Ana Spoke's Blog, page 12

This is how you get your book onto a bookstore shelf

You walk in and hand it to them. Well, not quite that easy, but close. I’m exhausted from jumping up and down over here – Shizzle, Inc is now available at Readings St Kilda (that’s in Melbourne, Australia). How’s this for starting 2016 with a bang:

I always wanted to get my book into a brick-and-mortar bookstore, but did not have a plan on how I was going to get this feat accomplished. My general feeling after reading online articles was that it’s very hard for self-published authors to do so. Perhaps it is, if you expect the bookstore buyers to order books from CreateSpace, but NOT if you are willing to be a supplier yourself, and to sell on consignment (this means you don’t get paid until the book is sold, and the store reserves the right to return the stock to you without payment, if it does not sell).

On Saturday, I was catching up with my sister for a coffee on the famous Acland street in St Kilda, when I’d decided to mix in some business and stop by Readings to enquire about selling books on consignment. I was told to come back on Monday to talk to the store manager, and that they “do it all the time”.

I could hardly wait till Monday, and showed up at the store with trepidation and a paperback in hand. The store manager turned out to be this gorgeous creature called Amy. She not only agreed to take the book (after a brief glance through, probably to check the print quality), she asked for three more copies to “give it some shelf presence”. Needless to say, I was back in a couple of hours with more books, an invoice, and signed agreement. Amy suggested that I should price the book “under $29” (all prices stated are in Australian dollars). I almost fainted and said I was thinking about $19.99 at most, and she seconded that motion. Readings take 40% on top of your “wholesale” price, which I set at $14.27 to get the overall $19.99. It costs me just about $8 per book, depending on the conversion rate, so my profit before tax is just over $6, which makes me happy indeed. Also, I just found out today that Lightning Source now prints B&W books in Victoria, so once I get that sorted, my per-copy price will come down to a mere $5.30!

The same process was a bit more difficult with the buyer for the Readings Carlton, who also happens to be the buyer for Readings in the State Library. He happily agreed to take a copy for review, but warned me that it will take him a week to get back to me. Fingers crossed.

I also have in my sights another Readings and two Dymocks buyers, which together cover about half-dozen stores. I’m not too thrilled to have to keep track of multiple venues, but that hardly marrs the excitement of having my actual, physical book in an actual, physical store, where people may discover it just by browsing.

Of course, I can’t do the same in the US stores, or at least I have not yet come up with a strategy. At this point I’m thinking of contacting a few stores, arranging for 4-5 copies at a time to be printed and sent to them directly (if they agree), and just taking the risk that the books will not sell. In the US, without the international shipping, a book will cost me about $6-7 AUD, so I could take that risk, unless anybody has a genius idea for me?

Would love to hear from any self-published authors with books in the US bookstores, and thank you, everyone, again for such beautiful comments and thanks on my previous post. You have no idea how motivational it is for me to continue going – in fact, it was what got me to punch out 2,000 words yesterday and 2,800 words today! Thank you all so very, very much :-)

Upward trends, hard work, and big dreams for 2016

Hi, everybody!

After a 20-hour trip and an 8-hour “nap”, I’m finally home. I was going to finish a draft post about Vietnam, but it’s just not happening. Maybe I’m simply not cut out to be a travel writer. I do have some interesting stuff in the draft, so I will finish it eventually, just not now.

Instead of uploading photos, I’m inspired to reflect on the year that just ended and maybe to daydream a bit about the year that just started. One of my favorite things to do, especially when I’m feeling a bit down, is to think where I was a decade or a year ago, and then project a trend a year or a decade into the future. It’s fun, because the trend is persistently upward, even with a few bumps along the road (if running away from an abusive ex-husband can be called a “bump”, that is). It kinda helps to start from a low base, say being born in a third-world country. Everything seems better and brighter since I’d managed to sneak out from under the Iron Curtain…

So, instead of uploading more photos, I found myself thinking where I was a year ago in the writing/publishing journey, and where I may be at the end of 2016, if everything goes according to the plan. I was actually surprised at the difference – it helps to look up from the grinding stone every now and then and get some perspective.

In terms of writing, at this time last year all I had was a final draft of Shizzle, Inc – with just one structural edit, done mostly out of desperation for someone to tell me it’s not a complete waste of time. Today, I am 20K words into a sequel, and at the end of the next year I plan to have two sequels polished and published.

