R.J. Price's Blog, page 2

I Have a What Now?

I went through my WordPress pages to check to see what needed updated. I was surprised by how out of date they were, I was also surprised by a couple of other things.

The quick description for Highest Lord has been on the Books page since last spring/summer. In my FAQ page, I actually talk about my timeline for books and I’m still technically on time.

Oh, and I have a FAQ page. And a Link page. I… I am a terrible person, I forgot about the pages I created.

Of course, my memory is about as shoddy as Aren’s is, at times. I set things and then forget I do those things. Which is also part of how I can forget about my blog or Twitter for months on end before I pop back on as if I had never left. It’s kind of like I never did.

So I suppose I could claim that my problem is that I forget I’m supposed to do things. I could set alarms on my phone for that sort of thing, but I get cranky when my calendar reminds me that I’m being paid, let alone daily updates like, “Update Twitter,” and “Stop ignoring your work, stupid.”

Yes, I’m mean to myself in my private notes, going so far as to call myself names. It makes me feel better as I write the notes and then when I read them later on it gives me a giggle.

I have an odd sense of humour.

My Smashwords interview (oh, and my author pic) are over two years old. Good work, R.J.

I mean that, at least I filled them out originally.

To my horror, I’ve just noticed that there is a page count on my interview. 181 page clicks and only two of these have been me. It’s a bad interview. Definitely need to fix.

…

Thirteen hours later, I’ve got Smashwords author interview updated, posted on Twitter by clicking a button (in my defence, I wanted to know what the button did) thanks to the Smashwords interview. I mainly updated the answers, gave them some editing and then, of course, added on last question.

Then I went over to Goodreads to the do the same thing. I know Goodreads has “preloaded” questions for authors to answer but while trying to find it, I found the widgets instead.

The long and short of it is, I didn’t get the widget up. My brain is fuzzy and coding takes a lot out of me. I have to Google a bunch of stuff and focus. Basically, I’d have better luck editing right now. There appears to be no help for the widget and I can’t find the appropriate group to ask about the widget so, I got frustrated.

And put on a cat video for Izzy, the new cat.

What started it was that she was trying to chase my mouse across the screen. So on a whim—and frustrated with the Goodreads author widget—I went over to youtube and literally googled bird videos for cats. Well, that worked fine for a while.

Until she stood on the keyboard and there was a funny sound.

She shut down my laptop.

This is the beginning of the end, I’m sure.

Anyhow, in the end all I managed to update was Smashwords. I can’t find the Goodreads setting at the moment and the cold has drained me so much that I’m just going to head to bed.

I may, however, have someone to at least take my author photo

Doing Nothing Gets You Nothing

So, I did a ton of marketing for Trouble in February, mainly in the beginning and middle. I saw a wonderful spike in downloads, with long term effects of this marketing still being seen.

Books in the series are being slowly purchased, a few reviews have come in, I couldn’t be happier with the results.

Except they tapered off when I stopped marketing. It was half-test, half-running out of places to market. Trouble has slumped in downloads considerably. I’m not back to where it was before, but I’m pretty close.

The message really is: if you do nothing, you will get nothing.

On the Internet everyone assumes that if you haven’t updated, that means you’ve quit or just fallen off the face of the earth. You aren’t doing anything for whatever it was that you were talking about before. Readership drops, interest drops, and when you come back out of hiding you have to start all over again.

From the bottom.

So, time to update all the things. I have a list I’d like to go through over the next two weeks. It is as follows:

1 – New author pic : barring if this cold develops past more than a sniffle. I don’t photograph well while healthy, let alone sick.

2 – Update author bio: maybe write something that doesn’t sound like I’m beating my head on a proverbial wall. Then update all the sites.

3 – Create a new author interview for Goodreads and Smashwords.

4 – Update book page on WordPress. Hopefully to include an in-page link to jump to the new series. Need to figure out what it’s called first, so I can look up the coding for it.

5 – Create book pages on GoodReads for Highest Lord and Five Years Dead, if they’ll allow me to without the cover pages.

6 – Finish edits on Highest Lord, maybe cover that sucker and get its hard copy formatted.

