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.
I still can’t believe it! My second giveaway for Shizzle, Inc lasted two weeks and it was requested by 1,699 people – enough to make it onto the front page of the Goodreads Most Requested list, and even climb up to #24 (there are 30 on the first page). Thank you all who’d entered – especially those who answered my plea on Twitter earlier today, when it was 37 requests or so away from making it to the front page. Amazingly, nearly 300 people requested it today alone.
I have added a new column to Shizzle Goodreads giveaways spreadsheet, to track how many followers I get – I was not paying attention to that number before, big mistake! I have not filled in the total cost to me – which will be huge, since the winner is in Romania and I have to get the book there within 4-6 weeks.
Also, I had a lot of fun checking my book stats:
Did you know you can look up this chart for any book on Goodreads? It’s in the top right corner of each book’s page – look for “stats”. Just today, 175 people added it to their “to read” shelves!
So, what did I learn from comparing (ahm, staring at the charts) the two giveaways? My data seems to confirm that:
You should open the giveaway to the entire world. Interestingly, the second giveaway started slower, but had more daily adds in “the middle”, the normally dead time.
It is better to have two short giveaways than one long one. Heck, my short one doubled the performance of the long one! Any guesses why? Is it because it was open to all countries?
I have another guess – it is actually better to give one copy than multiple. I know, I know, everybody says to give as many as you can, but I spent hours looking at most requested and least requested books, and I have a gut feeling that giving multiple copies (some people give away 25!) creates a feeling that the book is not that special. Giving one, and preferably autographed, copy creates the opposite effect – that you are competing for something rare and special.
Another thing I’d learned from looking at other people’s giveaways, that they don’t do one, or even two of those – some of the very popular titles have been on practically constant giveaways. I’m about to schedule another one, and want to test one of the factors – I’m thinking another two weeks, all countries, one copy, but this time unsigned. Does the word “AUTOGRAPHED” have any effect on the numbers?
Did you know that if you pay for the Premium account, you not only get rid of pesky third-party ads, you also get a list of benefits you are probably not using? Like CSS, or custom design?
I’m kind of excited and scared at the same time – I’m one of those people that knows how to drive cars and use computers, but not exactly sure how the cars or computers work. Still, I’m not gonna fall behind the times – I have to regularly force myself to try something new. Like buying a Surface Pro, even though it means a week of crying “Where did my file go?” and “I want my Grandpa PC back!”
This time it will be “Oh my God, what have I done to my website?”
By the way, have you noticed what I’ve done? It’s in the right top corner – see the invitation to buy my book? See how it won’t go away, no matter how fast you scroll? Cool, huh…do you want one for your website? I will walk you through it step-by step while it’s still fresh in my mind.
I started with WordPress support post on Custom design. I didn’t understand half of it, except that you can “try it now” without purchasing an upgrade, which is a good news for those with the free accounts.
I then read through some of the CSS Customization Forum, backed away from the computer, and cried quietly in the corner. That’s my process, okay? You should have seen how much I cried over essays in highschool…anyway, the Forum will be a good resource later on, when I start getting all fancy with my trickery. For now, I will climb the mountain one step at a time. The first step I’d decided to take is create one of those (mildly obnoxious) floating invitations to buy your book or sign up for an email list. I have to credit alfageek with generously sharing the original code for an invitation to buy a book. Turns out that once you have a base to work from, learning CSS can be a lot of fun as you tinker with values and then refresh madly, to see what your tinkering has done.
STEP 2. Once you have a working widget, go to the wp-admin version of your site, and click on Appearances-Customise-CSS. This is what my CSS looks like now, with custom code beginning on line 6:
STEP 2. Copy this code and paste it to your CSS window:
STEP 3. Almost finished! Change number “4” in lines 6 and 17 above to the order of your widget in the sidebar. So, if your widget is at the very top, change it to read “text-1” and so forth.
THAT’S IT! Now, the fun part! Play with the code line-by-line and see what it does:
6. “text-4” refers to my widget being #4 in the sidebar. Change number to reflect the order position of your widget.
7. optional line – if you delete it, the font will not be bold.
8. “fixed” position means it will stay put while you scroll through the page.
9. “right” can be replaced with “left” – that’s where it will appear on the page. -2px refers to how far it is from the edge. Mine has a 2px (2 pixels) border around it, so -2px shaves off the border on the right.
10. “top” can be replaced by “bottom”. Play around with the pixel number until you get it to the exact spot you want.
11.”margin” – add a margin, if you wish. I have none.
12. “background” – I have white. Have a look at CSS Tricks for codes to some alternative colors.
13. “border” – change pixel number to make it thicker, or delete this line if you don’t want a border. Change color code to match your website.
14. “padding” – controls the amount of background space around the text. Increase the number to make your banner larger, while the text stays the same.
15, 16 and 17 – I have no idea, just leave as is or play with it.
18. “font size” – did not seem to make a difference, perhaps it’s a combination of font size and line height (line #19).
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.