In terms of publishing, last year I was persistently, some may even say obsessively, sending out query letters in hopes of getting a traditional publishing contract and then methodically crossing out those that bothered to send me a rejection letter. I gave up on that in May last year and have since self-published Shizzle, Inc in paperback and e-format. I take it for granted now, but a year ago I did not know anything about the self-publishing option. Over this coming year, I hope to create so much buzz for my three books that agents will be fighting over me. In fact, I will not deviate from the self-publishing route unless I’m offered enough to quit or put on hold my regular job. Can it be done in a year? There’s only one way to find out!

What about social media? Twelve months ago I already had a year-old Twitter account, which I’d started without any plan. I was happy to just post jokes and loved the fact that my three thousand or so followers retweeted them. Today I am much more strategic, and (after lots and lots of daily grind) have 36,000 followers on Twitter. Hey, quite a few of them have actually bought my book! My spreadsheet tells me that I will have over 100,000 followers by next Christmas, and my spreadsheets never lie.

And those are very active followers, too! I couldn’t post a graph for the entire year, but here are the last 3 months of “impressions” – crazy numbers! The light gray columns at the bottom are the number of tweets – you can see that as I fell off the radar in December, so did my stats.

Not only that, the blog stats say that 1,710 visits to this blog last year came from Twitter, so it has helped me grow the blog following as well.

Speaking of the blog, it is bursting with activity now, but would you believe that it was dead in the water last year?

Almost 30K views! That’s more than 3000% increase in visitation in just one year! It was a lot of work – as you may know, I post at least 2-3 times a week, answer all comments, comment on other people’s blogs, etc. I don’t think I could (and frankly, shouldn’t) invest more time next year, but let’s just see what happens :-).

Ah, but what about sales? And reviews? Well, of course, a year ago there were no sales, as the dream of publishing seemed to be out of reach. Again, I can only post the last 90 days of sales, which are all over the place due to the various promotions I’d run:

I’ve learned a lot about sales and promotions, and I hope you have too, if you’ve been following my testing of promo sites, complete with posting live stats on Twitter. I have even bigger plans for the next year, as my first 50 paperbacks have arrived from the US, and I plan to take them to stores and radio stations in hopes of getting some exposure. I’ve tried emailing those same stores and radio stations, to no avail, so it’s time to just show up and win them over in person.

I hope you stick with me, and I would also like to pass a message to the free cover contest participants that currently have only few votes – get to work! Writing a great blurb (or a great book) is only half of the job. Unfortunately, you have to market your work, so that people find out that it exists, and hopefully like and buy it. View this contest as a practice in both aspects of self publishing: first you had to write the best possible blurb, now you have to get as many people as you can to vote for you. Use this as an “excuse” to grow your social media, to try every possible marketing gimmick to get people to vote for you. Your reward will be a free design and a confidence that you will be able to do the same when it comes to marketing the actual book.

Ok, that was it for the “Deep Thoughts with Ana Spoke”. Thank you all for my best year yet, and look forward to sharing 2016 with you!

Who will win a free cover design for their story? Cast your vote!

Happy New Year everyone!

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): 


Take Our Poll

Only one vote per person/computer is allowed. Voting will close on 24 January.

CONTEST ENTRIES (in the order received):

1.Ninja at Law by Jim Peacock

Ninja at Law (Ages of the Seed, vol. 2)

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.

Tobe Sparkles is about to fuck all that up.

2. Head on a Grave by Terry Nelson

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.

3. The Nightmare by Amir.H.Ghazi

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.

4. Mark My Soul by Abby Cashen

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.

5. The Puzzle by Nick Langis

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.

6. Confessions of a Good Mother by Kathi Tesone

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 !”

8. Chrysalis by Sharon Gerdes

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?

9. Ember’s Heart by Charcam Olson

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.

The sun came out!

Just as I suspected and hoped, the view is spectacular:

The ocean is still murky brown, but who cares! We are going outside, to have adventures and bask in the sun.

