Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 25
February 9, 2015
Starting Out as an Indie Author: Where to promote permafree books
I’ve talked before about how permafree can be used as a marketing strategy for ebooks. Permafree is indie author shorthand for permanently free. Many sales venues allow you to set the price of your book to free; others do not, most notably Amazon. But it is still possible to make a book free there, either through price-matching, or by writing Amazon directly, listing the other sites where your book is free, and pointing out the promotional advantage of having the book free. As an example, her...
February 8, 2015
The Cover that Judges You
I had to share this. :)
February 6, 2015
Sea lions on the Oregon coast for Terribleminds Fiction Challenge
Note: I’ve long wanted to participate in one of Chuck Wendig’s Friday Fiction Challenges, but somehow I never seem to have the time. This week, I’m a bit ahead of myself, and I decided to give it a shot. This on the 1st “fourth” of a story — which someone else should take up next week! If you want to play and see how it works, check out the rules here.
And now for my open beginning:
“I’m not going back to Germany.” Deirdre scuffed the damp sand with her white Reeboks, erasing a random dog pri...
February 4, 2015
A little flirtation for #WIPpet Wednesday
The writing has been going quite well for the past few weeks. I’ve been consistently getting over 1000 words a day written, with a few exceptions here and there, like when I was putting stuff together for our taxes. It’s something of a breakthrough for me, since for years I’ve regarded it as a particularly good writing day if I get 700-800 words completed.
It started when I decided to power through and get the rough draft of Facets of Glass finished by the end of the month — which I did, hurr...
February 2, 2015
Starting out as an indie author: To KDP Select or to not KDP Select
Recently, a friend of mine expressed surprise that when you publish through Amazon (KDP or Kindle Direct Publishing), it is also possible to generate income when someone borrows your book. I’ve been aware of this for so long, it never even occurred to me to point it out in this series. The possibility of making money from borrows is just one of the ways Amazon tries to entice authors to make a book exclusive with their platform.
And since they introduced Kindle Unlimited, borrows have gone wa...
February 1, 2015
Advice for C.C. Finlay
I got a kick out of this. I received many alas-o-grams in my day, but I always kept trying, since Gordon was so wonderful about rejecting promptly, which meant I could turn my stories around way faster than with any other market. I had the great good fortune of selling one story to GVG, “Mars: A Traveler’s Guide,” which ended up being nominated for a Nebula. :)
Originally posted on Oliver Buckram:
Congratulations to C.C. Finlay (CCF), who has just been named the editor of The Ma...
The first draft of Facets of Glass finished!
I put in a pretty intense writing week in order to earn my little monster, as I explained in this post.
So in order to complete the challenge by the end of the month, I wrote 8000 words this week. The week before, my word count was 5700. And all of that constantly looking up details about glassmaking, travel times in the 17th – 18th century, Bohemian glassworks, regions in Venice, etc. etc.
I know from experience that writing projects that don’t require a lot of research can result in way mor...
January 30, 2015
An Open Letter To WordPress
This is all so terribly true! I *hate* the new editor. And I *hate* the new stats page. WordPress used to ask me which I preferred and why, but now they don’t anymore. Go figure.
Originally posted on Fish Of Gold:
Dear WordPress.com,
I am loath to write yet another letter to you, since I typically prefer to spend my time writing actual blog posts, but I���ve been bitching on Twitter and in your forums to no avail, so maybe you���ll pay attention to a blog post. It���s not likely,...
January 21, 2015
An update and a suspicious gift for #WIPpet Wednesday
It’s my granddaughter’s fifth birthday today. Which, of course, is really cool. But OMG was she in high energy mode today. Worse than Christmas (a comment I’m pretty sure most parents will understand.)
OTOH, after I picked her up from day care and was bringing her home, we met a neighbor we don’t have much contact with, and she asked if Mira was my daughter. Kinda nice at my age to be mistaken for the mother of a five-year-old. :)
Anyway, with birthday and spaghetti and a sick older sister we...
January 19, 2015
Two free science fiction books
This week, I’m giving away books again, science fiction stories and a novella this time.
The Future, Imperfect is a collection of near future, dystopian short stories by Ruth Nestvold. Environmental changes — slow in some regions, catastrophic in others — have had a major effect on our world, not for the better. While water wars and pandemics have devastated the Mediterranean region, and a major earthquake and the resulting destruction of nuclear power plants and sensitive research facilities...
