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Posts Tagged ‘amazon’

Things are moving right along. I’m waiting on one more beta reader to get done with Fire Wizard. The good thing is, two of my betas pretty much read it in one sitting because they said they couldn’t put it down. 🙂 I might be having a FB party for the release. I’m looking at an end of September release.

I’ve written one scene of my cozy mystery (title to be determined later), and have worked a little on a couple more scenes. I have a love/hate relationship with Scrivener, but I think I’ve worked out most of the bugs, so it’s mostly love. I was having problems losing the formatting, but I think I got it worked out. I’m a linear writer, but I like how when I think of something that could go in a scene later, I can just go to that scene (I have outlines, so I can tell where that scene is) and write it before I forget. Then I can go back to the scene I was working on.

I’m still trying to decide whether or not to write this book under this name or another pen name. I have reasons (that some of you know) to write under two pen names. This brings up another question of whether or not to start writing under a publishing company name or not.

Which brings up another problem. I want to get a federal ID number, but I found out from two different author friends that when trying to change from a SS# to a EIN, or from one EIN to another one, Barnes & Noble made them delete their account and republish all their books under the new number. Which means, they lost their reviews and ranking. If Amazon can just let them change the number, why in the world can’t B & N do the same thing? That’s made me rethink the EIN number. I have some decent reviews on B & N, and I would hate to lose those. This makes my eye twitch.

I’m also proofing a new book for a client, so that business is going well.

So, how are the rest of you doing?

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For a long time now, I’ve really wanted to have at least one of my books in audio. There’s probably not a lot of profit in it, but it’s something I would love to have. When my friend, Sharon Gerlach announced that her book, Office Politics, was available in audio, I asked her about it. She used ACX (an Amazon company).

Okay, here’s how it works. You put your book (or books) on the site, and it lets narrators know if you’ll pay by royalty share or by hourly fee. Right now I have two of mine up for royalty share. I honestly don’t think I’ll get any takers. For one thing, they show your ranking on Amazon. Unfortunately, they show your PAPERBACK ranking instead of ebook ranking. Which, of course, is a lot worse. Also, Soul of a Vampire only has one review, although it’s a 4 star, so that doesn’t appeal to many narrators, because these people want a book that sells well. Haunted Lake has 34 reviews for an average of 4.1, so that would be appealing maybe…except for the paperback ranking, of course. So if no one picks it up, I’ll probably go with the per hour option. I’m not going to post that on there, though, because if I’m going to pay per hour, I want to pick my own narrator and make an offer. If I announce I’ll pay a flat rate, I may get offers I don’t want, and I hate to reject people. Awhile back, I looked into getting a narrator for Haunted Lake, but the one I contacted wanted $1500. I just couldn’t afford that. On ACX, they have different narrators who work for different fees. They have a $0-50 all the way up to $400-$1000. There weren’t many at $0-$50, so I checked out narrators from $50-$100. If I can get one at $50, Haunted Lake would be about $270. At $75, it would be $405. I’m going to leave it up as royalty only for a week or two and see if HL gets any takers. If not, then I’ll decide.

So what do you all think? Would you do this if you lost money or broke even? Would it be worth it to have your books, or at least one of them, on audio?

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I haven’t written anything this week yet since I’m going back to my Thursday, Friday, Saturday writing schedule for awhile. And then I’m going on vacation next week, so I’m going to READ instead of write that week. But I DID do something I’ve needed to do for a long time. In fact, I’m really ashamed that I hadn’t done this yet. It’s been hanging over my head for a while. When I proofed Haunted Lake for print, I found several errors in the original manuscript. Errors that had been missed before publishing the ebook. I fixed them and had others look over it before publishing in print. However…I never got around to replacing the manuscript for my ebooks on Amazon, B & N, Smashwords, etc. I’m am SO not proud of this. So last night, I went into my office and got the printout of my book where I had corrected the errors, and got to work. I fixed all the errors and made a couple of small changes I had made for the print version. And I got it uploaded everywhere.

The only snag I ran into was with Smashwords. Since all retailers have changed the requirements for book cover sizes, Smashwords couldn’t distribute the new version to Apple, Sony, etc. until I sent a new cover. (Amazon and B & N didn’t make me send a new cover.) My wonderful cover artist, Anya Kelleye, is super, super busy right now since she’s picked up several new book cover jobs, so I hesitated to ask her to fix this for me. I emailed her, told her the situation, and asked how long it would take to change the cover size. She dropped what she was doing and immediately fixed this for me. What a friend she is! So I was able to upload the cover and now Smashwords is happy. And I feel better knowing that an error free (I hope) version of Haunted Lake is now out there. This is still my favorite of all the books I’ve written. I don’t know if it’s the BEST one I’ve written, but this story is still close to my heart.

