Bride-and-Seek Free Days

The Bride-and-Seek free days are here.  For the next three days, you can pick  up your copy of my romantic ghost story based on a legend in England for free.  Hope you all enjoy it.  E :)

Upcoming Free Download Days All Books

Since I've moved all my books off Smashwords and Nook and I haven't done any free days in a while, it's time to do some more free download days.  I tried to space everything out so that nothing is really running the same day but there ended up being two back-to-back (see below), which may or may not work to my advantage - lol.

Here is the lineup:

"Bride-and-Seek" - July 18-20 (3 days); September 24-25 (2 days)
"The Proposal" - July 23-25 (3 days), September 27-28 (2 days)
"The Tulip Kiss" - August 13-17 (5 days)
Finally Home - August 29-September 2 (5 days - this will run the Thursday before Labor Day through Labor Day)

Remember the free promotional days run midnight PST through midnight PST (3 AM to 3 AM EST).  If you are eastern time and look for the books at midnight the day it starts,  you won't see them listed as free. 

Also posted on the JGDS blog that "Train of Clues" would go free next week and then again in August.  The schedule will be July 11-12 and August 27-29 (which will overlap one day with Finally Home, but it will be okay since they are not related and shouldn't have any bearing on the other).  Check out my posting and let me know if you have any thoughts on gaining sponsors for the state series.  Thanks all - see you in the postings - Mrs. E :)

End-of-School Year Freebie

So here it is the end of the month and summer is upon us, although everyone is saying the beginning of Summer was last weekend.  If you haven't picked up your copy of Finally Home for you Kindle yet and would like a copy, this weekend (today, tomorrow and Sunday) you can download a copy for free.  If you like Nancy Drew mysteries and would like to try a new story on the lines of a Nancy Drew mystery or know a middle grade/young adult reader who is into mysteries and Nancy Drew, please direct them here for their free copy.  Hope you all will get your copy and enjoy the read.

The audio book should be up on amazon, audible,com and through itunes within a week or so.  See you all in the postings - E :)

This and That

Let's get started with sales or downloads. Since technically "The Tulip Kiss" and "The Proposal" are being offered for free, they aren't really sales but I've had a few this week on smashwords, 3 of "The Tulip Kiss" and 1 of "The Proposal", none of Finally Home. On Kindle, there have been no sales this week as well as on Nook. So far this month, though, I've had something sell every week except the week of the 15th with "The Tulip Kiss" having a download on the 1st of the month when I actually started the SSW50 coupon participation on smashwords, Finally Home selling a copy on Kindle the week ending the 7th; Finally Home selling a copy on Nook the 11th; "The Tulip Kiss" selling a copy on Kindle the week ending the 14th; and then this week's downloads on smashwords. None of the downloads on smashwords this month will bring me any royalties unless someone purchases a copy of Finally Home at the half price special in the next couple of days. Tuesday is the final day for the special over on smashwords. So if you haven't received your copy yet and you enjoy reading Nancy Drew mysteries or know someone who would enjoy reading a short mystery similar to Nancy Drew stories, pop over to smashwords and get your copy for only $1.50 (don't forget to use the coupon code SSW50 on checkout).

I've started an Etsy store this week and have put all my bookworms and afghans on there and will be adding the kindle/nook covers and tablet covers soon. I hope you all will stop by and see everything. I'll be adding some more bookworms soon as I picked up three skeins of yarn the other day for bookworm purposes only. For more listings, stop by my shop.

I've been watching the Olympics some but mostly crocheting bookworms and finishing up more afghans. I've got 2 more skeins to finish the Watercolor one and I think I just started the 3rd skein of the Woodsy. All that's left is the Marrakesh. I keep forgetting to take the handheld sewing machine back or purchasing a power cord so I can sew the velcro on the tablet covers but for the most part, everything is finished other than the velcro and a few buttons. I have buttons for half the colors and have sewn those on but need to find buttons for the rest of them. Will be looking for buttons this week.

Nothing else to report for this week so see you all in the postings - E :)

Friday the 13th free book promotions

I saw a posting on the Sisters in Crime yahoo forum digest yesterday which had been posted Tuesday actually for a Friday the 13th free promotion day. I figured it can't hurt. I know I wasn't going to use the other free days left on any of my books but I wanted to see some numbers again and since Friday the 13th is usually considered a bad luck day, I thought I'd turn it into a good luck day by making all three of my short stories - "The Tulip Kiss", "The Proposal" and "Bride-and-Seek" free for the day only.

If you would like to see a listing of authors who have joined the free promotion day, Friday the 13th, you can find all the books listed here. You will find mysteries, young adult, children's, romance, westerns, nonfiction, self-help books and everything in between. So let's see how it goes. Happy downloading Friday the 13th.

