A Glimpse into the NEW WIP from JK Mikals, Author of “A Chip in Time”

April 24, 2013 by Patrick Jones

JK Mikals, Author of A Chip in Time, Talks About Her Next Novel

Welcome to The Linden Chronicles!

My work in progress is called Cold, Cold Heart. What’s it about? In 1941 a girl journeys across a grey Atlantic filled with U-boats to wartime Panama, only to be spurned by her new husband. Pregnant, she struggles to survive, hide the child and conceal all further trace of herself. Why did she work so hard to block her trail?

The idea popped up on two different fronts. While trying to straighten out my incredibly tangled paperwork for residency in Panama, I found whole rooms full of strangers quieting so they could eavesdrop as I regaled the officials with tales of my probable origins. That gave me an appreciation of how intriguing the story was. Then, a casual suggestion in a science popularization book about quantum physics that it might – actually – be possible to shift the past sent the story roaring into my keyboard.

Genre? I guess we have to call it literary, although, too, it is a mystery without a murder, and contains elements of what some might still call science fiction. I can’t say what other books it might be like, because I haven’t seen anything quite like it before. It’s certainly not like my first book, A Chip in Time, which is a satire featuring fertility gods, businessmen, the Akashic Records, rabid squirrels and an innocent twit who is supposed to save the world. A Chip in Time takes a gentle swipe at nearly everything and makes people laugh, while Cold, Cold Heart raises questions and might make readers cry.

I’m an Indie to the core, so I’ll be publishing it myself on Smashwords and Amazon Kindle and CreateSpace. Look for occasional teasers and discussions of the back story and science behind it on my blog at
http://jkmikals.blogspot.com

What Every Author Should Know

April 22, 2013 by Patrick Jones

Reblogged from Savvy Writers & e-Books online:

When consulting / coaching our clients, helping them with their book marketing, we often have to watch them coming to a screeching hold when they try to organize special sales or free days: authors cannot change prices, text or anything else on their retailers account if they go with a publisher. No matter if it is a traditional big publisher or one of these "vanity" publishers, as only those can go into the retailers account - unless they give their authors the keyword and other details and the permission to do changes on the sales page.

Yvonne Hertzberger – The Dreamt Child: Earth Pendulum – Book Three

April 18, 2013 by Patrick Jones

Please welcome Yvonne Hertzberger talking about her latest WIP, “The Dreamt Child.” Thanks for visiting, Yvonne!
dreamtchild

My current work in progress is the third volume in the “Earth’s Pendulum” trilogy “The Dreamt Child”. I call it “Old World Fantasy” because it is set in a pseudo, early medieval period with little technology. While many fantasies have a great deal of magic or mythical beasts and such, the only paranormal in this series is a seer who has visions and a relationship with the goddess Earth. This seer also communicates with certain animals via ‘mind speak’ and sometimes this adds a little humour.

In “The Dreamt Child”, the seer, Liannis faces major changes in her world and what it means to be a seer amidst these changes. The goddess has decided one seer is not enough in a growing society. This is a story of transitions, relationships, good guys and bad guys, and a good smattering of action.

I never intended to write a trilogy. It just happened. When I attempted to write a short story all these amazing characters wormed their way into my consciousness and demanded that I tell their story. It’s been a fun and unpredictable ride.

As with the first two instalments, “The Dreamt Child” will be Indie published on Createspace, Kindle and Smashwords. I hope to have “The Dreamt Child” available for the holiday shopping rush (Rush? Well, a girl can dream.)

Each book seems to take me roughly two years to complete. I really thought this one would take less time but I got involved in social media, promotion and marketing, and with a wonderful group of authors called Indies Unlimited.

I truly cannot say my work compares to any other writer’s work, though I would love to have Robin Hobbs or Juliet Marillier say they liked it.

While my books are labelled Fantasy because they are not historically accurate they will also appeal to those who like historical fiction and historical romance. These are traditionally considered ‘women’s genres’ but several men have read and enjoyed the first two, “Back From Chaos” and “Through Kestrel’s Eyes”, because they have enough action and there are such strong, well-developed characters – both male and female. That is what readers say they love best – my characters.

You can find me at
http://yvonnehertzberger.com
for a closer look, sneak peeks, and my blog.

You Are Not Alone - Get a Mentor

April 15, 2013 by Patrick Jones

Reblogged from Savvy Writers & e-Books online:

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You just wanted to write - and upload your book to Amazon, expecting that it becomes an instant hit. The writing - your skills - an art you mastered, is making you proud. However the publishing / marketing process feels scary … and you never before thought about becoming an entrepreneur.
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Sure, you know all the benefits of self-publishing:

Spring has finally arrived in Missouri!

April 7, 2013 by Patrick Jones

Patrick Jones and family

Spring has finally arrived in Missouri!! Talk about Happy! No more snow in the Spring…please! Take advantage of the sun and enjoy nature at it’s best. Sandy will be taking more pictures of the garden this year to share with everyone!

