Anne Emerick's Blog, page 2
May 24, 2013
Holy Cow — How Did We Miss THAT?
An Amazon reviewer commented that the word ‘Seuss” was misspelled on the cover of The Day I Met Dr. Seuss
My knee-jerk reaction was that the reviewer was wrong. They COULDN’T be right!!! or could they?
I looked.
I shrieked with horror!!!
They were right.
I dashed off an email to my cover creator who sent me back an apology and the correct version and she echoed what I thought, “How could we not have seen that before?”
I guess I’m thinking that it is perhaps a tribute to the person who created the illustration for the cover, Nikolai Popov. I know that when I look at the cover, I always look at Dr. Seuss’s face and somehow the whole Seuss – Suess thing totally escaped me.
I feel a bit of embarassment. Spelling never was my strong suit. I’m trying to go with the sentiment that any publicity or attention for a book is a good thing.
Tags:Amazon reviews,dr seuss,funny typos
May 21, 2013
Interview with Sammy the Bookworm
I bumped into Sammy the Bookworm on Goodreads and invited back here for the following quick interview. Sammy usually calls SammyTheBookworm.com home.
Me: So can you tell my readers, what IS Sammy the Bookworm?
Sammy: Sammy the Bookworm is me on a web page. It’s reviews of just about anything I’ve read recently and interview with the authors who are gracious enough to talk. I’m also lucky enough to share my love of books through some killer giveaways and I threw in some one week special events here and there. It’s everything you can think relating to books and it’s put online for the whole wide world.
Me: I’ve heard you’ve had some real success with getting publicity and PEOPLE to your website. Tell us more. Don’t be modest. I suppose bookworms, as worms, used to crawling around may not be comfortable taking the spotlight, but go for it.
Sammy: Sammy the Bookworm has been very successful. In the last week, the Twitter followers have skyrocketted by 200 people. I had over 400 people enter a giveaway for a paperback book once. This is the stuff that outsiders can see. Behind the scenes, I’ve received over $3,000 worth of books for review and have created business relationships with some of the more popular authors today like Hugh Howey (Wool) and Marissa Meyers (Cinder). And all these numbers, continue to rise all the time. It’s been a huge success for a one year old website.
Me: So as an author, what’s the best way for me to participate – provide a book for a giveaway?? Send you a book to review?
Sammy: As an author, you can participate quite a lot! You can send your book in for review, provide items for a giveaway or even just give me 10 minutes of your day for an interview. Sometimes I even have special events like the Bookworm Birthday Bash in August. A great group of authors signed up so I can raffle away over 40 books plus merchandise like bracelets, bookmarks, artwork and more! It’s a month long event and it took alot of authors to fille the schedule. But anyway, there’s a lot of of oppurtunities for a budding author to be seen. For details, see: https://sites.google.com/site/stbauthors/
Me: Is this a full-time occupation for you? Reading $3000 worth of books is going to make you one busy bookworm!
Sammy: You may find it surprising, but this is not my full time job. I am actually a busy high school student trying to work toward college. Sammy the Bookworm takes up a large part of my day though and I look forward to working on it. $3000 worth of books has kept me very busy but I plan my day ahead of time and am able to be socially active with others and go out when I feel like it. Even though I have events planned for every week on the website, I still keep up straight A’s!
Me: Wow, holy cow, you are a high school student. Very impressive. I predict awesomeness in your college application process based on both your communication skills, initiative and more. What inspired you to create Sammy the Bookworm and the website?
Sammy: The creation of Sammy the Bookworm was actually an acident. As a 9th grader I was studying HTML. I was trying to think of a site idea to be able to practice my HTML and CSS and my dad thought of a book review site since I had read over 70 books the previous summer. I didn’t like the idea but it was all I had. When I had an author ask me to review a print copy of his book, I was estatic. Once I got to talk with a few authors, which was like Heaven to me, I was hooked. Now I can’t imagine a week without my site. It has become a part of me and I won’t be giving it up anytime soon.
Me: What’s worked best for you in creating those relationships? And building website or Facebook traffic?
