The Amazon Publishing Game: Friend or Foe?

Well, here I am three days into "Ever After"'s release and STILL finding issues with Amazon.  I am NOT amused.

Don't get me wrong - I understand that this is a process and that when I wrote and published "The Christmas Cottage", it was a completely different beast.  Why?  I published a feel-god Christmas story and released it right after Thanksgiving.  As an avid reader of romances, I LOVE reading a good holiday romance at Christmas time.  So basically, the timing was beyond perfect.

"Ever After" is a new challenge.  There was no holiday that I wanted to tie in to (I don't want to write like that) and I released it just like every other author and now it has to compete like every other book with nothing to draw any particular attention to it.  It's frustrating to say the least.  What people don't realize is that, as an author,  you are ALWAYS going to want your book to be a success.  You write, you publish, you wait for success.

No one likes the waiting.

Ever.

So things are moving slowly right now and a HUGE hindrance to the process is that Amazon still has not figured out or fixed the problem with the "Like" button.  I chose to publish through Amazon's Kindle Select program and so the only place you will find "Ever After" is on Kindle.  Well, how does Amazon track traffic to your page or your popularity?  

Through the like button.

Basically, you don't have to have a boatload of sales to move up the charts.  Weird but true.  But you need to get traffic to the page and have people click like.  Hard to do that when the "Like" button isn't there!

So now here I sit with a book that is competing with a million other books and a missing marketing tool.  Not a good place to be sitting.  So what am I getting by being a part of this whole Kindle Select program?  No one knows.  There is the possibility of some higher profits from some special fund that they have but I'm not seeing them doing anything to move my book to get it to have higher profits.

Correct me if I am wrong but considering that they take a HUGE part of my profits, wouldn't it make sense for them to try and SELL my book???  I don't understand it.  I want to scream; I want to have an all-out hissy fit.  It won't do any good and unless you are a writer yourself, you probably don't understand what the big deal is.

Basically, I am marketing myself/my books.  Local advertising is a waste of time and energy.  I have to be all over the internet and not just on sites visited by people that live around me.  World-wide.  Global sites.  It's not a difficult concept but you'd be surprised.  Amazon is world wide and they are limiting my marketing.  I have a fan club base of almost 300 on Facebook (thank you, Nick!) and I have gotten multiple complaints that they can't go to Amazon and like the book!  I've gotten enough comments about it that it's sincerely and issue and all I get from Amazon is that they cannot identify the problem.

Why?  Because it's like the "Like" button is basically playing peek-a-boo; now you see it, now you don't.  Two computers in my house, one has the like button, one doesn't.  At work, there are 15 computers, half have the like button, half don't? 

What in the world is up with that?  Shouldn't an INTERNATIONAL company like Amazon do a little more to support the author's whose money they are taking?

Help me, readers!  Please go to Amazon and get your copy of "Ever After" - it's only $1.99 and if you can see it, click the LIKE button!  

How to Take a Successful Writing Retreat

I have said it before and I'll say it again, I have some amazing friends in my life.  Right now I am sitting in a cozy cottage in the woods for a weekend to total writing abandon.  I have the place to myself; no tv, no radio, no phone, no family, no laundry, no...anything.

Except I have a cell phone, a laptop, a kitchen, my iPod,  my Kindle and enough food to feel a small family of four for a weekend.  

I like to be prepared.

This is my third retreat and each time I come away feeling accomplished and refreshed and more than blessed for the time I was given.  The first two retreats I did were during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) times so I had a definite writing goal in mind.  This time around it is all about working on SEVERAL writing projects.

To prepare for the weekend I had to gather all of my files that I would need from my desktop and move them to the laptop.  I had to pack clothes (primarily pajamas because I intended to be VERY lazy and casual), pack up enough food for the weekend so that there would be no middle-of-the-night Taco Bell runs (I don't do it at home but for some reason it becomes HIGHLY appealing during a retreat!) and all of the tools I will need to get my projects done over the course of a weekend.

I left for work on Friday morning and loaded my car.  During my lunch break I ran to Target and got some last minute items.  After work I ran to the grocery store to get the last-LAST minute items I couldn't find at the Target and then grabbed some Chinese take-out and I was off.

It was pouring raining and after four trips to the car, all of my belongings were in the cabin and I was ready to retreat.  I sat down, opened my dinner and pulled up something to watch on the laptop.  Really, who needs a TV these days?  Then I got serious.  I put on my jammies and got comfortable and at 6:40 I began to tackle the first of six projects I had outlined for the weekend.  By 11:45 I had completed two of them and was ready to crash.  It was sweet to have the whole bed to myself and no alarm to set.

Saturday dawned - still raining.  There's something soothing about writing with nothing but the sound of the rain.  I set up again, had something to eat while playing some Scrabble on Facebook and then started to write. 

To my son.

Back and forth.

On Facebook.

Sigh.

This was so NOT going as planned.  Don't get me wrong, I had accomplished two huge projects the night before and yet I couldn't get into the groove.  I played more Scrabble with a friend, played some Solitaire, talked to my husband on the phone, ate some lunch and then said, THAT'S IT!  I'm getting serious now.  So I took out the papers that my agent sent back to me (I LOVE saying "my agent") and pulled up the file I had loaded on to the laptop and got ready to edit and...

