UPDATE: My book is no longer 50% off - now it's FREE for the month of July!

My book, Rose of Par Kluhnd: A Fairy Tale, is now FREE for the month of July, only at Smaswords! Use the code SSWSF at checkout to get this ebook for FREE. Here's the link: Rose of Par Kluhnd sale.

Smashwords only sells ebooks. If you want the paperback, you'll have to go to Amazon, which is not having a sale, sorry to say.

Rose of Par Kluhnd is on sale at Smashwords!

My book, Rose of Par Kluhnd: A Fairy Tale, is 50% off all this month at Smaswords! Use the code SSW50 at checkout to get it for 50% off. Here's the link: Rose of Par Kluhnd sale.

Smashwords only sells ebooks. If you want the paperback, you'll have to go to Amazon, which is not having a sale, sorry to say.

Book signing this Saturday!

I'll be signing books in Cuyahoga Valley National Park this Saturday! How awesome is that?

When:
Saturday, June 18th, 9:00 am to 12:00 pm

Where:
Countryside Conservancy Farmers' Market
Howe Meadow, Cuyahoga Valley National Park
4040 Riverview Road,
Peninsula, OH 44262

What:
A book signing at the Farmers' Market!

If you're in the neighborhood, stop by to experience a great Farmers' Market, and come say 'hello' at the book signing tent! I'm so excited, I love farmers' markets!

Getting two books ready for paperback release!

I've been hard at work getting My Twelfth Christmas and The Witch of Starmont ready for paperback release. I won't have my hands on the proofs until next week.

I'm excited about them becoming available in paperback for two reasons. One is that I'll be able to offer paperbacks of The Witch of Starmont for sale along with my herbal salves and teas and tinctures when I participate in an arts and crafts fair in early June. The Witch of Starmont is about a woman who runs her own herbal remedy and skin care business, but who also harbors a secret. There's a lot in the book about collecting and growing beneficial plants, so it will be a nice addition to everything I'm offering for sale at the craft fair. Those interested in my wares may also be interested in the book.

The other reason is because My Twelfth Christmas is my best seller and it might be the type of book that people want to have a hard copy of. It's small and will be very inexpensive, likely under $4.00. So when the Christmas season rolls around (although it sells pretty steadily all year round), the paperback version will be there, too, for those who may want it in that format.

You can read the first chapter of My Twelfth Christmas here, and you can read the first chapter of The Witch of Starmont here.

The Ogham Alphabet

 

From the Triskelle Irish History Website.

 This is the Ogham Alphabet, a form of ancient Celtic writing often found carved on standing stones.

Each letter is also associated with a type of tree. Different types of trees held their own special meanings - mystical, magical, or sacred - for the long-ago users of Ogham.

I borrowed the Ogham alphabet and use it here and there in my book, Rose of Par Kluhnd: A Fairy Tale. There are a lot of links to ancient Irish myth and legend in this book, for those who care to look for it. You don't have to be at all acquainted with Irish lore in order to enjoy the book, but it's there for those who want to delve a little deeper.

Congrats to the giveaway winners! And, we have skipped the other seasons and gone straight back to winter.

My book giveaway is now over and five winners have been sent a copy of Rose of Par Kluhnd: A Fairy Tale. Congratulations to:

Bitsy Anderson
Kendra Swallow
Fiona Clark
Dana Palmer
Gabbie Jonhson

Out of 1389 people entered, they were the winners! One is from Great Britain, one is from Canada, and three are from the good ol' United States. Your books are on the way! And a big thank you to all of those who entered to win a copy of Rose of Par Kluhnd. Wish I could afford to send everyone a copy : )

In other news, we seem to have skipped over spring, summer, and fall, and gone directly back to winter. At least our doggy likes the snow : )

In which I mention a Book Giveaway and digress on the topic of Negative Reviews

ONE: There are only a couple of days left to enter my book giveaway at Goodreads - it ends March 31st. I'm excited to learn who the winners will be. I have the books right here, waiting to go out to their new owners.

TWO: I read a negative review for a self-published book the other day, and rejoiced. I've read samples of several self-published books which were not very good, and yet they had several reviews which rated them very highly. When I see that I wonder if it's all family and friends writing the reviews, or acquaintances who are too embarrassed to say what they may really have thought. When a one star review pops its head above the crowd of accolades, I do a fist pump and say, "Yes!"

Why? Well, the particular review that I'm alluding to here, mentioned poor writing, grammatical and syntax errors, and the overall poor flow of the story, among other things. And I would have to agree with the reviewer for the book in question. As a writer, I want to know about these things - preferably before my work goes out to the public. But if I've published trash, I also want to know that. I'll want to improve my writing, or take a good, introspective look to see if I should leave writing behind and allot my time to other things.

