Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 9

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...

The KU Conundrum…

I’m not following the drop in pages read as much any more, since I pulled all my books from Kindle Unlimited, but it looks like the problem is far from fixed, according to this post.

Ruby Madden

I’m re-assessing how I run my publishing business for 2017 and wanted to share some of my frustrations as an Author.

Recently, many authors have noticed that over the last few months, the pages-read numbers for our eBooks that are borrowed at Amazon and read, have decreased dramatically. Some say it...

Tales of the Rose Knights: Smooth Angel

A new Tale of the Rose Knights that I wrote with Jay Lake went up on Daily Science Fiction today, “Smooth Angel.” Here a short teaser:

Smooth Angel came out of the uttermost east, across the great Sea of Grass into the lands of the Roses. She traversed the farthest kingdoms, crossed the Ivory Mountains by hidden passes, and descended through Hy Rugosa, already arrayed as a knight with her pale banners the color of the first orange of sunrise. Her armor was lacquered in the manner of the Sal...

Advantages and Disadvantages of Self-Publishing

I am finally (finally!) compiling my “Starting Out as an Indie Author” series into a book, and since I started this weekend, I’ve noticed a couple of things I still need to add. Since the first part of the book revolves around the question, “Is Self-Publishing For You?” I realized I had to write my own version of the consideration of the pros and cons of indie and traditional publishing. (I have a few more things up my sleeve that I will probably blog about in the next week or two.)

So with...

Over 100 great SFF ebooks this weekend for only 99c each!

The monthly specfic promo is here again, this time with over 100 ebooks in science fiction and fantasy, all for only 99c!

Choose your poison — the promo page includes convenient links to the retailer of your choice, so you won’t end up frustrated by books you can’t get.

Call to Arms: Year-long survey reveals which book advertiser offers best value for money

Great info from Nicholas Rossi’s advertising survey. I was quite surprised by AMS (Amazon Marketing Services) coming out as the leader of the pack. I tried them some time ago and had absolutely no luck. And now that I’m no longer in Select, I can’t test them anymore. Ce la vie!

Anyway, good info there — check it out!

Last year, I shared with you the result of my Call to Arms, on my very popular post, Book Marketing Results 2015. I now have collected enough data to follow up with this year’s r...