Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 18

For Halloween, get “Misty and the Magic Pumpkin Knife” free! (At most retailers)

Happy Halloween!

In honor of the occasion, I made my Halloween short story “Misty and the Magic Pumpkin Knife” free through Draft2Digital. Since it’s no longer in KDP Select, I couldn’t make it free through Amazon this year without a lot of hassle, but I’ve made it free there before, so I hope the Amazon folks won’t feel too left out.

Misty Mankin hated Halloween. She hated ghosts and princesses and black and orange. Especially orange. She hated frozen pumpkin pie, the most common kind in...

Summary of ad results for 99c sales

When I did my 99c Countdown Deal of Yseult two months ago, I promised to do a summary post after this round of promos was over. Last week, the third week-long promo ended, and now I have put together my results to share with you, along with some conclusions about running a 99c sale. I did not apply for a Bookbub ad for any of these promos, since part of my motivation in testing ad sites like this is to find alternatives to Bookbub. I have had Bookbub ads before, and I know that they are effe...

Putting things in perspective — via Russell Blake

A hugely successful indie author, Russell Blake, summarizes the ways it just ain’t easy here:

http://russellblake.com/things-ive-learned-to-myself-as-a-newbie-writer/

I especially appreciated this:

That’s different than I thought when I started out. I kind of hoped that the old canard that you wrote a great novel, sold it to NY, and then sat back and got rich, was true. That you only needed to produce a little work over the years, and could devote lots of time to thinking great thoughts, tra...

5 Ways to Promote Your Free Book 1 Series Starter – via Lindsay Buroker

I’ve mentioned before on this site that permafree can be a good method of getting eyes on your books, even if it is no longer as effective as it used to be. This week, Lindsay Buroker has some great suggestions on how to push those free books, despite Amazon’s attempts to hide them:

5 Ways to Promote Your Free Book 1 Series Starter

Highly recommended!

And once you have read that, you might want to check out my list of places where you can advertise permafree books.

Luck and skill to all. :...

Final ad testing experiment: 99c sale of Shadow of Stone

I’ve been sick with a major head cold recently, which is one of the main reasons why I haven’t posted to this blog in over a week. I’m feeling a bit better today, which coincides with the first day of final round of testing ads for 99c sales of ebooks, this time for Shadow of Stone, Book II of The Pendragon Chronicles. Here’s the lineup for the next week:

Oct. 15 – None
Oct. 16 – BookGoodies ($5)
Oct. 17 – The Midlist (free)
Oct. 18 – ContentMo ($1.99)
Oct. 19 –
Oct. 20 – Book Barbarian ($8...

Goals for the final quarter of 2015

I’m a bit behind here in posting my goals for this quarter. Mostly it’s because of the translation, but here’s an even better excuse:

Cannstatter Volksfest 2015

Those are my granddaughters at the second biggest Volksfest in Germany. Only the Munich Oktoberfest is bigger.

Which proves that I am not working all the time. :)

My goals for this round are going to look a lot like those from last round, just with a few completed taken off the list, and a few new ones added. I never manage to eve...

Testing more ad sites: 99c sale of Chameleon in a Mirror

I have another 99c Countdown Deal on one of my books going this week, this time for my time travel, Chameleon in a Mirror. BTW, it also got a very nice review recently at The Reading Head. :) Anyway, here’s the lineup for the ads:

Oct. 5 – Ereader News Today ($20) – 26 sales so far
Oct. 6 – Book Goodies ($5)
EbookStage? (free) – I have a question mark on this one because they wanted me to post a Tweet which Twitter rejected as spam. As a result, I’m not sure if they will actually promote th...

Gaetano goes to Prague for #WIPpet Wednesday

I skipped last week again and opted for a quarterly wrap-up instead. The thing is, I really have to concentrate on getting this translation finished, and blogging is not high on my list of priorities at the moment. But I will continue posting excerpts at least every other week. Not only do I want to keep in touch with other WIPpeteers, I also like the way it keeps me focused on this project.

So for today I’m giving you three paragraphs from Facets of Glass for the 3 in the day of the month....

You win some, you lose some: 3rd quarter writing goals wrap-up

My main goal for this quarter was to get back into better habits regarding the writing. I’ve been semi-successful in that respect. Part of what has helped is my new goal to write at least 100 words a day, even if it’s late and I just finished the day’s translation. Because sometimes, if I start getting into it, 100 turns into 200 or 300 or more. I’m not quite up to the 2500 words a week regularly that I wanted to achieve at the beginning of this round, but last week it was 1900, and the week...

From Earth to Mars and Beyond #free through tomorrow!

Until recently, this collection of eight of my previously published sf short stories, including the Nebula nominated “Mars: A Traveler’s Guide”, was available wide through most stores where eBooks are sold.

And it sold about 2 copies.

So I pulled it from other venues and put it into KDP Select, which means I can also give it away to my loyal readers. Through tomorrow, Sept. 23, you can download the collection free from Amazon.

Here the description:

“From Earth to Mars and Beyond” is a co...