So, I just checked my reports for the two days I offered "The Proposal" for free on the KDP program. Pleasantly surprised as to how many downloads I got over the weekend.
As compared to when I had "Bride-and-Seek" for free with 360 downloads and "The Tulip Kiss" for free with 380 downloads, "The Proposal" brought in 694 downloads (almost double either previous offer) from the US, UK, Germany (DE) and France (FR), actually only gaining one download from France. I did have one actual sale of "The Tulip Kiss" during this offer.
I totally hope there will be an upswing in my sales but that remains to be seen. I'll keep you posted more on my weekly posting (This and That) concerning actual sales and what not.
See you all in the postings - E :)
Showing posts with label free ebooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free ebooks. Show all posts
Monday, April 02, 2012
Saturday, March 31, 2012
The Proposal - Free today
My second place winning story, "The Proposal" (an April Fools Day story), is free today and tomorrow for the kindle only. You can find the story here. Remember you don't need a kindle to download the stories - all you need is the free app available from Amazon and then you can download the stories.
Also, my stories "Bride-and-Seek" (selected anthology pick) and "The Tulip Kiss" (first place winning story) are available for only 99 cents. So if you haven't already picked up these stories you may enjoy reading a couple of short, paranormal (ghost) romance stories, these are for you.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Misled and disappointed
I'm talking about the KDP select program and my February report - after looking it over and seeing my royalties (not mind blowing and not enough to even buy a meal anywhere).
The KDP select program allows authors/publishers to reach the prime members (only in the US, those folks who pay the $79/year to get free shipping on all their amazon orders, free streaming videos and one free "borrow" a month (you guessed it - out of hundreds of thousands of ebooks available, they only can borrow one book a month).
This is the first paragraph of the terms and conditions for the KDP select program: KDP Select is an option for KDP publishers. Through KDP Select, for an initial period of 90 days your Digital Book is exclusive to Kindle and is included in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library Program where it will earn a share of a monthly cash fund when readers borrow it. Also, you can promote your Digital Book as free for up to 5 days during these 90 days. Before including your book in KDP Select, please read these terms and conditions carefully.
Now, let's look at it sentence by sentence:
KDP Select is an option for KDP publishers. - yes it is an option and no one says we have to participate in the program.
Through KDP Select, for an initial period of 90 days your Digital Book is exclusive to Kindle and is included in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library Program where it will earn a share of a monthly cash fund when readers borrow it. The lending library is for those folks who pay their $79/year to get a few benefits from Amazon. So I ask you this, why would someone want to only borrow one book a month? Especially when there are hundreds of thousands of ebooks available. What is going to make all those prime members want to borrow a ghostly romance story over say a thriller or a different type of ghost story? After they borrow their one book (and just to let you know when they borrow a book it is for an indefinite amount of time - they don't have to return it like in a regular library where you borrow a book for 2 weeks or 3 weeks (depending on the library's lending time) and can either renew your borrow time or you have to return the book or if you return it late, you are charged a fee on a daily basis), then if they want ebooks do they have to pay for them just like everyone else does? And why is the prime membership only opened to the United States since Amazon has kindle and ebooks available in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the UK? Basically if readers don't borrow your book you make no money other than your regular sales royalties.
Also, you can promote your Digital Book as free for up to 5 days during these 90 days. So if we can promote our book as free for these 5 days and the book is available in the lending library, what happens if a prime member downloads the book during that free ptomotion? We have downloads but we are no longer earning money on those downloads, even if a prime member is the one downloading the book, because when it is offered for free, everyone who has a kindle or a free app that Amazon offers can now download the book. It is not considered a borrow even though those prime members are probably downloading the book. It becomes a sale now.
This to me is the misleading statement. If you are allowed to promote your book as free during this 90-day exclusivity term with Amazon in this particular program, why not pay out on those downloads too? Your book is still in the lending library; you are giving everyone a chance to get your book for free and allowing prime members to be able to download more than one book in a month.
The other part of the disappointment for me is that I've seen many authors who blog about their actual "sales" after their free promotion days and the numbers are running in the hundreds to thousands afterwards. Grant it I have only short stories to offer but even after reaching #7 on the Amazon best selling free list during my free promotion time, I saw maybe 2 or 3 sales. How does an author garner those hundreds of sales after running a story for free?
My stories aren't written poorly and aren't bad stories by any means. And I'm not just bragging on my stories but the merits of winning first, second, third place or runner up and being selected in a very exclusive anthology. If the stories weren't written well or up to the judging persons' or contest persons' standards and/or requirements, they wouldn't have placed anywhere. "The Tulip Kiss" is my first place story. "The Proposal" is a second place winning story. "Bride-and-Seek" was selected (this is a blind selection as the judges only get the stories; they don't know who writes the stories as the editor of the anthology has the cover sheets so it makes the playing field even. There is no chance a judge would select their friends' stories or only the people with whom they are familiar with their writing or their style of writing) and published in the SCWW anthology. By being selected for that anthology, we are paid a small amount for the story, plus 2 copies of the anthology.
So by other people's decisions, I've been told my stories are good and written well. So why are my sales not reflecting the word of mouth advertisement or the places they have taken in various contests? Why did I not really see a difference in pre-free day offerings' sales and post-free day offerings' sales? Did I gain about 350 readers who are anxiously awaiting my next free promotion? Maybe, but if I truly gained those readers, they would have bought my other stories in addition to downloading the free offering at the time, or, on the other hand, they would have told their friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers that I had a short story being offered for free. They would have been my promotion, because we all know that word of mouth is what sells anything - books, movies, restaurants, and the list goes on and on. Person A likes such and such movie and tells Person B and Person C who then tell two people, et cetera. (That reminds me of the old Farrah Fawcett commercial for Breck Shampoo - I told two friends and they told two friends and the image keeps multiplying for the two friends each two friends tells. That is how word of mouth advertising works.)
