Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 33
July 28, 2014
A bit of fun
I write like
Ursula K. Le GuinI Write Like. Analyze your writing!
Fun writing game on Widdershin’s blog. (Of course, I had to try a few different excerpts until I got the results I wanted …)
Originally posted on Widdershins Worlds:
On her blog today, Kyrosmagica discovered she writes like Stephen King!
I apparently write like Dan Brown, Cory Doctorow, Vladimir Nabokov, and Mark Twain, depending on which story I offered up a sample of.
Starting out as an indie author: Smashwords, Draft2Digital, and Xinxii (Using distributors, part 2)
In my last post for beginning indie authors, I went into the reasons you might choose to publish your books through an aggregator who distributes them to various sales channels for you. In this post, I will take a look at three such sites in more detail, Smashwords, Draft2Digital and Xinxii.
When I first started experimenting with ebooks, the main options for marketing fiction were Smashwords and Amazon. Since I was a bit intimidated by all the programs needed to create an ePub file...
July 27, 2014
Starting out as an indie author: Using distributors for getting into online bookstores
Aggregators and sales channels
In my last blog post for beginning indie writers, I wrote about various ways to format your manuscript for ebook publishing and some of the more important sales channels where you might want to upload your books.
The sales channels I mentioned there, however, are only a few of the very many online bookstores that have started cropping up in the last few years, such as OverDrive, Flipkart, Oyster, Scribd, Baker & Taylor, Page Foundry and more. Not to mention the g...
July 25, 2014
Building a Killer Email List
I think my blog will soon see change — a free book offered for signing up to my (largely dormant) mailing list. :)
Originally posted on David Gaughran:
There is a lot of upheaval in publishing today and I think that’s likely to increase rather than decrease. The best insurance policy any writer can have against the future is a targeted mailing list.
I’ve written before about how the author with the biggest mailing list wins, and I’ve invited Nick Stephenson along today because he...
July 23, 2014
Questions upon questions for #WIPpet Wednesday
The writing continues to go well, 5200 new words total last week on various projects. I also made some more dents in my goals, and on Monday I started a series of articles on my blog for beginning indie authors. You can read the first one here. In connection with the blog posts about self-publishing, I have also decided to declare Mondays my official marketing day, so that I will finally get back to actually trying to sell my books again. Wish me luck. :)
On to WIPpet Wednesday. Today I’m giv...
July 21, 2014
Starting out as an indie author: preparing your manuscript for ebook retailers
A dear friend of mine recently got the rights back to a novel she published some time ago, and she is now nearly ready to brave the waters of indie publishing with it. Many of the questions she had, however, were not things that I immediately and / or spontaneously had answers to. So I promised her I would try to organize what knowledge I had in a series of blog posts. Of course, my experience is not exhaustive, but I hope it will help others as a starting point for getting their books out th...
July 20, 2014
Kindle Unlimited: The Key Questions
David Gaughran asks some great questions about Amazon’s new Kindle Unlimited — and seems to be just as undecided as I am. :)
Originally posted on David Gaughran:
Amazon launched Kindle Unlimited on Friday, giving self-publishers a big decision to make.
The long-rumored subscription service will allow users to download unlimited books for $9.99 a month, and reader reaction has been, from what I can see, overwhelmingly positive – especially because they will be able to test the ser...
July 16, 2014
Post-travel update and more from Taliesin for #WIPpet Wednesday
As a result of a week spent traveling around England, I’m a bit behind in my word count goals for the round so far. I’m shooting for 2500 words a week, and the first two weeks in July only added up to 4000 words total. But I’m confident that I can make make good on those missing words, especially since this week has started out so well — 1600 words total for Monday and Tuesday.
I also completed one of my goals and posted the reports from my trip to my blog. If you missed those and are curious...
July 14, 2014
Calleva / Silchester
On Monday, my last day of sightseeing / research before heading off for the wedding festivities, I wasn’t quite sure if I should even attempt to see Calleva (Roman Silchester). The blister on my little toe hurt, and I was not looking forward to the prospect of hiking for miles along country lanes in search of old rocks. Maybe I should just head south to the coast, I thought, take a day off and just enjoy the seaside. I’d already seen plenty of sites for The Pendragon Chronicles, and I wasn’t...
July 13, 2014
Winchester / Venta
Winchester Castle
Originally, I was intending to do Calleva on Sunday, but my train was five minutes late into Basingstoke. That is exactly the amount of time I had to change — five minutes — and by the time I got to the track, the train was gone. The next train to Mortimer, the closest stop to the Roman ruins of Silchester, wouldn’t be leaving for another hour. So I checked the train schedules and saw that there would be a train to Winchester in only fifteen minutes. I changed my plans, and s...
