“Twisted”: An Unusual Body Switching Tale
Posted: September 21, 2018 Filed under: Book Review, Books, Dark Fantasy, Paranormal, romance, Romantic Comedy, Speculative Fiction | Tags: Book Review, Dark Fantasty, Humor, Paranormal Romance, RA Winter, Speculative Fiction, Twisted, vampires, werewolves 3 Comments
We’ve all heard tales which involved body switching, but what does one do when they are switched into the body of, not only the opposite sex, but that of a different species, one that is your sworn enemy? Twisted is a Vampire Werewolf Freaky Friday novelette, by R.A. Winter which deals with just such a delimma. And the worst part is, they are going to have to work together if they want to save their world.
This funny, quirky novelette explores the unthinkable and makes it believable and entertaining. The humor is on the adult side and may be a little over the top for the YA crowd, but it will keep the pages turning. It’s a fun read andI give Twisted five quills.
Kaye Lynne Booth does honest book reviews on Writing to be Read in exchange for ARCs. Have a book you’d like reviewed? Contact Kaye at kayebooth(at)yahoo(dot)com.
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Writing for a YA Audience: Boo! There’s a ghost behind you.
Posted: September 19, 2018 Filed under: Fiction, Paranormal, Speculative Fiction, Writing, Writing for a YA Audience, Young Adult | Tags: Ghost Stories, Ghosts, Jordan Elizabeth, Paranormal, YA, Young Adult, Young Adult Fiction Leave a comment
Ghost stories have always fascinated me. I’m obsessed with history, so I see ghosts as a link to the past. They’re our chance to communicate with those who came before. Plus, the mystery surrounding ghosts is fascinating.
Ghost stories are prevalent in young adult fiction, as well as non-fiction. Whenever I visit a new locale, I always check out books on local ghosts. You can see I love ghosts, right? They tend to drift into my writing more often than not. My young adult novel, VICTORIAN, centers around ghosts in an abandoned village where visitors come to relive the past. ESCAPE FROM WITCHWOOD HOLLOW features a ghost child trapped by a witch’s curse. TREASURE DARKLY tells the story of Clark Treasure, a young man who receives the gift of communicating – and raising – the dead.
Oftentimes, I’m asked if I believe in ghosts. That’s a big yes. I’ve even experienced a few ghostly happenings.
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Ever since I was a small child, I’ve had people say my name, voices no one else hears. It doesn’t happen all the time and the voices never answer if I reply. I always turn to find no one behind me. The earliest time I can remember was when I was driving by Lake Delta. A voice came from beside me on the back seat. “Jordan!” No one was there and my parents hadn’t heard it. More recently (a few years ago), I was working in a renovated woolen mill. This building of weathered brick was infamous in the neighborhood for its hauntings. I never saw or felt a presence, but twice a female called my name from directly behind me when I was alone in an office with a closed door – and the only other person in the building was a male custodian.
I was a recent high school graduate when one of my grandmother’s close friends passed away. She and I were in her bedroom when the phone rang, My dog – the only one else in the house – was also in the bedroom. While my grandmother was learning about the passing from her friend’s daughter, a box of candy flew off the kitchen table and slid across the floor. It had been on the center of the table and we hadn’t experienced an earthquake. Nothing else in the house moved. I like to think it was the friend’s way of saying goodbye.
The other ghostly goodbye came while I was at my then-boyfriend’s house. I suddenly had an eerie feeling. The world wasn’t quite right. After a few minutes, I went to get a drink. As soon as I walked into the other room, a female voice said my name directly behind me. Almost instantly, the eerie feeling passed. I learned the next day that my father’s aunt had died. I’d only met her a few times, but perhaps she had done her rounds through the family to say farewell.
I’ve been on plenty of ghost tours, but only once did I catch an orb on film. A local church is connected to a mansion with giant pillars, beautiful windows, and embellished rooms. The mansion is breathtaking. A friend hooked my parents and I up with an exclusive tour. Many people have claimed to have experienced ghostly happenings, but we didn’t see or feel anything. I did, however, catch a clear orb in a picture of the upstairs sitting room. Ghost or dust? I like to think it’s a ghost saying hello.
