Jennifer Becton's Blog, page 46
February 8, 2012
Death Benefits: Thank You for a Great Launch
I want to thank you all for a wonderful first week of Death Benefits. More than 100 copies were sold in the first 36 hours, and that amazed me. Thank you to everyone who had a part in the book's creation, purchased and read it, reviewed it, or just put up with me during the writing process. I appreciate you all more than you know.
This week, I had the honor of being interviewed at Amy and the Pen, the blog of another fellow indie author. Please pop over and say hello. Amy will be posting here later this month about finding an audience for your book, so be sure to check back. Check out Amy's books: The Jester's Apprentice, A Mystery Novel
and Dead Locked, A Mystery Novel
.
Also later this month, we'll hear from indie author Jessica Grey, whose first YA fantasy Awake: A Fairytale (Fairytale Trilogy)
hit the virtual shelves last week. I finished it this week and loved it.
February 2, 2012
The Go Button Has Been Hit
The ebook version of Death Benefits is now making its way through the systems of Amazon.com and BN.com.
It's already for sale on Amazon: Death Benefits (A Southern Fraud Thriller)
And it will be on BN soon. I'll post the link as soon as it's live.
Death Benefits will be on sale for $.99 for a limited time, so hurry and get it while it's cheap!
February 1, 2012
No Fewer than Two Guns
I'm taking a break from the last edits of Death Benefits to blog about book cover and interior design. I predict (no crystal ball needed) that this is really going to take off in the near future. Apple is already on the move with a drag and drop ebook creation software that allows authors to add images and video easily. Amazon will have to step it up to compete. I'm sure they will.
But that's the (near) future, and now is now. And what's now? Color ereaders and tablets. They're the hot thing, so make the most of it by adding images to your text. That's what I'm doing. There are some limitations right now. For instance, I can't hyperlink images on my Kindle books. (If anyone knows how to get past this, I'd LOVE to know.) But images are still a way to set yourself apart from other books.
And on the subject of art, I thought I'd break down my thoughts on the Southern Fraud covers. A couple of reviewers have commented that they thought my covers didn't match the seriousness of the books. I've thought long and hard about this.
And here's my reasoning behind the cover design. My books deal with serious crimes, but in casual language and with a more lighthearted tone than other thrillers. So the covers are bright and colorful to convey the feel of the book, but the content of the art is key. The covers contain no fewer than two guns. Why? Because of what I said above: these books deal with serious crimes.
So that's my thinking.
What attracts you to a particular book? If you're an author, why did you choose the art you did?
Ps. I'm hoping to hit the go button tomorrow!
January 26, 2012
Death Benefits: The Final Stages
"Occupy Vincent" by @PattyMarq, my Twitter pal
Death Benefits is in its final stages, and I'm very excited to share it with everyone.
I still don't have a definite release date, but I promise not to dally. Here's what's left to do:
Punch list of final checks.
Hack my way into the copyright website and apply. (For some reason, I always have trouble with that site.)
Create ebook ARCs.
Final cold reads, thanks to my 3 cold readers.
My last read. Actually I listen to it. I can't find errors anymore if I read.
Finalize interior art.
Format ebook.
At that point, the ebook will go on sale.
Did I mention I'm excited? 
January 16, 2012
Reconsidering Reviews
I've already done a post on book reviews, but I thought I'd add a few new theories I've begun to develop about how to best interpret and make use of reviews of your work.
I read a lot of reviews. I read those for my books, and I also read those given to the works of other authors. You see, I've been torn about how exactly I should be understanding what I'm reading. Even though many reviews contain numerical/star ratings, book reviewing is not a scientific process. It is almost entirely based on opinion, and because not everyone sees things the same way, many reviews conflict.
Hence my quandary. I want to grow and improve as a writer and I thought I could use reviews to help guide me. But how do you react when one review says the beginning is slow but the rest of the pacing is good, the next says the end is slow but the rest of the pacing is good, and the next says the middle is slow but the rest of the pacing is good? If I believe all three of these opinions, then I'd have to think that my book is both slow from beginning to end AND yet also well paced from beginning to end. This type of conflict of opinion happens a lot in reviews. But it left me wondering what the heck does it mean for me, the writer?
When there are conflicts like this all over the place in a set of reviews, I have to chalk this up to difference in reader opinion.
When is it not just opinion then? How do you know when to act as a writer based on reviewer response?
When a trusted reviewer, whose opinion and judgment you respect, offers criticism, then you should consider acting upon it.