You can find all three books listed here. See you all in the postings - E :)

This and That

Today starts "read an ebook week" - so go out and get a copy of your favorite author's books or download someone new and start reading those ebooks or dust off your "TBR" folders. Either way - read an ebook, support your favorite authors.


--------------------

Colds - you gotta love them, right? - Not really. They mess with your head, your breathing and your sleeping. Right now, I'm on the tail end of a cold to which I can say good riddance. I don't like being sick. This has been a rollercoaster week for me as far as being on game or accomplishing anything. One day I feel okay and can sit and concentrate for a few hours and the next I feel okay but can't concentrate on anything since I wasn't able to sleep the night before. The worst part of my cold is that I've never really felt bad enough to not do anything at all, just that in between stage. Last night was the first night in a week that I actually slept in the bed all night for what it's worth (not that it really was a restful sleep or cough-free one either, just that I wasn't pulling my computer chair over to the bed to use like a recliner to sleep sitting up and I didn't have to have a made up inclination of something to prop up on either).

Last night was the annual Anderson County Library's spelling bee and I participated again this year. We were a person down (someone was sicker than I am/was) but we did pretty good considering. We should have gone for a level 3 word right out the gate so we would have ended up in a tie-breaker situation and possibly could have taken the trophy. Our team got two words that I actually knew that the others didn't (thank you work) and one of them they wanted to mulligan (this is a lifeline to throw the word away and get a new one in the same level - the word being oligotrophic) and the other just happened to be something very common in the hand clinic fracture world so that one (comminution) came to me immediately. I've been asked to join the team again next year. So next March, I'll be spelling up a storm. The winning team had 24 points and we had 23 points - very close (if only we had started with a level 3 word, we would have ended with 24 - lol). The other teams weren't too close from there (three teams with 17 and then I don't remember from there on down).

So rollercoaster ride week, let's look at sales this week.

My friend, Faye (author of To Tell The Truth) emailed me Wednesday and said something to the effect that she wasn't doing as well this go round for her free download days. I had totally forgotten that she was offering her book for free the end of the month so didn't promote it as much as I did the first time. After receiving her email, I was curious as to how my sales were going. Imagine my surprise when I opened my reports page and saw that my month-to-date sales showed 78 sales for "The Tulip Kiss". Mind you this wasn't even early morning when I checked the report. I thought surely there was a mistake since I didn't remember scheduling a free day. So naturally, I had to go look at my bookshelf listing and check my scheduled days, and you guessed it, I had scheduled "The Tulip Kiss" for February 29 and March 1.

I did some quick advertising of the free listing and sent out an email but not very much promoting (nothing compared to what I did when "Bride-and-Seek" was first released and offered for free).

This morning, the results look like this:

Week ending 03/03/2012 (there are two sets of numbers for some because some of the downloads are counted on February and the rest on March for accounting purposes).

In the USA: downloads sales
"Bride-and-Seek" 0 1
"The Tulip Kiss" 220 (02/29) 0
89 (03/01)
in the UK:
"The Tulip Kiss" 56 (02/29)
12 (03/01)
In Germany (DE):
"The Tulip Kiss" 2 (02/29)
1

So my calculations show 380 downloads over 2 days of "The Tulip Kiss" and 1 sale of "Bride-and-Seek". This exceeded "Bride-and-Seek" by 20 when it was offered for free. Yay me! lol

My guests this week were Leslie Dubois and Sarah Renee. Leslie stopped by and offered a free ebook to the first ten commenters, of any of her books - what a generous offer. I think she only had five people comment not counting my one comment and hers. So if you visited her posting and missed the comment about a free ebook and haven't contacted Leslie (aka Sybil Nelson) for your free ebook, please do so. Sarah Renee had a few visitors but I didn't see any comments from Sarah herself, so maybe she'll poke in and leave a comment too.

I thought I'd offer free ebooks as well for those who left comments on either of their postings. So if you haven't already downloaded a copy of "The Tulip Kiss" or "The Proposal" and would like a copy, please email with your choice and whether you prefer a nook or kindle version or the PDF file.

There is a lot going on in the next couple of weeks, so I'll try to have my postings up and ready to go. Tomorrow I'll be talking about the Paypal censorship thing going (this will probably be a 2-parter because it is a pretty lengthy discussion); Wednesday will be another set of similar or maybe just one question from Mrs. Jurkowski's class and I'm going to work hard on gettting my Friday book reviews back on track (have a lot of them scheduled already but just haven't written them). Next week will be a whirlwind week as I will be in and out of the office (home), but more on that next Sunday.

See you all in the postings - E :)

Another freebie offering

I totally forgot that I had a free offering of one my stories for Wednesday the 29th and Thursday the 1st of March. So you have until midnight PST March 1st to get your free download of "The Tulip Kiss". This is my first place winning story from the Fast and Frigid contest a few years ago - same title, same story, new cover and only available on kindle.

