Lizzy Ford's Blog, page 73
April 25, 2011
(T)op 100 downloaded books on Smashwords: Damian's Oracle
I was surprised when I saw Damian's Oracle on the Top 100 Downloads on Smashwords.com. Yes, I know it's not Barnes and Noble or Amazon or anything like that, but there are something like 15,000 authors publishing through Smashwords.com and who knows how many books!
To say the least, I was thrilled! For full disclosure: I'm #100, so I might get knocked off soon, but I made it!
And I intend only to climb. Hopefully, as my writing gets better and I produce more books, I'll soon have all my books up there!
Thanks to everyone who's downloaded Damian's Oracle! 
April 24, 2011
(S)mashwords: A guerrilla writer's tool in launching his/her career
The main reason I love Smashwords.com: it allows self-publishers to distribute their books to places previously only available to Big Publishers. As you all know by now, all my books are FREE. I pay nothing for everything Smashwords does for me, though they should charge me for harassing their I.T. folks with stupid questions.
Smashwords is a free site that formats your ebooks into multiple formats, distributes to all major eReader stores, and allows you to track your royalties and distribution from one easy-to-use interface.
There are no upfront costs with Smashwords. They operate off royalties, so they take money out of each sale you make, then return the rest of the $ to your account. As long as you can format the interior and exterior of the book on your own, you will never pay a dime up front!
The advantages of Smashwords:
- If your books are free and you epublish through Smashwords, you never pay a cent. My books have cost me nothing to distribute to all the major ereader stores.
- They'll give you the option of a free ISBN.
- They distribute to all the major ebook reader libraries (Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Diesel, Sony, Apple, etc) People really don't realize how important this is – but only major book distributors can get into some of these places, like Apple, and no one else does it for a self-published author FOR FREE. Smashwords does.
- It's pretty simple to use and has awesome, awesome customer service. (On twitter, you can follow @smashwords and @markcoker, the founder of smashwords.)
- They format it into all the different formats you need, so you can direct anyone interested to their site while you wait for Smashwords to distribute to all the major ereader libraries.
The disadvantages of Smashwords:
- They can be a bit slow. It can take 2-3 wks to see your books in all those libraries. If you're in no rush, it's worth waiting, because you can only have free books on sites like Barnes and Nobles if you go through a book distributor. Otherwise, you have to charge.
- They don't have a distribution agreement with Amazon, so you're better off uploading to Amazon yourself. The good thing here is that you can use a PDF for Amazon, and it takes a few days. The bad thing about posting it yourself to Amazon: you can't post it for free. If you post it for .99, Amazon keeps 70% of the book sale. If you post it for 2.99 or above, YOU keep 70% of the book sale.
- For Smashwords, there's a double whammy: the store they go through AND smashwords will take a cut, but their cuts combined are still LESS than what any other distributor charges for paperbacks.
- The Meatgrinder - Smashwords' ebook format conversion tool – can kick your butt the first time you try to submit your book. Smashwords has really detailed formatting instructions, and if you don't get them 100% right, the Meatgrinder will kick them back. There are people who will format your books for you for $25/hour, but my suggestion is to learn to do it on your own.
Interested in more? Visit Smashwords or post a comment, if you want to know anything about my experience with them!
April 23, 2011
(O)n the topic of (P)aranormal (R)omance: Worldbuilding
I've slacked for a week on my A-to-Z challenge blog entries. I'll try to catch up in the next couple of blog posts!
What I love about paranormal/fantasy romance is that I can combine my love of complicated relationships with my love of creating a world unlike anyone else's.
In fantasy, the art of world-building is the ability for a writer to show a reader a new reality in a way that doesn't take hundreds of pages of exposition. How do you establish a new world quickly? Here are a few tips:
1. Emphasize that this new reality already exists and is in full swing.
The readers should be stepping into a new culture and place, not being told the history, appearance, and intricacies of everything around them. This new culture and place may have its own lingo, its own traditions/customs, its own issues, etc.
In The Warlord's Secret, the readers are thrown into the middle of the heroine's journey to pay off an ally to defend her kingdom. The readers see her two most important struggles up front: the fact she fears war from unseen attackers and fears what the demon within her will do to her. The external conflict is established: she lives in a world on the verge of war, which means there have been issues for quite awhile.
The readers aren't starting out with her as a child and watching – they're flipping to a channel where a movie has been playing for awhile and is already halfway done. As a writer, your job is to immerse your readers somewhere in this movie while interweaving what they need to know about the back story without pages of boring prose.
2. Snag the readers' attention up front then teach them about the new reality as you go. Curiosity and some uncertainty will challenge readers and make their involvement rewarding.
