Re-releasing a Book

By June Shaw

Getting a book published is exciting, especially when it's your first one. Getting it published again adds more excitement, mainly when it's a new edition with additional editing and a different cover.

I've had so much fun to finally be selling one and then another and so on of books I write. It been amazing to watch the various editions of the same book. For example, Five Star published RELATIVE DANGER, first book in my series of humorous mysteries, in hardcover with one cover. Harlequin put it out in paperback with a totally different cover. I had it published as an ebook and used a unique cover. It came out as an audiobook, again with a new look, and Untreed Reads recently re-released it as an e-book with a new cover again. (I just remembered RELATIVE DANGER came out in large print, too, but don't recall the cover on that edition.)

Getting to sell a book and then seeing how various editors envision my work has been a joy I never expected when I chose to become a writer.

I'm having a great time seeing the new editions of my mystery series with brand new covers. Untreed Reads just finished re-releasing all three of them. I hope you'll take a look and check them out. Thanks!

http://www.juneshaw.com

Doctor, There Is No Minor Surgery

By Jackie King

Writers share the same problems as the rest of the population, but we have the advantage of recycling our misery. We even have the audacity to call this “research.” The truth is anything we novelists experience, sooner or later turns up in our books.

I’ve been writing about the complications of aging. And believe it or not, I'm doing this in order to cheer myself up. (This sentence sounds dumb even to me, but it’s the truth.)

On September 16, I had a pacemaker implant. It seems that I had developed something called AFib. (Medical abbreviation for atrial fibrillation.) Listed among several causes are high blood pressure and sleep apnea; and I have both.

My first thought was that AFib was what old men got, not middle aged women like me. Then I remembered my actual age (which always comes as a shock to me) and had to admit that I had joined this rather large club. (And I do know that it’s better than the alternative, but I still like to gripe.)

AFib can cause strokes, so the doctor ordered me to stop driving until I had a pace maker implant. “This is a simple procedure and easy to recover from,” said the good doctor.

He lied!

No doubt it’s simple compared to open-heart surgery or having a brain transplant, but it has been no walk in the park. One of the inconveniences I’ve suffered has been the necessity of carrying my left arm in a sling so I don’t raise it over my shoulder. Have you ever tried to style your hair with one hand? So I spend all of my time explaining to all and sundry how I broke (or didn’t) break my arm.

As a writer I’m tempted to make up exciting stories about farfetched adventures instead of telling the boring truth, but so far I’ve resisted the urge. I don’t dare risking one of my friends breaking my right arm.

I’d love to hear your similar stories. And to repay you, next time I post you’ll hear about how I learned to live with a mask and bi-pap machine to control the sleep apnea.

I’m falling apart…God help me.

Hugs,

Jackie

Danger – MMORPGs

I think role playing games are fun. They call for the same sort of commitment readers make when they get involved in a story and suspend disbelief, feeling the fictional characters to be at least as real as they are themselves. My novella, Alternative Dimension, is about the attractions and the dangers of playing games and entering a virtual reality. For me, being part of a fantastical online community was a source of humour, a chance to indulge in some gentle satire, as well as a place where I met and got to know people I’d never have come across otherwise.

People are surprisingly unguarded there, revealing intimate secrets to others, even though they’re only interacting with an avatar and they have no idea of who the person behind it is. The risks in that are obvious, and the whole business of grooming and manipulation is very sinister and very real. And, of course, as someone unloads their childhood traumas onto you, you’ve no idea whether they’re true, whether the person’s male, female, Aryan supremacist or Jehovah’s Witness. (It could even be your partner on a laptop in another room – which is an even scarier thought.)

But games are making legitimate claims to be a separate art form in their own right. They’re like movies, they’re like books, but they have dimensions of interactivity which go beyond the traditional. The immersive atmosphere they create, the power of their music, which now has mainstream respectability (the London Philharmonic has recorded several of the best-known themes), the fact that you, as a player, actually inhabit the story and the settings – all of this makes different demands on the creative input of designers but also of players.

So the BBC radio programme I heard about the whole subject made for fascinating listening. One interviewee talked interestingly about how increases in computing power and the refinements in the disciplines involved in creating all aspects of a game meant that today’s ‘best’ experiences were constantly being superseded. Whereas Dickens, Hardy, Shakespeare and the rest continue to be read and performed, old computer games seem limp and passé.

As I said, all of this was very informative and interesting. But, as she continued to enthuse about the excitement and value of getting immersed in games, she made one throwaway remark which I found very chilling and which made me rethink the values she was ascribing to them. To make her point about how games do have an afterlife in the memories of those who’ve played them, she described a night she’d spent escaping from some captors, gathering weapons, fighting her way along and eventually dragging her boy friend’s body from where he’d been held captive. There was a smile in her voice as she described it all, and the residual excitement was obvious. But then, after all these ordeals, she said ‘God, I felt like I’d gone through Vietnam’.

And there, it seems to me, you have a hidden danger. Not just treating war as a game but diminishing reality itself. It’s a paradox. This isn't a criticism of her and I don't mean to imply thoughtlessness or insensitivity on her part. She was interesting, enthusiastic and very knowledgeable. The experience for her was real, draining, even traumatic, but its ‘reality’ was immediately put into perspective by the inappropriate parallel she implied with true stress and horror. OK, it wasn’t a considered remark but, in a way, that makes it worse. As I said, I'm not condemning her, I'm asking whether our priorities and sensitivities are shifting.

Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference 2013

I just got back from three days at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference in Denver. This is the twelfth year I’ve added, and I always get great ideas and end up with a huge to-do list of follow up action items. This is an excellent conference for improving writing craft, honing pitch skills, learning more about book promotion and catching up on the latest trends in the publishing world.  

Some of the highlights:

-          Author Jeff Shelby taught a number of workshops on the emerging independently published world describing his journey from traditionally published to self-published. After ups and down in his publishing career, he has now gained traction with eighteen self-published books. He equated self-publishing to being a small business owner. It’s not traditional versus self-published; it’s traditional and self-published.

-          Dinner speaker Margaret George entertained us with stories of her career in publishing historical novels.

-          Lunch speaker Ronald Malfi inspired us with a message on perseverance and tenacity.

-          Cate Rowan cited e-book growth with the following statistics: in 2010 e-books represented 2% of dollars spent. In 2010 this increased to 7% with 14 % of book units. In 2012 e-books represented 11% of dollars and 22% of units.

Pictures show Margaret George and Ronald Malfi.

I’m now ready to dive into my to-do list.

 Mike Befeler

The Tudor Signet

by Carola

Romance, adventure, blackmail, spies, highway robbery, a persecuted widow, a mad sculptor, a card-sharp, a future inheritance: and the Tudor signet ring holds the answers. Dartmoor and Plymouth are the scenes of the crimes, where a dashing hero meets a determined young lady--in less than romantic circumstances. Positively embarrassing, in fact...

Almost as embarrassing is the error Zebra made in the title of the paperback: There is no Tudor secret. I'm glad I was able to get the correct title restored on the e-book!

Add a devoted dog and a wild ride through the night to a dramatic denouement. What more can you ask?

Available from most e-book sellers:


http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-tudor-signet
http://www.amazon.com/The-Tudor-Signet-ebook/

PS. CROSSED QUILLS e-book is still on sale on Amazon.

How to Promote Free Books to Sell More

Being published by a micropress has its drawbacks, mainly a dearth of distribution and promotion. I like to have my books available in paper for the few who decide to take one, but mainly I sell them at outdoor festivals and book events. Most of my mysteries and thrillers (now ten) are sold as ebooks. And since I decided to cast my lot with Amazon KDP, they're only available in the Kindle Store.

I have used their free days almost monthly over the past year to promote sales. KDP allows you to give a book away for five out of every ninety days. Despite how it sounds, the act of giving away books has a definite effect on book sales. The practice has brought less results as time progressed for several reasons. One has to do with the fact that more and more authors are using the free days route. There are several dozen Internet sites that promote free ebooks, but they get so many requests now that they limit what they do or charge for the service.

I have used several sites in recent months, paying from $5 to $25 for guaranteed listings. When I first began the practice, my books sold well after the three free days (that seems the most effective period) for two weeks or more. Not just the book that had been free, but the rest of my backlist. However, for the past few months, the lingering effect has been much shorter.

Recently I've read posts by my colleagues on some promo sites about their use of  BookBub.com. It sends out an email to its list of thousands of readers daily, promoting from two to four ebooks that are either free or on sale at a discount such as 99 cents. This one is not for the faint of heart. For mysteries that are free, the price is $240. For mysteries priced at $1 to $2, it's $720. They claim 700,000 subscribers to the mystery email list and show average downloads of 18,000.

I started three days for a free Kindle copy of my second Greg McKenzie mystery, Designed to Kill, on Saturday. It goes back to $2.99 tonight (Monday) at midnight PDT. As of 10 p.m., the time I'm writing this, the book has been downloaded 49,009 times. During this time, the first book in the series has sold 47 copies, book three 31 copies, book four 12 and book five 6.

If things go as expected (at least hoped), Designed to Kill should sell hundreds of copies in the coming days, while the other books in the series continue to do well. The theory is that if readers like the free book, they'll come back to buy the others. I've already gotten three new four-star and one five-star reviews since the giveaway began. People who take part in these promotions are good about writing reviews on Amazon.

I'll post in a couple of weeks how the after-effect turns out. Has anybody else tried this approach? How were your results?

When Life Gets in the Way

By Mark W. Danielson

I haven’t been writing much fiction lately because life got in the way.  To write well, one must be focused on what they are creating, but I’ve been terribly distracted monitoring the construction of our retirement home.  Spectral Gallows, my latest Maxx Watts novel, which is due out this fall, may be delayed because I was severely late in approving the final draft.  In my defense, our builder sucked the life out of my wife and me.  Somehow we managed to survive.

Now that our house is finished and we are getting settled, murderous musings literally come to mind – as in how to kill a builder, and whether to bury him or make him part of the foundation.  In this regard, fiction writing remains wonderful therapy.  Whether I write Building is Murder remains to be seen, but I cannot stop these thoughts from needling my brain.

The benefit of life’s experiences is they broaden our perspective and provide us with tremendous character development.  Tangles with builders, subs, and spouses spark countless ideas for stories, settings and conversations.  You cannot put a price on that.  Even so, writing shouldn't be about getting even.  To live that way means the bastards win, and I never want that.   

Neighbors who have gone through similar problems said it takes two weeks to stop being pissed off.  I’m well past that two week mark and have yet to let go, but I’m getting there.  It’s only a matter of time before we are unpacked and have landscaping.  No doubt our house will grow on us once we hang some art work and stop to smell the roses.

Lately, my computer has been my Jiminy Cricket, keeping me sane.  After letting me pound its keyboard in anger, it will stare back at me and say, “There – feel better?  Now purse your lips together and blow.”  Suddenly, I’m whistling while I work.  Ah, yes.  Plotting murder can be fun . . .