7 – Continue trying to market Trouble.

It might seem like a lot, but in reality it’s not much. Maybe a little much for someone who works full time, yes. But I’m not going to get anywhere by sitting on my hands and sniffling about how I don’t have enough time to do what I want to do.

It is important to me, I will make the time.

Being self-motivated as an indie author is very important. Being able to talk about yourself and your books with confidence is an absolute boon. That’s not to say that you can’t sell books as an introvert, just that it’s easier to do when you talk about yourself.

All the authors I’ve met in person tend to be humble. I haven’t met any big name authors I should add… but they don’t talk about their books constantly, they aren’t loud and brash about it. They definitely don’t have that speel at their back of their minds constantly like I’ve seen so many writers in movies and shows.

They struggle when asked, “what’s your book about?” Unless they have something rather generic like vampires.

Myself, I stumble anytime I’m asked.

“What’s your book about?”

“Uh… it’s a series?”

“What kind of a series?”

“Fantasy… er… with… Uh…”

“You don’t know what your own book is about?”

“Shut up. You can’t just ask what it’s about, there’s an entire world and history behind it and you can’t just sum it up in a sentence and I know you aren’t interested in the speel.”

Of course, get a couple drinks into me and ask about it, I’ll ramble for hours on end.

In order to sell, you need to talk about it. Even if your book is free and you’re giving it away, you need to talk about it. Doing nothing will get you nothing.

And sure, sometimes doing all the things you can think of gets you nothing too, but at least you can tell people in the real world that you are self-motivated and a self-starter.

Well, That Explains a Few Things…

When I created my blog on WordPress, I discovered I had an older blog under my author’s email. So I made do with that. Today I realized that my name appears as something else and promptly started poking all the buttons. Got it figured out, changed the name which is awesome. Just, it doesn’t effect past comments…

So that was fun.

Last night I did some of the checks for the edits for Highest Lord, I got about three chapters in when Izzy (my new cat) climbed under my couch and started attacking me from underneath and behind. The couch is supposed to be an outdoors thing with cushions on it, so she can do that. It was an interesting way of getting my attention.

Once she had it, she climbed onto the couch and into my lap, where my laptop was. Then when I moved the laptop and tried to work around her, she started batting at my hands. I sighed, I gave up on editing and checked my sites, then went to bed because it was late.

This morning I woke up and checked all my sites. There’s been a lot of activity this past month so I’m trying to make certain I keep up on changes, rather than have them noticed days later.

Trouble has two more reviews on Amazon, which put me up to six reviews with over four stars so I submitted it to another free site that had a requirement of five or more reviews with four stars or better on Amazon. Hopefully, it gets picked up.

Normally the sites that have requirements are the ones that I see the most gain from when it comes to free marketing. Next week I might try David’s List again because that was a pretty good reaction for a free site.

Then I have to remember to update Twitter. I’m getting better with Facebook, but Twitter is something I have to get into. It is where people can share a little easier, look up hashtags, and where a lot of the free marketing is so the spread is further. I know Facebook has hashtags now, but I don’t know how effective they are.

Oh, and doing the edit checks for two books, looking for two covers and babysitting an idiot who doesn’t want to go home because he had a fight with his boyfriend.

Which was not that big of a fight, and this specific idiot doesn’t believe anything should be done when one has company besides entertaining the company. Even if you really, really need to get this done. And didn’t ask for the company in the first place.

And now a cat that believes she should enforce bedtime… and then start playing with toys because the “kiddies” are in bed. She’s a little bit of an odd cat compared to my previous cats.

My next day off the day job is in four days, hopefully I can still get some work done between now and then. I hate having nothing going on for days on end because I’m working and tired. Might be a cold, given the ache in my throat this morning when I woke up.

I just need to stay positive, though waking to new reviews was a good way to start the day.

Being Impulsive is Impractical… Most of the Time

I got a cat… from Kijiji, free the owner said. Comes with a microchip, fixed, and all her shots.

I kind of thought it was a joke. It was not. The owner even provided medical records for the cat, which is amazing. Though she is tubby as could be, tubbier than I thought a year and a half old cat could be. Won’t eat cat food eagerly, tries to crawl onto your plate, which explains the tub.

