Lisa Olsen's Blog, page 15

May is Here!

May rang in with a bang with an unexpected boost to sales (for no reason that I can figure), The Avengers opens this Friday, it’s time for a new monthly resolution, and I’ve started my new book Nine Steps to Sara! Whew, that’s a lot for one update!

First of all, can I just say again – The Avengers opens this Friday!!!

Okay, I’m better now.

For the month of May, I’m proud to report I still haven’t cheated on any of the previous month’s resolutions. If you remember, I’ve given up fried food, fast food, baked desserts and started exercising 5 days per week. So what to give up next? Well, sadly, I’m not seeing a whole lot of movement on the scale yet, and I know why. There are still waaay too many delicious things out there for me to eat too much of! So, for May, my resolution is to start tracking what I eat again in an online food diary. I’ve done it before with great results, but I was reluctant to get back to it because it’s so tedious! But, I know it’s good for me, so as of yesterday, I’m tracking every single thing that goes into my mouth, including the sugarless gum (which is still 4 calories per stick, ).

Nine Steps to Sara is coming along well, beginnings are always hard for me on the first pass, but hopefully I can find the right creepy/entertaining vibe I’m going for.

Let me think… what else is going on… Moonsong is doing very well so far, and I’ve been very happy with the reviews I’ve received. Now if I can just get it formatted for paperback so I can add it to my shelf…

That’s about it for me, guys. Oh, but have I mentioned, The Avengers is opening this Friday?

Moonsong is now available online!

My new werewolf paranormal romance Moonsong is now available for sale on Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com! It’s out as an e-book for $3.99 but you don’t have to have a Kindle or Nook to read it, they have free downloadable apps so you can read it on your PC, or even your phone. It’ll be available in print as well in a couple of weeks through Amazon.

I’m already deep in plotting mode for my next book Nine Steps to Sara which is a spooky thriller set in the remote English countryside.

We Have A Winner!

Moonsong has a new cover and CL Parks is the winner of the free book!

Well, it pretty much came out as a tie, so in the end I went with the greener one. I agree, the blue is much prettier, but the green seems to catch the eye better.

Thanks again to everyone who voted, I appreciate it more than I can say.

P.S. Moonsong should be available any day now in ebook format, the print version to follow soon.

Vote for Cover Art – Moonsong

It’s that time again to give me your thoughts and feedback on the cover art for my new book, Moonsong. Anyone who comments on the covers on the website will be automatically entered for a chance to win a copy of one of my books (your choice of books).

I know the difference is subtle, and please remember this will be mostly seen against a white background on Amazon.com, since that is where I sell the most. I’d also love to hear constructive criticism and ideas for how to improve them if you have any suggestions. Please keep in mind that they have to be not only eye-catching, but easy to identify when much smaller in ads and for sale on websites.

Here is a little blurb of what the book is about:

After werewolves attack her family, Amelia Singer escapes to Cutter’s Folly in search of her long lost Grandmother. There she finds the strangest revelation yet; not only is she descended from a long line of shapeshifters; Amelia’s firstborn is destined to lead the pack to dominion over all others. Now power hungry shifters everywhere will stop at nothing to share in that prophecy. Choosing a mate is the only way to end the violence, but how can she be expected to choose a man she’s known for less than a week? At the heart of this struggle, Amelia is torn between Chase, who makes her pulse race with a single sultry glance, and Cutter, a reclusive but tempting loner with secrets of his own. Can fiercely independent Amelia find happiness with the pack, or will she rebel under the pressure and take her chances on her own?

Mercy for the Damned is now out in Print!

The third book in The Fallen series is available through Amazon.com in print! To celebrate, here is another little excerpt that takes place after Mercy gets back to Midian to rescue Adam.

Without thinking, I let go of Nelo's hand, rushing forward to greet him without a single thought as to whether or not there might be anyone else in the room watching. "Adam!" I gasped, my heart clenching almost painfully in relief as I ran to his side to throw my arms around him. Only Adam didn't seem happy to see me at all, catching hold of my arms before I could wrap them around his shoulders.

"Nice try, I'm not falling for that again," he growled, shoving me aside where I landed on my butt with a soft whump. Oh sweet Jesus, had Raum sent him an imposter me? For what possible purpose?

"Adam it's me!" I insisted, shifting back up to my knees. "It's Mercy."

"Uh huh, sure," he turned back to his book, studiously ignoring me.

"No, seriously…" I frowned. "Who else would I be? Look, I brought Nelo with me," I looked around but Nelo was gone. "Nelo?" Adam didn't even bother to look up, and I craned my head to look back towards the doorway. "Nelo, this is really not a cool time to go walkies…"

"I'm not into the floor show, so you can take your act and buzz off, okay?" he smirked. "Why don't you run off and tell Raum I don't need his attempts to keep me happy, I'll keep honoring my part of the bargain."

"Oh for the love of…" snatching the book out of his hands, I tossed it aside. "Hey, the least you can do is listen to me after everything I did to get here. I don't know what Raum's done to you and frankly I don't want to know about you and any body doubles he's sent your way, but it really is me and I can prove it."

