Michelle Proulx's Blog, page 11

Imminent Danger free to download Monday + Tuesday

As we reach the end of Imminent Danger’s first 90 days in KDP Select, I realized that I’ve only used 3 of the 5 free giveaway days! Gasp. Thus, I am pleased to announce that …

Imminent Danger And How to Fly Straight into It

will be free to download on Monday & Tuesday (April 6-7)

Here are assorted links for your clicking convenience:

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.ca

It’s actually available on all Amazon sites, so just head over to your Amazon site of choice and it should be there!

If you want to share the news of the free downloads days, you’re awesome. If you don’t want to share the news, you’re still awesome. Either way, thanks for reading, and happy downloading!

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Unrelated media of the day:

Today for your enjoyment I have a series of humorous Tumblr posts.

Self-Publish Stats & Sales for Jan + Feb 2015

Happy Saturday, everyone!

I know I always find it super helpful when self-pubbed authors post their sales stats, so I’ve collected my stats for January and February and detailed them below.

A couple of notes, and a couple of takeaways:

NOTES:

This is all ebook-related — I think I sold maybe 1 print book, so I didn’t include that in the stats
“sold” means an actual sale
“borrowed” means the book was borrowed as part of the Kindle Unlimited program (basically an online library) — if they read past 10% of the book, I get a certain amount of money based on that month’s Unlimited Fund (about $2 per book, I believe)
“free” means a free download (from one of the free download days I ran as part of KDP Select)

TAKEAWAYS:

The number of books borrowed almost doubled the number of books sold — which means that 2/3 of my money is coming from KDP Select — so, in the eternal Smashwords vs. KDP Select war, I’m a fan of KDP Select right now, as those borrows are really doing work for me
I made about $100 a month (approx), on a first title by a new author, with not too much advertising — which is great! Hopefully A) that continues for future months, and B) the amount will rise when I eventually publish Chasing Nonconformity
Denmark randomly buys/borrows/downloads my book a lot more than other European countries — no idea why

That’s all the analysis I can manage on a snowy Saturday afternoon. I’m off to get tasty, delicious pizza now. Below are the stats. View and enjoy!

January

.com 17 sold, 31 borrowed, 1063 free
.uk 5 sold, 9 borrowed, 89 free
.denmark 1 sold, 2 borrowed, 22 free
.france 3 free
.ca 143 free
.italy 1 free
.in 5 free
.aus 1 sold, 1 free
~~~
February
.com 12 sold, 38 borrowed, 690 free
.uk 6 sold, 11 borrowed, 124 free
.den 1 sold, 2 borrowed, 60 free
.fra 5 free
.jap 2 free
.ca 3 sold, 3 borrowed, 31 free
.it 2 free
.in 2 free
.aus 16 free
.neth 2 free
~~~
Total stats for 2 months
Sold: 46
Borrowed: 96
Free: 2261
~~~
January
.com $76.52
.uk $20.45
.den $4.52
.aus $2.12
TOTAL $103.61
~~~
February
.com $77.50
.uk $25.34
.den $4.70
.ca $9.08
TOTAL $116.62
~~~
Grand total for 2 months: $220.23
~~~

Unrelated media of the day:
(forgive the blurriness)

Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/RDAhF

Holiday Writing Update

Happy Holidays, dear readers!

Since Christmas is tomorrow and I’ll probably be busy with presents and turkey and so on and so forth, I thought I’d check in tonight to A) wish every Happy Holidays, and B) do a quick little update on my current writing adventures.

Writing Adventure #1: Proofing Imminent Danger And How to Fly Straight into It

I’m now on Round #3 of proofing the shiny new edition of Imminent Danger. Originally I was just intending to do a quick run-through of the iUniverse version, add in some commas, chop out some adverbs, and then repackage it and call it a day. But once you start revising … well, let’s just say I ended up doing a bit more editing than I expected. The story is still the exact same, the scenes are the exact same, it’s just a few phrases and wordings that have shifted to enhance clarity, enhance humor, etc.

First proofing round was about checking formatting and typos. Second proofing round went to my mother (aka my editor extraordinaire) who found some extremely minor logical flaws that needed correcting — plus typos and some more wording changes.

Now I’m on the third round, which I’ve given to my little brother Jesse to read through for typos. I don’t know if he’ll actually read it, as he’s very busy playing computer games (*cough*sarcasm*cough*), so I’ll probably have to end up scanning it for typos again myself. I’ll probably employ the “read it backwards” technique to make sure I’m not distracted by the story. There’s also a weird formatting issue where the text on some pages are higher than on other pages, giving the book a lop-sided appearance — but since this only happened on this proof round, I suspect it’s an issue with the printing process. I’ve emailed Amazon, and we’ll get it sorted out before the book goes live for sale.

Writing Adventure #2: Editing Chasing Nonconformity with Linda Schneidereit

Mom and I are back into our “SHWOOP sessions”, which basically means we’re video chatting via Google Hangouts and I share my screen with her so we can edit the book page by painstaking page. It takes forever and is very frustrating (mostly because, as mentioned, it takes forever), but each page is way better once we’ve SHWOOP-ed it, so it’s definitely worth all the pain.

