Word Witch Wednesday - more on marketing

Just when you think you know the general rules of marketing your work, something else comes along. If you're like me and don't have a lot of time to stay on top of every little thing, it helps to have other people give you a head's up. Here are a few new things that have come up this year that authors need to know.

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Some of you might have heard about this. It may be a European law, but it affects all businesses including writers. These regulations will better protect people's information online. It will help it from being used for purposes other than what they have given permission for.

If you have a newsletter, you will need to have readers resubscribe to give you explicit permission to email them. Yes, this is only for Europeans at the moment, but it is good if you have all readers do so.

Update: If you wish only to have your European readers resubscribe, but you don't know which ones are in that region, Mailerlite will be releasing new tools later this month that will allow you to see what country your subscribers are from. I hope other email marketing sites will do the same thing.

Amazon reviews. Oh, Amazon. Always messing around with rules about reviews. The newest one is that a review will be deleted if it states that person received a free copy of the book in exchange for a review. I've recently posted a few reviews which included that, and my reviews have not been taken down. Yet.

More links for you:

18 exciting book marketing predictions for 2018.

Top Facebook marketing trends for 2018.

8 new graphic design trends for 2018.

12 book marketing mistakes.

Do you have any news on author marketing? Please share with us in the comments below.

Happy Christmas! All the books in the TOTEM series are 99c until January 1st!

Merry Christmas from my house to yours!

Enjoy the fun and festive times with your friends and family.

As a big thank you to all my wonderful readers, I have put all the books in my thrilling urban fantasy series, TOTEM, on sale for 99c.

Dark Dawning

Silent Whispers

Cloak of Snow

Shattered Spirit

Ghost Cat

Deep Current

Shadows Fall

Descending Moon

True Shifter

The series is always free to read on Kindle Unlimited.

Friday Five for February 7, 2014

 

1. Earlier this week, I checked my sales on Amazon and discovered there were over 1000 downloads of THE MARQUIS in less than 24 hours. I was shocked and ecstatic! It was #1 on the Demons & Devils best seller list and #9 on Paranormal & Urban. It was also #274 in the Free Amazon Store. I have no idea what promoted the rush of downloads. I haven't done anything new with marketing. It's just one of those weird and wonderfully unexpected moments.

2. I haven't gotten a chance this week to start on my revisions for WIP #2, my superhero story. I'll get a few hours this morning, but hopefully I'll find time on the weekend, and we won't get any more snow days. Though the groundhog saw his shadow, didn't he?

3. Don't forget there's still time to enter the huge Valentine's Day Giveaway. 21 authors giving away their books. I'm giving away a digital copy of The 13th Floor Complete Collection.

4. My son amazed several people this week with his reading skills. I always love watching people's amazement when they see a 3.5 year old reading. I'm so proud of him. This does not show in the bad mom haircut I gave him this week. Poor kid. He won't let anyone else do it, so it's up to me, and he cringes at the sound of scissors cutting hair. Yes, it is a weird and a bit unnerving sound, but it makes for an uneven cut no matter how much I try to be careful.

5. I finished reading a trilogy by Nora Roberts. The first Roberts books I've ever read. Surprising since I do like romance, but I was a bit intimidated by the number of books she has published. I tell myself that I need to be that prolific, suffer a few moments of immense stress over it, and then tell myself to just get through the revisions of my current WIPs. Worry about writing more later. Working on revisions for two WIPs, yup, that's enough for me right now.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Friday Five for September 27, 2013

1. It's been a busy week. I'm all set for The 13th Floor Complete Collection blog tour. The book is already available on Amazon and Smashwords. It looks fantastic! Cherie Reich did an excellent job editing and formatting for me. We're making great progress with the print version. It'll definitely be ready for October 13th.

2. Click on over to Heather Musk's blog and read what she thought of the final novella in the 13th Floor series, THE GHOST. She'll be interviewing me on October 11th for my blog tour. Don't miss out!

3. I had a terrific time with Yolanda Renee on Monday. As promised, I used Random.org to pick a winner of an ecopy of MEMORIES OF MURDER. The winner is Catherine Stine! Congratulations, Catherine. I've already informed Yolanda that you were picked. Enjoy the book! Guess what? Yolanda is hosting me during my tour next month too. Join us on the 19th.

4. It's school picture day at my son's preschool. Last year I was the photographer's helper, and the boy refused to smile. This year, I won't be there, so hopefully he'll show them his cute dimples. It's been a long week with four days spent babysitting, a school board meeting, and an optometrist's appointment. Glasses have gotten so expensive!

5. Join me Monday for some creepiness. Julie Flanders' cover reveal for THE GHOSTS OF AQUINNAH and an announcement to give you the chills. In a good way!

Have a fantastic weekend!

Out from under the bed a little early

The official release date for FEARLESS is August 7th, but I couldn't wait any longer. The book is available already! If you've popped by today, please go get yourself a copy and enjoy.

Smashwords (free in all formats)

Createspace ($3.99 for a print copy)

I was lucky enough to have a fantastic critique partner who is also an editor. She formatted the manuscript for me for each site. I went over everything again a couple of times before I finally started to upload the novella to each place.

Smashwords: Easy to upload. They were fast to get it up too. I had 3 downloads before I was even finished and satisfied with the profile. I like that I can put my work up for free here, and it will send it out to various other ebook sellers too. It was even more exciting when I started getting my reviews! I already have five 5 star reviews by random people. I want to hug them all! One kind reviewer dubbed my book "Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Monsters Inc." What a perfect description!

Amazon and B&N: Tedious. Lots of pages to fill out. They didn't have the book up for days. I didn't get the option of selling for free. At least on Amazon I can get it price-matched, but I've heard that's not permanent either. They are two major forces in the book business. It's important to have my book up there.

Kobo: Not as much to fill out as the previous two, but I didn't like the way it was set up. They also did not have paranormal or paranormal romance listed as a genre. I had to call it contemporary romance. That's not a proper description of it, but they didn't give any other options that were close to my genre.

Createspace: It took the longest to work with, but it was easy enough to do. They have an easy to navigate system set up for reviewing your interior and creating a cover. It'll be very cool to have a print copy of the story. I know what I'm getting everyone for Christmas this year! I'm having a few problems with them that I don't understand about ISBNs, and I hope is just an error on their part. The keep replying to me with the same email over and over. I need to call them, but the book is up and for sale.

A reminder about the "What was your childhood monster?" blogfest. Still lots of time to sign up and share with us what scared you as a kid!