Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 27

Beware of gifts from the dowager princess …

Slowly getting back into the blogosphere, me. With family matters no longer as pressing, and the head cold winding down, I can get more done that needs to get done. Yesterday I didn’t make any progress on the big stuff on the to-do list, but I did manage to get 1200 words written. That’s a good writing day for me!

After that mini-update, on to WIPpet Wednesday! As a result of craziness of the Christmas holidays, and then that stupid cold, I haven’t played for several weeks. In honor of 2015,...

First quarter goals for 2015

Happy New Year! I hope everyone has started it off better than me — I’ve been sick with a very irritating head cold. It seems to be slowly letting up now, though. I certainly hope so. I find it very hard to concentrate when my head is full of gunk.

Anyway, on to the first order of the year — stating my goals for this round! A number I will have to carry over from last year, but I did make a big dent in my publishing goals in the last days of 2014: I got Mars: A Traveler’s Guide, and Yseult, P...

A Christmas gift for my readers: Looking Through Lace

Merry Christmas, everyone! We had a wonderful family Christmas Eve last night, and much turkey and many presents were had by all. Christmas is so much more fun with children, their enthusiasm is catching. :)

In honor of the occasion, I’m offering my award-winning SF novella, Looking Through Lace, free through Dec. 29.

As the only woman on the first contact team, xenolinguist Toni Donato expected her assignment on Christmas would be to analyze the secret women’s language — but then the chief l...

Starting out as an indie author: Where to promote a 99c eBook sale

In my ongoing attempts to bump my sales again, I tested a 99c sale with Shadow of Stone last week, from Dec. 15-19. In this post, I’d like to share my results, along with the resources I’ve put together, a list of sites where you can have you sale book listed, both free and paid.

First of all, some info on what I did and the results. About ten days before my sale started, I wrote to all the sites below that offer free listings (except the Naughty List, since the book is not romance or erotica...

Stories on the Go: 101 Very Short Stories by 101 Authors – FREE!

I have another Christmas present for my readers: Stories on the Go: 101 Very Short Stories by 101 Authors. For this one, my contribution was very small, as you can gather from the title — less than one percent. :) This is a mutual project from a whole bunch of indie authors who hang out on Kboards, including Hugh Howey, Toni Dwiggens, Lisa Grace and many, many more. All of the stories are flash fiction pieces, under 1000 words. We have Andrew Ashling to thank for doing most of the editing, wi...

Why the Sony hack is unlikely to be the work of North Korea.

Ruth Nestvold:

This has nothing to do with Indie publishing, but it does have to do with the dangers creativity is faced with in a digital age — an besides, it’s a fascinating analysis, with all kinds of food for thought, and maybe fiction.

Originally posted on Marc's Security Ramblings:

Everyone seems to be eager to pin the blame for the Sony hack on North Korea. However, I think it’s unlikely. Here’s why:1. The broken English looks deliberately bad and doesn’t exhibit any of the classic compr...

Important info: How Amazon’s sales algorithms work

Probably the biggest German site for indie authors, Die Self-Publisher-Bibel, recently did an extensive test of sales rankings on Amazon with books published deliberately for that purpose. They wanted to test three basic assumptions about sales algorithms used by Amazon:

– Price influences sales rank

– Enrolling in KDP Select influences sales rank

– The dynamics of sales influence sales rank

The results are eye-opening. Fortunately, they have also published an English version on their site. I...

The guard and the princess for #WIPpet Wednesday

Hi, everyone, I’m back! I still haven’t really gotten back into the swing of things as far as writing is concerned, with only a measly 800 words written so far this week. But on the family front, things are looking a lot better, and my head is free for creativity again. In the next few days and weeks, I will be working on reestablishing my old writing habits, and hopefully the word counts will pick up again. I still have some present wrapping to do, but I got most of that done while I was sti...

How Jessica Mitford Exposed A $48m Scam From America’s Literary Establishment

Ruth Nestvold:

Every now and then we need a happy ending, where those who are defrauding others are exposed. This is one of those stories.

Originally posted on David Gaughran:

Jessica Mitford took on the American funeral industry, the California Department of Corrections, and the Ku Klux Klan, but it was her 1970 exposé of The Famous Writers School which led to Time calling her “The Queen of the Muckrakers.” And if a courageous editor hadn’t reversed his decision to kill her story, it might nev...

Shadow of Stone on sale for 99c through Dec. 19 – and testing ad sites

In my on-going attempt to get back into the swing of things marketing-wise — and figure out what works in this new self-publishing era of Kindle Unlimited and various other changes — I set up a sale this week for Shadow of Stone, the second book in The Pendragon Chronicles.

For over ten years, there has been peace in Britain after Arthur and his warriors soundly defeated the Saxons at the battle of Caer Baddon. But sometimes peace is deceptive …

After a series of hard winters and famine, an al...