The pool looks pretty good in the sunshine, too:

According to Josh, the pool in nearby Sheraton is even better. Yesterday he went over and asked to see their rooms – for about 50% more you can have modern luxury and amazing facilities, like a proper gym and an infinity pool overlooking the ocean. With all that, there’s no security – so he just waltzed back in later and used the gym. This is the strange benefit of being white here – you are assumed to be a guest in whichever hotel you boldly walk into.

We ventured out on the town and visited the market:

Had to snap a photo of this “security” dog watching over the local mechanic shop:

I was happy not to see any dogs for sale, anywhere. They are everywhere, though – every other shop has a small dog hanging out at the front. In general, dogs here look healthy, well taken care of and even loved. Here are a couple of dogs napping with their owner in the afternoon shade:

We managed to do a few things, like visit a 1,300-year old temple:

Josh was told to wear a robe to enter the temple, and we had to take our shoes off. I think he’d make quite a fetching monk:

The temple is on a hill and offers an amazing view of Nha Trang, somewhat marred by the monstrosity of a hotel/apartment block under construction. Just one look at this, and you’ve got to agree, town planning laws and regulations are a necessary evil:

We climbed another hill, to see this enormous Buddha:

It was hot – at least 30 degrees Celsius, and on the way we saw a quite few people napping in the shadows (sorry, the best pic I could get without feeling like a complete intruder):

In fact, afternoon naps are everywhere – I even saw one guy laying back on his motorbike, fast asleep, yet somehow maintaining a balance. Shop owners sleep on the chairs out the front, and rickshaw drivers sleep in their carts:

We had dinner by the water, in Ana’s Bar – a tranquil place full of lights. I’m not sure if it has anything to do with Christmas, but the Christmas lights are everywhere, in abundance. I was hoping to see some stars, but not with this kind of light extravaganza everywhere:

We decided to walk back, to work off some of the calories. This was apparently completely unacceptable to the local rickshaw drivers, who ganged up on us, to the point where one of them got off and very nearly tried to pull us into his cart:

We literally ran away from the rickshaw drivers and things got better on the other side of the boulevard, where tourists were expected to walk by the local restaurants, most of them displaying live or recently deceased sea life out the front:

We have also come across an amazing workshop, set in a tranquil garden:

It was half-workspace, with girls embroidering right in front of us and half-art gallery. This is just one of the “paintings” on display – I’ve tried to capture the fine quality of fine embroidery – it looks three-dimentional.

It’s not cheap, most items were in thousands of dollars, and this enormous one was about $25,000 USD:

So that was it for yesterday – today the weather has been just as awesome, and I will try to post more photos and a bit of a story later – I had the balls to ask some expats if they live here, and got some ideas for future retirement plans :-)

The Upgrade Worm, Awesome Cheap Eats, and the Russian Invasion

Well, things are looking better! Not drier, by any means, but much, much better! Judge by yourself – this is the “before” view (which would have been great in hot weather, as you can open the patio door onto the pool):

And this is the “after” much bargaining with the management:

We got a fully renovated room on the 5th floor, complete with a “honeymoon” treatment and a free bottle of wine:

And who do we have to thank for it? The wriggly bathtub worm. The worm may be long dead, but his legacy lives on in the rose petals, chrome fixtures, and a jaccuzi, filled with even more rose petals. It wasn’t easy, though, far from it – it took nerves of steel and readiness to walk away from the negotiation table. The key to this dance with the management was that we actually did not ask for the upgrade, we simply asked to leave early and get a refund for the last three nights. We had Exhibit A: the worm and Exhibit B: worn-out interior. We didn’t even mention the nightmare Josh had, waking me up in the middle of the night with a bellow of “bed bugs!” (there weren’t any). I started the process by trying to call “customer relations” extension. Someone picked up the phone on the other end, but just breathed heavily, saying nothing.

“Hi,” I said trying to be friendly and annunciate at the same time.

“Hi,” said the woman on the other end.

I stated my case as clearly as possible.

“Hmm,” she said and hung up.

I then tried to dial “operator” extension. After much back and forth with the man on the other end, I’d realised that I’d called another room.

We finally went downstairs, together, as a team ready to face the opponent. The opposing team of front desk staff was so confused and stressed by our request, that it took them a while to understand what was happening. We were eventually shown to a room on the top floor, with a spectacular view, but the same worn-out bathroom and carpet. We’d asked to think about it, did some research and found that we could pay quite a bit more in Mui Ne, but get a villa in a place that not a single Trip Advisor reviewer found “terrible” or even “poor”.

