Apologies to my loyal readers for not posting in so long. I have been busy, busy, busy over the last couple of weeks. Let me tell you what has been going on.
As most of you know, I write professionally. Well, sort of. I write and make my writings available through Amazon.com's self-publishing tools. I have won a couple of medals for my writing. I go about writing as if it is a job. I do some self-promotion: Talking about my writing, gathering prizes for a drawing, social networking online, keeping my website current, contacting publishers and agents, etc. But I make almost no book sales. Still, I say I write professionally. Let's go with that for a while and pretend I am a professional writer. (I am very skilled at, "Let's pretend.")
A little bit ago, I found out about this new program with Amazon Kindle called "Prime." It allows subscribers to "borrow" an unlimited number of books, one at a time, from the Amazon electronic "lending library." As an author, if I wanted to participate in the lending library program, all I needed to do was register the books I would put into it and promise those electronic titles would remain EXCLUSIVE to Amazon for their enrollment periods. In other words, I could continue to sell enrolled titles on Amazon, but had to remove them from Lulu or any of the other electronic publishers while the titles were enrolled in the Prime lending library. Enrollment periods are three months at a time.
I thought about this new program for all of about two minutes before deciding that I could enroll one of my titles that never sells, my Silver Award winner, The Disposable Noble Wife. I enrolled it and waited to see if anyone would borrow it. Not surprizingly, nobody did. But then, I was looking at the big, fat zero for borrowed books one day and I noticed something I had not seen before. Enrolled titles get five free promotion days per month.
"Oh!" I thought, "I should try this and see if it does any good." So I chose a weekend to run three days worth of "free promotion." Then I forgot about them. I finally remembered on the second of my free days and went to see if I had made any sales. Lo and behold! Over 150 electronic copies of my book had sold! I get NO commission from these sales, but I don't even care. I am just so exited!
By the end of the weekend, 312 copies of my previously unread novel were in the hands of readers.
Before the end of the weekend, I went into my account and scheduled my other two "free promotion" days. I also enrolled The Bleeding Love in the lending library program and scheduled all five of my "free promotion" days of that title. (If you subscribe to Kindle Prime, look for my promotions on Saturdays.) As I made sure to schedule my second book's promotion days for different days than the first title, I noticed that I could have my name in front of people every single weekend if I had just one more book to give them.
Well, I do have another book, but it is the ONE that ever makes any sales. I am not willing to hand it out for free. So I put up my Halloween Fire story, instead, and started work on another title right away. As I have a lot of fun wrapping fiction and fact together, the new title is a lot of fiction intertwined with a little bit of fact. But to make it interesting, I decided to use the very public persona of an old friend as one of my main characters, along with his annual, signature fundraising event. Check him out at http://www.darrylmarkette.com/ .
No Joke: Within a week of starting my story, Darryl sent me a Facebook Event Invitation to one of his shows. I wrote on his wall that I would not be able to make that show, but was planning to finally (after only three years) come to his annual fundraiser concert. (Note: This is the same concert I am using in my story.) He responded that he was thinking about cancelling the concert!
"Eek!" I thought. "The concert is already in my story! NOW what will I do??"
I emailed him. He has subsequently announced that the concert will go on as planned. (Whew! There you go, folks, evidence that chivalry does exist to this very day.) I kept working on the story and have been quite busy with it.
But that is NOT ALL that has been keeping me from my blog. There is another author. The gentleman is from Africa and he mailed me a complementary copy of his book, which is on a similar topic to that of my second book, Navigating Marital Abandonment. Lovely young man. When I got his book, I noticed some pretty bad grammatical errors in it right away. (English is his second language.) The grammar problems were driving me crazy and I also had a few insights to offer, so I messaged to ask if it would be okay for me to made some suggestions. He was delighted for my offer and asked if I would be inclined to help flesh out a short section by writing a few paragraphs for inclusion in the manuscript. (What an honor!) I agreed, of course.
Plus, of course, there is all the normal stuff to keep me busy, busy, busy, like winter concerts, sprained ankles, cookie stealing dogs and so on. Hopefully, when I get The Rumor's Secret up on Amazon and the editing/addition-writing finished, things will slow down and get back to normal -- well, as normal as I get, and I can go back to telling amusing anecdotes about cookie-eating dogs and the like.
