What's Up Wednesday

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk.  Head over to Jaime's page for links to find out what's up with everyone else. Here's what's up with me.
What I'm Reading

I actually read this book last summer, but I've never recommended it on WUW, so I'm going to mention it today. Dormant's author, Leeann McLennan is both a friend of mine, and a fabulous writer. Dormant is about a superhuman girl (aka superhero) who chooses to ignore her powers and try to live as a normal after her mom dies while helping to save the world. When Olivia is taken hostage during a bank robbery, her supernormal instincts kick in and she is thrust back into the superhero world.

This is a very fun YA/SciFi story that I would recommend to anyone who loves a good superhero adventure.



What I'm Writing

Now that my second novel has been out in the world for almost a month, I'm trying to focus on writing book three. Trying being the key word. December is so not the time to start a new project. Real life is way to distracting. I started penciling out some of my ideas for book three last spring when I was waiting to hear back from beta readers on book two. I've now read through all of those notes and have about 10k words of a crappy first draft.

I want this book, Fragments of Life, to come out sometime in 2015. In order to make a November release for EoE, I had to get a good draft to beta readers in April. Um, yeah, I have a lot of work to do on this next story.

The story does start on New Years Eve. So maybe I'll aim to make 12-31-15 the release date. That way it will be out for the ebook upswing in January after people get ereaders for Xmas. Yeah, I still have a lot of work to do.

What Works for Me

KDP Select. For people self-publishing, or thinking about self-publishing, you should definitely know about KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) Select. Any indie author who wants their ebook on Amazon has to use KDP, but you also have the option of signing up for KDP Select.

In order to use KDP Select, you have to give Amazon exclusive ebook rights for 90 days. Every 90 days, you can either re-enroll or start selling your book in other platforms. There are two main benefits to KDP Select. The first is that you get 5 free days, or 5 discount days, per 90 day period. Today, is actually one of my free days. So if you haven't bought The Evolution of Emily yet, and you want to read it, but don't want to pay for it. I recommend getting it for free right now.

The other benefit may actually be more significant. KDP Select books are included in the free Amazon Prime lending library for the entire 90 days they are in KDP Select. A percentage of the Amazon Prime membership fees is given to authors whose books are borrowed, so my royalty rates for borrowed books are actually about the same as my royalty rates for sold copies.

In the three weeks EoE has been out, I've actually had more borrows than sales. In addition to getting paid for borrows, they also count towards Amazon sales rank. I only had my first book, Counting to D, enrolled in KDP Select for 90 days before opening it to other platforms. I'm now thinking I'm going to leave The Evolution of Emily on KDP Select until my third book comes out, whenever that happens.

What Else I've Been Up To

It's December and my life is therefor insane. If you've read my blog at all in the past four months, you probably know that I just adopted two kids. Both kids have December birthdays. My son is about to turn 6, and my daughter is turning 8. We've got two birthdays and Christmas all in the same week, every year for the rest of our lives. Yeah, December is now crazy.

We're having a joint birthday party for the kids next weekend. So far there are 35 people coming, but we're still waiting on several people to RSVP.

I said my life was crazy right now right? Yeah, book 3 is so not getting done anytime soon.

So what's up with you?