My new book is about retiree travel jobs, but I am not going to do a Goodreads Giveaway this time.
Posted: September 20, 2016 Filed under: e-book, ebook, Kindle, Kobo, Nook | Tags: Goodreads Giveaway, live for free in National Parks, retiree blogs, retiree travel jobs, retiree travel work, senior travel jobs, senior travel work, work for retirees Leave a commentIn my previous post I wrote about doing a Goodreads Giveaway for a romance novel I published. I’m not doing a giveaway with the new retiree travel jobs guide. The cost for the Goodreads Giveaway outweighed the benefits.
So here is a capsule version of what ‘How Seniors Travel for Fun and Profit’ it is all about:
Retired? Eager to travel but only have a shoe-string budget? In this guide you will learn, step-by-step, fun ways to make money while you are traveling. And find out how to live for free in National Parks in the U.S. and abroad as well as how to pay zero rent in big cities like London or Sydney and tropical beachfront homes.
More interested in enriching your spiritual life and earning the goodwill of others now that you are retired? Learn about ways and places to do it around the world.
And discover where age discrimination is no problem. There are vacation companies actively seeking Seniors. So read this guide and start packing. Travel fun and money are straight ahead.
NOTE: It is introductory priced right now…but not for long on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo.
What happened with my Goodreads Giveaway–worth it or not?
Posted: April 6, 2016 Filed under: Annie Carroll, e-book, e-publication, ebook, Kindle, Kobo, romance novel | Tags: Amazon reviews, book reviews, ebook reviews, Goodreads, Goodreads Giveaway, Kirkus Reviews, L.A. Ladies, NetGalley Leave a commentLike most indie authors I felt as if getting those first reviews for my books resembled climbing a mountain in a blizzard wearing lead boots–one slow step at a time. Of course, some indies have a very supportive Writers group or belong to a book club or have some other circle of friends and acquaintances who will eagerly buy and review their new novel. And lickety-split, the reviews pile up fast. (Although if Amazon discovers that the reviews are by relatives or close friends, it will take those reviews down. And Amazon has been doing that with a vengeance lately.)
So I looked around for alternatives to the slow uphill slog and came across three well-known choices: 1) Kirkus Reviews 2) NetGalley and 3) Goodreads Giveaway.
With Kirkus Reviews the cost is $425 if you are willing to wait 2 or 3 months for a single review which can be published on their website–if you decide that you like the review. If the review is less than favorable, you can decide not to publish it. If you want rush service the price is $575. This all struck me as being a bit pricey for one review. (For heaven’s sake, I’ve heard that reviews used to cost $5 on Fiverr but Amazon put an end to that, too.) Anyway for complete details about Kirkus go here.
NetGalley was recommended by a woman who publishes romance novels, so I checked it out. So much better! For $399 an indie author can post a book manuscript for download by thousands of potential reviewers who, in exchange for the ‘free’ book, are asked to post reviews on the NetGalley website. Apparently some of these readers also post their reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, etc. For details about NetGalley go here.
Then I looked into Goodreads Giveaway and it sounded great! All I had to do was offer to send a specific number of paperback copies of my new novel, ‘L.A. Ladies’ to the winners of a drawing. Goodreads information indicated that a month long promotion period would result in about 800 Goodreaders signing up for the giveaway. Goodreads suggests offering 10 books and notes that about 60% of the winners will actually write a review. I noticed that not all authors were offering 10 books; one offered only 2 copies. For more details about a Goodreads Giveaway, go here.
Quickly I crunched the numbers. The books would cost me 2.69 each plus rush shipping through CreateSpace. Postage would add a little, I thought, but not much. I’d send the books using the media rate. So I jumped right in, deciding to offer 12 books–signed copies. I had already set up pre-publication orders on Amazon and B&N so my publication date was fixed–just two weeks away. That determined the expiration date for my Goodreads Giveaway. And I decided to make the giveaway available in Canada because I’d sold some books through Kobo.
Oh happy days! Those lovely Goodreads readers signed up in droves! In 2 weeks 900+ women entered my Giveaway–twice what I had expected. And within hours of its end Goodreads sent me a list of the 12 winners. One in Canada, the others scattered across the U.S. I bundled up the books and drove to the Post Office where I found that there is no media or book rate to Canada. It cost $15 to send ‘L.A. Ladies’ to Alberta! In total my shipping costs were around $70.