As most of you know, I write professionally. Well, sort of. I write and make my writings available through Amazon.com's self-publishing tools. I have won a couple of medals for my writing. I go about writing as if it is a job. I do some self-promotion: Talking about my writing, gathering prizes for a drawing, social networking online, keeping my website current, contacting publishers and agents, etc. But I make almost no book sales. Still, I say I write professionally. Let's go with that for a while and pretend I am a professional writer. (I am very skilled at, "Let's pretend.")
A little bit ago, I found out about this new program with Amazon Kindle called "Prime." It allows subscribers to "borrow" an unlimited number of books, one at a time, from the Amazon electronic "lending library." As an author, if I wanted to participate in the lending library program, all I needed to do was register the books I would put into it and promise those electronic titles would remain EXCLUSIVE to Amazon for their enrollment periods. In other words, I could continue to sell enrolled titles on Amazon, but had to remove them from Lulu or any of the other electronic publishers while the titles were enrolled in the Prime lending library. Enrollment periods are three months at a time.
I thought about this new program for all of about two minutes before deciding that I could enroll one of my titles that never sells, my Silver Award winner, The Disposable Noble Wife. I enrolled it and waited to see if anyone would borrow it. Not surprizingly, nobody did. But then, I was looking at the big, fat zero for borrowed books one day and I noticed something I had not seen before. Enrolled titles get five free promotion days per month.
"Oh!" I thought, "I should try this and see if it does any good." So I chose a weekend to run three days worth of "free promotion." Then I forgot about them. I finally remembered on the second of my free days and went to see if I had made any sales. Lo and behold! Over 150 electronic copies of my book had sold! I get NO commission from these sales, but I don't even care. I am just so exited!
By the end of the weekend, 312 copies of my previously unread novel were in the hands of readers.
Before the end of the weekend, I went into my account and scheduled my other two "free promotion" days. I also enrolled The Bleeding Love in the lending library program and scheduled all five of my "free promotion" days of that title. (If you subscribe to Kindle Prime, look for my promotions on Saturdays.) As I made sure to schedule my second book's promotion days for different days than the first title, I noticed that I could have my name in front of people every single weekend if I had just one more book to give them.
Well, I do have another book, but it is the ONE that ever makes any sales. I am not willing to hand it out for free. So I put up my Halloween Fire story, instead, and started work on another title right away. As I have a lot of fun wrapping fiction and fact together, the new title is a lot of fiction intertwined with a little bit of fact. But to make it interesting, I decided to use the very public persona of an old friend as one of my main characters, along with his annual, signature fundraising event. Check him out at http://www.darrylmarkette.com/ .
No Joke: Within a week of starting my story, Darryl sent me a Facebook Event Invitation to one of his shows. I wrote on his wall that I would not be able to make that show, but was planning to finally (after only three years) come to his annual fundraiser concert. (Note: This is the same concert I am using in my story.) He responded that he was thinking about cancelling the concert!
"Eek!" I thought. "The concert is already in my story! NOW what will I do??"
I emailed him. He has subsequently announced that the concert will go on as planned. (Whew! There you go, folks, evidence that chivalry does exist to this very day.) I kept working on the story and have been quite busy with it.
But that is NOT ALL that has been keeping me from my blog. There is another author. The gentleman is from Africa and he mailed me a complementary copy of his book, which is on a similar topic to that of my second book, Navigating Marital Abandonment. Lovely young man. When I got his book, I noticed some pretty bad grammatical errors in it right away. (English is his second language.) The grammar problems were driving me crazy and I also had a few insights to offer, so I messaged to ask if it would be okay for me to made some suggestions. He was delighted for my offer and asked if I would be inclined to help flesh out a short section by writing a few paragraphs for inclusion in the manuscript. (What an honor!) I agreed, of course.
Plus, of course, there is all the normal stuff to keep me busy, busy, busy, like winter concerts, sprained ankles, cookie stealing dogs and so on. Hopefully, when I get The Rumor's Secret up on Amazon and the editing/addition-writing finished, things will slow down and get back to normal -- well, as normal as I get, and I can go back to telling amusing anecdotes about cookie-eating dogs and the like.
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