Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 9

Pronoun Redux

I recently posted about a certain amount of frustration involved in publishing to two new distributors, Streetlib and Pronoun. Well, it looks like I’m going to have to give Pronoun another chance. They have announced a number of changes, including better royalties (70% for everything up to $9.99), and more flexibility as to where you publish your book. Whereas you used to be required to publish your book on all the retailers Pronoun supports, you can now choose which ones to publish to. The o...

Starting Out as an Indie Author: Social Media and Cross Promotion

I’m almost there on getting the book version of my series “Starting Out as an Indie Author” ready for publication! I’ve put together some new material on subjects I hadn’t covered in my posts. Today I would like to share a new chapter with you, “Social Media and Cross Promotion.”

Social Media for Writers

If you are forced by financial difficulties to keep your expenses for advertising as low as possible, social media and cross promotion may be the only effective avenues open to you until you...

Big 99c sale of Science Fiction and Fantasy eBooks, Jan. 7-8

We have another big sale coming your way to start the new year, over 100 eBooks in science fiction and fantasy genres, all for only 99c each.

Just go to http://pattyjansen.com/promo/ and click on your favorite retailer to see what’s available! The promo officially begins tomorrow, January 7, but a lot of books have already reduced the price.

My contribution this month is Shadow of Stone, book 2 of The Pendragon Chronicles. The books are standalone novels, though, so you can easily start wi...

New Tale of the Rose Knights: “Snowfire”

A new Rose Knights flash fiction piece that I wrote with Jay Lake is up on DSF today, “Snowfire”:

nowfire should have been a cliche, with her brilliant face and her ways full of love and thorns. The Rose Knight of the Rose Knights, she strode the world wrapped in laughter and a charisma that could stun stone idols. She needed no sword for her battles. She could smile her way through walls and gates and brambled pits and talk the very monsters from their lairs, soothe the raging ocean, and hu...

New distributors for indie authors: Pronoun and Streetlib

I have recently become aware of a couple of new distributors (also referred to as aggregators) on the self-publishing scene, Pronoun and Streetlib. Some time ago in “Starting Out as an Indie Author,” I covered the topic of distributors in general, and Smashwords, Draft2Digital, and Xinxii in particular:

– Using distributors for getting into online bookstores

– Smashwords, Draft2Digital, and Xinxii (Using distributors, part 2)

Today I would like to share my experiences with these two new agg...

A newbie writer’s guide to getting your first Bookbub ad — via Patty Jansen

Patty posted this to her blog six months ago, but I only now just saw it. Since it made me chuckle and fits right in with my “Starting Out as an Indie Author” series, I thought I would pass it along.

* * *

In conversation.

GH = Grasshopper
VA = Veteran Author

GH: Soooooo, I hear Bookbub is all the rage, but is that site even open to us indies, because I submitted my book once, and they didn’t want it.

VA: *loud belly laugh* You submitted ONCE? Mwahahahahahahaha!!!

GH: But they didn’t even t...

A new tale of the Rose Knights: Rose de Rescht

Rose de Rescht by Florian Moeckel (public domain)

A new flash fiction piece that I wrote with Jay Lake went up on Daily Science Fiction yesterday, but I was too busy decorating the Christmas tree with family to remember to post about it. So here, a day late, I give you Rose de Rescht:

Rose de Rescht
by Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold
Rose de Rescht was something of a mystery among the other Rose Knights. Said to have come from a land more mythical than real, a land that had once born the legen...

Amazon Delivery Fees and Reducing the File Size of Your E-Book

One of the things that isn’t often mentioned in discussions on preparing your book for publication is the fact that Amazon charges a delivery fee for the books it sells for you. This fee comes to $0.15/MB on every eBook sold in the US published under the “70% Royalty Option.” You can find the complete list of delivery fees for all Amazon stores here:

https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A29FL26OKE7R7B

15c may not sound like a lot, but think about what it means if you have a boxed set with tho...

Quiz: Self-Publishing vs Traditional Publishing • Reedsy Blog

Take this little authors’ quiz and discover which is best for you: to self-publish your books, or seek out a literary agent and work with a publisher?

Source: Quiz: Self-Publishing vs Traditional Publishing • Reedsy Blog

Using Vellum for formatting e-books

Ever since I started going indie and publishing books on my own rather than through a traditional publisher, I have been using Scrivener to create the epub and mobi files required by most retailers. Okay, not ever since — my very first experimental attempts were uploading Word docs to Amazon and Smashwords, and they were resounding failures. But once Scrivener added epub export to its many wonderful writing tools, that is what I have been using as my default e-book formatting program.

I have...