Photo by OVAN on Pexels.com
Have you had any ghostly experiences? If you have, share them with us below!
Jordan Elizabeth is a young adult fantasy author. She may or may not be staring at a supposedly haunted house trying to see faces in the windows. You can connect with Jordan – and point her in the direction of some paranormal activity – via her website, JordanElizabethBooks.com.
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Interview with Multi-Genre Author R.A. Winter
Posted: September 17, 2018 Filed under: Author Profile, Book Covers, Books, Contemporary Romance, Fantasy, Fiction, Interview, Paranormal, romance, Speculative Fiction, Western, Writing | Tags: Author Interview, Contemporary Romance, Mystic, Native American, Paranormal, Paranormal Romance, R.A. Winter, Spirit Keys series, Twisted, Western 2 Comments
I recently made the acquaintance of the energetic, sassy author, R.A. Winter. She writes in several genres, including fantasy, magical realism, dark fantasy, , time travel romance, contemporary Native American romance, and paranormal Native American western. And it seems she never rests when it comes to writing. Please help me to welcome R.A. Winter to Writing to be Read.
Kaye: Hello and welcome. Would you start by sharing the story of your own publishing journey?
R.A.: I started out writing genealogy nonfiction books under my married name. I love research and old libraries! I also love reading romances. With so many ideas flirting around my head, I thought I’d give creative writing a go.
Kaye: Is there anything unique or unusual about your writing process?
R.A.: I write the raunchiest first draft, the humor is way over the top. Then I cut it down, and my crit circle cuts it down further. My editor slices more. They say that a bit of humor goes a long way.
Kaye: You have sites on both WordPress and Wix. Can you give us the advantages and disadvantages of each? Which site do you prefer? Why?
R.A.: Wix is easier to deal with, super simple to navigate and change. WordPress is a bit of a pickle to deal with, and every time I change something, I mess up the page. I do prefer WordPress because I can easily share review and pages on a whim. Wix doesn’t give you that option.
Kaye: You’re on the review team at The Naked Reviewers, where authors can submit a book and request an honest review. Would you like to tell us a little about that site and what the review process is?
R.A.: We have a group of published author on Scribophile.com who formed the group. Right now, I think there is twelve of us. When someone submits a book, we all read the first chapter, the ‘look inside’ feature on Amazon. Then we rate the writing, the blurb, and the cover. If two of us agree, we review the book. Each Wednesday, two of us leave our review as a feature, if anyone else read it, they leave their thoughts in the ‘comment’ section. It does mean that most books that we review get a 4.0 or higher rating, usually. We wanted to show off the best books.
Kaye: You had bad experience with Amazon regarding reviews. This is something we’re hearing from many authors, although complaints vary. Many reviewers, including myself, have had book reviews pulled by Amazon, with the claim that their terms of use were violated because of an existing relationship which would bias our opinions. I even heard of an reviewer whose reviews were pulled because Amazon saw that they were Facebook friends, which they claimed indicated a prior relationship. (This doesn’t make sense to me. Many authors who I have done reviews for have become virtual online friends because of the review, not the other way around.) Your experience was a bit different because it wasn’t books that you were reviewing. Would you like to tell us a little about your experience?
R.A.: I ordered products from Amazon.com. A coffee grinder, a milk frother, and a small coffee taper, they just happened to be from the same company in China. Now, I review every product I receive, but when I went to upload my reviews, Amazon wouldn’t allow it. After contacting them, they said that I had a ‘relationship’ with the company in China and that I’d violated their terms. Apparently, I ordered too many things from them. I just don’t understand. They ask you to review, you review… then they’re like… you review too much! They banned me for LIFE for writing any reviews.
My point to them was- IF I was screwing reviews, wouldn’t my books have like 300 hundred reviews instead of each of them having less then 10? I mean seriously. THAT’S what would have benefited me!
Kaye: What is one thing that your readers would never guess about you?
R.A.: I have five children… all boys. I’ve lived in 5 different countries too. I don’t know which one was harder to live through. And all my boys look like my husband.
