Sandy Appleyard's Blog, page 23
March 27, 2013
The Wife of a Lesser Man is Finally Here! Read The First 2 Chapters Right Now!
After 8 months of writing, 2 months of editing and a month of beta reading, The Wife of a Lesser Man is finally here!! To view the book trailer, click here.
First, a little about the book and then you can read the first two chapters here for free!
This is the story of Mark, a police chief and Shelley, his wife of 20 years. They live a charmed life up until he has a heart attack. After surviving his affliction, he encounters other physical challenges such as impotence. Mark’s return to work thro...
March 25, 2013
What Happens When You Don’t Use Hootsuite?
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you didn’t use Hootsuite? If you didn’t have any of your own content circulating for a period of time?
I conducted a little experiment recently. The experiment’s purpose was twofold: 1) I needed to take a little vacation from things, and 2) I wanted to perform an experiment to see what would happen if I didn’t use Hootsuite and thus, didn’t re-post any of my own material.
The content circulating on my Twitter account was simply from Buffer and the syn...
March 22, 2013
Things to be Careful of When Self Publishing
In self publishing my latest novel, I hit a few snags and realized they were worth sharing with other indie authors.
Make sure your book is 100% free of errors-even after it’s been beta read. My book was professionally edited AND beta read and there were still formatting errors (duplicate chapter numbers, etc.). Before publishing to Amazon (Createspace), Kindle or any other database that allows a straight upload without any autovetter error screenings, I recommend running your book through Sma...
March 20, 2013
Guest Post: How Does an Author Get Exposure?
To kickoff my guest post series, I’d like to introduce you to Summer Lane. Summer and I met on Twitter and we have some things in common, namely we’re both authors. As authors, we’ve encountered many obstacles; one of the major ones is gaining necessary exposure to sell books. Here’s Summer’s interesting take on the subject. So, without further adieu….take it away Summer!
Being an Indie author isn’t easy. Much like starting up your own brick and mortar business or investing in something that’s...
March 18, 2013
Book Review: “Create Your Writer Platform”
If you’re a writer, do you have the following questions in mind: How do I get started? Am I on the right track? What more can I do?
If so, than ‘Create Your Writer Platform’ is a book you’ll enjoy. Chuck Sambuchino narrows it down to twelve simple fundamentals of platform building that are achievable.
What’s great about ‘Create Your Writer Platform’ is that not only does he supply the opinions and input of agents, but he also gives the success stories of current authors at the end of the book....
March 13, 2013
Don’t Get Stuck in the Promotional Time Warp!
Image credit www.thepottingshedder.blogspot.ca
How much time do you spend promoting your work? How much is too much?
It’s really tough to find the correct balance, especially when you have underlying factors to contend with like work (paid work that is), family time and whatever other personal endeavours you have in your life.
In the beginning, I spent all my time writing and nothing on promotion. This netted me zero sales for my first two books. Then I did what all newbie authors do (at least t...
March 11, 2013
What Buffer is and Why You Should Use It
I’m a writer, and like all writers I’m trying to establish my platform. My most successful social media outlet to date isTwitter. I’ve spent countless hours retweeting people who have mentioned my posts or retweeted me.
My philosophy is this: don’t thank people by simply saying thank you, thank them by retweeting or mentioning them, you’ll get way more out of that and so will your tweeps. For a previous post on this, click here.
In doing this, I found I was extremely overwhelmed. Up until about...
March 6, 2013
How to Come up with Amazing Book Ideas
I’m not great at book marketing; I’ll admit that. Nor am I great with platform building; I’m learning as I go. But I will tell you that I definitely know how to come up with amazing book ideas. Here’s how:
Read, read, read, read, read…..did I mention read?
The testament “if you want to read a book that hasn’t been written yet, you must write it” is so true. Most of my book ideas have come from this sentiment. Some of my favourite authors are Sue Grafton, John Grisham, Nicholas Sparks, Philippa...
March 4, 2013
How Important are Reviews and Likes Anyway?
Have you ever wondered what would happen if book marketing platforms like Amazon didn’t have the ‘Like’ or ‘Review’ features?
When you’re a new author, these features are pretty scary and you almost wish they weren’t there. You look at other established authors who have hundreds of likes (well, maybe not that many) and so many reviews that you can’t even get through them all and think……how on earth am I going to get those?
So you ask your friends and family and beg people on your fan site (if y...
February 28, 2013
Vote for a Chance to Win a Copy of ‘The Wife of a Lesser Man’
I’m releasing my second romantic mystery ‘The Wife of a Lesser Man’ in April.
Kit Foster Design has created three different mock ups for the cover, and I thought it would be fun to have a vote for which cover is best suited for the book.
Everyone who votes will have their name entered into a draw to win a free copy of either Blessed and Betrayed (available now) or The Wife of a Lesser Man, your choice. Of course, if you choose my new one you’ll have to wait a little, but it’ll be worth it 
Here...