When there is a consensus among reviewers, you should consider acting on their advice. Look at the reviews of Janet Evanovich's work as an example. Book 1 in her Plum series starts out with a typical spread of reviews with all the contradictions you'd expect, but when you get to book 17, you see a lot of low ranks AND repetition of criticism.
So those are my current thoughts on the subject. Writers, what have you found about reviews? And readers, what's your take on this?
January 11, 2012
Eight Years Ago Today…
Normal people celebrate wedding anniversaries and children's birthdays, but horse people celebrate horse anniversaries. I hope you'll indulge me in celebrating eight years with the horse of my heart, my perfect horse Darcy. This is a repost, but it says everything I want to say.
When I was a kid, I prayed for a purebred Arabian gelding. And he should be black and full of spirit, just like the Black Stallion. Well, fifteen years later, I had my prayers answered. Only I got a half-arabian mare; she's an arab x saddlebred. But she is black and full of spirit.
After lots of searching, my dressage-teacher friend and I found my perfect horse, whose registered name we later discovered to be "Call Me Crazy." I thought I probably ought to be called crazy during our first few months together. I was a brand spankin' new horse owner, and my horse was very sensitive. To everything.
But after lots of lessons for me and training for my horse, we are partners, and she is truly the horse of my heart. Her barn name is now Darcy. Yes, named after Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. I know, I know. I sound like an obsessed teenager. But my Darcy does have the same aloof qualities of Austen's Mr. Darcy. But once you get to know her, you'll find that she, like Mr. Darcy, has a heart of gold and does her best to please when she understands what you want.
This year–2010–has been a big one for Darcy and I. I have made great strides in overcoming my horseback riding fear, and we have been able to travel to local trail riding facilities, which until this year I'd been too terrified to do. The work I did in overcoming this fear has carried over into my whole life, including writing and publishing.
Yes, there is a great deal of potential fear in publishing your own work. Will people buy it? Will they like it? Is there some horrible mistake in the text that will turn people off? But like with horseback riding, I've had to acknowledge my fear and then ask good questions to make sure I was not going to allow my fear to control me. I made sure to do the best I possibly could do on Charlotte Collins, and the rest was out of my hands. And even though I took a pretty nice spill off Darcy and injured my arm in November 2010, I am not suffering fear of riding as a result.
Both riding and writing have risks, and I do my best to minimize those risks. I try not to let my vision be tainted by fear, but see what is really happening. And as a result of learning to ride and write fear-free, I have experienced the best years of my life so far.
So many thanks to my Darcy for being the best partner I can imagine. Thank you for making me a better person. I look forward to hitting the trails again with you soon, Darcy-girl.
Don't try this at home.
January 9, 2012
3 Months and 9 Days
That's how long it took Caroline Bingley to sell 1,000 copies. I am grateful to everyone who decided to try a book about one of Jane Austen's least liked creations. Thank you. I hope you grew to like Caroline a tiny bit after reading my take on her.
Now for some analysis for those of you in the indie pubbing biz.
Before I begin, I'd like to say that I wanted to make this a worst-case scenario experiment: less popular character, higher price, and extremely minimal outside marketing. If I was invited to blog about Caroline, I did, but apart from that, I've done no marketing for the book. So, without further ado:
Caroline Bingley fits into the same niche market as Charlotte Collins, which sold 1,000 copies in 4 months and 2 days. Though Charlotte sold at a slower pace, it attained much higher Amazon ranks, often in the 1,000s. Caroline has never broken 5,000 in rank. So that tells me that the ebook market has grown significantly in the last year. There are more ereaders and also more ebooks available, so more competition for rank spots. It also means that lower ranks don't necessarily mean slower sales.
Charlotte was priced at $2.99, and Caroline is priced at $3.99, so the slightly higher price has not hurt sales as far as I can tell. Of course, there are too many variables to make a truly accurate comparison on that.
Caroline has rarely made the Regency Romance Best Sellers List, but it is still selling well. I used to believe that it was critical to make a genre list in order to get exposure on Amazon. I still believe it's a desirable thing, but I'm starting to think that the "customers who bought also bought" list is more important. Caroline's sales have also been mostly level from day to day, with a spike starting after Christmas. It will be interesting to see which books seem to bring in the most income long term: those that spike and drop off in sales or those that are level from day to day. Not sure yet.