We went back down and asked again, very nicely but firmly, to leave early. We were told that we could leave, but that the hotel manager will not refund any money. I then asked to speak with this hotel manager, who seemed to be some sort of a Wizard of Oz, pulling levers from back in his office. There was more confusion, and finally a polite, well-spoken man appeared. He told us that there was a misunderstanding, that he would certainly refund our money, if we would only agree to have a look at one more room. We’d agreed.

The room is awesome, the photos hardly do it justice. It turned out to be the one they reserve for the owner of the hotel, whenever he comes to visit. So, in a way, we’d ended up in a presidential suite of sorts, or the closest thing on offer. The sauvignon blanc from Chile also helped to sweeten the deal…

With this victory under my belt, and a lot of Chilian export in my veins, I attacked my frizzy hair, changed into a decent dress, and we took off for a night on the town. The second winner of the day was the restaurant called Lanterns. It’s a local favourite, and seems to be perpetually busy:

We were all smiles…

…as a personal chef cooked beef at our table in a mini-babrbecue pot filled with hot coals:

Did I mention that the barbecue beef cost us about $10 USD? For two people?

So yes, things are definitely looking up. Except for the relentless rain, which is coming down hard, as I write this on the gorgeous balcony. I’d like to ask it to go away, but, apparently, it won’t. December is the end of the monsoon season – I shudder to think what it’s like at its peak. I’ve asked the receptionist when would be the good time to visit Nha Trang, specifically when it doesn’t rain. She thought about it for a moment.

“February,” she said decisively.

“What, one month only?”

“Ahm,” she said looking up the way all locals do when they have no idea what you just said. “August?”

Ok, I thought, if I can’t change the weather, maybe I can be better prepared for it.

“What’s the weather forecast? Will there be a thunderstorm later?”

She looked at me. “Tha…what?”

“A big rain. With lightning.” I waved my arms around, channeling Zeus throwing so many lightning bolts onto unsuspecting tourists.

“No,” she said. “Not much rain.” Then she thought about it for a moment. “Take umbrella?”

I’m trying hard to accept that I flew half-way across the world and paid tons of cash to develop a raging cabin fever. The place must be spectacular in good weather – I can barely make the outlines of the mountains framing the bay. The ocean is the hue of milk coffee, from all the waves crashing onto the foreshore. I can almost imagine it a different color, blending into an azure sky, rather than the bleak gray one. My Russian genes are stirring, aching to write Dostoevsky-style stories of soul-crushing despair, nihilism, and slow-cooking drama.

Speaking of Russians, oh my God, I have not been around so many of them in exactly 30 years! They are everywhere – I would say it’s a 50/50 mix of Russians and locals, with a few bewildered others thrown into the mix. All the signs are in Vietnamese and Russian, and it is incredibly weird to watch Vietnamese converse in Russian with their customers. It also reminds me just how un-Russian I’ve become over the years – I don’t use the same words or intonations when I speak to my family, I dress differently, and don’t wear nearly enough makeup or jewellery. I feel like an undercover agent who’s infiltrated a foreign organisation, trying hard to cover up my accent, although I’m not exactly sure why. Josh thinks this is hilarious and is threatening to use a couple of phrases I taught him just for fun, namely “I am God” and “Because I said so!”

It’s not only the signs that are customised to Russian tourists’ tastes. We have ventured out this morning in search of coffee – to add to the list of grievances, a coffee is not included in the free breakfast at our supposedly 4.5 star hotel. You can buy one, of course, but it would cost $6 AUS per cup – twice as much as back home. We found a cute little venue on the corner, with a view of the ocean and a covered outdoor terrace. We’d ordered a double espresso and a cappuccino. The waitress looked at us like we were idiots or something and wordlessly pointed to the menu. The closest substitutes on the menu were black coffee and “coffee with milk”, so that’s what we ordered. When my coffee arrived, black as the night, I asked for milk. The increasingly irate waitress picked up my cup and stirred the drink with a spoon. It turned out that at the bottom of the cup was a spoonful of sweetened condensed milk. Josh couldn’t believe it, but for me it brought back childhood memories – coffee was hard to come by, and nobody’s ever heard of a milk frother, so a cup of real coffee with condensed milk was a treat. I would not be surprised to find out that this is a Nha Trang specialty, and a recipe bestowed upon the local community by the Soviet-era Russians.