I had uploaded the wrong file.

DAMMIT!

Okay, now I call my husband because I need to vent and we end up arguing about something completely different.  Why am I even at this retreat???  I mean, I am getting NOTHING done!  Like ever!  I finally get off the phone with him and hide the phone so that I am NOT tempted to call anyone and then cross that one project off of the list and move on to tackle another one.  "Write Three Blogs".  This is number two so hey, I'm making progress.  

I have a full-length novel that is completed to edit and I am writing another novella so that will give me plenty to do for the rest of the night.  I don't plan on leaving here until the late afternoon tomorrow so I think by the time I am ready to go I should be almost 100% finished with my list.

The most important thing to keep in mind when doing a retreat like this?  Don't sweat the small stuff.  I grabbed the wrong file, I had to move on.  There were plenty of other projects to work on and it's just a matter of being flexible and getting my brain wrapped around a different one while not eating all of the food that I brought with me.

Still in my jammies...

Still loving it...

Not Just a Romance Writer...

You know, it's kind of nice to not be locked in to any one type of writing.  For most authors I've seen them go from writing romance to writing mysteries and thrillers, from righting light, fluffy romances to more in-depth novels with a romantic element.

I'm not there yet.

For me, I have always been a romance writer at heart.  I started messing around with it in high school and then let it go for years and then messed around with it again in my thirties and now here I am in my forties and making it happen.  But along the way, particularly in the last ten years or so, I got in to TEACHING writing.  I taught creative writing to middle school kids and high school kids who were homeschooled and I loved it.

I had created my own curriculum that I used but I stopped teaching about two years ago and still had all of these lessons on my computer.  So what did I do?  Well, I decided to start self publishing them too!  They were just sitting there not getting used and so basically, most of the work was already done; all I had to do was organized the files into a workbook format and upload them to CreateSpace.

There will be a total of four workbooks in the Creative Writing Series and this weekend I released the first two - Introduction to Creative Writing and Developing Your Character in Creative Writing.  The next two which will be released next month will be The Art of Dialogue Writing and then Introduction to Fiction Writing.  Each workbook is $9.99 each and as of now they are only available through CreateSpace but by the end of the coming week, they should be available through Amazon as well.  I will put the link out there once that happens.  For now you can order Intro to Creative Writing HERE and Developing Your Character HERE. 

So for now, I may not be writing blockbuster novels or doing the crossover genre thing, but I'm pretty darn happy to have my light little romances out there and my workbooks.  But it doesn't hurt to dream, right?

Oh, and while I'm in self-promoting mode (and really, when am I not?) don't forget that Monday is the big release day for "Ever After" on Amazon!!

Traditional vs. Indie - Which Publishing is Better?

So I've been doing a lot of research in the last six weeks or so and I've read dozens of articles on the indie publishing trend.  Really, it was once considered the last resort for people who weren't talented enough to get published but now?  Not so much.

There are THOUSANDS of fabulous self-published books out there and they are in every genre.  Don't get me wrong, there are still bad books out there too, but not as many as we were once led to believe.  Self-publishing is no longer the "shameful" way to publish.  If anything, I'm starting to see some well-known, previously published authors (who were published under BIG name publishing houses) taking the jump over to indie publishing.

Why?  Only they know, but here's my theory.  Traditional publishing houses no longer do for their authors what they once did.  Advances are becoming a thing of the past and essentially, a large percentage of the marketing and the promotion of the book is still the responsibility of the author.  I have started following a TON of big-name author blogs that they have all started and have mailing lists to that heavily promote their upcoming books/releases.  

One author friend, who had published dozens of books for her publisher, recently had one of her submissions rejected.  Apparently, it DOES happen.  But it was a book that she had worked hard on and was proud of and she is going to self publish it.  I can only hope that she sells a TON of copies and then goes back to the publisher with a satisfied and smug look on her face.  

Back when I was doing promotional stuff for Susan Mallery, I was surprised at how little the publisher was doing for her.  She's a NY Times Best Selling Author and she came up with the brilliant idea of enlisting the help of her fans to promote her books!  Honestly, the idea completely worked for her and I bow to master on that bit of marketing genius.  

Insert bow here.

When you self-publish, you work on your own time table.  Your deadlines are more flexible and at the end of the day, a larger percentage of the royalties are yours.  What's not to like about that?

So what's the downside?  The cost of said marketing and promotion and the cost of having artwork for covers done and editing work done.  Sure, you can do it yourself but as I found out on this last book, people can be mean and harsh and nasty and when you put out a product that is less than perfect (no matter how low-cost you offer it for), everyone becomes a critic.  

I am blessed to have gotten some volunteers for the next project to proof-read for me (thank GOD!) but I will probably use a paid service for the cover art-work.  Not a HUGE amount of money but when I looked at what was available for free on CreateSpace (who I use for publishing), I'm am HIGHLY displeased.  There are plenty of services out there that provide high-quality artwork, I just have to come up with what I am looking for.  And that will come when I finally decide on a title for the darn project.

A writer's work is never done...