If you don't have a kindle, it's okay - you can download the free app to your computer or phone or tablet and still download the free stories.

"The Tulip Kiss" is another ghostly romance story, like "Bride-and-Seek" except it's a modern setting and shows what happens a young love is turned upside down.

If you like romantic suspense and didn't get your free copy the first go round, my friend, Faye Tollison, is offering her book To Tell The Truth until midnight PST March 1st as well. Stop over on amazon and download both stories.

(a few stats from today - just checked the reports a little before 1 AM EST and in the USA I've had 251 downloads, in the UK 53 and in Germany (that is DE on our listing and I thought that was Denmark - lol) I've had 2. The UK and DE downloads haven't changed over the course the day (probably since about noon or before), but that's okay. My goal is to get close to our exceed what I did with "Bride-and-Seek" which was 360 downloads over a 2-day period. As you can see from the numbers, I'm pretty close - at 306 right now.

I do ask all of you who have downloaded the story to please post a review somewhere - your blog, amazon, goodreads, anywhere else you can and let me know so I can lead folks to your reviews. Thank you in advance for that - E :)

This and That

It's Saturday night again and I'm making my reports. Figured I needed to get this posting up before we lose power as my internet is flaking in and out.

You saw my 1st day KDP select posting - by the end of the 48 hours, I had a total of 361 downloads, which included 52 from the UK and 1 from Denmark as well as 1 sale of "The Proposal" in the USA.

Since the freebies have gone back to regular price, I have picked up 2 or 3 sales of "Bride-and-Seek" and no other sales.

I think I had 2 sales already of "Bride-and-Seek" so I had been subtracting those from the total numbers. I'll know for sure next week when i can check the prior 6-weeks sales.

Last night I posted on when my other stories will go up for free. The only story I'm not putting in the KDP program, but it is still available on kindle, is Finally Home. If sales pick up throughout the year on the kindle for that story, I may consider putting it in the program when I'm about to release my next novel, Imogene: Innocense Lost.

I've also been thinking about the titles of my stories and wondering if the titles have anything to do with the lack of sales. I can't really say it is the covers because I really do think my covers are pretty awesome and that Heather does a great job. So I'll put it out there to my readers, and please leave a comment here so I know you are actually reading my blog, do you think my titles are appropriate to the story? If not, what would you title "The Proposal", "The Tulip Kiss" and "Bride-and-Seek" or even Finally Home?

I try to find appropriate titles for all my stories and usually don't even write my stories to titles. Case in point, Imogene's story is taking shape and the title keeps tumbling around like it's not the right one and who knows, when I'm through writing it and start the editing process, the title may change. I'll leave that up to my editor to decide whether or not it should be left as is or changed, although at this point, I'm not really sure what new title I could give it. I'm not even sure I can give a brief description of the story yet. This will all take place as the story develops.

I think that is everything I have to report - internet is flakng due to weather so I'll sign off for now and see you all lin the postings - E :)

Promoting Marilyn Levinson

I just updated two of my out-of-print children's books and put them up on Kindle. RUFUS AND MAGIC RUN AMOK was an International Reading Association-Children's Book Council Children's Choice. Fourth-grader Rufus Breckenridge discovers he has magical powers like the women in his family, but keeps it a secret. Once his mother learns he's an "Empowered One," she'll make him take lessons so he can use his powers to do good deeds. Where's the fun in that? Suddenly Rufus is no longer afraid of Big Douggie. He can perform all sorts of tricks. His powers grow stronger and stronger and get him into more and more trouble. Soon his magic is out of control.

NO BOYS ALLOWED was in print for eighteen years, and has been translated into Swedish and Dutch. Eleven-year-old Cassie Landouer is devastated when her father divorces her mother to marry a young lawyer and moves out of state. She handles her pain by boycotting all the males in her life, including her best friend, Bobby. Then Uncle Harry moves in and she can't very well ignore him. Even worse, he discovers her secret. What's a girl to do?

RUFUS AND MAGIC RUN AMOK is $2.99 on Kindle. You can download it for free on February 16 and 17th. NO BOYS ALLOWED is $3.99 and can be found here. Both will soon be available in paperback.

AUTHOR BIO: Marilyn Levinson is a former Spanish teacher and the author of several books for children and young adults. Her first, AND DON'T BRING JEREMY, was a nominee for six state awards. NO BOYS ALLOWED has sold over 200,000 copies.

More recently, Marilyn has been writing mysteries for adults. Suspense Magazine awarded A MURDERER AMONG US a Best Indie of 2011. The book has been featured on the Five Star Books site these last three months. The sequel, MURDER IN THE AIR, will be out later this month. Her ghost mystery, GIVING UP THE GHOST, is coming out in April with Uncial Press.

Marilyn is a member of The Authors Guild, RWA, The Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime and the Guppies. She co-founded and is President of the Long Island chapter of Sisters in Crime.