Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 6
July 15, 2017
Scammers Break The Kindle Store
Sigh. More evidence of how clickfarms (and those who them) win.
On Friday, a book jumped to the #1 spot on Amazon, out of nowhere; it quickly became obvious that the author had used a clickfarm to gatecrash the charts.
The Kindle Store is officially broken.
This is not the first time this has happened and Amazon’s continued inaction is increasingly baffling. Last Sunday, a clickfarmed title also hit #1 in the Kindle Store. And Amazon took no action.
Over the last six weeks, on...
July 12, 2017
What I do when I take a break from writing
The beginning of this month, I sent Ygerna off to beta readers. If you follow this blog, you know that it ended up WAY longer than I intended, and I decided to reward myself with a short “vacation.”
I did some sewing.
Our place isn’t big enough that I can have a dedicated craft room — or it might be if I tossed half my books, I guess, but I’m not to that point yet. 
July 8, 2017
I’m at #55 in the Kindle Store! (Not alone, unfortunately *g*)
As of this writing, the awesome anthology Galactic Empires, edited by Neil Clarke and containing my novella “Looking Through Lace” — alongside such greats as Greg Egan, John Barnes, Robert Reed, and Ian McDonald — is #55 overall in the Kindle Store!
Here’s the description and the complete lineup:
Neil Clarke, publisher of the award-winning Clarkesworld magazine, presents a collection of thought-provoking and galaxy-spanning array of galactic short science fiction.
From E. E. “Doc” Smith’s...
June 12, 2017
Lots of free and 99c SFF eBooks for June!
After a bit of a lull in my promotional activities, I’m participating in several group promos this month, for Looking Through Lace, Chameleon in a Mirror, and Mars: A Traveler’s Guide. Here’s the breakdown for you:
Big 99c Science Fiction and Fantasy Sale: over 70 books to chose from, many of them boxed sets!
http://sffbookbonanza.com/99c-books/
I’m in this one with my award-winning novella, Looking Through Lace, about a xenolinguist who finds herself having to decipher more than just the l...
June 8, 2017
World Reading Habits
The reading data here is quite fascinating!
As of Wednesday afternoon, I was half way through my rewrite – 4 chapters done and 4 to go. Woo-hoo!
I took some time off to read a few blogs and found this oh-so interesting info-graphic. What did I find interesting? That 40% of American readers read print only. I have to admit that when it comes to relaxation, I read print and only print. I work on a screen so I’m not really very interested reading on it.
Then there was...
June 7, 2017
Ygerna is done! (Almost)
I finally finished the “fill in the blanks” draft of Ygerna, my prequel novel for The Pendragon Chronicles! It took me a lot longer than I expected, since I apparently left more blanks than I had thought. [image error] The last draft had about 85,000 words; this one has 117,000. I have created another monster …
Anyway, I was looking at the two versions of the cover I have from my cover artist, and I’m wondering now which one I should go with:
What do you guys think?
I already have several beta reader...
June 4, 2017
Amazon Has A Fake Book Problem
Despite all the things real authors have to put up with from Ama, they still haven’t solved the problem of scam authors out to get page clicks. Sigh.
Fake books – powered by clickfarms – are gatecrashing Amazon’s charts. And despite being aware of the issue for well over a year, Amazon has failed to resolve it.
If you look at the Kindle Store Best Seller charts right now, and click over to Free Books, you will see that the Top 20 currently has five suspicious-looking titles.
N...
May 11, 2017
An Initial Attempt at Rebranding: A New Cover for Yseult
As much as I like the cover I already have for Yseult, the conversion rate for my ads is going from quite respectable to abysmal. Not completely understandable, since I haven’t changed the book description or cover for a long time, but given how many clicks I’ve been getting recently without sales, I decided it was time to experiment again. So without further ado, here is the first cover experiment for Yseult:
The idea for this cover is that it maybe / hopefully fits the epic fantasy conven...
May 4, 2017
Please Don’t Buy My Book
David Gaughran is back, with an interesting case study on also-boughts.
I’m just back from The Smarter Artist Summit in Austin, Texas. I won’t try and capture the magic of the event – Kobo Mark does an excellent job – but I would like to talk about the big takeaway: the dangers of Also Bought pollution.
Also Boughts are probably the most important aspect of the entire Amazon recommendation ecostructure. And also the least understood.
They are much more than a little strip unde...
April 22, 2017
Author Spotlight: Ruth Nestvold
Welcome to the second feature on other independent authors. We’ll throw a bit of a spotlight on how they think and create their fantastic works.
Author Ruth Nestvold
We met Ruth Nestvold through the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror (more commonly known to members as the Oh-Dub-Dub) (and yes, there are a lot of OWW alumni who are fantastic writers). From her website’s biography, “She has sold stories to numerous markets, including Asimov’s,...