I have three self-published books out there and very little feedback. One of the things that is stressed by other writers, self-published or not, is that writers must keep writing. Self-published writers tell each other that continuing to write and publish is one of the things which must be done in order to pave the road to success. I haven't gotten much feedback on the work I have out there, and because of that, I haven't really written anything for a while. I don't want to be throwing muck out there, if that's what it is.

So I'm waiting for feedback. I'm not afraid of honest reviews, in fact I crave them. It's hard to improve when everyone is just smiling and patting your back and gushing. Hey, I've gushed over books before, but I honestly felt the love. You can see some of my gushes under Recommended Books. I don't do reviews, per se, I do book recommendations here on this blog. I will do reviews on Goodreads, and I've occasionally given a bad review, but the books were exceptionally horrible. These weren't self-published books, but I think that if self-published authors hit that 'publish' button before their work is truly fit for public consumption, they should be ready to hear about it - and be grown-up enough to take the criticism and use it to improve their craft.

I hope I'm grown-up enough to hear the truth about my books.

The first review of Rose of Par Kluhnd is in!

My book, Rose of Par Kuhnd: A Fairy Tale, has received its first review, and I'm thrilled with it. To read the review please visit Books, Off the Page. That link will take you to the review of my book, for all other reviews, please click this link.

Why don't you prove it?

In the Harry Potter movie, Chamber of Secrets, when Harry accuses Malfoy's father of slipping Riddle's diary into Ginny's possesions, Mr. Malfoy says, "Why don't you prove it?" but he delivers the line exceptionally well.

My daughter and I sometimes use that line in banter:

Me: "You ate the last piece of chocolate!"

Daughter: "Why don't you prove it?"

Well, now I have proof!

This is my proof copy of Rose of Par Kluhnd. I'm going over it now, getting ready for the print version to become available. I laughed when I saw this on the very last page. I showed it to my daughter the first time she said, "Prove it!" after I'd gotten it in the mail.

She said, "Gaaah!" in frustration, claiming it wasn't fair.

Mwah ha ha! Too bad! Now I have proof.

The cover of my new book!

This is the cover for Rose of Par Kluhnd: A Fairy Tale!

It's out now and available through Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Smashwords.com. In the next few weeks it will be available through most other ebook retailers, too (Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, etc...)

Click on the cover for more information about the book and where to buy it for just $2.99!

Report on Self-Publishing eBooks Experiment

Several months ago (April, 2010) I began an experiment. I self-published two ebooks through Amazon.com to see what would happen. At the time, the self-publishing world was starting to really wake up to ebooks and Amazon has made it (relatively) easy to upload and publish your written works through their Digital Text Platform, and make them available for purchase through their Kindle ebook store.

You can do this in various other places, too. I, for instance, have also published one of my books through Smashwords.com, which makes your ebook available in many formats for just about any ereader. Through their premium catalogue, your book is also included in the iPad ebook store, the Sony ereader store, the Barnes and Noble Nook ebook store, and other ebook catalogues.

So, the big question, how have my books done? Am I a self-published millionaire yet? No.

A thousandaire? No.

A hundredaire? No, but almost.

Let me break it down for you.

My Twelfth Christmas was published in April, 2010. Since then, I've sold 194 copies, the majority during the months of November and December (it's a Christmas story). This short story sells for $0.99. I make a whopping $0.35 on each one sold. So this book, thus far, has brought me a total of $67.90.

The Witch of Starmont was published in July, 2010. Since then, I've sold 12 copies, half of those during the months of November and December (I think they were probably from people who liked the Christmas story and wanted to see what my other book was like). This is a novella and I've priced it at $1.99. I make $0.70 on each one I sell, so this book, thus far, has made me a total of $8.40.

So, together, thus far, I've made $76.30 from my little two-book self-publishing experiment. Oh, and over 200 people have taken a gander at my writing.

Success?

It's exciting when you see you've made a sale. And it was very gratifying to see my little self-published Christmas story ranked in the top 20 bestselling Christmas ebooks at Amazon, and often in the top 10 bestselling children's Christmas ebooks simultaneously during the holidays. That feels like success right there. But number-wise, it's hard to say.

I know of many self-published authors who sell hundreds of books per month, and several who sell over 1000 books per month. And then there are some who sell a book here and a book there over the space of several months. This last is exactly what my sales are like when it's not Christmastime.

