posted it on Amazon.com or Goodreads, or both, I will send you an electronic copy of all my future books for free.
I’ve created another MailChimp list using the steps explained in my previous post. To sign up, click the link at the top of the sidebar or click here. You will need to provide a link to your review – sorry, this is the requirement to get on this super exclusive list. I reserve the right to delete any applications without a valid link. I also reserve the right to stop offering subscription to this list, so get in early!
I know what you think, how crazy am I to offer the books for free, in perpetuity. I don’t know if this is crazy or genius – time will tell, I guess. My hope is that it will get me the reviews and the buzz I need to get the momentum going. It’s also a great way to say “thank you” to the people who have taken time not only to read the book, but to help spread the word. Thank you, guys!
The sequel to Shizzle, Inc will be published in May – I will email copies with Uncorrected Proof watermark to the ARC list in April, while the sequel is on pre-order. Let me know what you think of this plan 🙂
5 December – second chance for Bargain Booksy. They were nice enough to give me $25 credit for the disappointing YA audience promo, so I’m trying the chicklit audience. Cost – $70 (minus the $25 credit).
5-6 December – applied to Read Cheaply. Not sure if this will work, as they want a limited-time offer and Shizzle, Inc has been on sale for many weeks.
7-8 December – Read Free. Cost: free!
9 December – Free Kindle Books and Tips. Cost – $25.
11 December – Reading Deals. Cost: free!
12 December – BookHearts. Cost – $5.
14 December – eBook Lister. Cost – $25.
15 December – BookSends. Cost – $30.
17 December – Digital Book Today (Deal of the Day). Cost – $30.
Since the picture is worth a thousand words, here are the results at a glance:
And now, my opinions, in hopefully under a thousand words:
Bargain Booksy. Once again, a disappointing 15 copies sold, although there was a big jump in pages read the next day. AMAZINGLY, though – after I’d contacted them again, they’ve refunded BOTH of my purchases. So only a net gain to me, although I kinda have a feeling I may not be welcome to advertise with them again…will try again in a while, when I have a sequel and advertise the first installment for free.
Read Cheaply – I will have to test them again, as it appears I did not make it on the list – can’t find the confirmation email. proof you have to write everything down as it happens!
Read Free – several copies sold! Hey, it was free, so they go onto my “good list”.
Free Kindle Books and Tips – 18 sales on the day and 6 sales the day after. Not terribly impressive at the cost of $25, but I might try them again.
Reading Deals – did not happen as I wanted to add links to other platforms, they’d asked me to reapply, and then did not have a slot. To be tested again.
BookHearts – did not impress me, with 6 sales on the day at a cost of $5. I’m giving them another chance in January, to test if December was a bad month for eBooks.
eBook Lister – I have contacted them to complain that the $25 payment only got me 3 sales. Not sure what happened, good thing I’m writing this update, because the issue slipped under the radar for me. Will update as to their response.
BookSends – 22 sales on the day, but not enough at the cost of $30. Might give them another chance.
Digital Book Today (Deal of the Day) – pathetic 8 copies sold at a cost of $30. has anyone had a good result with them? I had high hopes for this one. I have emailed them and they responded promptly, refunding $15, but claiming that my 40-60 sales per day with eReader News were probably because of other promos I had at the same time. Nope – I’m a researcher, so I know how to control factors (when I remember to do that…).
Here is what’s planned for January (so far, I will update this post as I make further plans, and as usual – will tweet live scores on @spokeana):
9 January – another chance for BookHearts, a subsidiary of Choosy Bookworm. Guaranteed feature, cost (on sale): $5. Not confirmed yet, although the payment has been made – they confirm on Fridays only. UPDATE: only 2 sales, a complete disappointment. After two emails it did turn out that they did not feature me on 9 January after all.
16 January – Choosy Bookworm. Guaranteed feature, cost (on sale): $19. I tried to book it, but once I got to the paypal checkout, it reverted to $25. I’ve emailed them and was advised to “donate” $19, which I did. They confirmed the spot several days later.
18 January – BookHearts listed me in place of the earlier booking. I got only 5 sales.
19 January – I screwed up and did 2 giveaways. I will need to re-run and re-test Buck Books – the link is to their policies, but to apply to advertise you actually need to contact Jennifer directly on jennaputt@gmail.com. Claim to have 42,000 subscribers. Cost – $12. I also did eReader News Today again, at $30. Total sales were 44 on the day, plus about 2,000 pages read in the next few days.
Read Cheaply – TBD.
Reading Deals – TBD.
Read Free – TBD.
31 January – Betty Book Freak. Cost: $12.
2 February – eBook Soda. Cost: $15.
Kindle Nation Daily – sold out! Scheduled on 12 April.
In related news, the above graph makes me wish desperately to return to KU – I miss those pages! I will probably do this by the end of the month, so if you want to get Shizzle, Inc on Kobo, please do that now!
Looking forward to your comments and experiences. If you want to suggest an advertising site I have not yet tried, please do so!