The moment the owner left I basically started squeeing. Until I walked into my apartment, looked around, and realized I hadn’t really cleaned since Buster passed away. I mean, I had done the dishes and laundry and made my bed. But it was the dusting and clutter I had neglected.

And there she was, rolling in the middle of the floor, right in the dust.

So I started cleaning but I didn’t finish. I didn’t arrive at the drop off by myself because it is an online thing and people tend to lie, so I did have company. Which meant that I entertained my company and by the time they left, I was utterly exhausted and got no writing or editing or anything done.

On and off I feel like it was too soon to get a cat, not that I regret it, but it’s just that I keep wanting her to do things that Buster did. She’ll never do those things because she’s not Buster. Maybe I’d feel this way no matter when I got another cat, I don’t know.

I just know I saw her picture and fell in love. Except the picture was from months ago and a cat her age can change drastically.

I find it a little hard to get over how tubby she is…

Last night Five Years Dead came back from the editor. I read her notes and started panicking, yay. She didn’t say anything bad, just pointed out what I knew, that it’s more character driven (at least this time around the characters are three-dimensional!) than plot driven and it’s not a fast-paced apocalypse story. Sorry readers, if you’re expecting Mad Maxy: Fury Road with this one, you’re going to be disappointed.

It was an impulsive start, I got upset when people from university kept trying to tell me that you can’t be a fantasy author because you can only write what you know—and you can’t know how to be a mage. I can’t quite remember, but I think something went wrong at work because I rage quit the whole world and started writing about it a few weeks later when the opening paragraph started playing over and over again in my head.

Those who did read it remarked on how different it was from my other books and how they were attached to the characters and wanted to learn more.

No one made comment on the women not being main characters, we never see the world from their perspective. No one (until my editor) said that they had to know right then why the world had ended. But that could just be different readers.

We as humans don’t know why a lot of things happen or how they happen. In Five Years Dead, the surviving humans don’t know why the world ended and can’t figure out why things didn’t come back on. But most of them are just common civilians. The kind that had nothing to do with power plants, the ones who—when the power goes out—checked their phones and the internet, or called a number and were told it’d come back on later.

And then they sat and waited until later, except by then the phone lines were dead and driving to the police station didn’t exactly help because even they didn’t have answers.

There are hints throughout, and I think Scout will figure it out before anyone else does. Gosh, I hope so. I made him smart enough to figure it out, on purpose.

Now I feel slightly better, but I still worry. Readers can be so mean.

… I’m freaking out about it launching. Great, I haven’t felt like this since the day after Trouble launched. Guess it’s new-series jitters.

Well, the only solution is to get on it!

I’m a Procrastinator!

I was supposed to go through the edits for Highest Lord yesterday and then again today at work, but for some reason haven’t been able to bring myself to. Maybe it’s because I got the book back as my cat was dying—

Oh, yes, that happened and now I’m all alone and the only ‘downtime’ I’ve had from writing (because you’d be surprised how much attention a loner cat needs) has been haunting the local shelter sites looking for a new fur baby

—because I can come up with no other reason that I’d be avoiding this book. I always have the edits gone through before I get a cover, it’s never been any other way.

So yesterday, I procrastinated and I was just so bad…

I formatted Sit Pretty and Dark Spirits for CreateSpace and added Trouble to an expanded distribution. Gee, I hope this all pays off because I need a new laptop. First my back button broke off and now I can’t seem to get the ctrl to work all the time.

The laptop is three years old, normally it’s on fire in the backyard at this point so losing a few buttons I (often) use isn’t as big of a deal as say, the screen dying and taking the hard drive with it.

Anyhow, yes, I spent all of yesterday formatting the two books. The first six hours doing Sit Pretty and the next three hours doing Dark Spirits. The thing with formatting (the inside) of an ebook for CreateSpace is that you can easily do it yourself. Having someone else format it for you can be expensive, but by all means go that route if it’s your cup of tea.

The inside of Sit Pretty actually went pretty good. Until I submitted it and the cover, and realized that the chapter starts weren’t starting partway down the page like I had made them in Trouble. The two books also have different fonts on their covers, which I use for the chapter headings. Trouble’s was kind of neat, but Sit Pretty’s was just Times New Roman, which is what the inside of the book is.