So how am I to compete with all these people who are bragging about their actual sales after their free offerings? What do I have to do? I've added several titles and more are coming. I know I don't offer novels other than my YA paranormal mystery because I only write short stories. I do well writing short stories. Finally Home was a challenge because at that time I hadn't written anything over 10,000 words and probably nothing over about 8,000 words. I'd only known contests and most contests are looking for under 5,000 word stories, and many are a lot less than that.
I know reviews aren't super reliable but they are a way of expressing your thoughts and feelings about a book or story and they do help garner sales in the long run. The buying public looks to see how many reviews you have and then how the reviewers are ranking the stories. They tend to look at stories that have received 4 and 5 star reviews. My take on the rating system is this - no one in my opinion deserves a 5 star review because no one is perfect. Yes there are some excellent stories out there and yes I do think there are stories that are deserving of 5 star reviews; as a matter of fact, I know one I would definitely rate as a 5 star because it was THAT good. I would love if it the reviews reflected more options - because I've felt that many stories are 4-1/2 star worthy because they aren't quite at the 5 star place; but then again, this is my opinion. I would love to see some of those 350 people who downloaded my two stories ("Bride-and-Seek" and "The Tulip Kiss") post reviews. It may boost my sales or it may not but it's worth a try.
What does all this mean for my stories? Basically in a nutshell - I tried the select program; was disappointed and will move on. Come May when all my stories come out of the select program, they will once again go up all the other avenues available for ebook downloads. Does this mean I may never go back to the select program? Not really, but I'll consider it very carefully before doing it again.
There will be more stories coming out but they will not be exclusive to kindle from here on out. I also have removed the remaining free promotion days for "The Tulip Kiss" and "Bride-and-Seek" but am leaving the free promotion days for "The Proposal", although I'm only going to offer it for free for 2 days instead of the original 3 days mentioned in an earlier post. March 31 and April 1 is when I'll offer "The Proposal" for free. There won't be any more free offerings of the other stories. Until next time, see ya'll in the postings
The KDP select program allows authors/publishers to reach the prime members (only in the US, those folks who pay the $79/year to get free shipping on all their amazon orders, free streaming videos and one free "borrow" a month (you guessed it - out of hundreds of thousands of ebooks available, they only can borrow one book a month).
This is the first paragraph of the terms and conditions for the KDP select program: KDP Select is an option for KDP publishers. Through KDP Select, for an initial period of 90 days your Digital Book is exclusive to Kindle and is included in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library Program where it will earn a share of a monthly cash fund when readers borrow it. Also, you can promote your Digital Book as free for up to 5 days during these 90 days. Before including your book in KDP Select, please read these terms and conditions carefully.
Now, let's look at it sentence by sentence:
KDP Select is an option for KDP publishers. - yes it is an option and no one says we have to participate in the program.
Through KDP Select, for an initial period of 90 days your Digital Book is exclusive to Kindle and is included in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library Program where it will earn a share of a monthly cash fund when readers borrow it. The lending library is for those folks who pay their $79/year to get a few benefits from Amazon. So I ask you this, why would someone want to only borrow one book a month? Especially when there are hundreds of thousands of ebooks available. What is going to make all those prime members want to borrow a ghostly romance story over say a thriller or a different type of ghost story? After they borrow their one book (and just to let you know when they borrow a book it is for an indefinite amount of time - they don't have to return it like in a regular library where you borrow a book for 2 weeks or 3 weeks (depending on the library's lending time) and can either renew your borrow time or you have to return the book or if you return it late, you are charged a fee on a daily basis), then if they want ebooks do they have to pay for them just like everyone else does? And why is the prime membership only opened to the United States since Amazon has kindle and ebooks available in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the UK? Basically if readers don't borrow your book you make no money other than your regular sales royalties.
Also, you can promote your Digital Book as free for up to 5 days during these 90 days. So if we can promote our book as free for these 5 days and the book is available in the lending library, what happens if a prime member downloads the book during that free ptomotion? We have downloads but we are no longer earning money on those downloads, even if a prime member is the one downloading the book, because when it is offered for free, everyone who has a kindle or a free app that Amazon offers can now download the book. It is not considered a borrow even though those prime members are probably downloading the book. It becomes a sale now.
This to me is the misleading statement. If you are allowed to promote your book as free during this 90-day exclusivity term with Amazon in this particular program, why not pay out on those downloads too? Your book is still in the lending library; you are giving everyone a chance to get your book for free and allowing prime members to be able to download more than one book in a month.
The other part of the disappointment for me is that I've seen many authors who blog about their actual "sales" after their free promotion days and the numbers are running in the hundreds to thousands afterwards. Grant it I have only short stories to offer but even after reaching #7 on the Amazon best selling free list during my free promotion time, I saw maybe 2 or 3 sales. How does an author garner those hundreds of sales after running a story for free?
