Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 47

Short free run for Shadow of Stone, April 11-12

Since Shadow of Stone is still with KDP Select, I haven’t completely given up with “free” as a method of promoting my books. It’s free on Amazon today and tomorrow:

Enjoy!

Brief update: new version of book trailer and a few more chapters revised

I was in bed pretty much all day Monday with a fever, and not in the greatest shape Sunday or Tuesday either, so I got a lot less done than I wanted to. But I did get a new version of the book trailer for The Pendragon Chronicles made. Only minor changes, mostly having to do with the ending, since the main complaint was that the web page wasn’t visible long enough. Here’s the new version:

I’ve declared it final (for the time being *g*) since I needed to send the link for a promotion I’m doing...

Book Bomb for Ben Wolverton, Dave Farland’s son, and the Million Dollar Outline

Back in 2010, I attended Dave Farland’s Million Dollar Outline course. Dave is an excellent instructor, and I learned a lot. It’s certainly not his fault that I haven’t made a million yet, since I didn’t follow his advice and have yet to write the YA fantasy he said I should move to the top of my to-do list.

Dave is one of those few instructors who is also a very successful writer himself. His books have won multiple awards, and some of the now prominent authors he has taught include Brandon...

I Has Book Trailer! *g* (For The Pendragon Chronicles)

I got the first big thing off my horribly long to-do list today: I MADE A BOOK TRAILER!

Sorry about the yelling, but I’m ridiculously proud of myself, even though it was super easy. Anyway, here’s my major accomplishment for the week, my trailer for The Pendragon Chronicles series:

What inspired me to finally get this done was that I’m going to be having a Kindle Spotlight for Shadow of Stone in a couple of weeks, and one of the things they ask for is a link to your book trailer, if you have...

My ridiculously long writing to-do list (revised, 2nd quarter, 2013)

Since I’m in the terrible habit of constantly adding more projects to my plate, rather than just finishing things and crossing them off, my revised list of goals for the 2nd quarter of 2013 is very long. In my own defense, it seems like every time I finish another project, it only adds MORE work to my list rather than less (creating covers, finding editors, promotion, etc.). A lot of that will be reflected in these goals. Don’t worry, you don’t have to read the whole blasted thing. It’s mostl...

Being accountable: Progress on my first quarter goals, 2013

End of March, time for some navel-gazing, to see how well I did on the goals I posted back in January. Since I strive to stay as positive as I can (not always easy in this business), I will start with the successes, the things I did achieve in the last three months.

Revisions and rewrting:

- Did a complete pass of my novel Chameleon in a Mirror

- Finished revisions on my Story Hunger collection

Publications:

- From Earth to Mars and Beyond

- The Leaving Sweater

- Published Never Ever After to Dra...

Book in a Week, or rather two (or more) — and finding the WOW

This is my attempt to recreate the blog post I lost a couple of days back, with updates and some tentative conclusions, a few more days into the experiment. And this time, I am not writing the original post directly in WordPress. Luckily — since I wrote it Sunday evening, and while I was working on it, our Internet connection gave up the ghost!

After my Fast Draft fail a while back, I still hadn’t given up on finding a way to write faster more consistently. I once had a 5,000 word day, many...

A lost post – and a new story free on iTunes

I’d written a long post about the BIAW course I am presently doing, but then I hit an unintended key, and it disappeared. I looked and looked, and I couldn’t get it back.

Shoot and more shoot. Next time I will write the first draft outside of WordPress.

Sigh and weep.

At least as compensation, I can now offer “The Leaving Sweater” on the iTunes stone — for free!

I’ll be back.

Real life distractions and a bunch of unannounced freebies

I have a translation deadline for 10 am tomorrow, and seeing that I’m a night owl and that’s about the time I get up in the morning (one of the joys of being a freelancer), I had to finish tonight. It’s now off, and I can finally get around to an update.

Given the developments of the last few days, I really will be eating my words and keeping Shadow of Stone in KDP Select for another round. In the last three days, I’ve made nearly as much in borrows on SoS as I made on Yseult in all other ven...

Eating my words: preliminary results for free promo of Shadow of Stone

I’m running a free promo for Shadow of Stone right now, which I had intended to be the last. At the end of this term in KDP Select, I was going to take the book out and offer it elsewhere.

But now I have a dilemma. I’ve had very little time the last couple of days, and I didn’t do any announcements for the freebie like I usually do. An ad got cancelled at the last moment as a result of the changes Amazon is making to the Amazon Affiliate program, and the book didn’t get picked up by either of...