I like Blank Slate‘s titles, done up in some B-named font that’s all scrolly and floofy and definitely not going to be mistaken for part of the story.

Dark Spirits is done up in Times New Roman as well, so by the end of the chapters I was yawning.

My cover designer for the first three books gave the option of doing the CreateSpace cover but also allows authors to make their own, which is great. So I made my own for all three. Which was really just a dark background for Trouble and Dark Spirits.

Sit Pretty has a bit of a different cover, so I tried something a little different. I’d show you, but it’s a pdf and I don’t know how to turn it from a pdf into an image for the blog.

I’m savvy and know my way around a few things, but that is something that’s beyond me.

This morning I checked on Trouble on Amazon and discovered that the “new” books were up to 3 on hand and there was a “used” line. Because I did the expanded distribution.

Expanded distribution does spread your name further, but the royalties are almost nil. It’d be much better for a reader to pay the same price on CreateSpace, where the royalties are higher, but that won’t help unless you spread around your CreateSpace “storefront” so I’ll be adding that to the blog and a few other places. Let’s call it an experiment and see where it goes from there.

I did some research and it seems the “used” isn’t actually used, it’s third-party distributors who pay to carry a book as used, even though it isn’t. Trouble is currently going for 6c less than the new books on Amazon’s page.

… and there’s a fourth book listed under new.

Okay, I clicked the button. There are new books listed from the original price ($10.99) right on up to $14.36. Well, I’m glad they think the book is worth that much, but I won’t see more royalties from them selling it for higher.

The other thing with these “used” and new booksellers is that they don’t purchase the book from CreateSpace until the book is bought.

… so… it’s not used… and an author isn’t paid for the book until a buyer (such as you, dear reader) decides to purchase it. Which still brings me back to the original perfect royalty purchase for an indie author, selling from the CreateSpace website itself, in order to gain the most royalties.

But selling through there would also lack Amazon’s ranking system, which can help get a name out there more. So it’s really half of one, six of another.

Ah, well. Back to not doing edits for me. Maybe I’ll finish the third Blank Slate book in the mean time.

Marketing Part… Sixteen?

As an author, especially as an indie author, marketing is a huge part of the work. So far most of my marketing has been finding sites to drop Trouble onto and then hope. I don’t necessarily pay for much because I just can’t afford it.

It’s not like I drink coffee while out and about, so I can’t just skip coffee one day and then use that money for marketing.

I do network a little bit and that networking has brought in a lot more attention than I expected. Daniel Casey will bring out the review he did for Trouble every once in a while and post it on Twitter or Reddit. So I’ll check my reports one day and see a bounce and just sit back and go “when did I…” Except I didn’t, he did.

(By the way, I do recommend his book Adversaries Together to anyone who enjoys Fantasy. If I had money for marketing, I’d probably just spend it on his second book instead because I’m dying to read it but my book fund is as empty as my marketing fund)

I also have another name to add to that list, a friend of mine named Christina Quinn who has started off with a Vampire Erotica/Romance series. Now she hasn’t marketed for me, but upon hearing she was having difficulty marketing, I offered up my services.

This was, apparently, an absolutely fabulous idea. Christina’s first book, Danse Macabre is on Amazon for 99c at the moment, Trouble is free. So I’ve been trying (very hard) to find places to market for her and have been pretty well failing but at the same time, I’m finding site after site that takes free books. Anything I’ve submitted her to, I’ve made a list of for when the Blank Slate Trilogy comes out. The sites may be out of date by then, but that’s okay.

This all started on about February 7th, when I submitted to ten sites. I can’t track the results of eight of them, which drives me batty.

With the credit I had on Fiverr (because I caught a scammer trying to rip me off) I got a gig from bknight which is easy to track because Fiverr has both sides update. So he posted, he updated me and I saw a huge surge of downloads on Trouble. Two hundred and seven. The next day I saw a hundred and thirty. So would I suggest bknight to other people? Hell yes! Tell them I sent you, maybe they have a referral credit program.