My stories aren't written poorly and aren't bad stories by any means. And I'm not just bragging on my stories but the merits of winning first, second, third place or runner up and being selected in a very exclusive anthology. If the stories weren't written well or up to the judging persons' or contest persons' standards and/or requirements, they wouldn't have placed anywhere. "The Tulip Kiss" is my first place story. "The Proposal" is a second place winning story. "Bride-and-Seek" was selected (this is a blind selection as the judges only get the stories; they don't know who writes the stories as the editor of the anthology has the cover sheets so it makes the playing field even. There is no chance a judge would select their friends' stories or only the people with whom they are familiar with their writing or their style of writing) and published in the SCWW anthology. By being selected for that anthology, we are paid a small amount for the story, plus 2 copies of the anthology.
So by other people's decisions, I've been told my stories are good and written well. So why are my sales not reflecting the word of mouth advertisement or the places they have taken in various contests? Why did I not really see a difference in pre-free day offerings' sales and post-free day offerings' sales? Did I gain about 350 readers who are anxiously awaiting my next free promotion? Maybe, but if I truly gained those readers, they would have bought my other stories in addition to downloading the free offering at the time, or, on the other hand, they would have told their friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers that I had a short story being offered for free. They would have been my promotion, because we all know that word of mouth is what sells anything - books, movies, restaurants, and the list goes on and on. Person A likes such and such movie and tells Person B and Person C who then tell two people, et cetera. (That reminds me of the old Farrah Fawcett commercial for Breck Shampoo - I told two friends and they told two friends and the image keeps multiplying for the two friends each two friends tells. That is how word of mouth advertising works.)
So how am I to compete with all these people who are bragging about their actual sales after their free offerings? What do I have to do? I've added several titles and more are coming. I know I don't offer novels other than my YA paranormal mystery because I only write short stories. I do well writing short stories. Finally Home was a challenge because at that time I hadn't written anything over 10,000 words and probably nothing over about 8,000 words. I'd only known contests and most contests are looking for under 5,000 word stories, and many are a lot less than that.
I know reviews aren't super reliable but they are a way of expressing your thoughts and feelings about a book or story and they do help garner sales in the long run. The buying public looks to see how many reviews you have and then how the reviewers are ranking the stories. They tend to look at stories that have received 4 and 5 star reviews. My take on the rating system is this - no one in my opinion deserves a 5 star review because no one is perfect. Yes there are some excellent stories out there and yes I do think there are stories that are deserving of 5 star reviews; as a matter of fact, I know one I would definitely rate as a 5 star because it was THAT good. I would love if it the reviews reflected more options - because I've felt that many stories are 4-1/2 star worthy because they aren't quite at the 5 star place; but then again, this is my opinion. I would love to see some of those 350 people who downloaded my two stories ("Bride-and-Seek" and "The Tulip Kiss") post reviews. It may boost my sales or it may not but it's worth a try.
What does all this mean for my stories? Basically in a nutshell - I tried the select program; was disappointed and will move on. Come May when all my stories come out of the select program, they will once again go up all the other avenues available for ebook downloads. Does this mean I may never go back to the select program? Not really, but I'll consider it very carefully before doing it again.
There will be more stories coming out but they will not be exclusive to kindle from here on out. I also have removed the remaining free promotion days for "The Tulip Kiss" and "Bride-and-Seek" but am leaving the free promotion days for "The Proposal", although I'm only going to offer it for free for 2 days instead of the original 3 days mentioned in an earlier post. March 31 and April 1 is when I'll offer "The Proposal" for free. There won't be any more free offerings of the other stories. Until next time, see ya'll in the postings
Friday, February 17, 2012
Ebook descriptions and freebies calendar
I've decided to take all my short stories and put them in the KDP select program to see if I can generate some sales for all my stories. I will leave Finally Home available for Nook and through smashwords (available for all ereaders and PCs) but have just put "The Proposal" and "The Tulip Kiss" in the KDP select program. What this means is that I'm going to run some freebie days for each of the stories and see what I can generate interest wise. All these stories have placed in various contests or been selected for anthology inclusion, so I don't understand why the stories really aren't selling at 99 cents.
Remember that when these stories are offered for free on amazon, you don't need an actual kindle to download them; you can download the free kindle app for your phone, tablet, computer, et cetera. This will allow you to download the stories for free during the time they are offered for free or purchase them when they are regular price.
Here's the setup on the stories:
"Bride-and-Seek" was a selected piece in the SC Writers Workshop anthology, the Petigru Review, which was published for the annual conference in 2008. The selection process is blind and not everyone who submitted a piece gets selected. This story was written as a challenge back a few years ago when my friend sent me a "Haunted Realms" Calendar and Covington Manor was one of the featured places (all the haunted places are based in the UK and overseas). The story goes that the Lord of Covington Manor and his new bride had come back to the manor (they got married around Christmastime or on Christmas) and the bride had the wedding party engage in a game of hide-and-seek. She went off to hide and they all looked for her but no one found her. Rumors were said that she ran away. The groom continued his search for her but to no avail and finally gave into his broken heart, dying some months or years later, still searching for her. It is said that some years after his death a servant was cleaning the manor either to put it for sale or spring cleaning or whatever and stumbled upon a locked trunk in the attic. When he opened the trunk, he found the remains of a woman in a wedding dress. This is presumed to be the bride who went missing all those years ago. I've taken that description of what supposedly happened and rewrote the story with the same ending. I'm listing this story as a paranormal romance (love story with a ghostly twist to it) "Bride-and-Seek" is currently 99 cents and is available for kindle download only. It was just offered as a Valentine's Day freebie with a resultant 360 (maybe 361) downloads over the 48-hour period. It will be "free" again in March and April.
