C.L.’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2017)

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

D.J. wrote: "Yes KDP paperback CL. (Btw I was Amy, I'm now DJ!)"
Good to know! I lost my Dad and my dog recently and I've been AWOL for months.

Hey guys!

There's a secret way to do Amazon ads for other marketplaces. The best part is that because the advertising for places like UK are so new, they give you $100 of free ad spending money AND there is less competition so way better cost per click.

My UK ads are getting clicks at only GBP 0.04-0.06 and once I factor in KDP Select page reads those ads make like a 200% ROI.

So here's how to do it.

Go to http://advantage.amazon.co.uk/gp/vend...

Sign up for a UK Amazon Advantage account.

Then go to ams.amazon.co.uk and sign in using your Advantage log in.

Voila! UK advertising.

And yet if you call Amazon and ask how to do ads in the UK they'll tell you it can't be done.

But here we are.

So this is KDP paperback, right? I've been holding off joining it because they didn't do author copies.

Alexis, this was 100% me all the way until I discovered NaNoWriMo. Have you ever tried it?

NaNoWriMo taught me these things:

1. The first draft is supposed to suck. If your inner voice tells you this is garbage, tell it GOOD and keep writing.

2. You don't have to write it in chronological order. Get bogged down in the plot? Fine. Skip ahead to where you want the story to end up and write that big. Get stuck again? Skip ahead again. Connect the dots later.

3. It is much, much easier to fix a buggy manuscript that actually EXISTS than to try to manifest perfection in one go. Get something - anything - on paper. Then go back and fix it.

And if the problem is simply that you don't know where you want the story to go, try some plotting software like Beemgee.

Anna Faversham wrote: "I know the feeling C.L. I take years to write a book. I took 7 years to write ODN, 4 to write HiT, but since then I've got it down to two years and, if I can get moving, the next one will be about ..."
Thanks! Goal is to finish the third book by spring!

Sorry Alex to hear.

It's my Dad's last Christmas at home. My mother has been doing her best to care for him but it's an increasingly big burden on her and theres no point in her ruining the rest of her life in caring for him. He wouldn't have wanted that.

But he'll be scared and disoriented in a home so it sucks.

C.C. wrote: "C.L. - I understand the stress of making a sequel, but don't let it take away the thrill of knowing you've got that second book done. I've been impressed by how you've put together your releases an..."

Thanks - I did two things. First, whenever someone emailed me to tell me they loved the book, I saved their email address and marked them as a fan. Second, at the back of my book I give a link to an email sign up where they get free bonus stories about my characters.

Carole wrote: "Just bought it. I can't wait to read it."

Thanks guys! Amy - I see you've been publishing plenty on Radish so that's awesome. You're such a great writer - you'll find your fan base.

Marie - hopefully you're right. I have Chemistry as free to download right now and an ENT promotion got me 900 downloads so hopefully some of those read the book and buy the second!

I am not a fast writer. I love to write but I love to prune even more and I spend waaaaay too much time trying to turn my imperfect thing into something better.

So I finally published my sequel. I have an advance team of 30 fairly-dedicated superfans plus another 30 advance readers. The book went live today and only 12 have left reviews so far so I'm itching!

The book is doing okay sales-wise really but I'm really stressed and nervous for some reason.

Like I said, I don't publish fast/frequently so if fans of my first book don't enjoy my sequel/don't think it's worth paying for, then I'm in trouble.

On the other hand, if I get good sell-through and if people finish the sequel wanting more, then I'll be okay.

So I'm a little stressed and nervous today. How are you?

You have NEVER asked for a review or suggested a swap.

Carole wrote: "I'm happy for you CL- I'll try and buy from one of those other places tomorrow. ;)"

Thanks or if you're a kindle user you can wait til I put it on Amazon. I just won't be doing that until I'm ready to publish. And Congrats Erica!

Amy wrote: "Carole wrote: "It's not for presale on Amazon?"

I wondered that. CL-are you doing Amazon?"

I decided not to do pre-order on Amazon because apparently the algorithm works differently - pre-orders on other sites add up to your first day total but on Amazon they count as they go, so instead it counts as a sale here and a sale there instead of twenty sales in a day...

But my reviews are coming in on Goodreads and it feels good.

I only entered book awards that gave feedback regardless of how well your book did, so I could at least get some good blurbs from them (and I did) and I was delighted to win the IndieReader award in the humor category. It encouraged me a lot so I'll be entering more this year.

Congrats on the review, Carole!

My sequel is finally on pre-order on Kobo, Nook, and Apple stores, and I've sent out the ARC. I even have a goodreads page for it. Feels good to be almost done.

Even if you don't go wide, it's worth signing up with them so you can treat them like calibre and get your books converted!

I think the headline is misleading. Amazon isn't punishing authors for running legitimate promotions. Its automatic bots just temporarily rank strip any book that shows a sudden and suspicious jump in sales until their humans can look it over and make sure it's legit.

The title should be "Amazon's Protection Against Scams Occasionally Catches Innocent People Until They Can Verify Origin of Sales"

You're welcome! To heck with smashwords, d2d is the bomb.

Stopping by to tell you all that Draft2Digital is possibly the best thing in the universe.

When I published my first book, I spent forever trying to get it formatted nicely. I used Scrivener. I used Calibre. I used Microsoft Word. And I got an ebook that was... fine... and a paperback that looked professional.

But now I have Draft2Digital.

And it is amazing.

Reasons to love D2D:

1. Free to use. No sign up fees.

2. Publishes your book to Apple, B&L, Kobo, even Amazon (although I use KDP for Amazon because I know they prefer their own books)

3. Sends you royalties regularly even if it's only a few bucks.

4. Easy to use website with big obvious buttons to get things done.

5. THEY FORMAT FOR YOU AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL.

Number five is the reason I want to effing marry this website. Sorry hubby, move over, I'm in bed with D2D.

You can upload your own epub and they'll say "sure" and publish it. BUT if you upload a word file, they'll format it FOR YOU and it is so much prettier. They put drop caps on your chapter opening sentences. They put graphics to decorate your chapter pages and to place between scenes. And it looks SO NICE. There are several options for each genre so just pick the one that feels right for your book! And they'll add links for people to check out your author profile or to sign up to a new release alert list and all you have to do is check a box.

Oh, and they let you download the formatted book in Epub, Mobi, and PDF. Which means that even if you don't intend to actually publish the book through them you can go through the steps, get the formatted stuff all pretty, and just not hit publish.

But here's the best part.

While they're formatting your ebook for you, they also throw in a PDF formatted for paperback FOR NO REASON. They don't do paperback. They aren't trying to sell you anything. They're just like, "Oh, hey, here's your book formatted for paperback. You can go upload it to createspace or whatever."

And I looked at the PDF and it is so much prettier than the one I did myself even though I sweated blood and tears making sure my gutter margins and everything were good and that the recto and verso sides were ok.

Or I could have paid a professional to do it and it would have cost me a bunch of $$

But Draft 2 Digital did it for free, for no reason, and the pdf has pretty drop caps and lovely graphics and ALL THAT STUFF.

So... yeah. I love it. Everyone should use it.

www.draft2digital.com

You're welcome.

Hurray Alex and Carole!

I've been releasing the beta version of my sequel to fan volunteers in chunks that I'm calling "episodes" and I'm loving the feedback I've been getting. Some of the stuff is very helpful but my favourite is just the comments that say "Nooooooo!!!!" or "Next episode please!!" It feels so good.

Great interview, Carole!