Sammy: I found that the key to starting anything in the book world is just to ask. Alot of the authors I have met and worked with are from getting on Google, looking up new authors and indie books and finding the contact info. You have to get in there and work. And once you ask, they’re actually quite nice and sometimes say yes. As for building traffic, it’s again a scenario of getting in there. I joined loads of networking groups and I just shared my website info. People were intriqued and fascinated and hopped onboard. Now I’m almost at 400 Twitter Followers and I have a strong Facebook connection. The website gets hundreds, if not thousands of people. It’s a lot of hard work but it pays off.
Me: Thanks for stopping by Sammy. I believe both you and your website are worth keeping an eye on!
Tags:author promotion,author publicity,book review websites
May 11, 2013
Interview with Author Jonathan Clark
Today’s blog post is a question and answer session with author Jonathan Clark, a writer from the UK who describes himself as, “a tutor and writer.” and “a Beatles and Shakespeare obsessive”. Clark says, “I believe in the potential of children to become whatever they want and the power of a good educator to help them get there.”
Q: How long have you been writing?
A: I have been writing for about 4 years in total.
Q: What books do you have published?
I have published ‘A Question of Biology’ on Kindle. It is for 16-19 year olds who like to study Biology.
available on Amazon.com or Amazon UK website.
Then when I went on to write Karim and the Secret of the Stones on Amazon.com
(click for UK edition) it was in the belief that science (in this case the science of the Solar System) is fascinating if presented in the form of sci-fi. This is a book specifically for teenagers.
Q: So in Karim and the Secret of the Stones’ your main character travels from the UK to the US. Have you lived in both countries?
A: I have always lived in the UK but have travelled across the USA and been to New York twice. Would like to go back. I read a lot about the USA. Karim goes there as he needs to get to the centre of world power.
Q: Now, I interrupted your description of the books you have written, the last one is….
A: I also wrote ‘1994 The Very Last Lennon Interview’ after seeing a man on Polish TV who looked very much like I think John Lennon would have looked in his mid-fifties. I think you have to write about what you are interested in and passionate about, and that has to come from your life. I think this may be of some interest to late teens who like the Beatles – there are some out there!
ME putting in my 2 cents: I thought the concept of 1994 The Very Last Lennon Interview sounded fascinating. The basic idea is what if John Lennon had actually survived the murder attempt through a CIA operation; and taken to hiding out in Poland. So it’s a what if John Lennon didn’t die? What if he simply had to go into hiding. Considering Lennon wrote Watching the Wheels, this scenarios is quite believable. I had to look up the song after I read your book blurb. Here it is for interested folks.
Q: What is the best writing advice you ever got?
A: To write about what you know and to always write from the heart and have a fascination for the process.
Q: What works best for you for promoting your books?
A: Good question! Free giveaways can be effective. Advertising is unpredictable and can be expensive. Blogs can be good – but you also need a bit of luck too.
Q: What are you currently working on?
A: I am currently writing a book about the Beatles time in Hamburg in the early 1960s when they had a member called Stuart Sutcliff who died tragically.
Q: Anything else that you’d like to tell me? Advice you’d give to other writers? Something you’d like to say to readers?
A: To the readers I would say to just read what they like and not be put off by boring ‘novels’ that are supposed to be classics and are irrelevant and dull. Read what excites you and love it! To writers I would say write from your heart and be true to yourself and appreciate your own art for what it is.
Tags:author interviews,books for teenagers,John Lennon,Self-Publishing,self-publishing on Kindle,writing for teens,YA
April 29, 2013
More Self-Publishing Adventures
So I continue to make forward progress with self-publishing. I released 
Mattie Monster is Too HOT to Sleep
Hmm…. maybe I should have made that image a little smaller. Ah, well, next time. That’s the sequel to — there a smaller picture.
I have one more Mattie Monster book in mind.
Meanwhile I am working towards a print version of Dogs, dogs, Dogs
. In many ways, that’s my favorite book that I’ve written or published this year.