"The Tulip Kiss" is a first place winner in Echelon Press's fast and frigid themed contest (January 2007). We were given the theme frigid for January and had to write a short story based on the theme. My award was ebook publication for six months as the first place winner. The cover depicts a winter scene on an icy, back road where tragedy has just struck a young couple. The tulips come in from my husband's family being dutch and at one point, the Elderings were known for their tulips. This is a love story with a ghostly twist. "The Tulip Kiss" is currently 99 cents and will be offered for free the end of February, a couple of days in March and again in May.
"The Proposal" is the second place winner in Armchair Interviews April Fools Day contest. The basis for this story was that we were given a list of eight words and to incorporate several of them into the story and had to write a humorous romance short story. To date, other than the current free downloads on "Bride-and-Seek", "The Proposal" has been one of my bestselling stories. Even during my freebie days for "Bride-and-Seek", I gained 1 or 2 downloads of this story. I also had it on Smashwords and Nook but took it off both those sites and listed exclusively on kindle this week. "The Proposal" is currently 99 cents and will be run for free the end of March/first part of April as I want to see how well a "holiday" themed story does when it is offered for free during said "holiday" (yes, I know that April Fools Day is not a holiday but it's a fun-filled, practical joke day and that's exactly what you will find in "The Proposal").
"Butterfly Halves" (coming soon) will be added to the calendar once it is published. This story is a runner up in Echelon Press's fast and fanciful themed contest (March 2007) and is about two sisters who both want a butterfly necklace but when they fight over the necklace and it breaks, they find themselves in a different dimension in the future in their lives as they have dreamed of them being. This was a bit whimsical and fun to write. Once it is published, it will be listed for 99 cents and I'll determine free days at a later time.
I have two more stories, "Zombies Amuck" (a second place winning story for a local writing group) and "La Cave" (or "The Cellar" - still am undecided whether to list it in the French title or the English title - but will have to decide when Heather tells me yes she will do a cover for it and whichever she chooses for the cover will be what I go with). More on these two stories when it gets closer time to publishing them (if I get them published - lol). They will both sell for 99 cents when they are published.
Here is the calendar of upcoming free days for the stories:
February 29/March 1 - "The Tulip Kiss"
March 21 - "Bride-and-Seek"
March 21/March 22 - "The Tulip Kiss"
March 31/April 2 - "The Proposal"
April 25/April 26 - "Bride-and-Seek"
May 16 - "The Tulip Kiss"
I've only scheduled 3 days for "The Proposal" for now but will play that by ear as to when the next two free days will be scheduled.
I hope you all enjoy my stories and will tell all your friends and promote the free days as much as you can. I appreciate your support and following. Still looking for followers to receive a free ebook version of my YA paranormal mystery, Finally Home. When I reach 150 followers on this blog, you will be contacted with a coupon code for you to download the story. Please pass the word.
Also, the red/white/blue afghan drawing is still opened. The chances are only $1.50 per one chance or you can purchase 10 for $12 (that's a $3 savings over the individual chance). The drawing will be December 1 with the afghan being mailed out around the 7th of December. For more details on the drawing and purchase links, visit either The JGDS website or my main website and check the events pages.
My work in progress, Imogene: Innocense Lost is still that - a work in progress but there are some things in my head about the story. I hope to publish this story sometime at the beginning of 2013. It will be available in print as an ebook (all places - kindle, smashwords and nook). I need to really sit down and work on it so that I will be ready to publish next year. See you all in the postings - E :)
Remember that when these stories are offered for free on amazon, you don't need an actual kindle to download them; you can download the free kindle app for your phone, tablet, computer, et cetera. This will allow you to download the stories for free during the time they are offered for free or purchase them when they are regular price.
Here's the setup on the stories:
"Bride-and-Seek" was a selected piece in the SC Writers Workshop anthology, the Petigru Review, which was published for the annual conference in 2008. The selection process is blind and not everyone who submitted a piece gets selected. This story was written as a challenge back a few years ago when my friend sent me a "Haunted Realms" Calendar and Covington Manor was one of the featured places (all the haunted places are based in the UK and overseas). The story goes that the Lord of Covington Manor and his new bride had come back to the manor (they got married around Christmastime or on Christmas) and the bride had the wedding party engage in a game of hide-and-seek. She went off to hide and they all looked for her but no one found her. Rumors were said that she ran away. The groom continued his search for her but to no avail and finally gave into his broken heart, dying some months or years later, still searching for her. It is said that some years after his death a servant was cleaning the manor either to put it for sale or spring cleaning or whatever and stumbled upon a locked trunk in the attic. When he opened the trunk, he found the remains of a woman in a wedding dress. This is presumed to be the bride who went missing all those years ago. I've taken that description of what supposedly happened and rewrote the story with the same ending. I'm listing this story as a paranormal romance (love story with a ghostly twist to it) "Bride-and-Seek" is currently 99 cents and is available for kindle download only. It was just offered as a Valentine's Day freebie with a resultant 360 (maybe 361) downloads over the 48-hour period. It will be "free" again in March and April.
"The Tulip Kiss" is a first place winner in Echelon Press's fast and frigid themed contest (January 2007). We were given the theme frigid for January and had to write a short story based on the theme. My award was ebook publication for six months as the first place winner. The cover depicts a winter scene on an icy, back road where tragedy has just struck a young couple. The tulips come in from my husband's family being dutch and at one point, the Elderings were known for their tulips. This is a love story with a ghostly twist. "The Tulip Kiss" is currently 99 cents and will be offered for free the end of February, a couple of days in March and again in May.