And now for the results. There are now 4 reviews on Goodreads, three of which state that they received the book in a Giveaway. The fourth reviewer didn’t say one way or the other whether she bought the book or got it for free, but her review was very positive and she posted it on Amazon, too. In fact, all the reviews are positive–but there are still so very few. I’ve since heard from a fellow writer in my online writing group that Goodreads Giveaway reviews come in slowly so more reviews may come from this Giveaway. But the cost for each review at this point works out to be about $30–a lot less than Kirkus Reviews. I could, of course, reduce costs by not offering the Giveaway to Canadian readers and planning far enough ahead so I wouldn’t have to pay for rush shipping, but I don’t think I’ll do it again.
Now I wish I’d followed the romance publisher’s advice. I’m going to check out NetGalley to see whether they allow books that have already been published to go onto their site. Or I may put ‘L.A. Ladies” into Kindle Select and run a freebie sale. I’ll let you know what happens next.
L.A. Ladies now available for pre-order on Kindle and Nook
Posted: January 26, 2016 Filed under: Annie Carroll, e-book, e-publication, ebook, Kindle, Los Angeles, Mysteries, romance novel | Tags: collie dog, cozy novel, Kindle, Kobo, L.A. Ladies romance novel, Los Angeles, mystery book, Nook, Pre-order ebook, rough collie, Scribd Leave a commentTooting my own horn here! My new novel, ‘L.A. Ladies‘ is now ready for pre-ordering on Kindle. You can find it here and read more about Robin, a ghost-blogger who is re-starting her life after the death of her husband. (And–Yes!–a collie is a character in the novel.)
The paperback edition will published on February 18th, too.
This romance-mystery is available for pre-order at other online bookstores, including Nook and Kobo. Coming soon on iTunes and Scribd.
‘Speak’ and ye shall find ghost words, typos and other errors
Posted: January 16, 2016 Filed under: Annie Carroll, e-book, e-publication, ebook, Kindle, Los Angeles, romance novel | Tags: checking manuscript, ebook editing, edit ebook, Frog gate in Studio City California, ghost words, L.A. Ladies, L.A. Ladies romance novel, L.A. River, Speak in Word, text-to-speech in Word, typos Leave a commentI spent all day yesterday listening to the latest draft of my novel, ‘L.A. Ladies’. That’s right, I listened to it using a nifty feature in Word that I didn’t previously know existed. The feature is called ‘Speak’ and I decided to use it to see if I could find any ‘ghost words’ in my manuscript. ‘Ghost words’ are those little leftover words that accidentally end up in revised copy. When an author re-reads the revised section, her eyes slide right over the ghost words because, after all, she ‘knows’ what the passage says. The eyes and brain play tricks.
In one writers’ group online a fellow author suggested I read my manuscript aloud, but I wasn’t at all confident that the eye-brain trick wouldn’t happen again.
Instead I decided to use ‘Speak’ and sat here at my computer following the words with my eyes while Microsoft Anna (the voice of Speak and it’s a semi-mechanical sounding voice!) read to me. Much to my horror, I discovered a ghost word in the first chapter. Somehow the word ‘handed’ had been left in a sentence right beside ‘handing’. I quickly deleted ‘handed’ and kept on listening to Anna. Two other ‘ghost words’ showed up later in the novel and in one other instance I discovered that I’d written ‘on’ instead of ‘of’. All were fixed instantly. What is also important to note is that these four tiny errors in my manuscript were all properly spelled so they would have gone right through the Kindle Spell-Check and not shown up as mistakes.
Another discovery I made while listening was that in an early meeting between Robin, the main character, and one of her love interests, she sounded bitchy instead of surprised. So I re-wrote that exchange, too. Then checked it again with Speak to make sure there were no ghost words in my revision!
Okay. If you’re interested in using Speak — and I highly recommend this approach–search Google for text-to-speech in Word and follow the steps to activate it. It’s really easy and can save you from serious embarrassment.
Later: When I posted about this topic on my FB wwriter’s group I learned from other writers there is also a text-to-speech function in Adobe’s pdf reader as well as several free programs available online. I might try them to see if those other voices are more pleasant than Anna’s.
