Six Questions with J.A. Redmerski

The author of best-selling novel The Edge of Never, J.A. Redmerski is my guest for Six Questions this week!

Welcome to Six Questions, J.A!





1. Which authors have influenced your writing the most?

The two authors who have influenced my writing throughout my life would definitely be Anne Rice and Neil Gaiman. I love just about everything they write.

2. What is your editing process and have you hired a professional editor?

Like a lot of Indie authors, I couldn't afford to hire an editor when I first started publishing. I edited everything myself and then two friends of mine help edit it further, but that's about it. I know there are still several editing mistakes in my books, but we tried really hard! :-)

3. Did you start out querying agents before you first self-published?

I queried until I couldn't anymore. The Mayfair Moon and Dirty Eden were rejected by hundreds of agents, but my books really did need a lot of work so I think they were right to reject them at that stage. As far as The Edge of Never, I stopped querying agents long before I began writing it, so it never went through that query/rejection process.

4. What are the major things you've done to build buzz for your books?

Honestly, I quit my job to make writing and promoting my full-time job. Contacting bookbloggers/reviewers and signing up for book tours and being a member of Goodreads are all mandatory in my opinion.

5. What would you do differently if you could start all over again?

I wouldn't do anything differently. Everything that I did wrong, or that didn't produce the results I wanted were learning experiences and if it wasn't for those I wouldn't have gotten even a fraction as far as I have now.

6. How did you find the right readers for your books?

I read the book bloggers sites thoroughly and by that I mean their submission and contact pages and checking out what other sorts of books they generally read and review. Oh and of course, Goodreads.

                   

What would YOU do differently if you could start over?

Scrivener: More than Word

How many times have you heard about Scrivener and thought

'I'll look into it someday'?

Well, maybe it's just me, but I can't tell you how many times I've thought that. Maybe I just need a little more info, and I have found the definitive source for all things Scrivener ~ Gwen Hernandez, author of Scrivener for Dummies. 




As a writer, you're probably intimately familiar with some sort of word processing software. But, while Microsoft Word and similar programs are great for formatting a finished manuscript or business letter, they may not be the best tools for writing a story.

Enter writing software. Several programs out there are geared specifically for writers, and there's a good reason for it. Traditional word processors force you to write linearly, or cobble together multiple documents if you don't. Good writing software can free you to write in the way that works best for you.

My choice is Scrivener (available for both Mac and Windows). 

Here are just a few reasons why I love it so much.

Each writing project is organized as a collection of documents (e.g. scenes or chapters), all accessible from the same screen, much like being in Finder or Windows Explorer.

You can write a scene--or an outline of a scene--when inspiration strikes, and save it for later. You can easily move scenes around, create scene cards for them (viewable on the “corkboard”), search for terms across all scenes, color code them (by POV, setting, storyline, or whatever), search by keywords, keep project and scene notes, track your word count progress, and so much more.

I don't know how I ever wrote without it!

Within your project you can store web sites, character information, research documents, photos, outlines, synopses, pitch and blurb text, ideas for plot or character changes, and even older versions of scenes.

For those who are easily distracted, Scrivener offers a full screen mode with customizable background. And, in the end, you can export part or all of your project to one of many file types, including e-book (EPUB and MOBI), DOC, PDF, and RTF.

I use Scrivener to write fiction, nonfiction, blog posts, magazine articles, and class lessons. I know people who use it to write screenplays, poetry, legal briefs, academic papers, and genealogy records. You can even use it for recipes.

If you're serious about writing, consider switching to software that works with your writing style, not against it.

  

Got questions? I’ll check in throughout the day to answer them.

10 Tips For a Great Launch

Please help me welcome Toby Neal back to Finding Bliss! Toby is a special guest because she has given me the basics for my approach to build a platform for when I publish my book next spring. 

I am thrilled to share her knowledge with all of you and I KNOW you'll love her tips for a great book launch!


Aloha from Maui! I’m the self-published author of the Lei Crime Series, with three novels and one minibook, Building an Author Platform that can Launch Anything, out in one year. I wrote the minibook last summer after Blood Orchids, the first in the Lei Crime Series had debuted to commercial and critical success. Here are some fresh tips that I’m using now to build on the momentum of my books—hope you find some of them helpful!


1. Build your platform prior to your launch by PIF’ing. PIF is the phrase I’ve borrowed and used in my minibook to describe “paying it forward”—the process of building enough social media collateral to support the favors you will call in for your book launch. This takes the form of hosting other bloggers, retweeting/tweeting others’ posts, promoting others’ books you love, posting reviews of others’ books, etc.