"The Proposal" is the second place winner in Armchair Interviews April Fools Day contest. The basis for this story was that we were given a list of eight words and to incorporate several of them into the story and had to write a humorous romance short story. To date, other than the current free downloads on "Bride-and-Seek", "The Proposal" has been one of my bestselling stories. Even during my freebie days for "Bride-and-Seek", I gained 1 or 2 downloads of this story. I also had it on Smashwords and Nook but took it off both those sites and listed exclusively on kindle this week. "The Proposal" is currently 99 cents and will be run for free the end of March/first part of April as I want to see how well a "holiday" themed story does when it is offered for free during said "holiday" (yes, I know that April Fools Day is not a holiday but it's a fun-filled, practical joke day and that's exactly what you will find in "The Proposal").
"Butterfly Halves" (coming soon) will be added to the calendar once it is published. This story is a runner up in Echelon Press's fast and fanciful themed contest (March 2007) and is about two sisters who both want a butterfly necklace but when they fight over the necklace and it breaks, they find themselves in a different dimension in the future in their lives as they have dreamed of them being. This was a bit whimsical and fun to write. Once it is published, it will be listed for 99 cents and I'll determine free days at a later time.
I have two more stories, "Zombies Amuck" (a second place winning story for a local writing group) and "La Cave" (or "The Cellar" - still am undecided whether to list it in the French title or the English title - but will have to decide when Heather tells me yes she will do a cover for it and whichever she chooses for the cover will be what I go with). More on these two stories when it gets closer time to publishing them (if I get them published - lol). They will both sell for 99 cents when they are published.
Here is the calendar of upcoming free days for the stories:
February 29/March 1 - "The Tulip Kiss"
March 21 - "Bride-and-Seek"
March 21/March 22 - "The Tulip Kiss"
March 31/April 2 - "The Proposal"
April 25/April 26 - "Bride-and-Seek"
May 16 - "The Tulip Kiss"
I've only scheduled 3 days for "The Proposal" for now but will play that by ear as to when the next two free days will be scheduled.
I hope you all enjoy my stories and will tell all your friends and promote the free days as much as you can. I appreciate your support and following. Still looking for followers to receive a free ebook version of my YA paranormal mystery, Finally Home. When I reach 150 followers on this blog, you will be contacted with a coupon code for you to download the story. Please pass the word.
Also, the red/white/blue afghan drawing is still opened. The chances are only $1.50 per one chance or you can purchase 10 for $12 (that's a $3 savings over the individual chance). The drawing will be December 1 with the afghan being mailed out around the 7th of December. For more details on the drawing and purchase links, visit either The JGDS website or my main website and check the events pages.
My work in progress, Imogene: Innocense Lost is still that - a work in progress but there are some things in my head about the story. I hope to publish this story sometime at the beginning of 2013. It will be available in print as an ebook (all places - kindle, smashwords and nook). I need to really sit down and work on it so that I will be ready to publish next year. See you all in the postings - E :)
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
It's here - "Bride-and-Seek" free days
Today starts the free download days for "Bride-and-Seek" (you can pick it p here). You have through the end of day Wednesday to snatch up this book based on the legend of Covington Manor in the UK (newly married couple, come back to the Manor for wedding festivities; she wants to play a game of hide-and-seek; she hides and no one can find her; he dies of a broken heart and years later she is found in a locked trunk in the attic).
"Bride-and-Seek" is a twist - a love story that still ends in the same tragedy but different characters.
While you are checking out the story for free, take a look at my other downloads and see what might interest you. If you like romantic ghost stories, "The Tulip Kiss" is another tragic story of love at its peak with everything taken away in a flash. If you like humorous romance, then "The Proposal" will have you laughing and feeling sorry for Stella on her birthday which is riddled with practical jokes at a time when she thinks her man is being the most serious of all. Finally Home, my YA novel about Kelly trying to figure out why the house across the street is so important to her and her family, is also available. This novel is being compared to Nancy Drew mysteries and that it reminded the reader of the trouble Nancy Drew got into. The paranormal in this story is help from the grave by way of a mirror.
All my other books are available in print (JGDS state mystery series) with Finally Home also being in print.
Still available any of the state stories and everything else except "Bride-and-Seek" as a freebie offer in exchange for a review on any of the stories, as well as your choice of Finally Home or the two short stories "The Tulip Kiss"/"The Proposal" for following and reading this blog when I reach 150 followers.
Within the next month, I should have one more short story going up, "Butterfly Halves", a YA fantasy story which will only be available as a download for 99 cents and I may put that one in the program and offer some free days shortly after it goes up but I will have to play that by ear when I have the cover. Two more short stories are awaiting input from Heather as far as if she wants to take me on for more covers and then there is Imogene: Innocense Lost waiting to be written, so there will be more stories coming out but the state stories really do need to come first and foremost since I'm targeting teachers and librarians and homeschoolers now. Keep watching out for more stories and special deals. See you all in the postings - E :)
"Bride-and-Seek" is a twist - a love story that still ends in the same tragedy but different characters.
