Jo Robinson's Blog, page 64
November 21, 2014
Sally’s Christmas Grotto…Buy for Christmas gift emporium.
Here’s Sally’s Christmas Grotto. :)
Originally posted on Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life:
I thought that periodically I would list all the Buy for Christmas gifts in one place so that you can browse the categories if you missed the first time around��� Everyone is Indie in one style or another and the books and designs are not going to be found on the high street.
Words and images have been hand-crafted to bring pleasure and uniqueness into our lives.�� Many more to follow up to Christmas and I will repeat this each Friday.
Music
Books
Art��and��Design
Book��Covers
Sam loved everything Christmas���.
Images Pinterest and ��Sallycronin
#Readers #SciFi #Adventure #Romance #BookRelease #Promo – The Fifth Watcher by #Indie #Author Melissa Barker-Simpson
Originally posted on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog..... An Author Promotions Enterprise!:
The Fifth Watcher
Science Fiction (Adventure/Romance)
At the moment of Audrey Montgomery���s birth a new world came into existence. It is a barren place, a catalyst for the darkness spreading through the multidimensional system. The shift in power makes Audrey an invaluable pawn in a war between those who want to protect her and those who will go to extraordinary lengths to eliminate her.
As a result, she has spent her life on the run, unaware of her true origins. When her father dies and leaves her with a shocking legacy, her life is irrevocably changed. If she has any hope of surviving, Audrey must embrace her new reality and trust a man who is as dark and uncertain as the future itself.
Lieutenant Keith Delany, an Interdimensional Officer of the Law (IDOL), is tasked with bringing her in. It is an assignment his entire team��is invested in, having spent���
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Read Tuesday will Launch with Thunder
Originally posted on ReadTuesday:
SPREADING THE NEWS
Read Tuesday is a Black Friday type of event just for book lovers on December 9, 2014.
Authors can participate for free. Signing up and participating is easy.
Readers and gift-givers just need to browse the Read Tuesday catalog in early December. Find the books you like here, but buy them at Amazon or Smashwords like normal. Except for saving big, of course.
To help spread the news, we have a ThunderClap promotion scheduled for the morning of December 9.
Our ThunderClap currently has a social reach of over 300,000 through 100 supporters (thank you, everyone), with 18 days left to improve these numbers. We have our sights set on a million, and we���re nearly one-third the way there.
What the ThunderClap does is announce the big Read Tuesday sale by synchronizing posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. It���s easy to add your support (see below).
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#Authors #Bloggers #Readers – Be aware of Intellectual Property Theft Laws!
Originally posted on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog..... An Author Promotions Enterprise!:
Intellectual Property Theft ��� a growing problem that hurts everyone in this writing business
By Susan M. Toy
Recently, I���ve become aware of the increasing amount of Intellectual Property (IP) theft that���s taking place online. It���s been happening for a long time: artists���visual, photographers, musicians and writers���seem only able to stand by and watch as what they have created is either copied and pasted elsewhere on the net without permission or no attribution at all is given for their work. Yes, there are copyright laws in place to protect us and the illegal use of our IP. But internet users seem unaware of these laws, or blatantly flout them, or truly believe that, whatever is on the Internet is free for their own personal use and by anyone who wants to copy and paste it into their status update or to their blog.
I���m going to speak specifically to the���
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Tangled Roots by Rebekkah Ford
Originally posted on Feed My Reads South Africa:
Introducing Rebekkah Ford. Learn more about this fascinating author, and have a look at her very latest release.
After eighteen-year-old Carrie Jacobson discovers she was a witch in a previous life, she seeks to reawaken that part of her soul. With the help of an eccentric enchantress and a boy who is more than he seems, Carrie succeeds and is spellbound by the memories of her life in Europe during the 1600s as a powerful witch named Isadora. Carrie reverts to her bewitching, more volatile form and sets out to break a curse she cast long ago on her coven.
Carrie���s boyfriend Tree cannot help feeling uneasy about the changes he sees in the woman he loves. When Carrie���s past clashes with the present and dark magic intoxicates her once again, Tree must take drastic matters into his own hands and attempt to save Carrie from herself.
With Tree���s���
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November 20, 2014
Pirates Ahoy!
Amazon���s been refusing to raise the price of African Me & Satellite TV above $2.99 on the grounds that it���s being sold for that price elsewhere, but I couldn���t figure out where because it���s $3.99 on all the other platforms that I know of. I googled it and came up with a couple of foreign language sites I���ve never heard of before, but I���m guessing that they are Smashwords affiliates. One is definitely a pirate site though, offering PDF copies for download.
When I headed over to the site my Bitdefender blocked it, so I���m guessing that whoever downloaded it probably don���t have proper security on their computers, and got more than a book when they did. Jolly dee. I checked out the download site on WhoIs but I don���t see any way to contact them, so I���ve decided to ignore it for now. I���ve always said that if anyone is on a tight book budget and would like to read any of my books, all they have to do is ask anyway. I���m a bit amazed that the site offering the download links is hosted by WordPress, so I���ll contact them and see what they have to say.