"This should be interesting." Looking only mildly intrigued, Adam sat up, legs swinging towards me as he gave me his complete attention. "Go ahead; dazzle me with your Mercy-like skills."

Despite the mild rejection, I still itched to hold him, but it was clear I'd have to convince him first. "I'm assuming you can't tell by my Grace?"

"I see a shine of Grace, but that could be a trick of the light."

"Fair enough, but we have a connection, right?" I laid my hand on his knee lightly and his eyes dropped to follow it. "You should be able to feel me all the time the way I feel you. Don't I feel closer now?"

"You do feel close," he murmured as I slid my hand a little higher up his thigh, my body shifting so that I came to kneel between his legs.

"On some level you know it's me, even if I didn't have anything to say about the boneheaded deal you made with Raum."

"I know you're not her," Adam said evenly, "because if my Mercy were to show up here, I'd have to throttle her on sight for sticking her nose where it doesn't belong."

"Since when do I do what I'm told?" I scoffed. "Besides, there are other things to consider, things you know nothing about. Can't you tell it's me?" Leaning close, I brushed my lips against his tentatively. "Not even a little bit?"

Adam went as still as a statue at the touch, a little groan escaping his lips as I bussed him lightly again. "God forgive me, I don't even care if you're not mine, I miss you so much, Mercy," he breathed, mouth chasing after mine. For long seconds I lost myself in the familiar taste of Adam, before his words came back to haunt me.

"I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing," I frowned, breaking the kiss. I didn't want him kissing me unless he was completely sure it was me. "But if you need more proof, then here," I laid the two metal slugs I always carried with me into the palm of his hand. Adam's brows drew together as he tried to puzzle through what they were until the realization dawned upon him.

"You pulled these out of me that night…"

"In my living room, before you left me," I nodded, gratified to see his face change, the skepticism fading, replaced by longing so sharp, it took my breath away.

"And you're really here…"

"I'm here," I grinned like a fool before our lips crashed together in another passionate kiss.

Spring Has Sprung!

At the risk of jinxing myself, I'm gonna go with the notion that spring is definitely here and we can kiss all the snow goodbye! (Thank God! The white stuff is pretty, but I hate driving in it!) With the month of April, I have another resolution to add to the list. I'm happy to report that since the beginning of the year, I've stuck to all of my resolutions, adding a new one each month. So far I'm exercising 5 days a week, I've given up fried foods and baked desserts and now I'll be giving up all fast food barring sandwich places. That's not to say I won't get a salad and a baked potato at Wendy's if that's my only option, because I don't think that's a no no, but no more burgers or burritos and such. April is birthday month for us around the house for myself, my husband and my oldest daughter, so we'll see how hard it is to stick to the no baked desserts resolution!

I have to say March was a weird month for me. I saw a lot of success from the Pretty Witches giveaway and I published Mercy for the Damned, so the business of being a writer went very well. Creatively, I finished up my Push fanfic, but did little else in the world of writing. I've been working on my upcoming book and let me tell you, I can't remember the last time I was in such a wishy washy mood!

I'm supposed to be working on Let Sleeping Ghosts Lie, a paranormal mystery/ghosty book similar to The Touch. But instead, I've been inundated with all manner of other plot ideas, each vying for a spot at my next book. I've even gone so far as to do some major plotting on several of these ideas, hoping one of them would pull forward as the clear winner with the hopes of starting it this month.

Well, I'll tell you, the end of March came and I found myself no closer to picking what project to begin. Each idea has merit, but none of them were grabbing hold in just that right way that tells me it's the next one to focus on. So, instead of writing a new book, I'll be dusting off Moonsong, the first book I wrote about two years ago. My writing has evolved quite a bit since then, and it needs a bit of work to get it whipped into shape for publication, but that's what I'll be working on next. Hopefully, I'll have it ready to go by month's end. That means a jump start on working on the sequel to Wake Me When the Sun Goes Down or letting my other book ideas fight to the death with chopsticks to see what book comes after that, but we'll see where we are when I come to the other side of this one.

Not So Fast…

Okay, so remember how I said free giveaways are not a magic bullet? That point was definitely proven last weekend when I tried a free giveaway for Wake Me When the Sun Goes Down. I knew it wouldn't do as well as Pretty Witches, since that's my best seller, but I only gave away about 2500 copies in three days. Dude. Seriously? I can not give this book away. Talk about depressing.

On the plus side, I've gotten some very nice reviews and emails from people telling me how much they enjoyed the book and can't wait for the sequel, so that's nice to hear. But I can't say that it really boosted sales all that much.

My numbers are still on their slow decline, but still waaaaay better than they were before the first giveaway, and I'm getting a nice mix of sales across all six books, so that tells me that people are coming back for more, which is nice too.

My 3 month period with KDP select is ending this month, so I've got another Pretty Witches free giveaway slated for March 23 and 24th, so we'll see if that does as well as the first giveaway earlier this month. Hopefully it gives the numbers a little shot in the arm so I can finish out the month a little stronger.