The other site I could track was Ask David, which I admit looks a little odd. A talking head at the top of the page?

But Ask David posted Trouble for five days, which is the length of Kindle Select sales. Once a day for five days I received an email from Ask David with the Twitter link inside. A few downloads from this, not a ton like bknight but it’s free service and it was an awesome response. The tweets were re-tweeted between one and six times, which of course spreads it a little further.

Results will, of course, vary depending on book content. But if you want to track your marketing and see what actually happens, this is a great way to do it.

Most of my marketing for February 7th launched a week later on February 14th, yup. I’m an idiot. If Trouble was an Erotica or Romance, that would have been clever on my part, I suppose.

I found a site called MyBookBuzzing which is self-advertised as a type of Wikipedia for books. I added my book, Christina hopped over and added hers. There’s a “Publicize” button which is free, but I don’t know exactly what it does besides promotes your book on MyBookBuzzing, I can’t seem to track anything else. It is a relatively new site but is growing every day.

On February 16th, I submitted Trouble to seven more sites with untrackable results. Yes, I’ve been having a few downloads each day, but I don’t know who promoted what or where. It could have been a combination of sites.

Danse Macabre went on two sites, one of which was What to Read After Fifty Shades of Grey, a choice I made because at least one reviewer compared Danse Macabre to the book.

Today I submitted both to just a few more sites.

As it currently stands, in the past two weeks I’ve had approximately 387 downloads on Amazon and made 12 sales (which, for those considering Fiverr, would have paid off the bknight gig if I hadn’t had the credit). On the biggest day, Trouble hit #23, pics or it didn’t happen, right?

 

 

Which I’m so excited about. No new reviews, which does kind of make me boo, but I do have a couple new followers on my Facebook page.

The thing to remember with free books, though, is that just because it’s downloaded doesn’t mean it’s been read. A lot of people grab free books while they’re free and then read them when they feel like it. So the long term effects of hitting #23 are unknown (to me) at this point.

Now, if you’ll excuse me… I need to find a cover… urgh.

Author’s Update

I’m just going to say it: I suck at social media.

So what’s happened over the past four months?

I’ve written two books, edited both S.o.M. 4 and Five Years Dead then sent them both to the editor. Five Years Dead got sent back and I did some re-writes. I’m now in the middle of doing a check to see how the re-writes flow throughout the story. Good thing I decided to read because there was an issue.

Five Years Dead will be later than I had initially anticipated but ah well, I want it to go out properly.

The two books I wrote were of the (working title) Blank Slate trilogy, a dystopian erotic trilogy that I started writing for NaNoWriMo on a ‘dare’ from someone else and simply haven’t stopped writing. I apologize for nothing in the trilogy, fully taking advantage of tropes and then feeding the fangirls at the same time.

When Blank Slate was up on Smashwords it actually did quite well, especially compared to my other books. That’s encouraging, but then erotica tends to do better in sales than other things.

I’m currently in the process of writing the third book and finishing up with Five Years Dead, which will probably come out in June instead of the beginning of May like I originally planned.

I’ve been looking for covers for both Five Years Dead and S.o.M. 4 (which I’ve been calling Highest Lord but for some reason that’s been irritating me) while keeping an eye out for possible covers for the Blank Slate trilogy.

Trouble is now perma-free on all sites and Sit Pretty has dropped to 99c (American). I need to get on getting Sit Pretty in hard copy form.

Once Five Years Dead comes back from the editor, that’s my next stop. The S.o.M. series can come out as I can get to it because they weren’t brought out initially. But I want the Haven series out as the ebooks launch. Especially with it being set in Canada, I could probably sell hard copies at a local artist festival that happens once a month in my city.

This morning I spent the morning marketing Trouble across as many sites as I could find while sipping my coffee. Once I make a trip out (because the real world still needs seeing to) I’ll be coming back and looking for more sites. I’ve been setting most of the dates for February 14th, not realizing until after I finished my coffee and was texted by a friend, that the date is Valentines day.

Not sure if that will help or hinder my promotions, considering the slight romance tinge to Trouble.