I���ve never sent anyone a PDF copy of any of my books, but I suppose with all the different formats available to buy on Smashwords, pirating is made easier. Pirating is here to stay in the digital world, and I don���t think there is much you can do about it. My thinking is that whoever braves the malware on these sites to get these ���free��� books would never buy them to begin with, so I���m not losing royalties. I really do understand that some people just can���t afford to spend their money on books, and maybe this is the only way they get to read what they fancy. African Me has never been on free promotion, so it does bother me a little that someone else is doing one without my permission. Most of them probably just like getting free stuff just because they can. Buggers.
Image Credit: PublicDomain.net
Publishing Single Short Stories
Originally posted on Lit World Interviews:
There are lots and lots of people who buy and read mainly stand alone short stories. Probably because of the speed of life these days. This came as a big surprise to me when I published my first one. There are short story connoisseurs who follow authors who only publish short, and are considered masters of the art. I thought it was a cop out to be honest ��� a way of publishing something a lot easier than a novel length book, because I thought that anyone can bang out a short story. There���s an art to creating a good short though, so that���s not entirely true. I���ve always enjoyed reading them and have piles of anthologies and singles on my Kindle, written by authors from debuts to Stephen King. A short story must still be a complete tale, with good flow, plot, structure and ending. In some ways getting���
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November 19, 2014
Request for Tour Hosts and Google Whine
Firstly, I���d like to find out if any of you guys would be willing to host me for a launch tour for my next book release towards the end of December this year. I would email everything to you, and all you���d have to do would be to copy and paste. Anyone who hosts me would get Mobi copies of all my books, including the new release, just in case you don���t already have enough books, with absolutely no expectation that you read any of them. I���ll add a Contact Me page below for if you���d like to so I can get your email address.
Secondly, the very book I���m talking about is sometimes quite painful to work on, and I occasionally get myself well wound up and in need of an internet fix to get out of the zone. So earlier on I did just that and had a little zoom through my Google home page. Massive eyeball burn for me. Blech. I don���t know why some people feel such terrible urges to display their parts for unsuspecting scribblers to stumble upon. Rotten pervs. At least it got me out of the zone. I checked the purveyor of gnarly appendages profile, and realised that if I���d had a proper look to begin with I would never have added him to my circles. More blech.
Up to now I pretty much always follow back everyone who follows me. Twitter is easy to see if a site posts actual pornographic pictures, and obviously I���m not going to follow those, although I do quite happily follow and retweet erotica writers. Even though I don���t read or write it, I find them a really supportive and happy bunch of scribblers. It seems counterproductive to me to only follow other writers though, when it���s the people who don���t write who will hopefully turn into future readers, so I���ve always been a follow back bunny and try to interact with a broad spectrum of people.
On Google though, it���s a schlep to open everyone���s profile, especially if you have multiple new followers at a time, and you���re busy busy busy, so generally I just add them all with the Add All button. I won���t be doing that anymore though. I also had a clear out of unfollowers while I was at it today. I follow a lot of sites on all platforms that don���t follow me back, and I don���t expect them to. I���m following because what they have to share interests me. But ninety percent of those I follow is generally out of courtesy because they followed me first. Those arb people who follow thousands on Twitter and then unfollow the lot in one go are all over the place. Google will have the green Friends icon beneath someone���s avatar if you have them in your circles, regardless of whether they have you in theirs, and I���ll always support a friend if I see they���re trying to promote something or get a message across. But I don���t see the point of helping out some tool who is just using me as a number on his massive followers list. In case anyone���s having similar problems there���s a cool app that can help. Circloscope is the G+ equivalent of JustUnfollow on Twitter so the purge was pretty painless today, but definitely no more following back just because I���m nice anymore.
So after that tiny, totally un-blog tour related rant, I’ll add the form and hold thumbs that someone signs up.
[contact-form]
November 18, 2014
Originally posted on 
November 17, 2014
Book Cover Artist Q&A with Chris Graham the @StoryReadingApe
Ronovan managed to to get much more out of our secretive friend than ever before, and it’s great to hear Chris talking about himself and the wonderful talents he’s way too humble about.
Originally posted on Lit World Interviews:
RW: You are the Indie Authors best friend. That’s something many people know you as, but there is another aspect of your contribution to the Author world that some are not quite as familiar with. Tell us about how and why you came to create book covers? What was your first one?
CHRIS: My first cover was for the late Steve K. Smy, ‘Shade of Evil’, the first of a new series that Steve intended to publish, this was quickly followed by two more for ‘Evil Under the Circle’ and ‘A Darkness in Amazonia’, unfortunately, Steve died shortly after publishing this last one, however, based on notes left behind by Steve, his son Damien has published one more book of a new Fantasy series (asking me to do the cover and a map) and already has the cover plus maps from me for a second book:
RW:…
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