Josie’s Comments (group member since Oct 31, 2017)

Josie’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

Each to his own, Ted!

I think they’re often a bit pretentious, to be honest. They can be used to great effect where a story is specifically inspired by a quote, or where the author fabricated quotes from characters in the world in order to impart backstory and colour in an interesting and economical way, but otherwise I would avoid them.

It’s a great name for a writer, Angel, since it’s derived from the Ancient Greek word for ‘messenger’. You’re obviously intended to be a communicator of words!

That’s amazing work, Amy! You absolutely deserve a break.

That was the same realisation I came to. I can’t write in the regular way that serialisation requires. I tend to write in bursts of huge word counts, then take a week off. It works fine for publication deadlines, but not for publishing weekly!

If you like doing serialisation but don’t want to do Radish anymore, you could consider Channillo. I’ve written a tiny amount on there so earned nothing, but it’s a subscription service so a different model.

I don’t think I’d go so far as to say I recommend it, but you could check it out.

The problem is you need a lot of it to feel warm and fuzzy. Those bottles don't last long.

I'm with Amy on the Amaretto. Add a few maraschino cherries and it's basically a meal. I mean, fruit's good for you, and Amaretto's made from nuts, right?

For those looking for alternatives to Goodreads, LibraryThing (basically a Goodreads competitor) do a similar free giveaway system to what Goodreads is discontinuing. They offer e-book giveaways as well as paperback. I've just finished a giveaway with them and have no results to share yet, but that may change.

Twitter has sold me zero books. I just use it to meet and chatter with bookbloggers and other authors. Spamming promo stuff gets you nowhere, and should be a tiny percentage of what you post.

Most advice I’ve seen for authors says: if you don’t want to use Twitter, then don’t.

I never do. I think it just makes authors look petty. It’s not an author’s place to try to influence reviewers. Some people will like your book, some people will hate it, and I don’t think we should interfere.

If the review is from a reviewer I’ve asked to review my book, I send them a short email saying thank you for their time, regardless of their rating. I don’t engage with the content of the review, and certainly not publicly.

In any case, every review you receive makes your book more discoverable. Readers also like to see a variety of opinions when checking a book out; books that only have high reviews make me question whether the author has paid for positive reviews (a practice I consider dishonest).

Will do, thank you!

Thank you for the votes! I’m on hols at the mo but will be logging on to cast my votes tomorrow. :)

How about ‘Burn Out’? I’m not sure what your subplots are, so it may or may not be appropriate.

I wouldn’t go with Cascade, because there’s another indie with that name doing the reviewer rounds at the moment.

When I first submitted to Smashwords, I’d already been publishing through Amazon and had followed the Amazon formatting guides (which are free on the Kindle store) in preparing the document to upload.

I found that actually there was very little work to do to convert to the Smashwords format; the only difference was in the TOC. Everything else that Smashwords requires is best practice for Amazon anyway.

These days, I make sure I just format the documents correctly as I type them, and submit the same document to Smashwords and Amazon, since the Smashwords TOC format works just as well for Amazon.

I haven't tried those with jacket potatoes. Hmmm, shopping list time...

Personally, I'm a cheese and tuna mayonnaise girl, but the tuna mayo has to be made with Heinz salad cream rather than actual mayonnaise or it just isn't right.

Sausages and beans are more of a mashed potato meal for me, another perfect potatoey remedy for cold weather.

Jacket potatoes!! I have one in the oven right now. They almost make the cold weather bearable.

Thank you Kay! Looking forward to it, though it's reminded me that I haven't started the Christmas shopping yet...!

Thank you Ben!