Just a quick post to announce that the contest to win a free cover design has now closed – I have received nine submissions. Please review them carefully below or on the original post and cast your vote (it’s the same polldaddy poll on both pages):
Only one vote per person/computer is allowed. Voting will close on 24 January.
Life at the tail end of the 24th cee is fairly righteous. The advent of Stringtech mere centuries ago revolutionized the world. Hunger and disease are concepts of the past. Free energy is here for the taking of it and mankind enjoys an unprecedented period of largess, peace and growth.
While on vacation in 1927, Hollywood screenwriter Chet Koski and his wife Eveleen, both amateur sleuths, antagonize a divided small town, unravel a kidnapping, discover a timber scandal, and Chet fears his cousin may be a killer. These things happen when finding a head on a grave.
When fourteen-year-old Allen Foster is diagnosed with parasomnia, a sleep disorder evoking vivid nightmares, he begins journaling each haunting dream on the advice of his psychiatrist, keeping the notebook safely hidden in a floorboard — that is until a new family moves into the Maine house. When Rita, the daughter of the new owners, discovers the book and begins experiencing Allen’s old nightmares, she tracks him down in an effort to rid herself of the misery, only to find he has no memory of writing them.
An age old tradition. A few offline cameras. Shadows in the alley.
Lance works in a busy city, watching out for disturbances and things out of the ordinary. He has no idea just out strange things have gotten until he looks into a missing child case and discovers dark secrets in the shadows. Inhuman creatures seem to appear out of nowhere and are devouring the city. And the only way to stop them…is a tradition no one believes in anymore.
It knows your darkest thoughts, your deepest secrets, and your hidden desires. All you need to do; put the puzzle together. Richard and Vivian Cordova discover the puzzle when they move into their newly bought home. One thousand pieces wedge their way between the newlyweds putting their vows and their lives to the test.
Diana, a lonely and neglected, middle age, wife and mother decides to end her loveless marriage of thirty years. On her own for the first time in decades, she struggles to adjust to her new single life, dating and overcoming a devastating diagnosis of mental illness. Can she learn to love herself so she will be ready to find love with the right man or will she continue to get the thrills her illness demands by engaging in increasingly risky behavior? Will she get the help she needs to live a more fulfilling life before her mental illness wins and she decides to commits suicide?
7. The Hiding Place – By J.K.Tevis
The bugs were unmerciful in their quest for food. The ants were the most vicious. Her hiding place was their home and she was an intruder. The dried blood on her feet seemed to have driven them into a feeding frenzy making it look as though she wore a pair of black boots. Even though the earth under her was cool the sun had turned the fallen stones over her into an oven. As she drifted in and out of consciousness she kept remembering her mother’s last words…. “RUN,THEY’RE HERE !”
Joyel is a weapon, a genetically engineered ten year old. When the ruthless faction leader Anson kidnaps Joyel she must fight to save her soul. Anson spends ten years brainwashing her, demanding that she view him as father, embrace a new identity as Joy, and to kill for him. But Joy is determined to be subject to no man.
Cutting is how Joy copes with the years of abuse, etching her hatred of Anson into her skin until the time to mete out revenge has come. Despite her rage, now twenty-year-old Joy struggles to strike out against the man she calls father. Discovering Anson’s plans to restart the genetic program she was spawned from in order to raise an army forces Joy to act. To no longer be a pawn, she must kill Anson and destroy the monster she has become. If she doesn’t, she will never be free.
CHRYSALIS asks which is more important: to know who you are, or to whom you belong?
For Ember Rehksskari, a hated dragon and last princess of a fallen kingdom, there are two kinds of place in the world: those where the people will try to kill her, and those where they’ll try harder. Yet, fleeing from the second to the first, she may just find a third.
The kingdom of Salshira has no interest in hosting a dragon, any dragon, especially not one pursued by the Vohrskrain, but Ean Tavarin, crown prince and engineer extraordinaire, has a plan to make a home for this one…if he can deal with a best friend who wants all dragons dead, a father looking out for the rest of the kingdom, and a romantic interest he didn’t know he had.
It really shouldn’t be this hard to make one damsel safe!
But if Emperor Vohrskrain has anything to say, none of them will be until Ember is dead.
Incidentally, it is everywhere in Vietnam. The country may be lacking in physical infrastructure, but it is certainly staying well-connected. Yes, I’m looking at you, Melbourne – when will you get free Wi-Fi, at least in CBD?
I have done practically zilch work on the sequel, so I thought I might as well write down some of my fresh impressions of Vietnam in a blog post. I will translate them into Isa’s adventure in India some other time.
It’s day seven of my adventure, and so far nothing has gone according to the plan. Truth be told, the plan was not all that well thought through – from memory, every time I got on the web to research the weather or transport options, I inevitably ended up checking stats, blog comments, or my Twitter feed. As a result, we have landed in some pretty crappy weather in Hoi An (yeah, I know it’s winter in the Northern hemisphere, but c’mon! It’s supposed to be the END of the rainy season!). We were also forced to buy two pretty expensive last-minute plane tickets from Hoi An to Nha Trang (yeah, I didn’t realize it would take 10 hours by train, but c’mon! They are so close on the map!).