Free is Good!

I thought I'd chronicle my hits and misses with trying to figure out this marketing thing. Since publishing my first book last June, I've had a slow but steady growth in my sales, averaging 2-3 books sold per day, which is pretty good considering I'm a complete nobody who no one has ever heard of. My marketing strategy was pretty limited to networking on facebook and twitter, blog posts, fanfiction updates and the occasional paid promo. I only have a couple of hundred followers on facebook, so I knew that wouldn't translate to a cash camel, but I've met some really great people so I consider that to be a success.

Paid promotions: I've tried advertising on Goodreads.com, with a pay per click set up there ranging from $.20 to $.35 per click. The more people click, the more they show the ad, the more clicks you get to your link… and so on. It's hard to say if this has had any benefits at all. Some days I'd come home and see I had 11 clicks on a book and no sales. Did that mean they put it into their wish list to buy later? No idea. But I figured any exposure is good exposure, right?

I also advertised through Kindle Nation. This is quite a bit more spendy. It was $150 (now $160) to get an email blast that went out to their Amazon subscribers, pimped on facebook and their own website that is viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. Sounds good, right? For Angel of Mercy, I got about 30 purchases the first day. Pretty awesome when I'd been selling just one or two per day, but not enough to cover the costs of the promo unless you consider that people who read it might read some of my other books. For The Touch, I got about 40 purchases the first day, and it has improved sales somewhat since then, so I consider that to be a success as well. I have one coming up in May for Pretty Witches. It's my best seller, so I'm interested to see what it does with this type of promo.

Free Promotions:

The first thing I tried was to offer a giveaway to people who voted on book covers on my website. So far the response from winners has been overwhelmingly positive, but really in such limited numbers, it's not like it's really much in the way of a marketing promotion, just more like a little perk to people who regularly vote on my site.

Free Goodreads promotion. This costs nothing, but only works for print copies of the books and so you have to ship the physical book to the winner which costs around $5-6 each. I've given away two copies of Angel of Mercy, Wake Me and have one with The Touch ending today. The benefit here is a lot of people who enter to win end up putting it in their "to read" list. Has it translated into any additional sales? Again, it's hard to tell.

Free Giveaway on Amazon through KDP Select. I'd heard great things about this from other authors and decided to give it a go with Pretty Witches. I'd been leery to list anyting on KDP select, because it forbids you to offer the ebook anywhere else. That means no Barnes & Noble, no smashwords, I can't even offer a free copy of it to anyone myself. I went into it hoping for maybe a thousand or two free copies to be downloaded. I ran it from March 3rd through the 5th and ended up giving away 22,555 copies!!!

So, what does that break down to in actual numbers?

February was a very slow month for me, I sold 64 copies of my books combined, but my highest two previous months (Nov and Dec) I sold 114 copies each. The first two days of March I sold 3 copies total. The Saturday and Sunday while the free promo ran, I sold 56 copies of my other books combined. So far, so good! But would free copies of Pretty Witches translate into sales after the promo was over? So far this month, I've sold 1094 books! Finally, some numbers I can actually see the direct result of, I'd call that a success!

I've seen a slow but steady decline in the numbers as we get farther and farther away from the giveaway, so it's not like this is a magic bullet and I can now retire. But I'm thinking between the six books I have published, and three more due out this year I'll be able to keep the giveaways going and hopefully generate more interest to keep it somewhat steady. I've got Wake Me When the Sun Goes Down on a free promo on Amazon today and tomorrow, I'm interested to see how it compares to Pretty Witches All in a Row.

I haven't tried out running a free giveaway by dropping the price on smashwords to zero (which the other two sites will price match) yet, but I'll try that in the coming months.

What did I learn? Free is good! I'm not saying the same will happen for everyone, but hey, apart from listing on Amazon exclusively, what do you have to lose?

Mercy for the Damned is now available online!

Nook.

Now I get to enjoy a four day weekend before getting back to my Push fanfic and then I'll start working on finishing my outline for Let Sleeping Ghosts Lie, a paranormal/ghost thriller.

Last Day for Pretty Witches All in a Row Giveaway on Amazon.com!

The free ebook giveaway ends tonight at midnight PST. I have to say, this experience has far surpassed any hopes I had for it. As of right now I've given away over in 15,700 free downloads since Friday! Wow, and I mean WOW! I hoped for maybe 2,000 downloads over the weekend, so this blows those expectations out of the water.

I've also seen an increase in sales of other books over the weekend, and that's exciting to see. I've got a free chapter of The Touch at the end of Pretty Witches, so I was hoping for some cross-promotion there, but I've also seen a big increase in Angel of Mercy sales as well. I'll be blogging more on the ongoing benefits of the promo with some exact numbers in the next week or so, and how it translates to sales. I also want to try a giveaway through Smashwords to see how that compares to this free book through KDP Select. I have a paid promotion coming up in May for Pretty Witches through Kindle Nation Daily too. Hopefully through the course of the year I'll get this promotion thing dialed in and see what nets the biggest success.

For anyone who's missed it, you can get your free ebook copy here.