Penguin's Solution for Authors: One Racket To Rule Them All

March 27, 2013 by Patrick Jones

Reblogged from David Gaughran:

Regular readers of this blog will know all about Penguin's purchase last July of the universally reviled Author Solutions - a company infamous for overcharging writers, doing a terrible job of publishing their books, and forcing ineffective and expensive marketing services upon those authors when their books (inevitably) fail to sell.

My posts on the topic have been leaning heavily on the tireless work of…

MUST READ for Authors to Avoid Pitfalls

March 22, 2013 by Patrick Jones

Reblogged from Savvy Writers & e-Books online:

Writing is an art. Publishing is a business. If you want to sell your book(s) and not just write for your own fun, better get a thorough understanding of the publishing business and what to look out for when making decisions how to get your book to readers.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch wrote a fantastic blog - a warning to all authors, who are thinking about having a service provider (who call themselves publisher) to handle e-book formatting and posting the e-book to all online retailers - for 10 - 15% of your royalties.

The Pond

March 19, 2013 by Patrick Jones

The First Pond

Several years ago, after turning the side yard into a garden, I decided what was needed was a pond.

At the time, my wife worked out of town most of the time. I thought, as a surprise, I would dig a pond for her.

It was late March so the ground was soft enough to dig. I marked the ground with orange spray paint, picked up a shovel and went to work.

Three days later, I had a hole twenty five feet wide by forty feet long and three feet deep. From the bank of dirt to the inside of the hole, it measured a little over four feet deep.

I located the pond between five large oak trees. My thought was a walk around the pond built from sandstone. That was going to have to wait until May or June. The creek has layered sandstone to mine but I needed the water level to drop.

When my wife arrived home the following Friday, she was impressed at the size of the hole I dug in the yard with a shovel.

She was not impressed that my back was not going to allow me to walk. I have a problem with my back from time to time so she was not happy with me, but was with the pond.

The rain came in April and it rained a lot during the month; enough to fill the hole turning it into my pond.

When the rains ended, so did the pond. The water drained and left me with a muddy hole in the ground. Asking the neighbors around the area, they said digging the pond between five large trees was not a good idea.

My daughter is a geological engineer. When she finished snickering, she told me to try bentonite. It’s a powder that, when mixed with dirt and water, gets “gooey.”

Off to the feed store I went and bought ten bags. I mixed and mixed with dirt, then spread and packed it on the bottom and sides. Taking the garden hose, I lightly wet the mixture until the water started to settle in the bottom. I could feel the success ebbing from my breast!

I let the hose run with the intent to fill the pond but Glenn, The Weatherman, predicted rain for the next several days.

It rained, the pond filled, then the water left me again.

The cost of a liner was prohibitive. A friend suggested “roofing rubber.” He used it and got great results. I went to our local hardware store only to find out I could not get the size I needed and it was far more expensive than a pond liner.

So, for the next several years while I saved the money, the grandchildren used the hole as a fort when playing soldiers.

The Fort

One day I decided that a roll of 4 mil thick plastic would (maybe) work.

To my amazement (and my wife’s as well), it held water. We went and bought 3 koi fish. We had a wonderful time watching and feeding the fish.

A year later, we had the driveway graded and new gravel laid. The man doing the work, Don, said he could dig the pond deeper and pack it with clay. My wife jumped at the chance to have Don do the work.

Three days and several tons of clay later, he finished.

The Second Pond

It was a wonderful job. We built a walk around the top and my wife put plants on the outside of the bank. All that was left was water.

I took the old garden hose and filled the pond.

There was one small problem: It wouldn’t hold water and still does not.

Now I have taken you through a tale of woe, but it gets worse.

My four year old grandson dug a pond in his backyard – just like Pa-Pa.

His pond is holding water.

Grandkid Pond

Goodreads – the #1 Choice for Authors by Doris-Maria Heilmann with 111Publishing

March 15, 2013 by Patrick Jones

Doris-Maria Heilmann with 111Publishing has offered to write a guest blog for everyone to learn the Goodreads platform. Thank you for your post, Doris-Maria!

Goodreads is an often under-estimated social network marketing tool – even so it is specifically geared towards book lovers and avid readers. Members can explore and share their love of books, discuss literature, make contact with authors and share some of their own work. Goodreads consists of people who not only read books, but blog about books, write book reviews, and discuss books in their group forums. Authors can increase their discoverability tremendously – and subsequently their book’s success, with all the tools that Goodreads has to offer.

The publisher Tim O’Reilly said: “It’s a lovely social network.” And author Emlyn Chand praised: “If there is one social media site that is most important for authors, it’s GoodReads. Not Twitter. Not Facebook. Not even my beloved Google+. It’s GoodReads, hands-down.” Members love seeing what authors are reading and can discover if they have common favorite books. Did I mention joining Goodreads is free?

Goodreads is home to more than 20,000 book clubs and has almost 15 million members. Goodreads has so many valuable features; the site is often overwhelming at first glance. Learn how to navigate your way through Goodreads. With every visit to their site you learn new features you can use to promote your books.

