Tag Archives: writing

by | April 19, 2016 · 12:47 am

Who wants to beta-read Indiot?

Hi, there, everyone. Whew, what a rollercoaster few days I’ve had! The free giveaway on Kindle is over, with 3,974 copies given away. It’s only been a few days, so it’s too early to give you a full report, but I got my first new review just two days into the giveaway, and boy, what a gem it was!

New review

This is a huge relief, as free giveaways are apparently notorious for attracting bad reviews – people grab freebies without regard to genre, read them, don’t “get them”, and feel disappointed enough to complain. I hope more will come in the next couple of weeks as I have actually seen a huge spike in KENP – more than 2,500 pages read over the last four days. If it was anyone reading this, could you please post a review on Amazon? Apparently I need to get to about 60 to attract BookBub’s attention, and I’m now at 33.

I have no explanation for this KENP spike, by the way. I have contacted Amazon and they have confirmed that during free days people with KU get my book outright – so why such an influx? Sadly, I shall never know, as I have now taken Shizzle, Inc off Kindle Select – I plan to make it permafree in about a month, to celebrate the preorder launch of Indiot.

Speaking of which, I would like to get about 3-5 beta readers for Indiot, is anyone interested? This would be different from an Advanced Review Copy – if you’ve registered for my Permanent ARC list (see the floating banner to the right), you will automatically get a copy. This is more about helping me work through the current draft. I myself have never been a beta reader, and I have not done that with Shizzle, Inc, but I’ve given some thought to who I’d like to help me:

  1. Beta readers get to read and privately review a book before it is copyedited. This could be exciting, or disappointing, depending on how you look at it. You will not have a chance to be surprised at reading the finished book. (By the way, each beta reader will get an autographed paper copy as a thank you, when it’s released in July.)
  2. You generally like humor and chicklit, and you’ve read Shizzle, Inc and liked it enough. If you didn’t “get” it, you will probably be disappointed with Indiot. Not only the storyline relies on the knowledge of the previous events, it is similarly unrealistic and off the wall. That’s just what I do…
  3. You will have time to read about 70,000 words in the first two weeks of May. Sorry for the tight timeline, but I’m only looking for a high-level review, there would be no need to do copyediting – I will hire a professional editor to do that.
  4. You would be willing to critique my work in a constructive way – “this is shit” and “this is perfect” would be equally unhelpful. I’m looking for things like “this did not make sense” and “why did she do X when she said Y just before?” and maybe “you should develop the scene Z more.”
  5. I would give preference to Americans. Sorry! It will depend on how many people express interest, but I might have to make this call, as the novel is set in the US and I need all the help I can get, being a Russian-Down-Under. By the way, comments such as “Americans would say bla-bla instead of blah-di-blah” would be very welcome.
  6. Sorry for the #5. On the more inclusive side, any gender or age is welcome. I’m still blown away by how many guys have left reviews on Amazon – could this be the beginnings of dudelit?

This is all I could think of – if you have any questions or suggestions, please ask away! If you want to beta-read Indiot, please email me on ana.spoke (AT) yahoo.com.

Thank you in advance!

 

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by | April 16, 2016 · 1:03 am

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) free was in September, about two weeks after it was released. I didn’t advertise it, other than on the blog and Twitter, as it was intended to be just a thanks to my followers. With no sequel in sight, giving it away made no sense. Over the two days, about 150 people downloaded it.

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!

Screenshot (43)

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:

KND tracker

You can see that Shizzle, Inc (Isa Maxwell escapades Book 1) has come close, oh so close, but those thousands of free books were not enough. After this experiment and a lot of stalking of my competition, I am convinced that the only way to get onto the first page of Free Kindle Store is with BookBub. Trouble is, apparently everybody already knows that – the competition for promos with BookBub is fierce. So far I’ve applied twice and was rejected as many times, but from reading other people’s blogs, it seems that the ratio of applications to successful placements is close to 10:1. Those same people have reported anywhere between 20-100 THOUSAND giveaway copies as a result, so I just need to buckle up and keep trying. In the meantime, I’m thinking of printing this for my inspiration board:

Sales rank 108

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?