I often write you half a blog post in my mind and neglect to actually type it out and post it. I am still very happy with using Rachel Rofe’s accountability program. I don’t know if they are still taking new clients or not, but if they are I recommend giving it a try. Michaela, Rachel’s assistant is like this very kind-hearted task master who pushes me along just by asking the right questions and giving lots of encouragement. Well, I don’t want to get you too psyched about the program, in case they aren’t running it any more.
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February 27, 2013
To Print or Not to Print that Children’s Book
So I recently blogged about my focus shifting to making my self-publishing profitable. Being profitable is a lot easier to do when publishing for Amazon Kindle. For the titles I’ve published, my upfront costs were probably lowest on Dogs, dogs, Dogs
. In fact, I’m trying to remember if I had ANY upfront expenses for that book.
My most expensive Kindle book to publish would have to be 
The Day I Met Dr. Seuss which cost about $450 – $500 when I add up copyediting (my rhymes needed some polishing), the cover illustration and the cover design. Now, each sale of this book nets about $2 and then Amazon adds in a bit more (I’m hazy on the calculation) if the book is part of KDP Select and you do well with your free promotions. So I’ve probably just about recouped my publishing expenses and future sales will now be profits. Amazon’s reporting is decent, but NOT good to track overall sales of a single title. So it would take me more time than it’s worth to figure this out exactly Let’s just say that title became profitable for me in about 6 months.
So my original goal when I started in self-publishing was a children’s picture book that I wrote and had illustrated by a friend who I met through SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators). My friend Jennifer Walk, is an art teacher and so she has her summer’s “off” — ha ha…. she and all the other teachers in my circle of friends and family, and there are a lot, will probably call me to complain about that statement tomorrow. Anyway, during one of her summers she painted the illustrations for my story, Dripping Dan, the Wild-Hair Man. I paid her a substantial advance (I had to or she was just going to work all summer at an art store, something about needing to pay rent), but that money is not a reason alone for me to invest more.
The truth is Dripping Dan, the Wild-Hair Man has been one of my popular titles among family members. So as they’ve seen me pull one title after another out of the desk drawer, they’ve asked, “When are you going to publish Dripping Dan?”
Okay, I thought, so what would be the next step in publishing Dripping Dan? We need to get the illustrations scanned. My sister happens to be a watercolor artist and had recommended someone that is friendly, helpful, and can make colors remain true and handle scanning large items. So I emailed to ask for the cost and it didn’t sound too bad. Each illustration is 12 inches by 14 inches and it would cost me $29 to get a high-quality scan. That didn’t sound bad, until I did the math (30 illustrations times $29) — $870 for 30. “Nine hundred dollars!” my newly discovered money-oriented publishing brain shouted, “and that’s not even THINKING about printing!” This practical voice rattled on, “Any idea how many months (or years) of sales it might take to recoup $900? And what about printing?”
What about printing indeed. I went off to CreateSpace (provided by Amazon) and to a few websites of printers and in no time my head was spinning with trim sizes (size of each page) and small-run-printing versus print-on-demand vs. offset printing. I suddenly remembered how printing and print specifications was an aspect of publishing that gave me such a feeling of behing overwhelmed. I decided to take a break from the topic for a couple days AND…. since this blog post is so darn long, I’m also delaying writing about what I decided should be my next steps in publishing until at least tomorrow or the next day.
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February 25, 2013
Getting Legit Amazon Reviews (my experience)
Another writer on a forum commented to me that I seemed to have a lot of good reviews and where had I gotten them. After I replied, I realized this info would make a good blog post, so here it is:
For The Day I Met Dr. Seuss, I went ahead and asked friends and family to download on a free day and consider writing a review. I even contacted everyone who had ever been in a writing critique group with me. This approach got me about 6 or 7 reviews? out of maybe 40+ people I contacted.
I then offered to trade reviews with a few people. The only problem with that was there were a couple of folks whose books I didn’t think were particularly well written. I ended up with one person giving his one book a 3-star review and one book a 4-star review. After that, I stopped offering review exchanges unless I had read their book already and really liked it. At that point I was up to perhaps 13 or 14 reviews, as some had just come in from unknown sources (or perhaps friends who were a little slower in writing a review).
