MwM Author Spotlight: Jenna Ives
Marketing with Mandy Author Spotlight: Jenna Ives
Q: Tell us a little about your experience with Samhain Publishing as well as self publishing.
A: Samhain is an awesome publisher. They have great distribution and are very supportive of their authors. I'm very happy with them, but I decided to self-publish my novella Snow White And Her Seven Lovers to "test the waters" of self-publishing, since some authors are doing really well in this new frontier of publishing! My Snow White story came out on December 26.
Q: What tips/tricks do you use for marketing or promoting your own titles?
A: I try to think outside the box for promo tie-in opportunities. I always make a really big push at Christmas and Valentine's Day, since romances are a natural at those times of the year. I did a "Heat Up Your Holidays" book signing at a local lingerie store, and it was so successful they invited me back for Valentine's Day!
Q: What is one thing you'd want to tell a newer author, just coming into the game?
A: My marketing advice for any new author is that even if you're published with a traditional publisher, there's always some additional publicity you can get for yourself: pitch yourself as a "success story" to your local newspaper, college alumni magazine, or, if you happen to write about a particular thing (cats, knitting, martial arts, etc) pitch yourself to a magazine that focuses on those topics. No one will work harder for you than you yourself!
Q: Could you tell us a bit about your latest release?
A: My new novella is called Snow White And Her Seven Lovers, and it's an erotic twist on the classic fairy tale. Here's the blurb for the story, which is written in first-person from my heroine's point of view:
What's a girl to do when she wakes up poisoned in the ER and finds that she's lost her memory, her family, and very nearly her life?
That was me. Three months ago. With no identity, no money, and nowhere to go on the day I was discharged from the hospital, I gratefully accepted my gorgeous ER doctor's offer to move in with him and his equally gorgeous six friends – the ones who'd found me unconscious in an apple orchard. My plan was to stay until my memory returned, and I could figure out who I was and if someone really had tried to kill me.
Together with Doc, these were an amazingly diverse bunch of guys, but there was something about each of them that attracted me powerfully enough to want to explore it. The policeman with his clever handcuffs. The cunningly linguistic librarian. The disciplinarian teacher. The virgin computer whiz who loved to play sex games. The engineer who created shotgun orgasms. The wildly imaginative baker.
Becoming intimate with these seven men completed me in ways I suspected discovering my name never would. That is, until the fateful day a man showed up claiming to be my fiancé…
Conflict with lots of steamy love scenes! But by far, my most favorite part of this story was figuring out real-life jobs for these seven men. Doc (of course) is the ER doctor who saves my heroine's life after she's poisoned, but can you guess which of the above are Sleepy? Dopey? Grumpy? Sneezy? Bashful? Happy?
Q: Can you tell us a little about your current WIP's?
A: My Samhain release is called The Initiation Of Isabella, and believe me, you'll be hot to join this sorority after reading this story! I'm currently working on another college co-ed and her sorority initiation…
Q: How did you get into writing?
A: Well, as the oldest child, I was always making up stories to keep my two brothers and sister entertained. When I became an adult, the stories just kept coming!
Q: How do you balance family and writing?
A: Sometimes with the craziness of family life (plus a day job!) it's very hard to find time to write, but you just have to sit your butt in the computer chair and do it. Writing is fun, but you also have to think of it as a job, or else you won't treat it seriously.
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