 

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by | April 8, 2016 · 12:01 am

New marketing plans, a magic hashtag, and a free giveaway

I’ve been  trying diligently to get the first draft of Indiot finished, which has been at the expense of blogging. I won’t lie, there have been long morning walks on the beach with the dog, a few massages, and more than few renovation shows in the mix. Maybe even an occasional Real Housewives of Whatever, but I consider that research – in the third instalment, which is currently under plotment, Isa gets into more filthy rich drama than she could ever imagine.

I’ve also done a presentation on self-publishing basics to my writer’s group – it was so successful, I’ve been asked to do it again in a couple of weeks. I was incredibly nervous, so much so that I forgot to tape it! Such a bummer, too, because I was on fire, with the show turning into a bit of stand up. People were laughing AND taking notes, what more could I ask for? I will be more composed and better prepared next time and hope to post a decent video on YouTube.

As a result of all this sidetracking, sales are down. Boo! I mean, boo-hoo, poor me:

Sales on 7 april

Of course, I’ve learned something from this experience, the most important lesson being is that you can’t go into a house flip without a proper plan and budget, or expecting to do all the work yourself when you don’t even know how to hold a hammer. Secondly, you can never stop marketing your book, because the snowball effect doesn’t happen unless you keep pushing it along. Thirdly, you can get a massage for cheap at you local massage school, and yes, two massages a week are okay – after all, you’re helping students learn. Good on you.

There’s another small but pretty amazing discovery I’ve made last week, which I’m happy to share with you. Have a look at the above graph – do you notice anything? Specifically in the blue “Normalised Pages Read” part? Over the last four weeks both graphs were pretty much dead, with just a few sales and pages read thanks to my regular tweets of quotes with links. It was especially slow over the last two weeks, when I became so destructed, I forgot to top my Buffer account on most days. Then, a few days ago, I made one small change which resulted in a big spike on the blue graph.

Hands up – who wants to know what it is?

Believe it or not, I just changed a Twitter hashtag. Instead of a useless #humor and #kindle and fairly useless #amwriting and #IndieBooksBeSeen, I now make sure each tweet is accompanied by this little beauty:

#KindleUnlimited

That’s it. Honestly, I have no idea why I have not targeted subscribers to Kindle Unlimited before – Shizzle, Inc (Isa Maxwell escapades Book 1) is as good as free to them, but I get about $2 each time someone reads the whole thing, as compared to the $0.35 royalty I get with each $0.99 sale. I’m so excited about this discovery! I’d love to figure out how to target and find more Kindle Unlimited customers – if anyone has experience or ideas, I’d love to hear them.

So back to the lack of marketing action. Not only did it result in lack of sales, but the old enemy doubt has started creeping in and whispering various ugly thoughts. I know they are not true and that Isa will one day hit the big screen, but it’s demotivating. So it’s time I kill them dead with the next big marketing effort.

For this new experiment, I chose to do a solid 5-day free giveaway of Shizzle on Kindle. It will be on 11-15 April, inclusive and I have the following promos planned, some with companies I have not tested before. I will update the list below as confirmations come in, and, as usual, I will update the Super Duper List with the actual numbers, once the promos are completed.

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.

Submitted, awaiting confirmation:

  • AskDavid
  • eBooks Habit
  • eReader News – sold out.
  • Free Kindle Books and Tips
  • Ignite your book – not sure if my submission was successful
  • Readcheaply
  • Zwoodle books

Fingers crossed – I hope to get to #1 in Free Bestseller List in one of the categories. Will let you know what happens!

 

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by | March 26, 2016 · 1:34 am

Welcome to the game of self-publishing – my draft Prezi for Melbourne Writers’ Group

Next Tuesday, 29 March is a new milestone in my budding author career – I will be presenting to Melbourne Writer’s Group on the basics of self-publishing. If you happen to be in Melbourne, please feel free to come to Cafe Republic at 160 Toorak Rd, South Yarra at 6pm.

