Learning New Things On the Go (Self-Publishing Podcasts)

Photo by Mustafa Khayat (Flickr)

I love learning something new each day. I really do.  And right now, my listening queue is filled with self-publishing podcasts that I listen to while I'm doing the laundry, walking the dog or washing the dishes.

Among my favorite podcasts so far are the following:

Sterling & Stone's Self-Publishing Podcast: 3 Guys That Tell You What Does and Doesn't Work For Them In Self-Publishing
The key here is "for them" because it's based on the experiences of three guys, Johnny B. Truant, Sean Platt and Dave Wright, which is one reason why I loved Write. Publish. Repeat. (The No Luck Guide Required for Publishing Success), their book on self-publishing that's pretty much a no-nonsense guide to self-publishing though it feels like they're just chatting with you casually about it.

Rocking Self-Publishing: Weekly Interviews with Self-Published Authors, Every Thursday
Just what it says - Simon Whistler interviews self-published authors every Thursday.

The Creative Penn 
Joanna Penn is a writer and public speaker behind Creative Penn, and on her podcast, she covers everything from interviews, inspiration, and information on writing, self-publishing, book marketing and creative entrepeneurship.

I'll add a few more as I go along but if you're a self-published author and would like to hear what everyone else is doing and how they're doing it, then definitely check out their podcasts!

Do you listen to podcasts?  What are your favorites?

Where in The World...Are My Books?

I've seen this link floating around and have always made a mental note to look into it.  But like every mental note that never got written down, it disperses into the ether and I'm left with the same question, "where was I?"

So today, while reading Successful Self-Publishing by author and public speaker, Joanna Penn, I found it.  It's called Booklinker.net and you go and add the link to your book on Amazon, and voila! You end up with a global link page to all your books in the worldwide Amazon store.

Someone in Japan wants your book?  Well, they click on that global link and it takes them to Amazon Japan. Same thing happens to someone clicks the link from Germany or Canada - the link will take them to their the respective Germany or Canada Amazon pages featuring your book.

So without further ado, here are the links to a few of my books:

Loving Ashe -  myBook.to/lovingashe 

A Collateral Attraction - myBook.to/collateral

Finding Sam - myBook.to/findingsam

It can also link your Author page globally as well:

Liz Madrid - Author.to/LizMadrid

A Little Book First Aid, Please

Lately, my newest novel, A Collateral Attraction, hasn't been getting much attention from me compared to my earlier book, Loving Ashe.  As a result, its sales are languishing.  My one excuse is that I'm getting book 2 of the Loving Ashe Trilogy ready, and so all my attention is on fine-tuning the manuscript and getting it ready for its release.

But it's not a good excuse considering that I released A Collateral Attraction just last December 15, and the last thing I want to see is to have it languishing on digital bookshelves barely a month later.  It feels like I've just ignored one of my kids, or put them on mute or something - and it's not a good feeling.

But how exactly does one give TLC to a digital book?

If you're traditionally published and therefore, have no access to your Amazon KDP dashboard, you can't.  That's up to your publisher.  But as an indie author, I can do at least three things to hopefully make my book more visible on the Amazon Kindle Store (cross my fingers and wish me luck).

Tighten up my book's keywords

What exactly are keywords, you may ask.  Well, if you've ever gone online to Google something - let's say, identical twins romance, you're going to type those words on Google: identical twins romance.  However, that's just too vast. I mean, you're looking for a book, right?

So where would you go to find books?  Unless you've got something against Amazon and refuse to shop from them (I know a few people), then the answer is Amazon: Kindle.  So I'm going to head on over to Amazon and click on the Kindle Store and in the search bar, at the top, I'm going to type identical twins romance, and pick a book that interests me from the search results.  In the case of A Collateral Attraction, it's the third result out of 970.  But honestly, who looks for identical twins romance?   I need to come up with a better term, but it will be one of the seven keywords that Amazon KDP will allow my book to have.

What you've just done right there, whether it's on Google or on Amazon, is type a set of keywords.  Search words would be another way to look at it.  And if the right search words (which can be a group of words, not just one word, separated by commas in the keyword entry box in your KDP dashboard) can get my book noticed, then I need to tweak it now and then.

Fix up my book blurb

This is important.  And this is where I have not been doing well at all.  When you click on my book, this is the first thing you see:

Unfortunately, I did my screen shot too late.  I had a crappy blurb to begin with and what you're seeing, the quote from RT Reviews is the newest version of my blurb that I just uploaded less than 20 minutes before writing this post.

What I really wanted you to see is that, with Amazon truncating the book description to the first five lines, you've only got a teeny-tiny bit of digital real estate to catch the reader's attention after their eyes leave the cover.  That's why I finally decided to use the quote from RT Reviews, something I should have done from the very beginning.