To establish the fact this isn't the normal world/reality, step into your imagination and uses your senses to describe it to your readers. What do you feel, see, smell, etc.?
Imagine getting off a plane and walking into an Egyptian bazaar with the task of finding a "My friend went to Cairo and brought me this stupid shirt" t-shirt. You can't read the signs in Arabic but you start to see patterns in activity – such as people carrying t-shirts coming from one direction – or hear clues from others – such as when the British tourist beside you asked a vendor where the souvenirs shops are.
This is how you start to show the new world to your readers.
3. Give the new reality its own nuances and its own RULES. Sprinkle these throughout the book.
A post-apocalyptic world is easier to create than a parallel world with an alternate reality. In a parallel world, you have to show the differences between our world and the alternate world in a way that won't take away from the central story. These differences and rules should facilitate and support the alternate reality – how the people behave, how the world operates. You can't make this alternate reality too perfect or to evident, but you can't neglect to show it, either. You have to make it seem real in the reality you've created.
The reader will respect these rules and will react appropriately when one of these rules is tested.
For example, think about how you react to these statements:
- Vampires walk around in daylight.
- Werewolves come out only when there's no moon.
- Elves have pointy noses, not pointy ears.
Did these strike you as odd? Probably so. Why? Because long ago, writers established rules on how these mythical creatures look or act. It's the same for building new worlds/alternate realities.
4. Myth, superstition, history and legends are good ways of establishing a back story for why something is happening or why characters react the way they do.
A lot of times, you need a quick way to explain why the characters in your book think or react a certain way without spending pages describing it. These four are really good at establishing the feeling of: things-are-this-way-because-it's-the-way-it's-always-been.
5. Uniformity and consistency are key factors in a world building.
When you make rules, you can't break them just because. You've created a new world, introduced it to your reader, and your reader accepts it. This is a tacit contract that there won't be any inconsistencies in what you've created.
There are exceptions to this, such as, the story you're telling is about someone who doesn't fit into the world in which they exist; the realities of the world itself are mean to be challenged and the rules changed; etc.
If you break the rules you create, you need a reason. If you break a rule because you forgot vampires can only come out at night, then you risk losing your reader.
April 18, 2011
The Warlord's Secret
Download The Warlord's Secret Free
The latest book from the author is Damian's Oracle and Damian's Assassin is here!
Full length fantasy romance novel "The Warlord's Secret" is now available for free download for your Kindle, Nook, eReader or Kobo.
Rissa, the tormented Warlord of Tiyan, struggles to protect her people and Tiyan's magical springs against enemies led by the King of Landis and traitors within her own walls. She must also protect the secret of Tiyan's magic and the source her ultimate doom: the parasitic demon lurking within her, which has awoken to kill her and choose its new host: Taran, a near-blind slave of Tiyan's enemy.
Taran's sole motivation in life is his patient pursuit of vengeance for his family's death. Coincidence lands him in Tiyan and at the center of the kingdom's power struggle. The strength of Tiyan's army, the allure of the magical waters, and the endangered Warlord at first are nothing more than a means to an end, until he looks beneath the surface to find a world – and a woman – worth fighting for.
April 17, 2011
(N)ow featuring: The Warlord's Secret
The Warlord's Secret made it through the epublishing meatgrinder! Took awhile, but it's here! Woohoo!
Special thanks to: Christine LePorte, indie editor, and Dafeenah, indie graphics designer for making the book beautiful inside and out!
Synopsis of "The Warlord's Secret:"
Rissa, the tormented Warlord of Tiyan, struggles to protect her people and Tiyan's magical springs against enemies led by the King of Landis and traitors within her own walls. She must also protect the secret of Tiyan's magic and the source her ultimate doom: the parasitic demon lurking within her, which has awoken to kill her and choose its new host : Taram, a near-blind slave of Tiyan's enemy.
Taran's sole motivation in life is his patient pursuit of vengeance for his family's death. Coincidence lands him in Tiyan and at the center of the kingdom's power struggle. The strength of Tiyan's army, the allure of the magical waters, and the endangered Warlord at first are nothing more than a means to an end, until he looks beneath the surface to find a world – and a woman – worth fighting for.
April 16, 2011
(M)ore kindred spirits
I'm meeting lots of great kindred spirits. Here's my second installment of up and coming indie writers. Click their names to go to their sites/blogs! Tell them Lizzy Ford sent you!
Support your indie authors by checking out their sites and following them on Twitter!
April 14, 2011
(L)earning from reviewers
What happens when you start to receive conflicting feedback from your reviewers? I've had this happen on multiple occasions. At first, I was pretty baffled. If I thought there was a problem in the readability of the novel one way or the other, I'd have changed it prior to putting it out there!