A couple of the promotions I have no control over the dates of, but that’s what happens when you search for free. And considering how much I need to pay to edit the books I want to publish (that’s not a complaint about the cost, but really about my accelerated plans and the possible fact that my finance guy wants to throttle me), free is all I can afford at this moment.

I should ask for paid promotions for birthdays and Christmas… why didn’t I think of that earlier?

Being a single income, even with the lesser expenses and slight promotion at the day job, makes the publishing slower than I’d like it to be. I’d like to be in talks now with the editor for Blank Slate. Have the cover, have the promotions covered. The Haven series will be done properly with what I can afford because I’m sure it’ll come. The S.o.M. series really is a bumble about but still, I have great amounts of fun with it.

The Blank Slate trilogy will be completely written before I start editing. Everything will be done as one, then released depending on what my research tells me eroticas should go through.

I should probably stop delaying and actually get to work.

NaNoWriMo

It’s that time of year again! NaNoWriMo is only fifteen days… sixteen, sixteen days away!

Like every year, I will be participating. The past two years I’ve actually worked on two books from Haven Series, the two years before that I did safe choices on book selection. The years before that I tossed everything to the wind and just went crazy.

This year I want to try another sort of crazy, working on something that I normally wouldn’t do. I also like to explore other genres, even if I know I’ll fail miserably. But NaNo isn’t just about doing whatever, it’s about challenging yourself. I know I can write fifty thousand words on any of my preferred stories in a month. I know I can finish a novel in a month.

I’ve done it in eight days before.

Over on Smashwords, you can take your NaNoWriMo work and post it throughout the month of November. You can also, as a reader, go to Smashwords and read the works of authors.

For Smashwords, the only two “payment” options you have are free and ‘reader sets price’ which means that at no point does anyone have to pay for your book. It’s a fantastic way to find new readers. If you do the ‘reader sets price’ Smashwords encourages you to donate that money to NaNoWriMo.

The only trouble I have with that is that just because you can put up a story, doesn’t mean you have any money. Smashwords will pay you months later and by that time you could have forgotten what came from Smashwords. We are going into the holiday season, most of us will be very busy with family and possibly even with work.

If you’ve not participated in NaNoWriMo before, I’d strongly encourage it. It’s a ton of fun and you can make connections with authors in your area, or just browse the forums and talk about whatever you’d like. You can go to different genres as well as areas for conversations. There are idea threads, there are threads for helping with plot, for after NaNoWriMo.

It’s just… fun…

Fiverr (Part Two?)

With Dark Spirits coming out in a week, I decided to go to Fiverr and splurge on a few small advertisements. I used one buyer who I know does the work, then chose two others who seemed like they knew what they were doing.

Always verify the work you’ve purchased.

The one buyer, who I know does the work, brings in a few purchases each time, but it’s still more than I would have had before. And who knows, maybe it’s my book/cover/description that’s turned people off?

Bookkitty will send you a message (after you purchase and the order is scheduled) with links to all the Facebook pages she (he?) will post your book. They are actual pages and they update a couple times a day so your book doesn’t just disappear in a mishmash of other posts.

This is also one of the few advertisers (or anyone really) who uses freaking punctuation and actually sounds like they know what they’re doing and would be professional. The others give me hesitance but for many of them English is not their second language.

Up until a few days ago I was actually wondering why there weren’t more people who natively spoke English advertising English language books to English language readers.

Of the other two gigs I purchased one came back with photos. To which I said, “What the fuck?”

Photos can be faked. Very, very easily. I’m not stupid and I have a bit of a way around search terms thanks to work and just researching what I’m looking for.

… I couldn’t find any of the sites. Not the closed groups, not the public groups, not any of the names used. All the users on the pages were exactly the same in the snapshots. Only the banners changed.

After a frustrating hour of trying to find the pages, I requested links and came right out and said why I wanted the links. Snapshots can be faked.

Then the second one came in and it too had snapshots. I was then sitting on my couch and choking on my coffee because… come on!

Except in the second case the seller did actually do the work, they took a picture because the groups they posted on, while legitimate groups, were filled with mishmash and anyone could post about their books. So my book disappeared down the line.

