Kris Pearson's Blog, page 13

BookBub!

I’ve been waiting a while for this. If you’re an author you’ll know BookBub is reputed to be the best publicity around. Okay, it costs a heap to get your book listed for one day, and they’re very fussy about which books they accept. They want books with lots of good reviews, great covers, and at very good prices. They want to keep their subscribers happy, so good on them.

If you’re a reader, it would be well worth your while to join up with BookBub. You can do it HERE. Their mail-outs contain only the books you’ll be interested in. For example, you don’t have to wade through heaps of vampires and cookery books and sports stories if what you read is contemporary romance. You call the shots and they send only the relevant listings.

            

July 23rd is ‘my’ day for BookBub. I’ve chosen a great book which has hundreds of five-star reviews, priced it down to 99 cents, and made sure Amazon, the iBookstores, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and Kobo all have it down to the right price on time. I’ve booked a lot of other publicity as well, because I need to sell thousands of books over the next few days to cover BookBub's one day listing price of $US580.

(A 99 cent book returns around 35 percent to the author, in case you’re wondering.)

Free or 14 cents

Book promotion is the strangest game. As an indie author it’s up to me to promote my own books. Mind you, most traditional publishers now expect authors to promote their own books anyway. So what are the options?

Social media of course, but it does get very boring trying to dream up new and interesting ways to acquaint readers with what you’ve just written. Do it too often and it’s a sure-fire way to lose friends.

A regular newsletter to your readers can be a powerful tool. First you need them to subscribe to it; then you need to send them something interesting just often enough that they stay signed up.

Book bloggers and blog tours sound very grand, but they might boil down to a cover, the book blurb, and your bio – exactly what people can already see on your Goodreads or Amazon page.

The e-zines and review sites are happy to feature your books, but each is at least another forty or fifty bucks a month.

There are dozens (hundreds?) of ‘free books’ or ‘bargain books’ sites. If you’re willing to drastically reduce the price of your books, they’re well worth trying. Many don’t cost an author anything except time because the sites are Amazon Associates who get a small cut that way. But time is very precious when you’re uploading details to site after site and would rather be writing. An alternative is to use a service to do the uploading – for a fee.

Promo gold

Wow, am I lucky! Writing books is only half of an indie author's job; then you have to get the word out to all your readers that the next one is published. You can pay and pay and pay. Send free copies of books to review sites and never get the reviews. Employ blog tour organisers, answer time-sapping interview questions, and provide excerpts and prizes. Or make expensive bookings on advertising sites and hope you’ve chosen the best ones.

And sometimes, after a lot of hard work, it’s your turn for some good luck and you strike absolute gold.

Here’s the gold that came my way this week – a wonderful world-wide promotion with the iBook stores.

              

By special invitation, I’ve made the first of my Heartland books free. iBooks are featuring forty chosen contemporary romance titles in their main English-speaking stores - USA, the UK, Canada, and Ireland – as well as Australia and New Zealand. I’m honoured to be included beside writers including Kate Perry, Barbara Freethy, Melody Anne, Marie Force and Ruth Cardello.

Books galore

Everything’s happening at once!

My own new book is launched.

                          

My friend Tracy Alvarez’s new book is launched.

I’m taking part in The Romance Reviews’ Sizzling Summer Reads promotion, and so can you.                     

Tracey’s first book was ‘In too Deep’, which I loved.

(If you’re quick you can grab it for 99 cents because she’s reduced it to launch this one – ‘Melting into You’). Here’s what you can look forward to:

                                     

Big, sexy men who don’t relate well to kids need not apply…

Kezia Murphy plays her widow card well. When you don’t trust people not to let you down, it’s easier to not get involved—and getting involved with a man who makes her skin sizzle just by looking at him would be una pazzia—crazy! Four years ago while Kezia’s daughter, Zoe, battled leukaemia, a tragic accident stole her husband’s life. Starting over in the little town of Oban where she’s adopted into the close knit community on Stewart Island, Kezia and her daughter are all the family the other needs. Except Zoe yearns for more.

Next books

What do you write once a book is finished and onto the virtual bookshelves? I’m tossing up between two – another Sheikh (my all-time best seller) or something quick and naughty, just for fun.

Hmmm… the sure thing…. or the fun for me?

More than the Money has gone live this week. It’s out there in the big wide world, and to my great pleasure readers found it on Amazon before I even started promoting.

All the Buy links are on the first page of my website (click Home on the brown bar above.) If you click on the book cover there you’ll get extra info, too.