If you can’t make it due to the late notice and prohibitive costs of international travel, I’d love for you to have a look at my draft Prezi.

game of self publishing

I would also love to get your comments and suggestions – it was really hard to come up with just the right amount of “how to self-publish” content for 30 minutes. The Prezi is meant to be a prompt, rather than a comprehensive guide, as I will be talking and showing live applications as people ask questions. I have plugged my blog several times, which I hope is ok, since I am speaking strictly from my experience. If you know of any other online “self-publishing in 30 minutes” guide, please let me know!

The workshop is aimed at people who have never published, but it would be great to hear from both not yet published and self-published writers. If you’ve self-published already – what were your main lessons learned? If you’ve never published – what scares you the most?

Wish me luck!

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by | March 12, 2016 · 1:57 am

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:

Tracking Indiot 11 March 2016

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!

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by | March 5, 2016 · 2:00 am

How many words a day should you write, and other things I’ve learned in my first week as a full-time writer

It’s Friday night here, In Australia, and Week 1 of this full-time writing experiment is drawing to a close. If you’ve seen my work plan, I was supposed to have written 20,000 words. So, how did I go?

Well, I’ve had five leisurely breakfasts on my balcony.

IMG_2806 (1)

Oh, you want to know about the word count? Well, that’s complicated…

I estimate that I’ve written 15 to 20 thousand words over the last five days. The reason I can’t report the number with my usual precision is that I’ve deleted so much of the already-written text, I’m only 2,739 words ahead. That’s less than my planned daily quota. In fact, today I’ve worked for eight hours and ended up with about 500 words less than I had last night. Blin!

I am, however, very pleased with my current efforts. To start with, I overcame a major writer’s block – Monday was hard, as I went into some kind of shock of “this is it, sit down and produce a masterpiece.” I did sit down at my new desk, but managed to push out only 1K of words, and I could tell they were not gold.

Tuesday morning was a bit better, but my afternoon and evening were taken up by babysitting my niece and a writer’s group. I managed another 1K of pedestrian dribble.

It was Wednesday when I decided to stop forcing myself and to get reacquainted with my own work. I started writing in September, and it’s been so long that the manuscript read as if a stranger wrote it. A dull, tired stranger with a dayjob that sucks all of her creative energy, living nothing for character development, leave alone comedy.

Conventional writing wisdom dictates that you’re not supposed to edit your first draft until it’s finished, but I had no choice. There was every writing faux pas imaginable – from telling instead of showing, to boring filler fluff, to characters that reacted inappropriately and/or inconsistently, to finally (gasp!) a Deus ex Machina.

A magical thing happened on Wednesday, as I mercilessly slashed paragraph after paragraph. I started falling in love with the story again. I finally knew I was on the right path when, after I cleaned up and rearranged a major scene, I had goosebumps reading it. I could not stop working that day, finally forcing myself to go to bed around midnight. I then got up at least twice to turn on the light and write ideas on a huge whiteboard I have in my bedroom, so that I can finally go to sleep. It didn’t work very well – I woke up at 4.30, tried the whiteboard trick again, but had to admit defeat and make coffee instead.

The week is technically not over, so I should be able to add to the pile in the next two days, but currently I’m at 36K words. Entertaining, quality words that I would not be ashamed to send to a structural editor or beta-reader. Considering that Shizzle, Inc ended up being only 79K words, I’m almost half-way through Indiot.

I’m not only happy with the current progress, I’m very hopeful that I might have learned something about how I work. Forget all the rules – if editing helps you avoid writer’s block, then edit. If it paralyses you, then don’t even look at the first pages. How many words should you write every day? Well, that’s also up to you. I could not help but google this and found a pretty interesting article detailing average daily word output of famous authors. The morale of the article is that you should find your own pace.

The only thing I can add to that is that you should have fun, too.

