The March into madness is off and running. We begin with four weekends of events, while also applying feedback from beta readers on Siphon, my upcoming paranormal romance stand-alone novel. Oh and along with writing my next book Not Another Unhinged Romance, I'm also madly writing Nugget the Space Chicken 3 & 4 for an upcoming Kickstarter campaign—because my illustrator wants to get paid or something? Also also, I'm finalizing the author line up for the Lakeshore Art Festival's author alley. Aaaaaand planning a local book festival that will take place in September. I'm supposed to be sewing a new ren faire dress too, but yeah, that's kind of on the back burner at the moment.
So yeah, no dull moments any time in the near future. Or maybe (looking at my event list) until December.
Up this month: Mona Shores Comic Con— a nice little one day school con close-ish to home. Fantasticon Toledo—A mid-size two day con, not close to home. Third Coast Author and Book Festival—a one day book festival with a bunch of my author friends that is close to home. And Penguicon—a three day hotel con on the other side of the state where I'll be doing 8 panels, hanging out in the bookstore, and getting some writing done after hours. Or sleeping. Or checking out the room party when I should be sleeping. Place your bets. I'll report back next month.
Let's see what has transpired since my last post... The Mid Michigan Women's Expo was underwhelming with attendance, but as always, we authors had a good time, networking happened, and books did find new homes. And I bought a new crown, because hey, if I'm not going to have time to sew soon, at least I have something new to wear. :)
Loki, the new puppy, is settling in nicely. My lap (where my laptop should be) is his favorite place.
Zero, the newest chick is growing beautiful feathers. I'm excited to see how this one turns out when it grows up.
I recently did a couple podcast interviews if you're into those and want to check them out. On For the Love of Books, we talked about I9, my newest book, a stand-alone space opera with mystery and a little romance. Then on Indie Reads Aloud, we talked about One Shot At The Sphinx and The Narvan.
In non-writing things... I took a break for a couple of weeks and watched all 90 episodes of Farscape, one of my favorite sci-fi shows. Except for that one animated episode. Nope. All these years later, and I still didn't like it. The other 89 totally made up for it though.
For those of you on the author business end of things... BookFunnel finally came out with a cost effective audiobook plan, allowing us to sell our own audiobooks (without the distribution middleman getting a big chunk of the $) for only $2 a month and .04 per download hour. This means I can now sell Sahmara's audiobook in person at events along with my ebooks. I've really enjoyed having options for however readers want to read, ready to go right from my hands to theirs, where I get the majority of the profit. Sorry, but Amazon does not need your money to pay the bills.
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Well, I'll just be honest here, I suck at book launches. Mostly I write books and throw them out into the world because I have an endless cascade of events where I promote them along with my entire backlist. Do I do some of the usual things? Sure. And if you're wondering what those are:
Cover reveals, posting the blurb, teasers, guest blog posts, sending out a few newsletters- before, during, and after launch, getting ARC readers before the release date, and generally chatting up the book on social media before, during, and after launch. If I can talk my way into a podcast or two to promote the new book, that's a bonus.
Do I have a ton of money to invest in big name reviews or do big promo advertisements? Nope. I invest my $ in event table fees because that's where I know I sell books and my return readers are there. Your milage may vary.
I've tried ads. I've tried ebook blasts, bundles, blog takeovers, and promo deals. Results were meh on all of that. Not to say they don't work, but I'm guessing genre and timing have a lot to do with it.
Do I do a big release party? I have not. I tend to time my releases with a well attended con or festival and call it my book launch party. So nice of you all to come! LOL Sometimes I do have a few special launch goodies that I hand out to the first X number of people who buy the book. One of these times I'd like to do an actual launch party for local fans, but my schedule is a bit restricted so we'll see if that ever works out.
Until next time...