Oh, one last thing. Anna sometimes reads ‘is.’ at the end of a sentence as ‘island’. At other times she read ‘no.’ as ‘number’. She apparently ‘thinks’ they are abbreviations.
Results of my search for beta readers–or even more ‘likes’–on Facebook.
Posted: December 1, 2015 Filed under: Annie Carroll, e-book, ebook, Kindle, Los Angeles, Mysteries, romance novel Leave a commentAs I wrote in the previous post, I decided to search outside my current Friends and Family for beta readers for my new novel. As we all know, F&Fs will tell an author that they really like the book because that’s what Friends and Family do. And they might even buy a copy of the book once it is published, because that’s what they do. But an honest opinion–F&F aren’t good for that.
First I went to Goodreads for beta readers. They have two groups of Beta readers and following their instructions I listed my novel about women of a certain age finding love and danger and eating very well in Los Angeles. I mentioned the collie, too. The result: Nada. Nothing. No one in the beta group volunteered to read my novel. I found out, however, that there are people in a separate section of the GR beta group who will beta read and report back–for a fee. One of them sounds good, so I may send my MS off to her. Soon. I will report about how this goes.
After Goodreads I moved on and sent a copy of the novel, which I’m now calling ‘L.A. Ladies’ to a friend who is a playwright. Her first response: “Not noir?” I swear the brilliant Raymond Chandler cast a noir spell over Los Angeles. Well, that was then and this is now. My novel has not an ounce of noir in it. It is a romance with a mystery, a big friendly collie dog and a kayak trip down the L.A. River. Well, it will be interesting to read further reactions from my playwright friend who lives in Tucson and wants noir. I’ve asked her to get back to me by mid-December.
Now about Facebook. I decided that I should drum up some Likes for my FB Annie Carroll Author page before I solicited beta readers from the group. I agreed to a budget of $4 a day and put a limit of $1 for each Like. Well those folks at FB apparently can’t do math. My Likes started off at .90 per Like and steadily rose to $1.35 per Like. In the end I spent about $28 over 7 days and now have 32 Likes–not all of which came from the FB promotion. And about an hour ago I launched a second promotion for ‘Likes’. This time my budget is $3 a day and FB promises 2-4 Likes a day.
Meanwhile my non-fiction guide to Working After Retirement continues to sell a year after it was published. It is concise, practical and only $3.99 now.
Fiction sales figures by genre for 2013 – some surprises!
Posted: November 2, 2014 Filed under: e-book, e-publication, genre fiction, Kindle, romance novel | Tags: book sales 2013, detective novel sales, fantasy novel sales, fiction sales figures, genre fiction sales, genre fiction sales 2013, mystery sales, romance sales Leave a commentBookstat just released the sales figures by adult fiction genres for 2013. The surprise is that Mysteries came in lower than Literary fiction–at least according to this information. (I’m not sure what the genre called “general” is!)
1 – Thrillers ($1.088 billion)
2 -Romance ($1.079 Billion)
3 – General ($810 million)
4- Literary ($548 million)
5- Mystery & detective ($442 million)
6 -Fantasy ($377 million)
Another valuable source of information about sales by genre can be found at authorearnings.com This site reports quarterly and provides various kinds of data for authors. Their rankings by genre differ slightly from this.
My newest book is a non-fiction guide entitled Working After Retirement. It has all 5 star reviews on Kindle and B&N!
‘New Vampire Online’ is free on Kindle on June 6 and June 7th. It’s a humorous tale of Los Angeles vampires.
Posted: June 6, 2014 Filed under: e-book, ebook, Free kindle book, Kindle, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, vampire novel | Tags: Amazon, free book, free ebook, free Kindle book, free vampire book on Kindle, free vampire novel, free vampire novel on Amazon, New Vampire, New Vampire Online, vampire ebook, vampire novel Leave a comment
Okay. You know the routine.
‘New Vampire Online’ is now on Kindle: http://amazon.com/dp/B00HVLODMW
And you can get the first in the series, ‘New Vampire in Town’: http://amazon.com/dp/B00D3T0GRW
Enjoy! (And please leave a review!)