It did net me about two units, and the seller did provide exactly what they said they would. Am I impressed with that work? No, I could have done it myself, but it was still provided as I requested.

So fast forward twenty-four hours, Bookkitty is about to deliver and I’m about to contact Fiverr about seller one. All of a sudden I’m getting a refund from seller one with an apology saying their facebook was hacked?

… is… is there a report button on Fiverr? An investigation button?

I don’t know for certain that this person doesn’t do as they’re asked. However…

Fiverr approaches you the moment the order is “filled” to review. Most people just hit five-star and go on their way. I wait until the order is actually filled and I’ve verified that what I was told I would get was what I actually got.

So I was still sitting on my review for the first buyer when my refund came through. If any trouble was caused I would have left a one-star review stating my experience and my issue while making no accusations. I would have then contacted Fiverr and checked out their customer service and fraudulent seller program. If they have one. I still have to find it because this other person could be defrauding hundreds of people, hundreds of authors.

And that’s the problem with indie publishing. There are so many people who will come and take your money and say they delivered you invisible services, but they did nothing. They’re just taking your money. You worked hard for that money and now they’ve just stolen it from you.

If you take anything from this, let it be this: verify the work you’ve purchased.

Free Promotions

Last night right in the evening, as I got home and sat at my computer to wander the internet, I discovered that Trouble had sold more books than it had in a few days. I went to shower and came back, that number had doubled.

To which I wondered if I needed to start drinking, to prepare myself for the glitch in the system or whatever.

There appears to have not been a glitch.

Three weeks ago I placed Trouble on various free promotion sites, places that would promote your book for free if you met certain requirements and were picked for that day. There’s a lot of people applying to these lists, so getting onto them is not guaranteed, not by far.

After making all those applications, my old apartment went into meltdown mode. Roaches came flooding up along with bedbugs. I lost my freaking mind and began moving things immediately into the new place. Then I somehow managed to get a throat infection, but still did the move (because the old place was that bad).

Last Wednesday I got into the new place fully and spent the last week getting new furniture, putting it all together, and heading out to the new position for the same company, in a new location.

I have been dead tired. The few bits of writing I’ve done, I don’t think will be any use. I’ve kept an eye on some reports and made an attempt to update social  media when I remembered it existed.

I hadn’t given a thought to the free promotions I applied to, though the emails are still in my inbox, confirming that my information had been placed in the queue with everyone else’s. In a perfect world, I would have been marketing all along. Life got in the way.

Though, once I get everything set up here, I will be much happier.

There’s light everywhere and a backyard, garden, or park in every direction. Old wood flooring, and a real kitchen. A real kitchen!

… sorry. I like my new place. It’s the first place that has been my home and no one else can touch it. Except the contractors, but they’re here to help fix the minor problems and maybe put up my wall mounted television. Maybe, you know, if I ask nicely?

Anyhow, finding free promotional sites is as easy as Googling and then clicking links. I’d be wary of anything that says “upload your book here” because that just seems weird to me… Sure, the book is free for a promotional time, but this is not perma-free and if you upload your book somewhere, someone will start spreading it.

Whether that’s bad is up to you to decide, but to me it sounds like an opening to cause problems down the way.

There are a lot of sites out there, though some do have strict policies. There is sex in Trouble and many sites have a problem with that. Killing twenty-seven people, psychological and verbal abuse? Thats okay.

But no sex.

Some also have requirements such as a four star rating on Amazon or Goodreads, with so many reviews creating that rating. A couple won’t take your ebook unless it’s on sale/perma free, or any number of other things. Read the requirements and follow them, don’t waste your time (or theirs) applying when you won’t be accepted in the first place.

One site claimed I could apply to them, then sent me to another site and then sent me an email saying that I couldn’t apply to them, I had to apply to this other site. Something didn’t seem right about that, so I walked away rather than give them any more information. If something seems fishy, I’d say walk away.

Applying to free promotional sites, when you don’t know if you’ll even get accepted, may seem like a waste of time, but you could be pleasantly surprised.

All told, Trouble ‘sold’ ten times the number of copies of previous days. Today the number is back to just above the regular numbers, but I still have twenty-two days to push it and get something moving.