Kaye: What are your secrets for juggling writing with family?
R.A.: My kids are older, so they don’t need me. I like to write at night, when the house is quiet and no one interrupts. My earbuds are essential, and a song list that corresponds to my writing mood.
Kaye: You have some really great covers, some of which you’ve shared here. What do you do for cover art? DIY, or hired out, or cookie cutter prefab? Do you have a great cover designer you’d like to recommend?
R.A.: Some are creations of Kayci Morgan, from KreativeCovers.com. A few I did myself, which you can probably tell. Kayci is wonderful to work with and very reasonable. I am learning Photoshop and I’m doing my own teasers. I’m getting better but I just don’t have the finesse to do covers well.
Kaye: You have a paranormal romance fantasy novella, Twisted, which I’m excited to be reviewing here on Writing to be Read. (So watch for that review on Friday.) What can you tell us about that story?
R.A.: Twisted is a novella, and one of the hardest things I’ve
written.
It’s a Freaky-Friday, body switching piece… full of adult humor. A witch’s land is cursed. Males are no longer born to the vampires, nor are females born to the wolves. To end the curse, the witch must solve a riddle, and she has to have the cooperation of the vampires and the werewolves.
Kaye: What is the strangest inspiration for a story you’ve ever had?
R.A.: My Spirit Key series was a way to keep my cat alive in my memories. He’d just past away, and Dingle had the oddest personality for a cat. He always reminded me of an old man, you know the one. The spunky old guy in the nursing home who’s constantly bugging the pretty nurses and running behind them with his walker, never able to catch them. Occasionally, he’d pinch their behinds, but act like he didn’t do it. I taught Dingle how to wink, but usually he had this grumpy look on his face. He used to love to jump out and scare me, then give me that ugh, you’re-stupid-to-fall-for-that-again look. He’s now a ten-thousand year old spirit who has a bit of trickster in him.
Kaye: Your Spirit Key series are westerns with a bit of a different twist to them. Would you like to tell us about them?
R.A.: Contemporary Native American’s in a western setting with magical realism is the gist of the Spirit Key Series. In book 1, we follow young Sara, as the ghosts of ancestors haunt her days and try to keep her away from young RedHorse. There’s a new spirit in town, a nefarious one who has his own agenda. The Old One wants the land for the dead and he’ll do anything to have it, including taking away what Sara loves most.
Kaye: There are two books in The Spirit Key series: Painted Girl and Redhorse. What type of research did you do for these books?
R.A.: The first two book are contemporary, set in modern day Kansas on a farm. Books 3 and 4 (which are almost finished) go back to 1950, and we delve into Grandfather’s life, and that of the ten-thousand year old spirit who watches over them. My research centered on the old Indian Schools, and the horrors that the children underwent. It’s all to stop the spirits from invading this world, and to give grandfather his happy ending. The Native American research is from my family.
Kaye: You also write contemporary romance with a Native American twist. What about Little Sparrow, A Kiowa in Love or Red Dress, Two Wives?
R.A.: Those were my early books. I’ve taken the ebooks down, and now I’m writing those into the Spirit Key Series. Everyone is related, so it made sense to do that. I kept the hard copies up because a few people really liked them the way they were. My writing evolved, and I thought those two would be great as part of the Spirit Key Series with some rework.
Kaye: What is the attraction for adding a Native American element to your writing?
R.A.: Two fold. My grandmother was ‘found’. It was assumed that she was Native American. This was in the 1880’s, a time when the tribes had to travel west and were forced onto reservations. Our family farm was near one of the routes and my grandfather brought home a baby girl one day, saying that he’d found her. My cousins are Sioux. I barely remember the eldest two girls but I do remember their beauty. One day, when I was only six years old, they disappeared. Just up and gone. Our family went nuts, as you can imagine. It wasn’t until twelve years later that we learned that they had been taken west to different orphanages and divided up. (This was the early ’70’s when the government still took NA children on a whim.) Anyway, my stories revolve around finding your identity when you don’t know who you are, when you have no memories of your family. My Native American family is rooted by my life stories. You know that you’re different, but you feel the same as everyone else. You just have to find your own special, because it’s there, you don’t have to go looking for it. It just may be hiding in plain sight.
