Renegade A to Z: K is for Kindle
In the true spirit of being a renegade, I'm tackling my renegade A to Z challenge when it suits me. No, I'm not fooling anyone, I'm failing to keep to a post a day at the moment as life is frantically busy, so I'm getting to the letters as and when I can. Whilst the lovely Joely is on R (that makes me blush with shame) I am only arriving at K, which seems like a good opportunity to talk about something that has been on my mind about Kindles, and then something that will help all you Kindle authors out there…
Sony vs Kindle cagematch?
A while ago I posted about my life with a Sony e-reader and later answered questions sent in about my experience with it. Since writing those, I've had the chance to play with a Kindle, and I have to admit, it does give a superior reading experience.
I don't regret buying a Sony Touch for an instant, as it has functionality I have come to depend upon as an audio book narrator, namely that of being about to add notes written with the stylus, appended to a highlighted section of text. That may not sound that sexy, but when you're editing audio and need to re-record a line, the ability to make a note of the timestamp and audio file, then call up the list of notes and read them easily in one go is just fantastic.
However, if I had bought it just for reading e-books, I would have regretted it. There is an issue with glare, which thankfully isn't a problem with the way my recording booth is set up, but it has held back my adoption of e-books for pleasure, I must admit. What's so impressive about the Kindle is that it is entirely without glare, and much lighter too. One day, when I actually have some disposable income (laughs bitterly) I might well get one. But right now I can't justify a non tax-deducatible extravagance.
And while we're talking about Kindles…
.. I want to have a ramble about kindle books, if I may? Selling them specifically. 20 Years Later is already out as an ebook, in Kindle format amongst others, and From Dark Places is out for the Kindle too. What I'm struggling with is a way to let people know about them without being hugely irritating.
This is something I've wrestled with before, as I have a fear of self-promotion as it is, and have seen too many other authors turn into ugly creatures who do nothing but tweet links to their books. But I'm aware that I'm cowering at the other extreme end of the spectrum, and struggling to tweet about them at all.
Sigh.
But there is hope!
One thing I did learn about this week (several years after all the other savvy authors it seems) is tagging. This lit up a bulb in the brain for me as I've been an SEO copywriter for years in my other incarnation as someone who writes to pay the bills (I promise I don't do anything evil), and it makes a lot of sense to me to associate keyword phrases with a book to help people find it. What I didn't realise is that Amazon makes it very easy to tag books, and therefore easier for people to find it. So, of course, I went and tagged my two books that are up there straight away.
How do I tag a book?
It's easy to miss the tags section of the page, but if you tap your 't' key twice quickly when you're on a book's page, a little box comes up into which you can type your tags all in one go – but they need to be comma separated. Tagging with the author name also helps when people are looking for books by an author they have just recently discovered and want to find other books by them.
Can I have some examples please?
Why, of course, and I'll be cheeky and tell you what I tagged my books with!
20 Years Later is tagged as: ej newman, emma newman, post-apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic fiction, post-apocalyptic ya book, science fiction, speculative fiction, ya dystopian, ya science fiction
From Dark Places is tagged as: short story anthology, short stories, dark fantasy, speculative fiction, urban fantasy, ej newman, emma newman, short story collection
The more people that tag them, the higher in the searches on those particular tags the books should rise (according to some websites I read yesterday anyway). So, if you could go to my book pages and tag them too, that would be fantastic. More than fantastic, it would help reinforce my faith in humanity. And if you do that for all your favourite authors and books (you might need a cup of tea to hand) that would help them too.
Here are the links:
From Dark Places in paperback UK US
From Dark Places Kindle edition UK US
20 Years Later hardback (released on July 5th) UK US
20 Years Later Kindle edition UK US
And if you want to buy one whilst you're there I won't mind at all 
Can I help your books too?
If you have a book on Amazon, let me help you do the same by leaving…
its name
its amazon link(s) *warning* Apparently my spam filter won't like that, so maybe only put in the bit after the .co.uk / .com bit and we'll see if that works.
(and a little blurb too if you like so we can all see if we'd like to read it too)
tags you'd like added to it
…in the comments below, then I will go and add those tags to your books. And if we all do this for each other, wonderful things might happen, like baby unicorns being born, or sunshine returning to the UK. Maybe I'm being a bit silly there, but hell, we're all trying our best to make a living from writing things that people enjoy, and if I can play a part in helping that come true for you too, it would be my pleasure.