While you are checking out the story for free, take a look at my other downloads and see what might interest you. If you like romantic ghost stories, "The Tulip Kiss" is another tragic story of love at its peak with everything taken away in a flash. If you like humorous romance, then "The Proposal" will have you laughing and feeling sorry for Stella on her birthday which is riddled with practical jokes at a time when she thinks her man is being the most serious of all. Finally Home, my YA novel about Kelly trying to figure out why the house across the street is so important to her and her family, is also available. This novel is being compared to Nancy Drew mysteries and that it reminded the reader of the trouble Nancy Drew got into. The paranormal in this story is help from the grave by way of a mirror.
All my other books are available in print (JGDS state mystery series) with Finally Home also being in print.
Still available any of the state stories and everything else except "Bride-and-Seek" as a freebie offer in exchange for a review on any of the stories, as well as your choice of Finally Home or the two short stories "The Tulip Kiss"/"The Proposal" for following and reading this blog when I reach 150 followers.
Within the next month, I should have one more short story going up, "Butterfly Halves", a YA fantasy story which will only be available as a download for 99 cents and I may put that one in the program and offer some free days shortly after it goes up but I will have to play that by ear when I have the cover. Two more short stories are awaiting input from Heather as far as if she wants to take me on for more covers and then there is Imogene: Innocense Lost waiting to be written, so there will be more stories coming out but the state stories really do need to come first and foremost since I'm targeting teachers and librarians and homeschoolers now. Keep watching out for more stories and special deals. See you all in the postings - E :)
Saturday, February 11, 2012
This and That
It's the end of the week and here we go again - not as dismal as the previous two or three weeks, so let's start with sales:
"Bride-and-Seek" went live Sunday morning and by the end of the day there was 1 borrow (this story is listed exclusively on kindle and prime members can "borrow" books with no return dates) and 1 sale. Monday not much was going on. Tuesday, I was out and about most of the morning and upon returning and checking stats, I found another copy of "Bride-and-Seek" had sold and a copy of "The Proposal" had sold. I'll take 3 sales in a week considering I've had 0 sales for several weeks in a row. I'd really love to see 5 or so sales per title every week but I don't see me reaching that goal this year, but I'm not going to give up hope on achieving that.
Tuesday, February 14th, "Bride-and-Seek" goes up as a free download (this is for everyone who has a kindle or kindle app on any device who can download ebooks from the kindle store) and will run from 12:01 PST the 14th through 11:59 PST the 15th (you have two days to grab up this paranormal romance based on the Covington Manor (UK) legend of a husband who loses his wife to a deadly game of hide-and-seek; he never did find her and died of a broken heart.) I'll do a late night posting each day to show my rankings and bestseller's ranking throughout the week (this will be for all my books so I can see if having one book for free really does drive folks to purchase other titles and I'm hoping to pick up the foreign market for both "Bride-and-Seek" and "The Tulip Kiss" - this being that the Eldering name used to be very big with tulips in Holland and with a title like "The Tulip Kiss" with an Eldering as an author, you'd think I'd have that market already cornered but so far not; I even sent a downloadable version to my father-in-law for him to pass the word to relatives still in Holland and around other places to tell them about it but still nothing there - one of these days hopefully).
I've been keeping track of Faye Tollison's rankings this week (well the latter part of the week) as she had put her book To Tell The Truth as a free download Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week. Surprisingly her rankings did well over the 3 days but her downloads/sales weren't as high as we expected, and it certainly wasn't due to lack of promoting it as free download.
Tuesday night she started 611,000 (some odd numbers there) and when I checked Wednesday morning early - 7:30 AM - she was at the seller's ranking of 3306 with her book being bestseller's ranking of #33 in the romantic suspense category. Her seller's rankings dropped throughout the day from #33 to #26 to #19 to #16 to #15 to #14 (seller's ranking of 250 at close of day). She made it into the top 20. All day Thursday she stayed in the top 20 with a start to her day at #12 bestsellers ranking to a rise to #19 by the end of the day. Friday was even worse with a drop to starting at #17 and going to #29 near the end of the day. Her downloads over the 3 days (and this was reported from her to me) were right at 1750 in all the kindle areas (UK, DE, FR, ES, IT and USA). She is scheduling one of her next free days on March 29th when she appears on Your Carolina with Jack Roper (a local celebrity here in the Carolinas) and hopefully with the appearance of her on TV and promoting her book, among other things - Heather's cover designs, my book (which I'm thankful to her for doing that but really I do a lot of promoting myself so I wish she'd just promote herself) and Sisters in Crime - her downloads will skyrocket. I keep telling her she needs to get some short stories of hers polished and put them up for 99 cents and see how sales will change (like I'm one to talk - lol; I have four stories available as ebooks and haven't really had any sales to speak of since the first of the year) because people really do look for more by an author if they like the one book they try out. No one must really like my books as stated by the sales I've had this year - lol. Maybe when I get Imogene: Innocense Lost people will like that book and start buying books, but that is a ways off.
I also did a price reduction for Finally Home from $12.99 to $11.99 print and from $3.99 to $2.99 ebook. I was thinking of reducing the state stories a bit but don't really see how I can since I still need those in-person sales and usually do discount the price at events.