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by | February 28, 2016 · 2:45 am

The full-time writing gig is almost here, plus pics of my writing room

With just a couple of days left till I’m a full-time writer (for five months, but still!), I’m feeling the pressure of my ambitious writing plan. To be honest, I have not been writing much lately, partially due to some traumatic personal stuff I’m going through at the moment, and probably because I’ve been deferring writing for this time when I will be free from work stress and thus magically transformed into a writing machine. As a result, my tracking spreadsheet looks like this:

Bad writing record

The zig-zagging red “goal” line shows that I have twice already given up and reset my goal, only to fall short again. This can’t happen over the next five months, otherwise I would have wasted my long service leave, which I’ve been accumulating for eight years…it can’t happen!

So, I have started by setting up my environment. Virginia was right – oh, what a difference a room of one’s own makes…and here is mine!

IMG_2791

Terrible photo, sorry, can you tell how fabulous is the desk? Made even more so by the fact that it set me back just $10 on eBay. I mean, $10 AUD! That means it was practically free in American dollars! And the chair was just $25 from a garage sale.

My Italian Greyhound approves…everyone, meet Bubbles:

IMG_2737

I have managed to write a thousand words today, which is a far cry from the 3-4K I mean to write every single day for the next three weeks or so. Still, having a space to go and sit at the desk, all official-like was better than my usual lounging in bed or on the couch, which inevitably led to Internet surfing.

I plan to also dangle a carrot in front of my nose, for further motivation – I just made a deal with myself that if I complete my weekly plan, I will get a 45-minute massage at the end of the week. If I overachieve the plan by at least 25%, I will get an hour-long massage. And if I don’t complete it…well, there will be an extra grueling gym session on the weekend. Oh, I didn’t mention – I plan to also lose a couple of kilos during the five months. These are quite possibly pipe dreams, but who knows? I am trying to pound into my cerebral cortex a message of “your life could be like this every day.”

Speaking of pipe dreams, here’s another one. I finally unpacked an artist’s easel and a huge canvas I’d bought about a year ago:

IMG_2792

The big white canvas is just as frightening as my current word count and the number on my weight scale. Still, with a plan and daily discipline, I should be able to do it all, right? I started by taking stock of the “current state”, as I usually do at work:

  • Published books: 1
  • Drafted words: 33,330
  • Paintings: 0
  • Kilos: 62.6 (that’s 138 pounds)
  • Klout score: 61 (more on Klout in the next post)

Let’s see where I get to by 1 August 2016!

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by | February 21, 2016 · 3:38 am

Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Ted Cruz have endorsed my book!

That, of course, is an outrageous lie. What’s true, is that I have come up with the craziest marketing idea to-date. See for yourself:



What do you think? So far these videos are responsible for exactly one confirmed sale – funny enough, from someone who was initially upset over my Twitter post of Donald Trump, but then got the joke, and the book!

I did it with a phone app called Face Swap Live. Youngsters at work were having a blast one day swapping faces, and once I saw it, I had to have it. I was on the couch that night, making myself look like Beyonce (that hair!), when it occurred to me that I could use it for business as well as for procrastination. Long story short, I made the videos above. I’ve played with lighting and makeup, so while it may look “slapped together”, each one took quite a bit of work. More will be coming, since you can literally import any photo you like. If you want to see what I come up with next, subscribe to my brand new YouTube channel.

Speaking of “any photo you like”, how about animating your book cover?

The possibilities are truly endless!

Have fun!

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by | February 18, 2016 · 2:37 am

January marketing update – Choosy Bookworm and BookHearts disasters, plus other fun facts

Hi, everyone, just a quick update on the book marketing companies I’ve tested in January. It was only a few, since I wanted to make sure that the results I was getting were due to a specific promo and not an overlap.

