Ruth Ann Nordin's Blog, page 108

J.R. Reardon Speaks on Self-Publishing, Book Promotion, and Her Books

J.R. Reardonauthor of legal thrillers Confidential Communications and DISHONORED

[image error]J.R. Reardon's Website

J.R. Reardon's first book, Confidential Communications, was released on June 16, 2008. In that time, it has received some notable honors. As of January 21, 2010, her book has received 18 customer reviews on Amazon with an average of 4 out of 5 stars. The book was tagged #1 Conspiracy, #1 Legal Thriller, #4 Suspense, and #3 Action-Adventure. On Goodreads, the book has an average rank of 4.44 ...

Maybe These Should Be on the "Do Not Do" List

I'm laughing my head off, but I've just come off of a forum where authors and readers congregate and did it ever show me a couple of things relating to selling yourself as an author, which is why I decided to post this. So, for a quick run through, here's what I noticed.

1. Out of about 400+ comments, 3-4 people kept reposting information about their book. Every time they got a "new" review, they felt the need to plug that and recap on their past comments. There really should be a limit o...

Passion Keeps You Going When You Start To Despair

Once upon a time, I wrote with my family members in mind. I considered what they would want to read or not read, so I left some things out of my books and added others in that I thought might please them. But there was something missing in those books, and I never could get as excited about them as I am about the books I write now. Don't get me wrong. I do like those books. But I don't feel that burning passion for them.

The fact that my family turned out to not care about the books I was...

Thoughts on Audiobooking

Now that I have uploaded four podcasts of my audiobook, Loving Eliza, I have pointed out a couple of things that I want to do differently next time. I am not changing what I already posted up. My philosophy in life is that I learn and move on to make the next project better. I might redo the book a couple of years down the road when I've reached a more professional level, but for now, it is what it is. I have nine other books I want to read, and I'll want to read the ones I continue to wr...

Great Interview between Joanna Penn and April L. Hamilton and How I Actually Increased Sales

Today is one of those days where I have two topics I really want to post on. So I think I will. Forgive the length. I know it's much too long. I made a divider between the topics mentioned in the subject line.


I just listened this great podcast/blog post over at The Creative Penn. The link will take you to Joanna Penn with April L. Hamilton. For anyone unfamiliar to April L. Hamilton, she's a huge advocate of self-publishing, and she was the one who told me about CreateSpace at a time whe...

Google Alerts

I found this article this morning on Google Alerts and thought you might like to check it out. I did learn about Google Alerts at the writer's conference, but this article goes into more depth than what I learned.

I went to http://www.google.com/alerts and signed in. Then I inserted search terms that I wanted to follow, like "ruth ann nordin" and "ruth nordin". I did do a search for my book names but then I got everything out there with those titles or even one of the words in those title...

Thoughts on Small Publishing (based on a Victoria Strauss article I read today)

I've actually thought about starting a small publishing company. One of my good friends recently started one, and judging by the post on Victoria Strauss' blog, she is doing things right.

But also by reading through the post, I have thoroughly decided that I do not want to start a small publishing company. All I kept thinking as I read it was, "This looks like a headache waiting to happen." I'd rather just help my friend with it than take the reins. She has a business degree and a lot more ...

Ask the Agents (From the Writer's Workshop)

I know this is long, but since I'm working on my audiobook, I'm going to post the whole thing so I can focus on the edits for the audio. :-)

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At the HACWN conference, I got the chance to take a workshop where three agents answered questions from the writers attending it. The three agents were Mary Sue Seymour, Terry Burns, and Les Stobbe. Terry and Les were published authors before they became agents, and Mar...

An Invite to be a Part of a WordPress Blog where Self-Published Authors Can Congregate

My friend and I thought it might be fun to start up a blog on WordPress for self-published authors or anything thinking of self-publishing. Anyway, I thought I'd offer anyone who's interested to take a look and see if they want to join. I wrote this at the bottom of the post I made today to sum up our idea:

"Stephannie and I would love to have other authors (whether you are thinking of self-publishing, have done both self-publishing and traditional publishing, or are already self-published) t...

You Can Make A Kindle Version of Your Book

I didn't know this was possible to do for free. Someone was charging $200 for this service. I've uploaded my documents up to Amazon for making Kindles, but if anyone wants to make a Kindle to sell off their website or to offer a free ebook or even a sample chapter, then this might be useful to you: http://jwordsmith.wordpress.com/2009/...

Oh, Smashwords will also convert your file to a Kindle, but unlike Amazon, I can't see a preview.