So that’s it for today. I might continue with this journaling later, if anything dramatic happens. Who am I kidding, of course there will be drama! Talk to y’all tomorrow!

Thank God for free Wi-Fi!

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.

 

My first one-star review – I guess it had to happen sooner or later

This one popped up on Goodreads – thank god it’s not on Amazon, which would potentially mean fewer sales…I’m feeling pretty philosophical about it – I guess you can’t expect everyone to love a book, any book, it’s a matter of personal preference. Wish I could make sense of it, though – the main complaint from someone who loves screwball comedy seems to be that it’s “improbable” and has “too many screwballs”. The most disappointing thing is actually that I can’t use this particular critique to improve my writing. Anywho, I’m off to enjoy life :-)

 

 

 

 

Going down to Vietnam, gonna have myself a time!

By the time you read this here stream of consciousness, I will be on a plane or perhaps already in the exotic far-away lands. Vietnam feels like an odd choice for our pre-honeymoon, at least for me – having spent half of my life in the Soviet Union, and the other half in the US, I’m used to the stories about Vietnam being all about “smell of napalm in the morning” and “Charlies in the trees”. That was half a century ago, though, so things have changed – I’m going to spend two-and-a-half weeks in the lap of luxury, eating awesome cheap food and getting awesome cheap massages.

I’m hoping for an easy trip with aghm, a very budget airline…and that I don’t freak out the way I sometimes do, when it suddenly occurs to me just how ridiculous it is to be hurtling through the air in a sardine can…

I’m also hoping to detox a bit from my addiction to social media, so I might be sparse and not answering comments as I usually do. I will try to stay true to form and post updates on the promos I got scheduled – if not on the blog, then at least on Twitter.

Please don’t forget to enter the free cover design contest or the free Goodreads giveaway – both end on 31 December. Otherwise, enjoy your various holidays, and see you in 2016!

Goodreads Giveaway! Win one of five paperback copies of Shizzle, Inc!

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!

Good-bye Kindle Select, hello all other platforms! Wait…no! Take me back! Maybe?

Shizzle, Inc has been enrolled in Kindle Select almost since the day it was published on 4 September. My 90-day commitment is up and I have not renewed, thinking that I’m no longer interested in Countdown Deals or Free Days, since Shizzle, Inc is now pretty much permanently at $0.99.

I immediately published with a variety with other platforms – Shizzle, Inc is now available on:

Smashwords
Kobo
iTunes
Barnes&Noble

I was so excited! Yet another sales graph to obsess over…too bad (thank God!) it’s just one more – on Smashwords. Oh, and look, five people have downloaded free 20% samples! Oh, and look, I can set up coupons, which will let me do sales or giveaways!

Awesome, right?

That’s what I thought until I’d noticed that there was no longer a “get it free with Kindle Unlimited” button under the title. After some Googling and face-palming, I realized what I seriously should have known by now – that Kindle Unlimited is the main bait to keep authors exclusively with Amazon Kindle, not the promo options.

If you’d asked me what I thought about KU and KENP a month ago, I would have probably said “eh”. However, thanks to the recent promo blasts, the KENP graph (below) looks like the world’s awesomest mountain chain. In fact, I’ve made about $22 in the last couple of weeks just from people reading their “free” copies:

That’s equivalent to about 63 copies sold for $0.99! And at the very least 18 copies read (assuming about 240 pages per copy – I never get the “normalized” part of KENP). I don’t (yet) care about the royalties – I want as many copies sold as possible, so I would need to sell about 2 copies per day from other sources…wait, that’s not so bad, right? So, was it a good idea to part with KU?

After a bit more over-analyzing and face-palming, I’d calmed down and decided to give the other platforms a go – maybe a month? Maybe two? Advertise and see what kind of numbers I get, do some more calculations, then regroup and decide if I go back to Kindle Select.

So if you hate Amazon, but are interested in finding out what it might be like to work for the seventh richest man in the Southeastern United States – get Shizzle, Inc now from any of the sources above! I’m prone to changing my mind…