2. Top Quality. Don’t put your book out until it’s as great as you can possibly make it, and then revise some more. Don’t stint on editing. The best marketing in the world won’t sell more than a few hundred copies of a mediocre book.

3. Great cover. In a world of DIY covers, make yours truly outstanding. Raine Thomas and Kendall Grey are authors whose covers I’ve consistently found to be of the quality a traditional publisher would put out. I’m proud of my books’ covers; I have original photographs done for each one by my pro photographer husband, combined with the exceptional design skills of Julie Metz Design in New York. I spend $2,000 on each cover (and that’s my “frequent customer rate!)and it’s the biggest expense of a new book—it’s money well spent, because people DO judge a book by its cover.

4. Build brand recognition: this goes along with your cover. Once I had my Blood Orchids cover, my web designer then coordinated my Twitter, Facebook page, and Mailchimp account. All three Lei Crime Series covers have the same “look and feel” so that readers can easily spot them in a book lineup, grabbing new ones (hopefully!) when they come out with easy recognition. For a great coordinated site and package, check out my webgal Betsy Cohen at http://www.positiveelement.com/.

5. Build anticipation with your blog networks with a hoopla launch date. Have a countdown, a contest, schedule a blog tour, etc. This is the time to begin to call in those favors you built up with your friends and fans through PIF!

6. Send out Advance Reader Copies (ARC) to some of your fans in return for immediate reviews when your book goes live. These fans are worth their weight in gold—and for the privilege of an advance read of your book, all they have to do is post their review of your book when it’s available for purchase. Try to have at least 5 reviews that go up immediately upon the book going live. This will help the book “storm the lists” with a good initial rush and again, will help with visibility. (This is perfectly ethical—publishers do it every day!)

7. Load your book to Amazon with careful attention to categories and tags. I’m no expert on this, but from what I understand, choosing these carefully helps your book achieve “bestseller” status and also targets it to readers accurately through Amazon’s algorythms. (for more information, consult Rachel Thompson at BadRedheadMedia.)

8. Mailchimp Campaign: I’ve written a blog post on this with all the good reasons to build an email list of dedicated fans. Develop an email announcement of your book with embedded purchase links, and when your new book comes out, hopefully they immediately buy it, resulting in that initial boost that helps your book ride a wave of visibility to bestseller.

9. Contests, giveaways and other events. Use your blog and FB for these, and have other bloggers (with good reader traffic!) host your contests. This builds goodwill with them, since your giveaway attracts traffic to their blog, and is good for you because hopefully their followers will also become yours. Do A GOODREADS BOOK GIVEAWAY! Huge exposure on this—both my book giveaways attracted over 800 people competing for one book. Hopefully these folks will go on to buy my books after one of them wins. In any case, they will recognize my books again when they see them. (Caveat: Goodreads does giveaways for hard copies only.)

10. Submit the book to review sites. I think this is more effective than a blog tour; all that work, writing blog posts, is great for building relationships (and should be more of an ongoing) but submitting your book to a list of book reviewers who will read and write about it, posting directly to READERS—is what you want. I did close to a hundred guest blogs with my first book and about killed myself. Now, I focus on writing the next book and I cultivate relationships with book bloggers and reviewers, and get them copies the minute my new book is ready.


One of the tough things about the new Wild West of self-publishing is that you have to do it ALL—not just write a great book. That’s just step one! Embrace the idea that you’re not just a writer—you’re a businessperson. I hope some of these ten tips help you have a great book launch.

                

Do you have any tips that have helped you have a great launch?

COVER REVEAL: Dracian Legacy by Priya Kanaparti

Title: Dracian Legacy

Author: Priya Kanaparti

Genre: YA Paranormal Fantasy Romance

Expected release date: February 14, 2013

Age Group: Young Adult

Cover Designer:  maeidesign.com

Book Description:

Ren and Axel are caught between two powerful magical races: one destined to end the bloodshed, the other out for vengeance.

Seventeen-year-old Ren Pernell is prophesied to end the war between the Dracians and the Telalians. So when a Dracian, Axel Knight, is sent to find and bring back the prophesied one before she turns eighteen and Telalians discover of her existence, unexpected sparks start to fly between the two. Once Ren finds the truth behind Axel’s arrival, she wants everything to do with him and nothing to do with his mission.

Things prove to be difficult as Ren’s life is constantly threatened by forces that are beyond her control, including the leader of the Telalians.

With the clock ticking and Ren’s life in jeopardy, it is no longer just a mission for Axel. It becomes a personal endeavor to save the only one he’s ever loved. In a heart racing ending, they must find a way to evade the preordained war that won’t also end Ren’s life.