Kaye: I’m also very interested in your time travel romances, As Long As I Have You and Always With You. What can you share with us about them?
R.A.: These were part of an anthology, and part of a series inside the anthology. The rules are simple, Cupid owns a bar, and his mate has a special tattoo that glows when soul mates are touched. In book 1, Ann Paolo comes to the bar with her dog. Unbeknownst to her, the dog, Han, is the spirit of a long dead Native American, who has been cursed to follow Ann through time, always to love her, and be loved, but never to be with her. Cupid sends them back in time, so Han can erase his curse. In book 2, Ann’s back, because so many lifetimes couldn’t be rewritten. This time, Cupid calls on the fates to bring Han to life in this day and time. The fates have a bit of trouble writing him into time-line, so they turn to Netflix for ideas. Han is now, Dan Winchesty, from the TV show Super-Unnatural Killers and Revealers Suckers for short. You know, Dan Winchesty- the one with the perky nipples? It’s a spoof on Supernatural, and I think it’s hilarious, but that’s just my opinion.
Kaye: What is your favorite genre to write in so far? Why?
R.A.: I love magical realism and fantasy. Creating my own world, and rules, takes a lot of thought and design. You just can’t pop something on paper, it has to make sense, have rules, have life, and you have to bring a reader into your world and make them happy.
Kaye: How much non-writing work, (marketing & promotion, illustrations & book covers, etc…), do you do yourself for your books?
R.A.: I do all my own marketing, which isn’t much. Word of mouth is my best friend, because lets face it, my works are different. I just had a review from a guy, who said that someone at work bullied him into reading it and he loved it, even with the romance in the book. I think that was a compliment.
Kaye: If one of your books was made into a film, which book would you want it to be? And who would you like to play the lead?
R.A.: Hmm, I’d love the Spirit Key to be a series on Netflix, but for a movie, I’d chose Twisted. Sam Witwer and Meaghan Rath. They had great chemistry in Being Human. Now, however, Meaghan would be a vampire, and Sam would be a wolf.
Kaye: What’s next? What does the future look like for R.A, Winter?
R.A.: Oh, I have at least six books in various stages of completion. Twisted will be turned
into a series, readers have asked for that. I’m also writing a series about Death Takers
coming alive and finding love. It’s a dark romance series that takes the reader on a
journey to Tartarus and the bowels of hell. Book 1 is finished, book 2 is halfway. Once
book 2 is ready I’ll publish.
Kaye: If writing suddenly made you rich and famous, what would you do?
R.A.: I’ve done a lot of things on my bucket list. I’ve traveled the world, lived in five different countries and enjoyed most of my life. If I had a lot of money, I’d pay off my family’s student loans. Right now, it’s around 200k, and I’m serious. It would be life changing for them to pay off their debts. BTW, I have one family member, with 100k debt who graduated from Pitt with a bachelor’s in psychology. Anyone have any job prospects for him? E-mail me.
I want to thank R.A. Winter for joining us today and putting up with my interrogation. Seriously though, she was really a good sport about answering all of my questions with open, honest answers. You can find out more about her and her writing on her website, her Spirit Keys site, or her Amazon Author Page.
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The Well-Fed Writer: How to make your writing pay
Posted: September 14, 2018 Filed under: Books, Copywriting, Nonfiction, Writing | Tags: Advertising, Book Review, Brochures, Commercial Copywriting, Emails, Flyers, Newletters, Peter Bowerman, The Well-Fed Writer, White Papers Leave a comment
As some of my friends and followers know, I’m determined to turn my writing into my full time job. With that in mind, I’ve been delving into the arena of commercial copywriters, because it’s something I can do from my home office, it involves my favorite activity of writing and allows me to make money from it, and it is something I can start out at part-time and move into full time as the money starts rolling in.
The Well-Fed Writer, by Peter Bowerman should be required reading for all freelance copywriters. Bowerman is himself a successful freelance commercial copywriter, sharing his knowledge and experience, as well as a collection of advice from other freelancers.