This was the first blurb I had before the change you see above:

Some days, it can be tough being an identical twin — especially when your other half is in deep trouble. 
Billie Delphine has always been content standing on the sidelines while her identical twin sister, Blythe, gets all the attention, including a glamorous lifestyle with billionaire, Ethan Kheiron, who will do anything to wrestle back control of the family fortune from his younger brother, Heath.
But when Blythe disappears with Ethan while Billie is visiting her in New York, the last thing Billie wants is to be mistaken for her sister — or be falsely accused of a crime that Billie knows Blythe did not commit. So when Heath suggests they work together to find them, Billie agrees.
But a life of luxury, personal shopping sprees, and private jets cannot hide the years of unresolved differences between sisters, nor the decades of lies that have left the Kheiron family divided. And even as Billie slowly falls for Heath, she knows that until they all settle their differences, they're just pawns in someone else's game of power — where some of them are more expendable than others.

Honestly, it was way too much chatter that didn't tell me anything interesting, especially the first line in bold.  Is this the reason why people just thought, meh, let me move on to something else.

This was the final blurb I just uploaded today:

"A mistaken identity story that straddles the line between romance and chick lit." - RT Book Reviews 
There's nothing more annoying than being mistaken for your more glamorous twin sister everywhere you go - especially when you're also being accused of a crime you know she didn't commit. And for small-town girl, Billie Delphine, learning that her socialite twin sister, Blythe, is in trouble is all she needs to step out of her shell, even if it means working alongside the one man her sister despises for taking over her boyfriend's company, his younger brother, Heath Kheiron.
But the world of personal shopping sprees and private island retreats cannot hide the years of unresolved differences between sisters, or the decades of lies that have left the Kheiron family divided. And as Billie slowly falls for the Kheiron family's black sheep, she realizes that there's also another player in the game, and until they can all settle their differences, they're all expendable - some of them more than others.

I think this one, outside of the overlong sentences, is much better than the first one.  I'll still tweak it, but the first line will remain the same throughout - that quote from RT Book Reviews.

What do you think?  Which one is better?

Create a book landing page

For authors who don't have their own website yet, one way you can direct attention to your book is to have a landing page dedicated to that book.  If you're like me and you created your book using Pressbooks (normal price: $99 for epub, mobi, and pdf versions - the pdf is for print, like if you're going to have a paperback or hardcover book printed though they also have specials where you get 30 - 50% off), then Pressbooks has a landing page just for that book in question, including sample chapters that you designate to be freely viewed online, and a BUY page with links to online bookstores like Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, or Barnes and Noble.

This is what the page looks like on Pressbooks.

While the Pressbooks landing page is for those who wrote and formatted their books using Pressbooks, there's also Booklaunch as an alternative, and I talk about that here.  I think it's great for those who don't have an author website yet, or would like to set up a dedicated page for their book with buy links, an author section, testimonials, and also a way to integrate your mail list service for your newsletter.

And one more thing! With Amazon's embed feature, you can embed your book right on your website, like this:

From here, there's not much I can do but wait and see if those changes do help gain the book more organic visibility.  In the meantime, I can figure out ways to advertise the book.  I have a few more days of KDP Select free days to use though I'm not sure if I'm going to use them or not.  But if I do, I'll let you guys know so you can download it for free.  

Guess my next post will have to deal with promotions, right?

In the meantime, since I've talked my book till you're blue in the face, here's the link to buy A Collateral Attraction from Amazon.  And if you'd like to be updated about my latest books, giveaways and author events, please sign up for my newsletter.

A Writer Is A Writer...

A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, or because everything she does is golden. A writer is a writer because even if there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.  

- Junot Diaz

A Flash Fiction Challenge: These Damned Insects

I just discovered Terrible Minds, Chuck Wendig's blog where he posted a flash fiction challenge with 10 titles you can choose from.  I picked the one called These Damn Insects, and no, this isn't anything close to the women's fiction/romance stuff that I write.  Just something I did in 30 minutes.

But that's what flash fiction is about anyway - push your limits and see how far it will take you.

THESE DAMNED INSECTS

Velvet Madrid © 2016

He couldn’t understand where they were coming from, waking him  up from a deep sleep filled with dark dreams.  But they were coming out anyway. Out of their cracked shells, their cocoons or whatever else people called them. He couldn’t remember the simple words, his head too wrapped in sleep still, still caught up in  his dark dreams of blackness coming to life.  

Co-coon, he said out loud, his mouth so dry he had to swallow just to get his salivary glands going again, yet feeling something scratching against the back of his throat.  What did that even mean, he wondered as another insect burrowed out of its case, falling onto the pillow next to him.

God, they were so annoying.  How did this happen anyway? One day he was going about his own business, doing his thing with the homeless idiots standing outside his building, and then the next, he was watching all these damn insects hatching out of their shells, some of them flying, buzzing about his head, driving him insane.

Wait! Was he going insane? That was it! He was going insane!  Nah, couldn’t be.  He was sane - that he knew.  Maybe he was still dreaming.  Maybe he hadn’t woken up yet.  That’s why there was an insect wriggling on his pillowcase, joined by another, and another, each one getting bigger than the last.  A dream!  What else could it be?