For those of you wanting to know, I've done very little advertising and self-promotion for my books. This can make a difference, if you do it smartly, and well. I was thinking of doing some sort of advertising during the holidays for my Christmas book, but when I saw sales start to uptick in October on their own, I sat back and wanted to see what would happen without any advertising. I did make my presence known more than usual on the kindleboards and on a couple of amazon kindle holiday book threads, but that was the extent of my self-promotion (other than the obvious links I have on the blog here - which, by the way, rarely get a click-through).

And so the experiment continues.

Sometimes I'm a little slow...

I just found out that the Kindleboards forums over at Amazon.com have created profile pages for all of the kindleboards authors' books.

I have to say that the pages look really nice and I'm flabbergasted. They contain information about the book, a large cover photo, a link to the regular Amazon page where you can buy the book, and even an excerpt - all without the clutter that's usually found on the regular Amazon.com page.

Here are the links to the pages for my 2 books available through the Kindle store - downloadable not only to Kindle e-readers, but, with free Kindle apps, to your computer, iPhone, iPad, Droid, Blackberry, etc. :

My Twelfth Christmas

The Witch of Starmont

As the holidays approach, My Twelfth Christmas has begun to receive some notice. It's often ranked in the top 10 bestsellers for children's Christmas books, and it's often in the top 25 bestsellers for holiday/Christmas books in general. The rankings fluctuate a lot, but it's fun to watch. It's exciting to see that people are buying my book.

Low-cost Ebooks

Continuing my experiment, I have now self-published a novella as an ebook through Amazon.com:


A couple of months ago I self-published a short Christmas story. The results so far? I've sold about ten copies, three of which were to relatives, and one to myself. The other six? Real customers. Not such an impressive debut.

I must point out, however, that I stink at self-promotion so I've not made all the rounds on the Kindle boards and elswhere plugging my book. I did run two facebook adds, one for two days and one for three days. That's where most of my six additional sales came from. I also must state that, not being the Christmas season, perhaps people aren't looking for a Christmas-themed book right now.

So. Here we are with self-published experiment #2, The Witch of Starmont. It's novella-length, and probably just right for summer reading. In fact, I'm running a facebook add over the weekend which states just that, "The perfect summer read!". It's got a little romance, a little contemporary fantasy, a cottage in New England, what's not to love?

I haven't told relatives yet, so thus far I've only sold one copy - to myself : - )

Let the experiment continue!

On the future of the publishing industry...

I found this quote in the June 7, 2010 issue of Time Magazine. It's by Garrison Keillor. It's almost too true not to repeat. It originally appeared in the Chicago Tibune (click here for the full opinion piece):

"I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numerals (UR 2 1derful) ... The future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75."

To self-publish, or not to self-publish... Maybe through Kindle?

I'm not riding in the self-publishing bandwagon, but recently on the Galley Cat website, there have been a couple of posts about successful self-published authors. These authors were both self-published using amazon's digital text platform self-publishing tool for kindle. Their stories are interesting and worth a look, you can find J.A. Konrath's story here. And you can find Karen McQuestion's story here.

J.A. Konrath has something like 20 books available through the kindle store and sells something like 800 per day. Crazy, huh?

And Karen McQuestion sells tens of thousands of books per year and is the first kindle self-published author to land a movie deal.

Now, all of that success involved more than just uploading their books to the kindle store and sitting back. Konrath already had a book or two in print and so already had a following, and McQuestion made sure to keep her name, and her books, out there in forums and other venues.

After reading their stories, I decided to try my hand at the kindle self-publishing. Not with my major works, with which I am still going the traditional route and sending queries to agents and keeping my fingers crossed.

But I have two other works that I thought would make good experiments for the kindle platform. One is a short Christmas story. I actually recently turned down a real publishing contract for this story. I don't have an agent (yet) and the publisher was very small and very niche, and the contract was very bad (for me). They wouldn't negotiate, so I didn't sign. But this gave me confidence that this work was good enough to be published, so it has become my first self-published work on kindle. My Twelfth Christmas became available yesterday and I've already sold four! (One to each of my sisters, one to me, and one to my niece *grin*.)

But the experiment will continue. I have another work which was completed fairly recently. It turned out to be novella length and novellas are a hard sell through the traditional route, unless you are already a popular author. So once I've finished with revisions, The Witch of Starmont will be going up for sale on kindle, too.

I'm not that great at self-promotion, but I'll try. Because if you don't tell people about your stuff, no one will ever know it's there. And you want people to know it's there.

One key to high volume sales is low price. My Twelfth Christmas is priced at $0.99, and The Witch of Sarmont will be priced at $1.99. Right now, the royalty structure is such that I get to keep 30% of that.

They also give you an author page on amazon. Mine is still being created, but when it's up, I'll post about it with a link.

Let the experiment commence!

Is Spring here already?? And, no, I didn't sign the contract.