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I’m not really a selfish person. Most of the time I do things that will help other people rather than myself. I’m not tooting my own horn or anything, that’s just my basic personality. I like to help. It makes me smile. But the following is a completely selfish thing. Here it is:

The Gnome would be a really great read for Halloween. Buy it! Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords.

Whew, that felt weird! But I’m not going to apologize. In fact, I’m giggling a little right now. Um, not evilly like the gnome did…just because this was funny. 🙂

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Just wanted to let you guys know that Soul of a Vampire is up on Amazon now. Soul of a Vampire

It should be up on B & N soon. As soon as it is, I’m going to announce the giveaway I promised. 🙂

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I was going to upload SoaV during lunch today. Then I realized I needed a blurb. Duh. Then Amazon says KDP is not working and to come back later. Seriously? So, right now, SoaV is up on Smashwords only. Here is the link. Soul of a Vampire. Hopefully, Amazon will be up and working tonight so I can upload. And I plan to do B & N tonight, too. Right now, I’m off to file several reports to several different states. Stupid day job. (Just kidding…I actually like my day job!)

Keep checking back on my blog to see what I’m giving away in honor of publishing Soul of a Vampire. (I’ll post that when SoaV is published on all venues.) All I’m saying is that it’s pretty and it relates to something in the book. 😉

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Wednesday Update

I don’t have a lot to report. I’m letting my WIP sit for a few days after finishing, and I plan on starting the editing process tomorrow. I usually don’t have a lot to edit because I do a lot of editing along the way. But when I do the final read through, I always find things to change or add. I rarely find anything I want to take out. Since I’ve been at this writing thing awhile, my first drafts are much cleaner.

On a weird note. You know how Amazon sends you those emails suggesting certain books to read based on other things you’ve bought from them? Amazon sent me an email today suggesting two of my own books to me! That’s never happened before, and I thought it was kind of funny. Hmmm, I wonder if that means they suggested those two books to other customers….

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Nothing earth shattering has happened since Sunday. LOL. Good word counts the past couple of days. No exercise…my walking partner is on vacation…I’ve been a slacker. I haven’t felt very well, either, but I suspect exercise would make me feel BETTER. Silly me for not doing it.

I’m 2/3 through proofing Vampires’ Curse for print. A word about that. If it were just for my benefit, I’m not sure I would even put anything in print, although it’s nice to hold my book in my hands. But there are still readers out there who want a print book. It’s for them that I do this. It would be free if I didn’t want expanded distribution, but I pay $25 to do that. However, I make only about 50-75 cents per book when bookstores (other than Amazon) or libraries buy it (versus about $2.75 if readers buy it from Amazon). Is it worth it? I haven’t yet decided. I hate to limit where readers can buy my books, but it will take a long time, if ever, to make up that $25. It seems I spend a lot of time and money sometimes doing things to benefit other people. But…I sort of feel like that’s one reason we’re put on this planet. What do the rest of you think? Should I stop paying for expanded distribution? What would you do? It’s free to distribute to Amazon, since Amazon owns CreateSpace. But I have almost as many sales from the expanded distribution venues. I can’t decide what to do with this latest print book.

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Boy, I’m getting good at titles with dual topics lately. LOL Once again, these two topics are totally unrelated.

I purchased Hogan’s Irish Scone Mix and a jar of Hogan’s Lemon Curd from igourment.com. I love scones…at least the ones I’m used to. I’ve had scones from an English tea room and from Panera, among other places. They’ve always been kind of dense, almost reminding me of the consistency of shortbread or something similar. So I made my scones last night. They’re biscuits. Not exactly like my homemade biscuits I eat with gravy, but very, very biscuit-like. I was disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, they were very good, they just weren’t what I was expecting. So my question is this (Claire Farrell, you have to chime in)…are Irish scones different from English scones? Or are the English scones I’ve been getting here in the US not really scones at all? Does anyone know?

Okay, I said, when I was talking about getting my kitty playhouse from Amazon, that I would tell what else I got from Amazon. It was a sewing machine. I’ve had this sudden burning desire to SEW SOMETHING. And it’s been years since I’ve done any sewing. My old sewing machine is somewhere in the attic. I don’t know where. This new one is computerized, so you can change stitches without changing a disc. Now I’m panicking because I’m afraid I CAN’T DO IT! My machine has some bells and whistles my old one didn’t have, and until I learn how to use them, it looks like it makes things harder instead of easier. Did I just waste my money on a whim? Or will I really be able to do this? Tune in later for further updates. 🙂

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Both of my new releases, Search for the Vampires’ Curse and The Beast in the Mirror, are now available at Amazon. SFTVC should be available at B & N soon, but I’m going to let Smashwords distribute TBITM so it will be free. I hesitate to tell Amazon about a lower price on The Beast to get it to be free since you have to sign in to do it. But anyone else please feel free to do that. I really wish Amazon would let us put free works on there so we don’t have to jump through hoops to make it free. 😦

Search for the Vampires’ Curse

The Beast in the Mirror

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