Fuck, now his head itched, strands of his hair seeming to move on its own accord, like something was caught in his hair. He sat up, scratching his head as hard as he could, his fingers pulling things, wriggly, moving things clinging to his scalp.  Eh, you got crabs, dontcha?  But crabs didn’t burrow in one’s hair, they lived in pubes; these had to be lice, only they were bigger, with a pair of hooks for mouths and hairy bodies.  Gross!  

Something buzzed against his ears and he covered them with his hands, shaking his head from side to side as if doing so would silence them.  But they just kept on buzzing, like they were coming from inside his head.  

Wake up! Wake up, you dolt! It’s a nightmare, that’s it! Just a nightmare!   

You’ll wake up and these damn insects will be gone - and your pillow will be spotless, no squirming insects, bugs, whatever else they’re called. Oh, there’s a beetle!  Why were they on his bed now, spilling from his pillow to his bed, under the covers, over the covers, buzzing, moving, squirming about, making the covers undulate.  

He blinked, feeling something moving on his eyelashes. Abandoning his ears, he brought his hands to his face, rubbing the pesky insects clinging to his eyelashes.  He’d read somewhere that good bacteria lived in eyelashes - what were they called? - he couldn’t remember now, but they did.  But if they did, they’d somehow grown bigger, clinging now and dancing on his eyelashes, strumming each eye lash with their claws like guitar strings.  

He opened his mouth wide in a scream but something flew right in.  Or did it fly right out?  What the hell was happening?  Wake up! Wake up, you idiot! Wake up from this nightmare and be done with it!  You shouldn’t have cursed that old man standing under the stoop last night. He was only seeking shelter from the storm, wasn’t he?  But no, you had to insult him, call him names because you were too fucking drunk to care.  

What did the old man say?  He couldn’t remember now, instead imagining hearing a curse, just like the ones he’d read in books when he was a little boy - before the drugs and booze took hold of him and made him the way he was now.  

Black heart, black soul, one day the darkness will eat you whole.

That’s it! That’s what the old man muttered as he lay on the pavement, clutching at his belly.  But he’d laughed at the old man, kicking him again in the stomach, hearing the crunch of ribs against his boot.

Black soul eating me whole, my ass, he’d laughed. Like this is some fucking fairy tale. Get out of my stoop and find someplace else to hang out, alright?  

The buzzing growing louder inside the room, the bed littered with damn insects that squirmed and wriggled and flew about him, and he began to weep. His windows were shut but they were coming from somewhere - had to!  He began to wail, and when he did, he felt the flutter of paper-thin wings brushing against the inside of his cheek, and out of his mouth emerged the ugliest things he’d ever seen in his life. They filled the air before him with a fluttering blackness.

His skin began to burn, and he pulled his shirt up, exposing his belly, the skin bubbling from the inside as if something trapped within was dying to get out. Then pop! The once-tiny pores of his skin gaped open slowly as an insect made its way out, and then another, and another, some of them wriggling and squirming, some of them unfurling wings of paper and smoke.  He’d lost count how many emerged, filling his room with a buzzing that now rose to a crescendo.  He could barely hear his own screams but he screamed anyway, barely registering the insects emerging from inside his throat, working their way out, each one growing bigger against the lining of his esophagus, gagging him, choking him till he was on his knees on the floor, vomiting more wriggly, deadly things.  

Black things.  

Awesome Cool: You Can Preview My Book Right Here!

Amazon just rolled out an embed feature with their book sharing choices and I just had to give it a test run right here!  So if you've ever wanted to PREVIEW Loving Ashe without leaving this site, check out the preview below.

So where can you find this option? Right here:

You'll find it on the right side of the page, underneath the Buy box (at least on my Mac, that's where I see it on the website version).  They also have a HTML option for Wordpress.com sites which don't usually allow certain frame html on their page.

Launch Your Book With BookLaunch!

If you're an author wondering how to showcase your book without having to set up and maintain a blog or a website, then check out BookLaunch.  I discovered them today and even though my books have a landing page on Pressbooks, I liked that I could add testimonials or reviews if I wanted to, as well as have a newsletter sign up form.  There is also a HTML form where I could probably add an excerpt but I haven't done that yet.

It's a straightforward page that features your book, including links where people can purchase the book.  In my case, since my books are with Kindle Select, I only have one option and that is Amazon.  You also get an About the Author section and if you want people to sign up for your newsletter, they can and the list is automatically integrated with your mail list client like Aweber or MailChimp.

I think it's pretty cool for someone who doesn't have the time to maintain a blog but has a book (or books) to sell.  They have a free option which features your book, buy links and an About the Author Page and two paid options that allow you to remove the BookLaunch branding at the top and the bottom (like in A Collateral Attraction) and collect visitor's email addresses when they sign up for your newsletter.

So check out BookLaunch and see if it works for you.  I think it's an amazing idea and once you're there, click the Discover tab to see how other people have set up their own pages for ideas of your own.