This book is a basic guide to building a lucrative freelance commercial copywriting service, covering everything from gaining and dealing with clients to the different types of copywriting skills there are to add to your repetoir. It offers advice from successful copywriters who are making their freelance businesses work for them and makiing their writing pay. Although it does not feature many examples of the different types of copywriting projects you might want to offer, it does give links where you can find samples and explore those avenues; from white papers, to emails, to newsletters, to brochures and flyers. And Bowerman offers suggestions for other useful books you may want as well.
The way I see it, this book is like a bare basics copywriter’s handbook, and no copywriter that is serious about his or her craft should be without it. I found The Well-Fed Writer to be very helpful in knowing which direction I need to go to get my own commercial copywriting service off the ground. I give it five quills.
Kaye Lynne Booth does honest book reviews on Writing to be Read in exchange for ARCs. Have a book you’d like reviewed? Contact Kaye at kayebooth(at)yahoo(dot)com.
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Wake Me Up When September Ends
Posted: September 10, 2018 Filed under: Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Poetry, Writing, Writing Inspiration | Tags: Memoir, Michael Daniel Lee Booth, Mother's Grief, Nonfiction, Teen Suicide Leave a comment
September is a month that I’d prefer to skip over if I could. It is not an easy month for me and hasn’t been for the last ten years. My son Michael was born on September ninth, he died on September 21 at the age of nineteen, and he was buried on September twenty-eighth. Had he lived, he would have been 30 years old yesterday. Since his death the Green Day song, Wake Me Up When September Ends, has held a special personal meaning for me, because it would be preferrable to go to sleep and not wake up until September was over each year. But of course, that isn’t possible and so, I plod through the month, struggling with my emotions, and life goes on. I haven’t forgotten, and I don’t miss him any less as time goes on, but I am now able to prevent my loss from consuming my life, as it did at first.
After he died, I felt his story needed to be told, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, even though most of what I wrote during the first two years concerned him in one way or another. The wounds were still too fresh and I couldn’t distance myself from the situation enough to write it. I always knew that it was a tale that needed to be told, and I knew I was the only person who could write it, so I saved all the files and the photos, as well as physical momentos and hand written stories and poems written by my son.
As I mentioned in a recent post, It’s All a Matter of Time, I’ve begun compiling the plethora of journals, stories, poetry and visual images I have accumulated in releation to my son, so tuning out the world and hoping September will go away is not going to work this year. I’ve gathered these materials over the past ten years since his death and they are my works, as well as his, and eventually, it will all be included in my memoir about his life and death, His Name Was Michael: How I Lost My Son to Teen Suicide. After a decade, it is time for his story to be told. The pre-writing preparations have begun and I hope to have it ready for publication by this time next year.
This September will be filled with many tears, as I read through all the materials I’ve gathered and/or written for this book. To put it all together I must read through every piece of writing and go through all the photos of him. I’m not saying that it will be easy for me, because it won’t. In fact, it will probably be one of the most difficult things I’ve ever written, but there is no one else who can do it. It’s all up to me and I feel it’s got to be written.
Michael’s story is many stories wrapped up into his tale. His story will tell the tale of an amazingly unique young man in love, who made some poor choices. It will tell who Michael Daniel Lee was and who he might have been one day, had he lived. It will tell of a mother’s grief and attempts at denial. It will tell of the coping mechanisms employed just to make it through each day after the loss of a child. It will tell of a son, who was also my best friend, and a sense of loss that is undescribable, unknowable, unfathomable. It will tell of an epidemic that sweeps through our world taking young people who have their whole lives ahead of them.
Below is the eulogy that I wrote, which I read standing before a mortuary filled with mourners for my son one week after his death. It’s one piece in the tapestry of writing that will be used to illustrate Michael’s brief time on this Earth. I hope it will pique your interest and encourage you to read the book when it comes out, hopefully by this time next year. If you’d be interested in pre-ordering the book, leave a comment letting me know and I’ll put you on the list, making sure you get your copy when the time comes. It would be great to know that someone is interested, and that I will be writing this for someone other than myself.