Hopefully we’ll get at least halfway through the book by the end of the holidays, although that might be a bit optimistic. Ah well. Fingers crossed, my friends!

Writing Adventure #3: Writing the first draft of Cerulean Bound

I started this back in November for NaNoWriMo, and got about 20k in by the end of the month. I’ve since added another 5k, and will hopefully get another 10k-20k knocked out over the holidays. I’ve got Act 1 pretty much sorted out, so that should be easy enough to finish. Once I get to Act 2, though … well, it’ll be fun to see where it goes, let’s just say that, lol.

 

That’s all from me! What writing adventures are you getting up to over the holidays?

 

Unrelated media of the day:

That’s Doctor T to You, Buddy

Michelle Proulx:

Celeste DeWolfe has created another awesome piece of Imminent Danger fan art!!! Featuring Doctor T, everyone’s favorite sentient ball of light!!!

Originally posted on The Official Site of Celeste DeWolfe:

Hey again!

Still not doing anything productive over here… Well, at least not for me anyway. xD  But since Christmas is around the corner and I still haven’t wrapped anything, PROBABLY that’s not going to happen before New Years.  Sorry!!

Anyway, I wanted to draw something, so I continued in my quest to illustrate all of the scenes from Michelle Proulx‘s novel Imminent Danger and How to Fly Straight Into It!  I’m not even close–by the time I finish the first book the series will probably be done–but it’s fun, and I always appreciate Michelle’s reactions. :)  She’s such a good sport~

So have this picture in lieu of anything else!  I DO have posts/updates planned for after my Korea venture is more settled/I have less hours at work, but we’ll just have to wait for those.

As you can see, while Eris and Miguri are no…

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Fellow author tries out crowdfunding with Pubslush

Just checking in quickly this dreary Monday evening to let everyone know that a fellow self-pubbed author — Anthony Wade — is trying out crowdfunding for his book Grandfather. Click the image below to check it out!

 

He’s using Pubslush, which is a crowdfunding platform specifically for books. Read more about it here.

Anyone had any experience with Pubslush? Thoughts on Pubslush vs. IndieGoGo vs. Kickstarter? Thoughts on anything slush-related?

Stay excellent, my friends!

 

Unrelated media of the day:

Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/2DrKHkW

The Coin Collector by Michelle Proulx

Michelle Proulx:

I don’t often reblog reviews of my own works, but in this case it’s just too beautiful not to. Dave Higgins is truly a master of the writing craft. I also like that he makes my random whims as I wrote the short story into apparently deliberate acts of clever plotting and phrasing :D

Originally posted on Davetopia:

Combining a good ear for humour with sound logical arguments, Proulx creates a short story about taxation that is neither lumpy with tedium nor spattered by absurd ranting.

Mr Quimbly is the Tax and Revenue Agency’s newest investigator. Eager to do well on his first assignment, he girds his metaphysical loins and sallies forth to the warehouse of Mr Green to discover why he is stockpiling legal tender. But Mr Quimbly is not the first investigator to have this file; will he fall prey to Mr Green’s razor-sharp negotiation style?

While the earnest government official in a fantasy world is not a new trope, Proulx manages to make it her own, inviting comparison with Pratchett, Asprin, and other such authors without descending into pastiche.

This is in great measure due to the firm basis of logic upon which the plot is built. While there is fantasy in the world, the…

View original 232 more words

Reflections on My Successful IndieGoGo Campaign

That’s right — my IndieGoGo campaign is officially over! And I hit my funding goal! Woo!

All in all, it was a really fun experience. Probably my favorite part was coming up with the perks, and I think everyone’s going to be happy with what they get.

Here are the final stats:

Total raised = $631 (126% funded)
Contributions = 21
Most popular perk = $25 Sign ‘Er Up, Captain! (signed copy of Imminent Danger)

About 2/3 of the contributions came from family and friends, with the rest coming from all you wonderful people who read this blog!

I don’t think I got any contributions from people I don’t know (i.e., random people who stumbled across the campaign and decided to donate). So I think the takeaway from that is that IndieGoGo campaigns aren’t a great way of connecting with random new readers on the internet. Oh well.

The vast majority of contributions came during the first two days of the campaign, with a few others trickling in over the rest of the 30 days (and a final small surge on the last day as people realized the campaign was ending). So 30 days of campaigning might have been a little long, but overall I think the time frame was good.

In terms of my funding goal ($500), I’m really glad I set it so low. The thing with IndieGoGo is they do “flex funding”, so you get to keep everything you raise, but if you don’t meet your goal, they take 9% of what you raise (as opposed to 4% if you do meet your goal). Hence why I set the goal so low — to make sure I don’t get dinged with the 9% fee. And it worked!