But I missed something, and two camps of people didn't. Only, they don't agree with each other about what IT is exactly!
I decided I needed to take three steps:
identify the underlying issue whose symptoms my reviewers were seeing. For me, this almost always involves writing trade craft or mechanics.
fix the defect affecting my storytelling ability
experiment until I found a balance between good storytelling and good writing trade craft/mechanics
Here's an example:
In my first novel, Damian's Oracle, I had folks (hereby known as Camp 1) say they didn't like the first half of the novel. Some said it was too flowery, others that it was too slow, and still others that it was wordy. Camp 1 liked the second half of the novel, where there was less prose, more action/dialogue.
Camp 2 said the first half was ideal, as it gave them insight and the ability to learn about the characters and setting. This camp said that the second half of the book was rushed with not enough quality time with the characters.
Soooo … What did I do with these conflicting messages?!
The underlying issue was clear: there was a change of pace and writing style mid-story that people noticed. Bad or good – it was there.
My first decision was to smooth out this in the sequel, Damian's Assassin. For Damian's Assassin, I chose the style of the second half of Damian's Oracle: less time with the characters and more action/dialogue.
The reviews: Camp 1 detested the pace and lack of character time, saying the book was over-edited and too rushed.
Camp 2 loved it.
Soooo … what does this tell me?!
Sounds bad, but it tells me I did one thing right: there was no split about which part of the book was better, so I smoothed out the mechanics of my storytelling. Rather than call it quits at this, I took another look at the book and realized I needed to find a way to balance the mechanics with the storytelling (plot and characters) a little more.
This leads me to my third novel, The Warlord's Secret, which will be out soon. We'll see if I managed to balance the two and what else I can do to improve!
April 13, 2011
(K)indred spirits
Here are a few blogs I recently found for other indie authors. I want to help pass on the good word about these folks, because they're kindred spirits. What better way to support them than by featuring their blogs here?! Check 'em out!
J. D. Montague's Hungry Garden Chronicles
April 12, 2011
(J)ane Austen
I love, love, LOVE Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. It's the epitome of perfection! The dialogue, the restrained passion, the dynamics among all the different players … My favorite character of all time is Elizabeth Bennett. I'd like to think I was name after her, but I don't think that's how it happened!
What I love about this book:
1. the ability to read it over and over and still find some small nuance I missed before
2. the way Jane Austen shows her characters' flaws through dialogue
3. the way the characters remain themselves and don't suddenly change to facilitate the story
4. the complexity and dynamics of their interactions with one another
5. the fact the heroine ended up being the one who was prejudiced and who learned the truth the hard way (kind of like real life!)
6. the way the story remained focused on the people the entire time
7. just how flawed her characters are. I love that she shows this without judging them and lets the other characters tell you their companions' flaws.
8. Jane Austen's storytelling ability. The story flows and is entertaining, even when absolutely nothing is happening!
I try hard to keep these lessons in mind when I write.
April 11, 2011
(I).T. Sherpa
Every writer needs an I.T. Sherpa, someone who understands not only how to establish an online presence, but how to make your sites search engine friendly, and can guide you through (or manage!) your I.T. stuff.
So, what does my I.T. Sherpa do?
1. He designed the layout of my website, to include writing the code for pink camouflage, selecting the layout, setting up affiliate accounts to Amazon and others, and placing GoogleAds and such on the site.
2. He updates my WordPress format and gadgets as needed.
3. He uploads my ebooks to various other sites.
4. He manages the Search Engine Optimization of my site, to include feeding the site map to Google every day, so Google indexes all my posts and pages. He also installed an SEO pack to my site, so I can tag each post, every time I post. He does a lot here but I don't understand a lot of it.
5. He monitors backlinks to my pages, alerts me when there are new links, especially to blogs. Then I go to the blogs and post to readers/fans.
6. He monitors site traffic and analytics, so we can discern patterns in days and/or times of days when people visit the site. We hit 526,000 in Alexa ranking and have a new baseline of 230 unique visitors a day. He can tell you from where each visitor came (country/state), what they Googled, what sites they were referred from, how many were direct traffic, etc. We can use this info to time releases of blog posts and/or books.
7. He also manages the mailing list and comments pages.
I'm sure I do him a huge disservice with my simplified version of what he does, but these are some of the basics that make my site easy to find and use.
The best part: he does all this for free. There's no cost, but some elbow grease to keeping our site up and running and talking to the search engines. If you can find someone to help you, you'll realize quickly how invaluable an I.T. Sherpa is.
