Thinking Linking
Look at that. It hasn't even been 7 days and I'm putting another post out there!
I'm just as surprised as you are, Little C.! I didn't intend to get all wordy. And for those of you sitting at home, reading this blog in hopes of an update on The Five Tribes... I know what you're thinking. "OMG, she's doing blog entries now, instead of writing, isn't she??? She read some malarkey online about being a better marketer and now she's going to be writing blog entries, instead of writing books. DANG NAB IT!"
No, no, dear reader. I assure you, I'm just as bad at marketing as I ever was. I have no interest in being better at it. (You'll know that I've buckled when I join Twitter.) I promise to bury myself mostly in my word docs and forget about the world around me. And soon.
Honestly, I was killing time last night, waiting for my son to fall asleep and I was reading the extraordinary Passive Voice. Guys, there is so much interesting stuff abounding on the internet! I mean, there is just pages and pages today and I had to comment. Because I can't help myself. You must read about this stuff... so interesting.
The first is an article at The Washington Post Style Blog about a mid-list author that got unceremoniously dumped by her publisher. This, as she reflects herself, is one of those things that's happening more and more as publishers trim the fat. Personally, I would have encouraged her to go indie, given the cache of her name, but she did just fine for herself, in the end.
Then there is this post by Smart Bitches, Trashy Books about social media genius. As I stated above, I'm not the best marketer in the world. I'm just like this nerdy reader chick who also loves to write. *sigh* Maybe someday that will change, but I doubt it. lol
One of my favorite book blogs, Cuddlebuggery has this amazing post on not paying attention to stats if you're a blogger. But people, this applies to more than just book bloggers. As writers (I see it on kindleboards every day) we sometimes obsess about sales, too. There are people out there checking their sales or reviews 10 times a day! We get down on ourselves when we don't sell as much as people who have been indies for a shorter amount of time. We get down on ourselves when we've been selling great and our sales stop. We get down on ourselves when we're not meeting some invisible standard of success that someone else has told us is the goal. And we need to STOP! So, take five today and read this post, then just substitute author, sales, and reviews where needed.
And finally, in a bit of news that has turned the indie world upside down, Jamie McGuire has posted an entry about how Amazon customer service has sent out a mass email telling purchasers of Beautiful Disaster to ask for a refund. The problem is (1) amazon no longer sells that version of her book, so the refund dollars come right out of her other indie sales (2) she has no idea why they would do that. According to some sources, Amazon has now sent out another email, saying the whole thing was a mistake, but the controversy isn't dying down. This is big news, people, and scary to a lot of indies. There are seriously those of us who would be freaking bankrupt if Amazon sent out a letter like this. I'm not making the thousands a month that Jamie, is, I'll be frank. I would never hold it against ANYONE who wanted to return my book, but someone who bought it over a year ago??? Like I kept that money lying around. Anyway, if you want to read the Kindleboard post on it, here it is: http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php...
Happy Reading!
I'm just as surprised as you are, Little C.! I didn't intend to get all wordy. And for those of you sitting at home, reading this blog in hopes of an update on The Five Tribes... I know what you're thinking. "OMG, she's doing blog entries now, instead of writing, isn't she??? She read some malarkey online about being a better marketer and now she's going to be writing blog entries, instead of writing books. DANG NAB IT!"
No, no, dear reader. I assure you, I'm just as bad at marketing as I ever was. I have no interest in being better at it. (You'll know that I've buckled when I join Twitter.) I promise to bury myself mostly in my word docs and forget about the world around me. And soon.
Honestly, I was killing time last night, waiting for my son to fall asleep and I was reading the extraordinary Passive Voice. Guys, there is so much interesting stuff abounding on the internet! I mean, there is just pages and pages today and I had to comment. Because I can't help myself. You must read about this stuff... so interesting.
The first is an article at The Washington Post Style Blog about a mid-list author that got unceremoniously dumped by her publisher. This, as she reflects herself, is one of those things that's happening more and more as publishers trim the fat. Personally, I would have encouraged her to go indie, given the cache of her name, but she did just fine for herself, in the end.
Then there is this post by Smart Bitches, Trashy Books about social media genius. As I stated above, I'm not the best marketer in the world. I'm just like this nerdy reader chick who also loves to write. *sigh* Maybe someday that will change, but I doubt it. lol
One of my favorite book blogs, Cuddlebuggery has this amazing post on not paying attention to stats if you're a blogger. But people, this applies to more than just book bloggers. As writers (I see it on kindleboards every day) we sometimes obsess about sales, too. There are people out there checking their sales or reviews 10 times a day! We get down on ourselves when we don't sell as much as people who have been indies for a shorter amount of time. We get down on ourselves when we've been selling great and our sales stop. We get down on ourselves when we're not meeting some invisible standard of success that someone else has told us is the goal. And we need to STOP! So, take five today and read this post, then just substitute author, sales, and reviews where needed.
And finally, in a bit of news that has turned the indie world upside down, Jamie McGuire has posted an entry about how Amazon customer service has sent out a mass email telling purchasers of Beautiful Disaster to ask for a refund. The problem is (1) amazon no longer sells that version of her book, so the refund dollars come right out of her other indie sales (2) she has no idea why they would do that. According to some sources, Amazon has now sent out another email, saying the whole thing was a mistake, but the controversy isn't dying down. This is big news, people, and scary to a lot of indies. There are seriously those of us who would be freaking bankrupt if Amazon sent out a letter like this. I'm not making the thousands a month that Jamie, is, I'll be frank. I would never hold it against ANYONE who wanted to return my book, but someone who bought it over a year ago??? Like I kept that money lying around. Anyway, if you want to read the Kindleboard post on it, here it is: http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php...
Happy Reading!
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