The fact that anyone at all bought Caroline Bingley reconfirms that there is a market for books about Austen's minor characters. Yes, books about Elizabeth and Darcy will always sell better–look at Nancy Kelley's His Good Opinion–but if you are like me and have no desire to dabble with their narrative, you can be successful by taking another path.
And finally, thank you again to everyone who bought, read, and reviewed Caroline Bingley. I appreciate it.
January 5, 2012
Death Benefits Cover and Copy
Fraud investigator Julia Jackson is back in action, and her next assignment throws her straight into the crosshairs of a bevy of desperate people…and one man who will do anything to keep his secret safe.
Late one night, a car burns on a lonely rural road, and the discovery of a body—charred beyond recognition—in the driver's seat sets in motion a series of deadly events. And when the wife of the supposedly deceased driver demands her husband's million-dollar life insurance policy payout before the autopsy can be completed, fraud investigators Julia Jackson and Mark Vincent must determine exactly how the victim died and at whose hands.
As Julia and Vincent interview witnesses and tangle with a host of angry suspects, another man is working behind the scenes to erase his mysterious connection to the body by any means necessary.
Soon Julia and Vincent realize they are not dealing with an average death benefits scam, but with a potential serial killer instead.
Coming soon!
January 4, 2012
Musings on Muses
I don't have a muse.
There. I said it.
No watery tart whispers the plots of novels in my ear. And really, it's too bad because writing would be a lot easier if I had one. I'd never have to think or toil over a manuscript again.
As I've said before, I believe writing is part art and part science. Unfortunately, the science of writing–the actual process that happens in a writer's brain that produces a great book–has really never been studied and quantified, thus resulting in the myth of the muse. We don't quite know how something works, so it's got to be magic, right?
But Jennifer, how do you explain those moments of writing glory when the worlds flow so smoothly from a writer's fingertips to the page? That sure seems magical. And it is. It's the magic of your own thoughts, experiences, and abilities all working together to produce a story. Whenever a scene comes easily to me, I think it's because I've pondered the book enough to know, seemingly without conscious thought at the precise moment I sit to write, what needs to happen. It's not magic, but it is that glorious moment when everything is working in harmony.
Unfortunately, sometimes things are not in harmony. Sometimes I haven't thought enough about a scene or the overall picture of a book, and the process grinds to a halt. Lots of people call this "writer's block," and they put the book away, sit back, and get depressed as they wait for their muse to whisper again. Frankly, I don't like the whole idea of "writer's block" because it gives me the impression that I am again at the mercy of a muse or that some uncontrollable magical flow of words has stopped.
When I'm stumped, I take a break from the computer and I think. I think about the book, the characters, the arc. Sometimes I think about horses or movies or Doctor Who to give my brain a break from the novel. Then I come back and think about plot and characters again and experiment with some of the options I've come up with. After a lot of rearranging and rewriting, the novel begins to progress again.
So what am I trying to say? Writing isn't magic. It's hard work, and when the going gets tough, we have to persevere, push through, in order to emerge victorious on the other side, published novel in hand. Otherwise, you risk ending up like Brian Griffin and his unfinished novel.
So how do you think of muses and writer's block?
December 30, 2011
Looking Forward
Tis the season for New Year's Resolutions, but I'm not much of a fan. I hate that everything this time of year seems to be about weight loss, healthy eating, and exercise promises that will likely be broken by February. Bor-ing! Not that I'm against weight loss or healthy eating, but for crying out loud, why can't we look forward to something, anticipate something wonderful in the year ahead and not start off with resolutions brought on mostly by guilt?
So here's what I'm looking forward to in 2012:
Whiteley Press
The release of Death Benefits. I worked very hard on this book, and I hope everyone enjoys it.
Writing, editing, and publishing two books: the nonfiction book on horseback riding fear that I am coauthoring with Laura Daley and At Fault (SF3).
Experimenting with different ebook price points in the coming year.
Watching my friends' novels take off up the charts. (Stop by for lots of giveaways!)
Horse World
Riding my horse on a more regular basis.
Mastering canter serpentines.
Trail riding.
Just hanging out.
Misc.
Relaxing on the weekends again.
Cleaning my house and my email inbox.
Spending time with friends.
Watching every episode of the new Doctor Who.
The past year was frankly fantastic–if somewhat unbalanced for me–and I am looking forward to finding that balance in 2012 and having an even more fantastic year. (On a side note: If you contacted me in the past two months and I didn't respond, I apologize. I will soon.)
What are you looking forward to in 2012?