Stop by Monday for the third part in my series of promoting your books from Bookstand Publishing's booklet I got from free. Am still in need of new questions from students related to writing so teachers, please send any writing questions your students may have to eeldering (at) gmail (dot) com with subject WWYWWQ; in the body, please put the student's initials (like E.E.) from (your name - like Mr Hughes') class asks question? I will respond to you/your class/your student before posting my answer on my blog. Once I have the posting ready to go, I'll send you an emailed copy of the post before it goes up to share with your class so they can see they made it on my blog - thanks everyone for participating in my weekly project of mentoring students to help them become better writers. - see you all in the postings - E :)
"Bride-and-Seek" went live Sunday morning and by the end of the day there was 1 borrow (this story is listed exclusively on kindle and prime members can "borrow" books with no return dates) and 1 sale. Monday not much was going on. Tuesday, I was out and about most of the morning and upon returning and checking stats, I found another copy of "Bride-and-Seek" had sold and a copy of "The Proposal" had sold. I'll take 3 sales in a week considering I've had 0 sales for several weeks in a row. I'd really love to see 5 or so sales per title every week but I don't see me reaching that goal this year, but I'm not going to give up hope on achieving that.
Tuesday, February 14th, "Bride-and-Seek" goes up as a free download (this is for everyone who has a kindle or kindle app on any device who can download ebooks from the kindle store) and will run from 12:01 PST the 14th through 11:59 PST the 15th (you have two days to grab up this paranormal romance based on the Covington Manor (UK) legend of a husband who loses his wife to a deadly game of hide-and-seek; he never did find her and died of a broken heart.) I'll do a late night posting each day to show my rankings and bestseller's ranking throughout the week (this will be for all my books so I can see if having one book for free really does drive folks to purchase other titles and I'm hoping to pick up the foreign market for both "Bride-and-Seek" and "The Tulip Kiss" - this being that the Eldering name used to be very big with tulips in Holland and with a title like "The Tulip Kiss" with an Eldering as an author, you'd think I'd have that market already cornered but so far not; I even sent a downloadable version to my father-in-law for him to pass the word to relatives still in Holland and around other places to tell them about it but still nothing there - one of these days hopefully).
I've been keeping track of Faye Tollison's rankings this week (well the latter part of the week) as she had put her book To Tell The Truth as a free download Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week. Surprisingly her rankings did well over the 3 days but her downloads/sales weren't as high as we expected, and it certainly wasn't due to lack of promoting it as free download.
Tuesday night she started 611,000 (some odd numbers there) and when I checked Wednesday morning early - 7:30 AM - she was at the seller's ranking of 3306 with her book being bestseller's ranking of #33 in the romantic suspense category. Her seller's rankings dropped throughout the day from #33 to #26 to #19 to #16 to #15 to #14 (seller's ranking of 250 at close of day). She made it into the top 20. All day Thursday she stayed in the top 20 with a start to her day at #12 bestsellers ranking to a rise to #19 by the end of the day. Friday was even worse with a drop to starting at #17 and going to #29 near the end of the day. Her downloads over the 3 days (and this was reported from her to me) were right at 1750 in all the kindle areas (UK, DE, FR, ES, IT and USA). She is scheduling one of her next free days on March 29th when she appears on Your Carolina with Jack Roper (a local celebrity here in the Carolinas) and hopefully with the appearance of her on TV and promoting her book, among other things - Heather's cover designs, my book (which I'm thankful to her for doing that but really I do a lot of promoting myself so I wish she'd just promote herself) and Sisters in Crime - her downloads will skyrocket. I keep telling her she needs to get some short stories of hers polished and put them up for 99 cents and see how sales will change (like I'm one to talk - lol; I have four stories available as ebooks and haven't really had any sales to speak of since the first of the year) because people really do look for more by an author if they like the one book they try out. No one must really like my books as stated by the sales I've had this year - lol. Maybe when I get Imogene: Innocense Lost people will like that book and start buying books, but that is a ways off.
I also did a price reduction for Finally Home from $12.99 to $11.99 print and from $3.99 to $2.99 ebook. I was thinking of reducing the state stories a bit but don't really see how I can since I still need those in-person sales and usually do discount the price at events.
Stop by Monday for the third part in my series of promoting your books from Bookstand Publishing's booklet I got from free. Am still in need of new questions from students related to writing so teachers, please send any writing questions your students may have to eeldering (at) gmail (dot) com with subject WWYWWQ; in the body, please put the student's initials (like E.E.) from (your name - like Mr Hughes') class asks question? I will respond to you/your class/your student before posting my answer on my blog. Once I have the posting ready to go, I'll send you an emailed copy of the post before it goes up to share with your class so they can see they made it on my blog - thanks everyone for participating in my weekly project of mentoring students to help them become better writers. - see you all in the postings - E :)
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Motivation and Inspiration
Kim Baccellia over at the YA Authors You've Never Heard Of posted last Sunday (the 22nd) a posting on what is motivating her to write. She posted a video of the song "Unwritten" and then an episode of "Roswell".
I too have been lacking motivational wise to write. I have a ton of stories to complete (okay a few state stories) and am not motivated to get them written. I don't know what is up with that but I really need to get them written, edited and published since I have 44 more to get done over the course of the next 8 years.
Also, sometime the week before reading Kim's posting, daughter and I were chatting and I was reading her a bit of my new novel, Imogene: Innocense Lost and she asked me, "Where do you come up with your characters' names?"... "You have Sarah Beth in this one and Mary Beth in the other one, and Matt, and what's the other girl's name? and Matt's friend - oh yeah Guy" at which point she decided Guy for a name was funny. My answer was that the names kind of come to me when I write a little bit of a story. Somtimes I may have a name in mind and sometimes the names take a while to come up with. I have to do some research through baby name sites and sometimes look up what the meaning of the name is before deciding whether it is the name I need to be using.