Michael Daniel Lee Booth
When Mike said, “I love you”, it was forever, and when he called you his friend, you knew you could depend on him to stand by you, no matter what. He loved to try new things, to explore and to learn. He had a love for life and for all that he held sacred. Mike strove for excellence in all that he did, and lived by a code of honor that was extremely tough to uphold. His Christian upbringing was intermixed with Hindu and Buddhist beliefs to make up the tapestry of his own personal belief system that was disciplined and unyielding. When he made mistakes, Mike was harder on himself than anyone else ever could have been.
When he got mixed up with the wrong people and things, he made some poor choices. He did not deny what he had done, but instead stood up and accepted the punishment that was given to him. He tried to make amends for his wrongs and was on his way to accomplishing that goal. He expressed great sorrow for his errors, and inflicted emotional punishment on himself over and above what the law could ever require of him.
He had a strong will and could accomplish anything that he set his mind to, including learning to speak Japanese and perform martial arts skillfully, all on his own. Mike had a love for Japanese culture and he could have lived off of green tea and sushi. His knowledge and skills were gladly shared with those who wished to learn. Mike had a love for nature and enjoyed all kinds of outdoor activities, including skiing, hunting, fishing and hiking. His imagination was endless and he created stories and drawings that reveal a talent far beyond his tender youth.
Mike was so much to so many people; a loving son, a dependable big brother, a doting little brother, a respectful grandson, a loyal friend and a devoted husband. He loved his dog, Zaar, who was a companion and loyal friend to him. Mike was sensitive, and hurt so easily and so deeply, yet he was too strong willed to ever let it show outwardly. Only through his writing, can we glimpse the love that he embraced or the pain that he felt. When he loved, he loved with all of his being. Mike was fun loving and enjoyed spending time with those that were important in his life. He had beautiful curls and the most wonderful smile, which could light up my heart whenever I saw it. Mike turned 19 three weeks ago. He had a whole life ahead of him. He was much too young to be called home to God.
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“Destiny’s Detour”: Not Really Romance
Posted: September 7, 2018 Filed under: Books, Memoir, romance | Tags: Book Review, Destiny's Detour, Mari Brown, romance Leave a comment
Although Destiny’s Detour, by Mari Brown, may contain a happily ever after, I can’t really classify it as romance, because their HEA is more of a happy all the way through. For me, part of the fun of romance, or any story really is finding out how the characters will resolve conflict and overcome obstacles which are preventing them from achieving their goal.
For romance, that goal is usually for the couple in question to build and maintain a romantic relationship. In Destiny’s Detour, the worst conflict I found was that the captain of the dance team doesn’t like Destiny, which really doesn’t cause a problem because it seems no one really cares what Buffy thinks anyway. Although her brother David doesn’t like the ‘mushy stuff’ when it involves his sister, he is supportive of her relationship with Troy, so there’s not a lot of tension there either.
Brown writes this story in first person, present tense, which can be difficult to do, but Brown pulls is off fairly well. Destiny tells us what happens and what she is feeling, but I’d like to see more of the action. Instead of telling me she’s excited, I’d like to feel her heart beating as if it were trying to come through her chest wall.
Destiny’s Detour is a cute feel good story. It just doesn’t have a lot of tension to make me want to keep reading. I give it three quills.
Kaye Lynne Booth does honest book reviews on Writing to be Read in exchange for ARCs. Have a book you’d like reviewed? Contact Kaye at kayebooth(at)yahoo(dot)com.
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Social Media: What’s it good for?
Posted: September 3, 2018 Filed under: Books, marketing, Promotion | Tags: author platform, book marketing, Book Promotion, promotion, Reader Platform, Social media Leave a comment
I posted a link in my Writing to be Read Facebook group a couple of weeks ago. The article discussed the new changes made by Facebook which do not allow us to post promotional materials on personal Timelines. Under the new guidelines promotional posts are only allowed to be made on our Facebook Pages, which are designed to be set up for businesses. If you break the rules and make promotional posts on your Timeline, Facebook can ban you. This information caused quite a stir in my group, and I admit it caused me quite a bit of concern, as well. I came to the conclusion that, as with everything in life, we must learn to be flexible and accoodate change. I changed the title of my Kaye Lynne Booth Screenwriter page to Kaye Lynne Booth Author and Screenwriter and set my automatic posts from WordPress to post there instead of on my Timeline and hoped for the best.