                               

I have plenty of friends who’ve just launched/are about to launch a new book. Tracy Alvarez has her second novel just out. ‘Melting in to You’ follows her excellent first story ‘In Too Deep’.

Serenity Woods is racing away on a new series. I’ve just proofread ‘Treat with Caution’ for her, and there are more ‘Treats’ to follow.

Shirley Wine has broken her wrist, but that’s not stopping her from preparing a new book for you. It’s called ‘The Return’- another of her super-sized rural romances.

Launched!

'More than the Money' has hit Smashwords and the iBook stores on pre-order. It launches for sale on June 9. For only $2.99 it's a total steal in my opinion - not that I'm biased or anything! It came in with a bang at no 22 in romances in New Zealand, so it'll be fun to see how it goes.

What's the philosophy behind pre-orders? Well, it means keen readers get some advance publicity of when an author's next book is coming out. They can put in an order right away, and know that on launch day they'll have an instant copy. You don't pay until the book is actually available, so it's a win/win.

Hopefully it's a win/win for the author as well, because these 'pre-order sales' add up and all get put beside the book so that on Day 1 it's already showing sales and therefore gets a nice bump up the rankings.

'More than the Money' is the third of my Heartlands books, and it follows 'Her Man with Iceberg Eyes' and 'Christmas Holiday Husband', both of which are ticking over nicely.

Working with friends

Pssst! Want seven good novels for 99 cents?

Six of my friends and I have got together to bring you a really nice boxed set called Second Chances. It’s a special promotional effort exclusive to the iBook stores, and it’s available for pre-order right now. Buy right away and you won’t be charged the 99 cents (big deal!) until the book is launched in a few days’ time. You can download the free sample which has the first chapter of each of the books by clicking the black square.

               

It’s been fun doing this. More fun for some of us than others, I suspect. Our poor formatter had a pretty rough time making seven books combine into one good-looking entity, but it’s a chance for us all to make the most of our assorted promotional skills to spread the word about the book and each other. You might discover a new favourite author.

So who are we? Well, there’s me, and the book I’ve included is The Wrong Sister. It’s the second book I ever published and still a very nice seller at $2.99. Effectively it’s down to fourteen cents with this deal! And there’s everyone else you can see on the pretty cover below. We’re Kiwi Indie Authors, and you can check us out HERE.

Cover love

How much does the cover of a book draw you in? Do you get annoyed when the people on the front don’t match the people in the story? I remember one of my friends being highly indignant when she read a book with a horse on the cover and there was, in her words, ‘no damn horse in the book!’ That does seem rather careless of the publisher.

My latest novel is due up for pre-order later this week, with a cover reveal on Wednesday. It’s the first time I’ve had a cover reveal. It’s the first time I’ve hired a Virtual PA to help me. (Hi Lindsey!) She’s going to spread the cover and blurb around suitable sites for me and see if she can get some excitement going.

So who’s on the front? These two – Rory the Kiwi cowboy who has spent half his life in Texas, and Alfie the shy heiress who is the arranged bride, and his ticket to a wonderful property. If she’ll have him.

Do you think she’ll have him? Would you…?

Dreaded Promotion

One of the things about being an indie author is that there’s no publisher behind you to advertise your books. We have to do it all ourselves, but sometimes we get interesting opportunities.

This week I have two things to share. Well, maybe three. I’m going to start with being part of the big Smashwords promotion at the huge RT Booklovers Convention in New Orleans.

Two thousand of the romance industry’s most influential participants will be there. Smashwords is providing a four gigabyte thumb drive for every goodie bag – with 349 free romance books from Smashwords authors. My contribution to the thumb drive is Christmas Holiday Husband – the second of my Heartlands books, and selling very well even though Christmas is long gone. It leads on from Her Man with Iceberg Eyes. The next in this series will be More than the Money, and I’m just strangling that into submission for a June launch.

                  

Supermodels!

Well, we were! Many years of us… many, many kilos… it was super-scary, super-fun and we raised a super amount of money.

My service club, Soroptimist International, organises an annual fund-raising fashion parade with one of our local clothing stores, and Friday was the big day. Ballentynes of Kilbirnie have hosted us year after year. They let us use their big store after hours, set up a red carpet ‘runway’, tables for drinks and nibbles, chairs for as many people as we can safely cram into the store, and then give a generous discount on the clothing the guests buy over the following week. In return we provide ‘models’ of realistic proportions, the drinks and nibbles, and have a wonderful time. Here’s our intrepid modelling team.

This year we’re raising funds for a charity called Bellyful – an organisation that provides meals for families with new babies or struggling with illness – particularly those who lack a good support network.