Imogene came to me while I was writing the first scene of the story (and this may or may not really show up in the story because I think the story really starts with the next part) and Sarah Beth was the other name that came to me. I wrote the first couple of paragraphs with Sarah Beth being the daughter and Imogene being the mother, but as I wrote a few more sentences, I suddenly changed the names around. Imogene became the daughter. I can't explain what inspired me to do that but it happened. Now I have a very clear picture of who Imogene was and who she has become over the 10 years the story occurs; the story actually will be over a short period of time - a month or less but really starts ten years prior to the actual story that will be told when Imogene goes missing while the family is abroad.
How do we go from the inspiration to the motivation to get the stories written? It really isn't an easy task but if we are serious enough to take on writing stories and want to make this our chosen profession, we must keep at it.
I've had students ask similar questions - what is your inspiration for this? or what motivates you to write? - and I'm sure the answers they are looking for are something on the lines of fame and fortune but that isn't why we become writers. The money would be nice but I only would like to earn enough from my books to support me or to have all my events and book related expenses covered as well as travel funds and enough left over that I can pay my bills.
I'd be happy if someone were to contact me and say, "We really like your books and think you have a wonderful concept here; We'd like to sponsor your state books" and put money down to cover all my expenses with no worries of how events will be paid for, hotels, travel, et cetera; but for now, I will have to keep plugging away, taking my inspirations and going with the flow and keep myself motivated to write whatever it is that needs to be written (and right now it looks like Imogene is begging to be written). No more back burners; now is the time to write (this week will be an especially good one for me as all the hand clinic doctors will be out of the office and what little bit of work we have won't amount to much for any of us).
So if you are an author, what keeps you motivated to write your stories? What inspires you or inspired you in the first place to write your stories? Comments welcome on the topic. E :)
PS - don't forget I'm doing ebook giveaways for followers. When I reach 150 followers on this blog, I'll send you a code to download either Finally Home or both "The Tulip Kiss" and "The Proposal"; just for being a follower. Basically 150 downloads will be given away. I only need 59 more folks to follow the blog to start contacting you all to get your download to you.
Keep on writing and see you all in the postings - E :)
I too have been lacking motivational wise to write. I have a ton of stories to complete (okay a few state stories) and am not motivated to get them written. I don't know what is up with that but I really need to get them written, edited and published since I have 44 more to get done over the course of the next 8 years.
Also, sometime the week before reading Kim's posting, daughter and I were chatting and I was reading her a bit of my new novel, Imogene: Innocense Lost and she asked me, "Where do you come up with your characters' names?"... "You have Sarah Beth in this one and Mary Beth in the other one, and Matt, and what's the other girl's name? and Matt's friend - oh yeah Guy" at which point she decided Guy for a name was funny. My answer was that the names kind of come to me when I write a little bit of a story. Somtimes I may have a name in mind and sometimes the names take a while to come up with. I have to do some research through baby name sites and sometimes look up what the meaning of the name is before deciding whether it is the name I need to be using.
Imogene came to me while I was writing the first scene of the story (and this may or may not really show up in the story because I think the story really starts with the next part) and Sarah Beth was the other name that came to me. I wrote the first couple of paragraphs with Sarah Beth being the daughter and Imogene being the mother, but as I wrote a few more sentences, I suddenly changed the names around. Imogene became the daughter. I can't explain what inspired me to do that but it happened. Now I have a very clear picture of who Imogene was and who she has become over the 10 years the story occurs; the story actually will be over a short period of time - a month or less but really starts ten years prior to the actual story that will be told when Imogene goes missing while the family is abroad.
How do we go from the inspiration to the motivation to get the stories written? It really isn't an easy task but if we are serious enough to take on writing stories and want to make this our chosen profession, we must keep at it.
I've had students ask similar questions - what is your inspiration for this? or what motivates you to write? - and I'm sure the answers they are looking for are something on the lines of fame and fortune but that isn't why we become writers. The money would be nice but I only would like to earn enough from my books to support me or to have all my events and book related expenses covered as well as travel funds and enough left over that I can pay my bills.
I'd be happy if someone were to contact me and say, "We really like your books and think you have a wonderful concept here; We'd like to sponsor your state books" and put money down to cover all my expenses with no worries of how events will be paid for, hotels, travel, et cetera; but for now, I will have to keep plugging away, taking my inspirations and going with the flow and keep myself motivated to write whatever it is that needs to be written (and right now it looks like Imogene is begging to be written). No more back burners; now is the time to write (this week will be an especially good one for me as all the hand clinic doctors will be out of the office and what little bit of work we have won't amount to much for any of us).
So if you are an author, what keeps you motivated to write your stories? What inspires you or inspired you in the first place to write your stories? Comments welcome on the topic. E :)
PS - don't forget I'm doing ebook giveaways for followers. When I reach 150 followers on this blog, I'll send you a code to download either Finally Home or both "The Tulip Kiss" and "The Proposal"; just for being a follower. Basically 150 downloads will be given away. I only need 59 more folks to follow the blog to start contacting you all to get your download to you.
Keep on writing and see you all in the postings - E :)
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Giveaway - free ebooks
My followers are slowly climbing and I thank you for that. So, to thank you all for following me, when I reach 150 followers on this blog, I'm going to give each of you a free ebook - your choice of either Finally Home or the two short stories "The Proposal" and "The Tulip Kiss". I'll contact you all through your profile so please make sure you have an email available. No need to sign up or leave a comment or anything. Just recommend folks to follow my blog and when the 150th person is showing as following, I'll send out emails asking which you would like to receive - E :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)