First off, let’s have a look at the sales. As you can see, Shizzle, Inc (Isa Maxwell escapades Book 1) is back with Kindle Select, and can’t be happier about the additional action:

January sales

As usual, I’ve updated my Super-Duper, Exhaustive and Comprehensive List and the January highlights are below:

  1. BookHearts, a subsidiary of Choosy Bookworm, had a second chance on 9 January, but something went wrong and I only got 2 sales. I’d contacted them and they agreed to run the promo (whether the first time or again, not sure) on 18 January. See for yourself- I got 5 sales. The cost was $5, which is not much, but the result is still disappointing. What was even more dissapointing is that I’ve tried to contact Jay from Choosy Bookworm/BookHearts a number of times, and never got a response  OF ANY KIND. Makes me want to start a “blacklist”.
  2. On 14 January  it was BKnights via Fiverr turn. I paid $5, even though I saw mixed reviews. I got 4 sales and didn’t bother to ask why.
  3. On 16 January it was Choosy Bookworm. I got the “Guaranteed Feature” on sale for $19. Sold 11 copies. I contacted Jay, just like I did for BookHearts – no response. I can’t be more disappointed – blacklist it is!
  4. 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.
  5. 31 January – Betty Book Freak. Cost: $12. Sales – zero (if you don’t count the pages read). To give Betty credit, she promptly refunded my money.
  6. 2 February – eBook Soda. Cost: $15. I got one sale. Once again, they refunded my money, so I will leave them in “try for yourself” category.

I have not scheduled any other promos yet, a bit burned out (it takes a lot of time) and also, this month I’m playing with Amazon pay-per-click promos. Ever wondered if it’s worth it, what to set as per-click price, and whether to use categories or associations with other products?

Results in a couple of weeks!

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by | February 14, 2016 · 1:30 am

The differences (however slight) between CreateSpace and Lightning Source paperbacks

Have you worried yourself sick over which one of these companies to pick as your PoD? Well, the good news is that there’s no need to stress – if you are planning to publish a fiction novel without graphics (as in the case of my book), then, in my opinion, one is as good as the other.

I have now published with both, mainly to:

  1. Save on shipping costs. When I run Goodreads giveaways, I can now send a book to the winner directly from either publisher, depending on which option is cheaper. I also get to order cheaper, locally printed copies for my promotional mayhem in Australia.
  2. Lightning Source allows a “return” option, which means I stand a chance of having my book ordered by bookstores, even though I take a risk of them returning my books at my expense.

Publishing with both was extremely easy, although Lightning Source does charge a small fee upfront (was $50 AUD for me). There are very slight differences in appearance of the paperbacks, and I’ve tried to document them below.

Let’s start with the first impression. Can you spot any differences? The Australian Lightning Source (ALS) version is on the left, the American CreateSpace (ACS) one is on the right:

IMG_2719

The ALS version (left) is slightly lighter/brighter – noticeable in the red and gold of the title. Ignore the spacing between my first and last name and the position of the small gold line near the spine – I did those tweaks. The slight difference in color can also be seen on the back cover:

IMG_2720

In both cases the printing is crisp – any differences/fuzziness of the font is purely due to my poor photography skills. The interiors are also very similar, if not identical (again, ALS is on the left/top):

IMG_2729

The paper feels identical, although maybe, just maybe, the ALS is slightly smoother and ACS is slightly softer. The only (annoying) difference was that ACS did not want to lie flat, whereas ALS opened easier. This may be due to the differences in binding.

Speaking of binding, this is where I finally noticed a difference. In the photo below ALS is at the back (so the top of the photo). The ACS is next to my thumb.

IMG_2730

ACS is thicker! Not by a huge amount, but it is probably due to the thickness of paper, so please make your own conclusions. For me, this is good news for when I mail signed books – both can be mailed as a “letter” at 248 pages (6×9 inch format), but it may mean that if my next one is slightly thicker, I may still be able to pay cheaper postage for the thinner book. The thicker book, on other hand, may appeal to others as more substantive? Also, not sure if it will last longer – but does that really matter with fiction paperbacks?

One last small difference in binding is the groove along the seam. ALS is on the bottom/left:

IMG_2731

The groove is much more pronounced on ACS and is further from the spine (which explains why it is harder to keep ACS open). Does this mean it’s a better/more secure binding? I don’t know, but so far it doesn’t seem like either one will be losing pages soon.

So there you go, more info for you to mull over. Or, perhaps, to ignore? I’d say take a plunge and publish with either one – you won’t be disappointed 🙂

 

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