Priya Kanaparti was born in India, grew up in Detroit, and is now living in Boise, ID. She attended Wayne State University for her undergrad degree in Bachelor of Science in Biology, and University of Phoenix for her Masters in Business Administration. Priya works as a project manager in software field during the day and lives in the world of her characters during the nights and weekends. She had found the love for reading and writing early this year, when she stayed home with her one year old and needed something to occupy those 'downtime' hours.

She loves playing tennis on a good summer day and chess during the cold winters, but reading and writing has become a year round hobby.

She lives in Boise with her husband, son and a Yorkie. Dracian Legacy is her debut novel.

Priya Kanaparti | Facebook | Twitter

KDP Select Layering Strategy

Here is another fabulous recommendation from super woman Laura Pepper Wu.

I asked who could give us some insight on maximizing the KDP Select Program and she immediately suggested Kathy Lynn Harris.


I know some folks think the KDP Select program is no longer garnering the results it used to, but I’m still a big believer.

In fact, the KDP campaign for my debut novel, Blue Straggler, which was founded on invaluable advice from publicist Laura Pepper Wu of 30 Day Books, turned out to be a very good one. Thanks to a huge bump from the free days, Blue Straggler became an Amazon #1 bestseller in its category, and stayed in the top spot, for weeks. (More on the results in a bit.)

Here’s a snapshot view of the strategy, which Very Wise Laura called “layering.”

First of all, the book was released as an ebook in August 2011, and in paperback in March 2012. Between August and mid-March, positive reviews began coming in. By the time we launched our free promotion game plan, the novel had more than 40 reviews and a 4.5 star rating. I think this was paramount to the success of the campaign. That volume of reviews and a high rating snagged readers who had never heard of me or my work before.

I also had a modest fan following by the time of the paperback release, as well, which only grew in the weeks after the release. I was able to reach out to those followers via social media (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) and via my established email list to alert them to the free promotion coming up. Many of those followers were awesome about sharing the details to their networks.

On April 8, I posted a funny, quirky essay on my blog (You can take the girl out of Texas, but …) about how I’d suffered not one, but two, “midlife” crises — one when I turned 30, and then one more recently when I turned 40. At the bottom of that post, I promoted the upcoming free days on Amazon. The post was one of my highest-ranking ones ever, and I wrote it strategically; it had some of the same themes as Blue Straggler. Laura and I thought it would resonate with the same type of audience.

I scheduled my first two free days on KDP two days later, beginning on April 10. I promoted those free days everywhere I could — blogs, Twitter accounts, websites, Facebook pages — anywhere that listed free Kindle books. I got a pretty good smattering of coverage. (Note to authors: This takes a huge amount of time, so plan on buying coffee in bulk, and apologizing to your family for neglect afterward.) I wish I had kept a running list of all the places I posted or submitted the information because I’d love to use it again myself. But I was working so fast and furiously, I didn’t keep great records. Those who know me well will tell you this is not a huge surprise.

I followed up after the two free days with another blog post on April 11 — another funny one that I’d hoped was share-worthy, about Texas women — another solid tie to the novel.

On April 12, we advertised on Kindle Nation Daily and reduced the book to 99 cents for 24 hours, which gave another boost to the plan.


On April 13, I attended a book-signing event in Denver (my “hometown”) and got some media coverage prior to the event in local newspapers and major metro web calendars, with links to the book on Amazon.


On April 16, I began a weeklong blog tour of women’s fiction blogs.


And finally, during the mid-point of the blog tour, I scheduled another KDP Select free day, and the free deal was again announced on a variety of blogs, social media pages, and websites, including Chick Lit Plus.

The results? Here you go:

30,000 downloads from April 10 – April 30


Reached:


#6 in Top 100 Free
#1 in Kindle Store – ebooks – Fiction – Comic Fiction
#1 in Kindle Store – ebooks – Humor
#8 in Books – Humor & Entertainment


The book remains in the top 30 in Comic Fiction, 8 months later.

            

  

We want to know about YOUR experience with the KDP Select program! Did you have a plan, or did you just go free and sit back and see what happened?

Six Questions with JB McGee

JB McGee is the author of the Young Adult novel Broken and will be releasing her second novel, Mending, later this month. 

I am proud to be included in her list of stops on her current blog tour!

5 Tips For Building Buzz For Your Book

Susan Kaye Quinn is a former rocket scientist and engineer, but now writes middle grade and young adult novels because she loves writing even more than shiny tech gadgets.

I'm honored to feature Susan today as well as participate in the cover reveal for Free Souls, the third book in her Mindjack trilogy.