I’m planning on running another campaign in the spring when I publish Chasing Nonconformity, and I’ll have to ruminate over whether or not to set a higher goal. On the one hand, a lower goal makes it easier to hit. On the other hand, once you hit the goal, people might not be as inspired to contribute anymore. I really don’t know. I tried the low goal, and we did go over by $131, so clearly people weren’t averse to the idea of contributing to a funded campaign (so long as they get cool perks out of the deal, presumably). Any thoughts on low goals vs. high goals?

Those are all my reflections for now. Thank you again to everyone who helped out with the campaign — you’re awesome!

 

Unrelated media of the day:

Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/o0HZYid

 

 

Last Day of the Imminent Danger IndieGoGo Campaign! Get Your Swag Before It’s Too Late!

The title says it all, but basically today is the last day of my IndieGoGo campaign for Imminent Danger And How to Fly Straight into It. That means it’s your last day to nab a signed copy of the book, plus assorted awesome swag like mousepads, coasters, bookmarks, art cards, and so on and so forth.

Don’t forget about the stretch goal — if we break $600, everyone who contributed (except for the $3 perk) will get a bonus art card of the gorgeous new Chasing Nonconformity cover! We’re at $593 right now — so close!

Anyway, this will be my last post about the campaign before it comes to an end — although I’m sure I’ll do a post or two reflecting on how the campaign went, lessons learned, wisdom gained, etc. Until then, as a special favor to me, please consider sharing the campaign on the social media outlet of your choosing. It’s the last day, and I want to go out with a bang!

Here’s the link again to the campaign. There are assorted buttons on the campaign page that make it really easy to share. Thank you so much to everyone who’s contributed already, to everyone who will be contributing today, and to everyone who has so kindly shared the campaign with their friends and family. You’re all amazing, this campaign has been so much fun to plan and run, and I can’t wait to do it again for when Chasing Nonconformity drops in the spring!

 

Unrelated media of the day:

People were very upset when I referenced my roommate’s adorable cats in my last post and didn’t provide a photo, so here it is! (They’re not cuddling on the chair, but they are cuddling in the air, and chair rhymes with air, so I think it counts.)

Book Marketing — Facebook “Boost Post”

Due to the fact that my IndieGoGo campaign for Imminent Danger is almost done (Dec 9th, baby!), I figured I’d go out on a limb and try to spread the word via the Facebook “boost post” feature. The post is over on my Facebook page if anyone wants to check it out and ooh and ahh over how shiny it is. Hypothetically you could also share the post via your own Facebook account, but that might be a bit extreme.

I set the post to “boost” itself $5 a day, for 2 days. It’s supposed to show up for Canadian women aged 13-30 who like books and e-books … which supposedly will reach between 2k-5k people. The actual people who read my book obviously aren’t all in that target demographic (not by a long shot!), but I’m hoping some impressionable teenagers — I mean, clever and discerning young readers — will see the post and be tempted to check out the campaign. In all likelihood this marketing scheme will fail miserably, but heck, what’s life without a little risk? I’ll let you know if anything actually comes of this marketing attempt.

In unrelated news, my roommate’s cats have taken to spooning on the chair beside my desk, and it’s ridiculously adorable.

That is all.

 

Unrelated media of the day:

Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/2X9lSvq

 

Curse of the Dark Wind – Cover Reveal!

Debuting December 12th on Amazon Kindle!

 

Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

After their battles in Gaia and surviving the Island of Pallice, the champions of Windemere are off on their next adventure.

In his quest to be a hero and help others, Luke Callindor has jumped into danger countless times and would do so again without hesitation. So when he is infected by the toxic Dark Wind, it is up to his friends to find a cure and keep his courage alive. With time running out and their enemies in the shadows, one ally will make the decision to share in Luke’s suffering and forge a bond that runs thicker than blood. Such a sacrifice might not be enough when the truth behind this living curse comes to light.

Will Luke find the strength to defeat the Dark Wind? What ghosts from his past will appear during his weakest hour?

About the Author:

Charles Yallowitz was born and raised on Long Island, NY, but he has spent most of his life wandering his own imagination in a blissful haze. Occasionally, he would return from this world for the necessities such as food, showers, and Saturday morning cartoons. One day he returned from his imagination and decided he would share his stories with the world. After his wife decided that she was tired of hearing the same stories repeatedly, she convinced him that it would make more sense to follow his dream of being a fantasy author. So, locked within the house under orders to shut up and get to work, Charles brings you Legends of Windemere. He looks forward to sharing all of his stories with you and his wife is happy he finally has someone else to play with.

Blog: Legends of Windemere

Twitter: @cyallowitz

Facebook: Charles Yallowitz
Read the Previous Volumes of Legends of Windemere!!!

COVER ART BY JASON PEDERSEN (CLICK COVER FOR AMAZON SITE)

COVER ART BY JASON PEDERSEN (CLICK COVER FOR AMAZON SITE)

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COVER ART BY JASON PEDERSEN (CLICK COVER FOR AMAZON SITE).

COVER ART BY JASON PEDERSEN (CLICK COVER FOR AMAZON SITE)

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Art by Jason Pedersen (CLICK COVER FOR AMAZON SITE)