Then I had a guest post on AbsoluteWrite.com in early December, which I think (I can’t know for sure) is what gave me another 3 or so reviews that just appeared without me begging or cajoling anyone.
Finally, my next free day, I posted on Page One Profits Facebook page. Page One Profits is a product designed to help you get your book higher in Amazon’s search results. So I used it to try and rank that book well for “Dr Seuss”. So as part of the product, you become a member of a Facebook group which allows members to promote their free days and encourage reviews, downloads or tags — it’s a voluntary, community-minded writing promotional support group. It’s funny because that free day where I posted on Page One Profits Facebook page, I had very low downloads — about 100, but…. I got more reviews.
The lesson I’ve learned from this is that success often is built gradually. The way The Day I Met Dr. Seuss sold in October and November was pretty discouraging. Some weeks I was only selling a copy or two. I do have other titles — my chapter-book length books (Smelly Ellie: Second Place Sister and Poster Girl that are not selling at all on Amazon — in some cases 0 copies for a whole month. I’m thinking that the age where children start to pick out their own books, is perhaps a tougher Kindle market? I’m really not sure.
Mattie Monster is NOT Tired did very well off the bat. I have since met a friend who was a teacher and she said she tweeted about that book to her teacher friends on my free day. I also again posted about the book on Page One Profits. But I was pleasantly surprised by it’s success. Dogs, dogs, Dogs did even better. But in both cases, after 2 or 3 weeks the sales of these books dropped a huge amount where they began selling maybe a third or a quarter of the sales they had earlier. I have to figure out out to sustain the sales more or even why the sales drop off so much. Also, now that I am FINALLY profitable publishing on Kindle, can I return to printing SOME books on paper and still have them be profitable. But…. that is a topic for another post.
Writing things that are short makes it much easier to ask for reviews and hope people will really read the book and write one. But, that doesn’t mean you should give up if you write longer novels or books. Those books have great potential, but they are harder to get the reviews going, I think.
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February 24, 2013
Self-Publishing for Profit
Even though I officially became a self-publisher in 2007 when Poster Girl rolled off the printing presses and arrived at my home, I think it’s only been in the last month that I actually became a publisher.
What do I mean by that?
I mean simply that only in the last month have I begun to look at spending money to publish something in terms of “Will I be able to earn that money back?” and “How long will it take?”
Frankly I’m a bit embarrassed that it’s taken me over 5 years of publishing to ask that basic question. But I realized when I started self-publishing I just wanted to reach readers. I was incredibly frustrated by the fact that if I didn’t self-publish, no child or adult would ever pick something I wrote up off a bookshelf and enjoy it. A big turning point in my original decision to self-publish had been when the first page of a story of mine was read anonymously at a writing conference and people laughed out loud while it was read. That was the moment where I felt I MUST stop sending my writing off to editors and sitting and waiting. It was time for a game-changer and so I began self-publishing.
I published Poster Girl and then my No-Work Spanish audiobooks
thinking all the while that publishing was about three steps:
1) Publish a good product
2) Make people aware of it
3) Make money
Sadly… it doesn’t really work like that. There are projects that are so expensive to publish or so difficult to make people aware of that they are highly unlikely to ever get to stage 3 — making money.
And I have to steer clear of such projects, as any publisher (self or big-time) must do. Why?
Because if I publish books or audiobooks that don’t turn a profit (or don’t turn one in a couple years) then I can’t KEEP publishing. I don’t work a dayjob just to fund publishing as a hobby. And so I must approach my publishing decisions differently from now on.
Again, I’m a bit embarrassed that this reality has only become clear to me recently, but…. there you have it
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January 31, 2013
Dogs, dogs, Dogs — Funny and Free
Dogs, dogs, Dogs is funny AND free, today (Jan 31st) and tomorrow (Feb 1).
Don’t despair if you missed it, it’s pretty cheap the rest of the time too.