Question is, what do I do with it? Everybody and their grandma seems to advise building an email list, but is it really that different from “subscribe to blog via email” ? I mean, would anyone want to get a newsletter from me, considering that I already document every step and event along the way? Not to mention, I can’t even figure out how to add the sign up to my WP theme…
Does anyone have experience building an email list, and if so – was it worth it? And how do I get a signup form into a template?
Sorry for this completely uninformative and uninspiring post. I promise to make it up with the next one!
Did you know this??? Not only you have to make a separate Author Page for each of the ever- multiplying Amazons, the reviews of your book may or may not cross-appear on other sites?
I certainly didn’t, at least not until I started drafting a review request this afternoon (a post on how I plan to get “official” reviews is coming up soon). In copying Rachel Abbott’s flyer, I noticed that she posted different numbers for the American and British sites.
Huh?
Well, whaddaya know? I thought Shizzle, Inc had 26 reviews, but that’s on the US site. UK site has 5 reviews, which are the same as on the US site. I don’t know if those kind souls posted their reviews twice, or if Brits are ahead of others in terms of integration. Aussies haven’t bothered to post any reviews, and Canadians didn’t get the joke. India is also laying low – c’mon, guys, I know that at least three of you have bought it!
Not only that, the book has different ratings on each of the sites! At this exact moment sales are slow, as none of the January paid promos kicked in yet and I’m selling about 0.5 copies per day on the back of Twitter quotes. The ratings are as follows:
US: 465 in Satire
UK: 385 in Satire
Canada: 259,502 overall, doesn’t have a subcategory
Australia: 1,234 in Humour
India: 58,750 overall – best overall rating.
Fascinating, isn’t it? While the highest I ever got was #9 on the US Amazon bestseller list, I may have been the bestselling author in UK!
Anyway, just thought you should know. Check, quick – you might be a bestselling author in India!
Hi, everyone! Just a quick one to let you know that you can enter on Goodreads to win a free AUTOGRAPHED copy of Shizzle, Inc! This time, I’ve opened the giveaway to the entire world, but it will run only for two weeks. I have updated the link in the sidebar, too.
And just in case you are wondering, here are the stats for the last one, which was for 5 unsigned copies for US, UK, Canada or Australia residents only:
Length: 22 days
People requesting: 815 (although it now says 813)
New added: 353
New additions on “to read” shelves: 342
I have calculated that each added “to read” book cost me about 12 cents. So far they have not converted to “currently reading”, although there has been some activity in the end of December – I may be bold and attribute 5 sales to this giveaway.
True to form, I have started a spreadsheet to keep track of the data – I will try to figure out the following:
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.
Have you noticed a new button on my sidebar? Right there, at the top? Click on it, or enter here for your chance to win a free paperback copy of my book! I’m only announcing this giveaway now because there have been too many other exciting going-ons, what with a bestselling author stopping by, and Shizzle, Inc being available on every platform imaginable…
The giveaway has been live for less than 15 hours at the time of this writing, and already 131 people have requested it!
Wait, it’s now 135! Blink, and it’s 137! And over 80 of them have added it to their “to read” shelf! How exciting!
Truth is, I’ve been excited about this giveaway for months, after reading various author’s testimonials on how effective they are to promote new books. So I can’t believe that I’ve posted it without doing all that much research or even reading the giveaway guidelines. (I know! So out of character!)
Better later than never, so I’ve done some research now and have learned this:
There are claims that it doesn’t matter how many books you give away, you would get the same result with 1 or 10. I’m going to experiment with this – already got a spreadsheet going…
Supposedly it is better to give away autographed books, rather than just free copies, even if you’re a nobody. This will be tested in future experiments. For now I have just done copies, which I will order and ship directly from Smashwords – doesn’t make sense to ship them from US to Australia and then back…
Open giveaways to all countries. For now I’ve just done US, GB, and Canada – as it will be cheaper and easier to just order a book and have it shipped to the winner directly. Next one will be open to all, I promise!
You may be able to create a special image for the giveaway. I don’t know how to upload it, from memory (which is not very good), it automatically takes the image of your paperback cover. But I will try next time.
Schedule them ahead of time! It takes several days for Goodreads to review and approve your ad.
Make your ad exciting – add quotes, awards, whatever. Add a link to a newsletter sign up, your website, etc. Market all the ways you can hook them up on your blog, series, whatever.
Best one! Schedule the giveaway BEFORE the paperback release! Create the buzz for the launch day! I will schedule the next one as soon as I have the first draft and cover ready.
Longer is better – mine will be for just over three weeks, but you could do it for three months, or even longer – there will be bigger numbers of people requesting, which will make your book look very appealing indeed. I’ve looked at the “top requested” giveaways, and they all run for three months or so.
You can only do it in the six months after the paperback release…I only saw it on a blog, and can’t find any reference to this rule on Goodreads. In fact, Goodreads state that you can give away “new copies of an older book”, whatever that means.
If you have any other tried and true (and recent!) advice – please share! I’m gonna go check the stats…oh, look, 141 requests!
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 