The weather has been gorgeous here lately, sunny, warming temperatures. Our blanket of snow is looking rather tattered now. A couple more days like this and it'll probably be gone. Wow. It's unusual, we're usually looking at cold and snow through March and sometimes into April. I wonder if it'll stay this way, or if we'll have one last winter hurrah before all is said and done.

In publishing news, I didn't sign the contract, so I remain unpublished. There were a couple of big things in the contract that really made me uncomfortable.

1. They wanted me to assign all of my rights to them in perpetuity. It's recommended to license your rights, not assign them. Assigning rights is generally unrevertible - the rights now belong to the publisher and don't revert back to you. Rights are revertible in a licensing agreement, they revert back to you when the term of the agreement ends. And there are many kinds of rights, not just for printing. They wanted the rights for, "any and all media and forms of expression now known or hereafter devised."
2. They wanted the rights of first and last refusal for, "the Author's next published work in this series or subject matter and the Author's next published work." This means that any similar story and my next published work would be theirs unless they didn't want it. And even if they didn't want it, if I found someone else who did, I would have to take it back to them for a second look to see if they wanted it now that someone else was interested in it.

This is a very small, niche publisher with limited reach. This contract would lock me into them without hope of escape.

Why would anyone sign with them? They are a Mormon publisher, and if you are writing specifically for a Mormon audience, this contract wouldn't be all that bad. Your work would be published and would be distributed to Mormon bookstores (there are Mormon bookstores, just like there are Christian bookstores), and you would have a guaranteed publisher for any future works, as long as they wanted to publish them.

I, however, am not writing specifically for a Mormon audience. How and why did I even come to submit something to them? My brother-in-law is Mormon. He is something of a Mormon apologist - a defender of the faith (you know, like C.S. Lewis). Over the past few years he has published a couple of books on the subject that have been very well received in the Mormon community. This is his publisher, and when they sent out an email to their authors looking for a short Christmas story, he forwarded it to me, knowing that I had one.

It would have been a nice way to break into the publishing world, except for that darned contract. The funny thing is, I actually do have an idea for a book that would target a Mormon audience. The title would be, In Search of the Stray Elder and other Adventures in Jelly Making. You see, an Elder is what a male Mormon missionary is called. The elder in my title refers to elderberry bushes - so the title is a play on words. It would be a recounting of the adventures I've had in finding and collecting fruit for jelly making over the years. So they could have had two books out of me if they had been willing to negotiate.

Oh well. On to bigger and better things, I say : )

More computer problems, and still unpublished

My computer is down temporarily. Son's computer suddenly quit. Daughter's computer occupied. I am currently typing this entry on my daughter's boyfriend's laptop.

Not a good time to be without technology while trying to negotiate a book contract through email.

Found out, however, when I finally accessed my email through the laptop, that the small publishing company won't negotiate the terms of their contract at all. I'm not thrilled with the contract as it stands, so I am considering not signing. Which is disappointing, but I don't want to sign away more than I'm comfortable with (way more than I'm comfortable with).

So as of now, I am still unpublished, and likely to remain so for the time being. But hopefully my computer will be up again soon and I'll get back to the story I'm working on now - which I literally left mid-sentence when lots of things started happening all at once just over a week ago.

I'm itching to get back to that sentence : )

Yikes! I might become a published author!

I was offered a book contract the yesterday by a small publisher for a short Christmas story that I wrote. Yea!

I don't have an agent, so poring over the contract is up to me. I don't want to sign away my firstborn, so I'm trying to make sense of everything. I've caught a few things that need changing, so hopefully this publisher is willing to negotiate.

I have 30 days to sign the thing. Hopefully everything works out in the end. It'd be nice to have something published!

Ceiling Cat - the muse

To ensure that I have a muse to inspire my writing, my daughter has put ceiling cat above my workplace:

She found the ceiling cat papercraft here.

This is the original ceiling cat, from lolcats, not to be confused with basement cat, his nemesis:

There are lots of things to distract me from my writing:

Hopefully ceiling cat will keep me on track.

Keeping the faith - some writerly advice

Kristin Cashore, author of Graceling and Fire, has a nice post up about keeping the faith while writing, even if you feel your manuscript is "a total mess".

She emphasizes that, yeah, your book might fail, but it definitely will fail if you quit writing it. She talks about faith and doubt, and how you can have both at the same time - give yourself permission to believe even as you have your doubts, and don't fail because you didn't work hard enough.

Only, she says it all so very much better. See her post here.

And talking about writing, I almost seem to jinx myself if I talk about my writing here. I'll throw caution to the wind, though, and say that I am indeed writing, and the story is coming along nicely so far.