Don’t despair if you don’t have a Kindle, you can read Kindle books on your computer, by downloading the free application Kindle for PC
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January 18, 2013
My Kindle Sales Pick Up
Well good news and more good news has been the theme of my children’s books on Kindle in January. I was pleasantly surprised at how well Mattie Monster is NOT Tired has done both with its cheapy 99 cent price and initially as a free download, where it climbed to #1 for Free Books in Chidren’s Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Yes, take a realistic plot line and substitute a monster as the main character in place of a human child and voila…. you’ve written fantasy. So I took the snapshot below of Mattie’s moment of glory. And yes, I’ve started talking about Mattie as though he is real, which is good for my writing (he’ll be in a sequel) but not so good in terms of proving my sanity.
Meanwhile, The Day I Met Dr. Seuss has gotten reviews from unexpected sources, such as this one from Irene Taylor at My Book Blog: Ebook Reviews who wrote that
This ebook is a fun, quick read, that captures the rhyming cadences of Dr. Seuss. It would make a great read-aloud for any age or grade level. This story would be especially timely for teachers who are celebrating Read Across America Day on March 2 – a day that celebrates both reading and the birthday of Dr. Seuss.
Wow… compliments and new potential audiences for my book rolled into one review. How psyched am I? Pretty psyched.
I asked Irene how she happened to hear about The Day I Met Dr. Seuss and she said that it was highlighted on: The Kindle Buffet, so a quick shot-out to them. Thanks.
How they picked up my free day, I’ll never know, but I’m very happy they did.
Gotta run!
Tags:publishing children's books on Kindle,self-publishing children's books
January 3, 2013
Self-Publishing Children’s Books on Kindle – Ebooks in 2013
So a year ago I did not have any children’s books on Kindle. Today, I have four shown here (hopefully):
Amazon.com Widgets
My most recent title 
Mattie Monster is NOT Tired
is a slightly different approach for me.
You see normally I write the story I want to tell, then get feedback from others and then publish. This time I still wrote the story I wanted to tell. It was called Joey Edwards is NOT Tired. It was a story about a boy who is not tired. His mother sends him to bed where he continues to play with his toys. She says “No toys in bed”…. so he turns to his imaginary friend to play with. Back and forth the mostly good-natured parent-child bedtime struggle goes.
I wrote the story years ago and submitted it to traditional publishers. It came back with a few favorable comments. The editors who liked the story, said they still wouldn’t publish it because they believed parents wouldn’t buy a book that might encourage misbehaving at bedtime. When I began publishing books on Kindle, I briefly considered the story, but felt something was missing from it.
Then I sat in on a webinar on writing Kindle books for kids. The webinar host encouraged people to look at the current Bestselling Children’s Books on Kindle and look for trends, popular topics.
It didn’t take a genius to spot, at Number 4 was:
and then around number 22 or 23, there was:
Monsters — children like monsters, or at least books about monsters. In fact, in case we missed it, the webinar person even listed good topics for kids books and included monsters in the list.
So…. I had this bedtime story about a child who wasn’t sleepy. Why not turn that child into a monster? The truth is, don’t we as parents feel that this is EXACTLY what happens each night? We have this child, whom we love and we want them to go to bed and to sleep and they turn into this monster, who simply refuses to give us the break we need and go to sleep.
In fact, this syndrome and frustration is so common, that there was the runaway bestseller, 
But I digress. In the interest of marketability, I changed my main character from a human boy to a little monster. And… I went one further. I looked at common names. I wanted a name that began with an ‘M’, but it should be a popular name, because parents whose child had that name would be more likely to buy the book. Matthew was the number 4 name in 2005, a year that would mean children are currently age 7. And “Mattie” sounds like “Maddie” which is a girl’s name.
I went even further (being completely honest) in looking for ways to make people inclined to purchase this book. I decided to price it at 99 cents. And then I chose a cover design that would emulate this one:
:
Do you think I was too obvious? Both books have a brown background with a gradiant (gradual color change) and then they have the title in green and a green monster on the cover. Beyond that, my book cover is 100% original.
See the story is still what I wanted to write, original and unaffected by other’s books. But the packaging of the book — title, illustrations, cover, all are completely based on what is currently selling.
We’ll see how it does.
Tags:Amazon Kindle Ebooks,kindle ebook publishing,kindle publishing,self publish child book,Self-Publishing