Josh just read the last bit over my shoulder and concurred – but he has no right to comment, really. Every time he was tasked with booking anything online, I’d hear suspicious sounds of weights hitting a gym floor – he was looking at people deadlifting the equivalent of an average cow.
Anywho, back to more complaints (the silver lining should be coming up any moment!). Everything is more expensive than I expected – the side effect of being overly optimistic. There’s no such thing as “good and cheap” massage or food, or clothes, or anything. Just like anywhere else in the world, you can have good, or you can have cheap. You can find good and moderately priced (compared to ridiculously expensive Melbourne, Australia), so we’ve settled on that. I’ve also passed on having any clothes custom made – I’ve had one bad experience with that in Bali, that was enough. Sure, the fabric was great, but it didn’t fit right, even after two fittings.
To be honest, I’m not loving this trip as much as I was hoping. For starters, it’s hard to enjoy being served and pampered in a country of such drastic contrasts of wealth and poverty. It’s everywhere – from Mercedes on the street next to a rickshaw, to tiny toddlers trying to sell random goods to tourists dining outdoors. It’s especially hard if for whatever reason you decide to start you relaxing vacation with a visit to the war museum, and then you can’t stop quietly weeping, and decide to have a second glass of wine in hopes that it will stop the waterworks, only to find that it makes the flashbacks to the horror that much worse. All I can say is that I was happy to answer “Australian” to the question of “Where are you from?” , because I got a feeling that either “Russian” or “American” would not win me any favors. Actually, now that I think of Australia’s new immigration policies, maybe I should just keep my mouth shut and look mysterious…
I wrote the above paragraphs in the airport lounge, waiting for that unplanned flight to Nha Trang, full of anxiety and pre-flight booze. I wish it could be any other way, but unfortunately booze-induced arrogance is the only way you could coax me onto a plane these days. And it has to be planned early – I’ve learned a hard way that you can’t get a drink out of a steward on the plane until the wheels leave the tamarack. Turns out that the liquor license only starts in the air, and that the stewards won’t risk their jobs to pacify a hysterical woman. Not that I was hysterical. I mean, maybe a little.
The flight started off well, and Josh and I were pleasantly surprised at how new the Vietnam Airlines plane looked, compared to the dingy Jetstar Pacific one we took from Ho Chi Minh to Hoi An. Then, just before landing, we hit some pretty major (I mean, up-and-down and side-by-side) turbulence, which alone would be enough to plunge me into hysterics. To make matters worse, during one of those down the rollercoaster rides, Josh squeezed my hand and said “I love you” in a way that made me wish very, very hard that we’d opted for that supposedly terrible ten-hour train ride.
We did make it to Nha Trang, but I guess you’d probably already figured that part out. We also made it through an even crazier taxi ride from the airport to the hotel some 40 kilometers away. The driver practically flew through the torrential rain, hitting water puddles with a force of a speeding boat, spraying miserable motorbike drivers in our wake. His radio was sputtering incessantly, a woman’s voice chattering in high-pitched Vietnamese, accompanied by constant blowing of the car horn. Every driver, at all times is blowing the car horn – I’m not at all sure how it helps others, and it certainly pisses of bike riders, which sometimes shake an angry fist in protest. This time, they just hunched down under their plastic ponchos and persevered through the wet misery.
Driving through such conditions would not be a picnic on any road, leave alone a winding stretch between mountains on one side and the drop-off to the ocean on the other. Yet the driver managed to check texts on not one, but two cell phones. I’d thought about asking him to put at least one phone away, but decided against it – not only his English seemed to be limited to basic numbers and pointing, he seemed already sufficiently angry. I did not feel like finding out what his driving would be like if he was royally pissed off at some tourist telling him what to do.
We’ve now checked into our supposedly 4.5 star hotel, which looks like a Roman palace on the outside, and like a dingy 80’s motel on the inside. I’ve already found a wiggly worm in my bathtub, which looks suspiciously like a human parasite. Staff moved us to another, equally dingy room, and assured me that the supposed parasite is actually an adorable and crafty red worm which navigated its way from the soil, up the drainpipes, and into the tub on the first floor. Doesn’t matter, one way or another, it’s not a kind of assassin worm I want to get acquainted with.
Sorry, looks like there will be no silver lining in this particular post. I’ve had cookies and cream ice cream, maybe that counts? I will try harder tomorrow.
the other day. I do that quite often, actually – nothing like reading a good review of your book to get you out of the bed and to the keyboard. One of the reviewers mentioned that my book was somewhat similar in style to 
. I personally think that it’s more like 
or maybe 
. In any case, it was great to see my book compared to a bestseller.
with affiliate ones. It’s been months since that post, but a dozen people a week still find it from a google search for the author. It’s about time that interview started making me some money…and while I’m at it, why not sell 
? It looks like SO much fun…
Ana Spoke, author 