A.L. Wright's Blog, page 3

Noble Bloggings...

Moving forward from Blood Price, I am now over halfway done with Blood Ties. I've taken some time off of writing recently to read some books, give some reviews and do a TON of marketing for my first two books. All that plus working 9 - 5 has been draining! Well I actually work closer to 6 am - 5 pm 5 days a week... so you can see how my time gets so limited.

So since I wasn't working on finding the time to sit and write, I gave myself a timeline. I want this book to be ready by end of October. Sooner would be better! So my brain finally kicked into that overdrive gear and started churning out story lines again. So here we go! Hopefully I can get this one done and move on to the next book. And hopefully no more story ideas come along between then and now. I'm swamped with book ideas!

Until later....

Helpful Promo Services Pt. 2

This is part two to my previous post about listing everywhere you can, to optimize your search engine results. I've expanded out to three more sites in the last few days.

Awesome Gang. Yeah odd name, but it's free to list and again, the more you list the more visible you are to search engines. You start here by posting your author interview, then listing your books. There are some paid services as well but they aren't necessary in order to get listed. I believe I paid $10 for some promo emails on one of my books. They have a FB page, a Google + page and a list of other sites you can submit to for free as well. Check out http://awesomegang.com/author-interview/

Next is BookGoodies.com. This was in the list from Awesome Gang. Start with the self-serve author interview, then list your books. This is a busy site for listing, so while your author interview posts as is and quickly, your books will take a couple of weeks for them to review and post. But, it's all free. You can also submit your promo specials and freebies for eBooks here as well. I'm sure they offer more in the paid variety but I didn't check into those. Take a peek here at http://bookgoodies.com/authors-start-here/

And the third place I listed is Authors Database. I looked these guys up a while back and put them in the list of sites I'd get back to. Three months later I'm wondering why I waited. Listing is free. You get an author page, listing of info on your books and you can contribute to their front page BREAKING NEWS to push your books and brand in front of all the site's visitors. They also have a handy tagging system for search engine optimization. This site is HIGHLY recommended. Look them up here http://authorsdb.com/listings/submit-an-author-listing. And don't forget their #1AdB tag when you tweet!

And as a side note if you are looking at building your own website, try out Moonfruit.com. I've tried a couple different do it yourself sites and this one seems to be the easiest, and it's free! Can you tell I like free? :) Take a look around my site here at http://www.noblebloodbooks.net/ to see a small example of what they offer.

Peace and Love. And just keep swimming (writing) !!

Helpful Promo services Pt 1

I read a couple of months ago, that having your book listed and hosted on as many sites as possible increases your ratings in search engines. In light of this I reached out to get author and book pages in several places.

I started with Self Publisher's Showcase. They have a basic membership option that is very affordable for us Indie types, and even without signing up for tweet promo services you can get them and their other accounts to retweet by using their particular hashtag. They will build you a page and list all of your books on it for 3 years on the same basic plan. They offer a ton of other services if you desire them, including book reviews. Find more info here http://selfpublishersshowcase.com/joi...

I've also listed on AskDavid.com. This is a great site for listing books because the page they build for you shows all of your reviews from Amazon, and gives the readers another platform to post reviews directly on the page. You pay $15 for a 12 months, and can add as many books as you want until the end of that period. They send you a link with 10 different free tweets that will be sent across all of their Twitter accounts. They are an Amazon affiliate but that does not affect royalties on the books you list in any way. For more info click here http://askdavid.com/book-promotion

Next place I listed was Indie Author News. It is a little more expensive so I did a combo package to get a better value. They list you and your book, help you promote "free" days for your Kindle books, and post a good author interview in a separate page. They do twitter promo tweets, and to be honest I can't remember for how long. They've been doing promo tweets for my book for 2 months now... so I won't complain! More info here http://www.indieauthornews.com/p/prom...

One of the most recent places I've listed with is The Book Promoter, or Books Go Social.com. They have a slightly higher cost than the first two but you get so much more. You get first class attention from the creators of the company, and great tips on how to present your Amazon book page. Their program includes Twitter blasts from all of their connected accounts, email blasts to readers, facebook groups, Pinterest boards and of course a listing on their site. They place a 1 to 2 page preview of your book along with links to Amazon's buy now page. They also have their hashtag to use so they and others who follow them will retweet you. This one has been my favorite listing/promo site so far. More info here http://thebookpromoter.com/

And of course don't forget to make full use of your Amazon Author page! You can link your twitter account there, and list any videos or events. Plus your blog can show up in a feed on that page for anyone to see.

So get listed! Get your name spread around as many webpages as you can. Utilize those freebies, like Facebook, Google +, Linked In, Pinterest, Twitter etc.

Also contact other authors to see if they would mention your book on their website. Spread the love to your fellow Indies! I will be doing the same on this site soon.

Love and light!

Promoting a book is painful.

Here's another lesson from a want-to-do-it-all herself author.

Promoting a book is painful.

You are going to need help with promotion. It's something you realize very early on. So I wanted to just find the quick solutions, things that would just help with tweeting across random channels. And I would handle the rest.

Well it sounded easy, but come to find out there are promo services out there that just charge you and not care. Yes they will tweet about your book. But they won't check the tweets or posts first to see if they even help promote your book. And sometimes what they post is downright harmful.

I purchased a tweet campaign from BookTweep and 2 out of 3 tweets they've pushed have been more harmful than good. All they do is copy and paste a line from a random review of your book, any line, and tweet it. Whether it's good or bad. And they tweet the same message across 20 different accounts! And you know it's bad when other twitter users feel the need to shame them. (see pic)

I've emailed the service to ask them to just stop. I don't even care about getting the money back at this point, I just need them to stop.

So please let this be a lesson. Be very careful of the promo services you use! If you go to pay them on PayPal and don't get a business name, but you see a person's name, then be leery. Check twice. Check out their twitter feeds first. On several different occasions. Cause it would be awful you catch the one tweet of theirs that seems good. Then get burnt on your own.

I will post another time about some services that have been great, and why having author pages setup everywhere is beneficial!

Toodles!

My first author based blog

Wow. What a journey so far.

I had no idea that becoming an author was such a roller coaster ride! If I had known about everything involved and how much of my time it would consume.. I probably would have thought twice about writing.

But I'm sure I would still have ended up here, eventually. Words needed to come out of my brain in one form or another. And with one book published, one scheduled for the end of July, and several other books started, there's no way to just quit. Not yet.

I'm all in at this point. I'm just lucky that my family is so supportive. Cause if they weren't then I would have to see if my bosses minded me writing and marketing from work. Yeah, doubtful.

So stay tuned for future bloggings. I will write about my ever continuous roller coaster ride as I go book to book. And hopefully beyond.