One of the comments I received was a question toward one of the group members who was upset, viewing this as a ploy to force us to purchase paid advertising. The second member asked how using Facebook’s free advertising was going and asked if she had sold many books from it. While I don’t think this change prohibits making promotional posts as long as you make them through allowable channels, the conversation made me stop and think about what we authors are expecting to achieve through such posts.
Free promotion through social media is great. It offers us, as authors, an avenue to get the word out about our writing, without putting a dent on our wallets. For aspiring authors, who haven’t made it to fame and fortune yet, like myself, that’s great. But what results are we expecting?
If you’re thinking your book will rise to the top of the best seller lists, you’re dreaming. That’s not the way it works. The best seller lists, at least those on Amazon, work on algorithms, and if you’re only one of a smattering of books in a category, it may not take many book sales to place your book at the top of the list. Authors who write romance have it a lot tougher, because there are a whole slew of romances out there, a lot of competition, so even if your book is making sales, it may not be enough to launch you to the top because it’s based on the books which sell the most in that particular category.
Likewise, most of the folks who those promotional posts reach are other authors, not the people in your target audience. Authors may buy books, but basically they want the the same thing you do. They are out there to promote their own work. Social media isn’t designed to sell books, although their paid promotions may be quite effective, and anyone who is using free promotions to try and sell books, or anything else, may be sorely disappointed. Social media, my friends, is designed to promote connections, some of which may be quite valuable, but it’s not designed to sell merchandise, hence the word ‘social’. And that is what I get from my promotional efforts on Facebook and any other social media site I use. I grow my blog following and my email list. I find a few people who are willing to review my book. I meet people who can include me in their author services as an editor. I connect with artists who can create the book covers I need. While many are fellow authors, I tap into that as well, offering them interviews or reviews here on Writing to be Read. They get some free exposure and I great content for my blog. It works out great.
That being said, I’ve come to the sobering realization that nothing is free, and I’m going to have to invest some of my hard earned money if I want to boost my book sales. While I can’t afford paid promotion on Facebook or Amazon right now, there are affordable promotions out there.
- There are some affordable avenues of promotion out there. Most recently, I found a promotional site called I Like E Books, which has promotional packeages which range from free up to twenty dollars, which seems promising. They provide promotion on social media channels and other cool stuff, depending on which level od promotion you pay for.
- Although not a promotional site, per se, Book Bub is great for featuring your books under your favorites, so folks can see that they are available. You can follow your favorite authors and hopefully gain some followers of your own. It doesn’t cost anything to join.
- On All Author, you can have your book featured on their site for six months, with twitter promos, weekly mock-up banners, and review posting for a flat fee of $24.
- It’s also free to sign up for PromoCave, which is a site for ongoing promotion via social media sites. It helps on this site to post content fairly regularly, since it will bring readers to your profile.
- BMI Books is a global book marketing site where you can place and manage a book ad for free, although I’m unsure how this one works as yet.
- You may also sign up for free on Write Globe, which has a nice book promotion platform as well as supporting other types of creativity. This site was listed as number one in a list of “Top 7 Websites for Book and Author Promotion” by Alwin Gnanaraj on LinkedIn.
- Creative Designers & Writers is a free international classified site, where you can create and post an ad. It is supportive of other creatives as well and can serve as a platform for collaborative works with graphic designers and artists.
- Books Online Best also allows you to post a free ad in addition to other author services, such as book trailers and author interviews. You can also create a freelance site here.
One day, I’ll be able to afford to play with the big boys. For now, I will be grateful for the benefits I can get from social media, but I will approach it with reasonable expectations, being grateful for every follower I gain and counting any book sales that comes from it as an extra added bonus.
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