Goodreads offers so much to readers & writers

Create a Goodreads author profile
Promote all your online events or books signings
Generate buzz by providing giveaways for your book
Show your writing / book blog on your authors page
Promote your new books and your book trailer
Use Goodreads to help build your platform
Interact with your favorite writers
Follow other readers/writers to learn from them
See what others are reading, what they like
Store your “to read” list
Show your friends what you think of books you read
Check out reviews and ratings of books before purchase
Connect with other readers via reading groups
Write reviews and rate books
Share your favored quotes
Find groups that interest you and join them
Automatically add friends to your profile
Follow discussions and see what your friends are up to
Your friends can improve your books ranking with “Listopia” votes

How to start your presence on Goodreads

Take the time to read the Help Section before you start. It gives you all the information and answers in their FAQ’s. Create a fabulous author profile. A Goodreads author profile gives an author several benefits: It is an excellent promotion for you and your books. Your readers can easily check out the latest information about you, see a photo of you, and browse which books you have written. And it allows readers to view the books you have read. Accurate metadata on your profile is absolutely essential for online discovery. Make sure that each of your books has the correct ISBN / ASIN, publication date, cover image and page count etc. Once you’re through the initial phase of registration, you can set up your own virtual shelves. The default set of shelves are read, currently-reading and to-read. Your friends can see the books on your shelves and find out what you thought of the ones you’ve already read.

Join the Author Program

It’s completely free to join this Author Program
http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/7-great-features-for-authors-on-goodreads/
and have a second page on Goodreads, dedicated to your books. It will allow you to manage your own book data, to participate in an online Q and A session with your readers, to list giveaways for print copies of your books, to share excerpts of any upcoming publications or to post videos about your books or anything you choose. How to join the author program and get this second page on Goodreads is described in their Help Section.

Get LOTS of friends on Goodreads

As more friends you have, as more the word about your books you can spread and as more readers will refer your book to their friends. You have the opportunity to add friends
http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/how-to-add-friends-readers-on-goodreads/
to your profile automatically by signing in with your member ID from sites such as Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. – which saves you lots of time.

Or you can type your friends name in the Goodreads search window to find out if they are already members. The more friends that you have expands your popularity exponentially.

The most important friends you might choose on Goodreads are “top readers” and “top reviewers” or “most popular reviewers”. To find them, go to >community >people> and click on these to choose them as friends. These are the direct links:
http://www.goodreads.com/user/top_readers and
http://www.goodreads.com/user/best_reviewers

To be more of interest to others and gain more friends, click on lots of books that you would like to read (on any of your friends pages) to have more books in your shelves. Another way to get more friends is just from clicking on other people’s friends; best are those with lots of books (not those with too many friends, rather lots of books).

Use all the features Goodreads offers:

Get the much needed reviews.

The number of reviews – no matter if good or bad – significantly impacts the interest in a book. When a Goodreads member reviews a book, it automatically appears in the updates of all their friends on Goodreads, providing word-of-mouth marketing. Reviews are also exported to many other sites, including Google Books, Powells.com, USAToday.com and more. A Goodreads review works harder for you than any other reviews. Find out who reviews in your genre and invite them as friends.

Connect your blog with your Goodreads profile.

Not only does your blog help to make your author profile more interesting, but each week an email goes to members with featured new blog posts from authors.

Promote your author and book events.

Just add your events and invite Goodreads friends to attend. You can do this with a single email to all of them! Virtual events, such as online discussions and book releases, are as welcome as bookstore signings and author appearances.

Introduce yourself to potential readers.

By fostering a reader community, you strengthen the ties between your work and the people who read it. Perhaps the biggest benefit of Goodreads is that you will have the chance to communicate with other people who love books as much as you do – and who will promote your books in the future.

Use giveaways to generate important pre-release reviews.

Goodreads recommends that you offer multiple giveaways, each open for about a month. The first giveaway should ideally start about three months pre-publication. Then, a few weeks before your book hits the shelves, run a second giveaway. There is no limit to the number of giveaways one can run on Goodreads. Learn in this blog:
http://www.novelpublicity.com/2012/02/how-to-run-a-goodreads-giveaway-with-maximal-results-11-tips-we-know-youll-need/
how to run a Goodreads giveaway with maximal results.

Join several Goodreads reader groups.

Don’t talk about yourself as a writer initially. Use the group as a reader first. After you’ve been an active and enthusiastic member for several weeks, you can approach the moderator about hosting a discussion of your book. Popular groups like “The Next Best Book Club”, “Romance Readers Reading Challenges” or “The History Book Club” regularly host chats with authors. Read more about Goodreads groups:
http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/hidden-gems-at-goodreads/

Vote for your favorites and get voted on Listopia.

Listopia:
http://www.goodreads.com/list
is a hidden gem in Goodreads book ranking. Ask all your friends to vote for your book and help it climb in popularity (and do it in return for them!).

There is more, your Goodreads friends can do to support you: Underneath your author portrait (and often some ads) on the left side of your page are icons for Google+ and Facebook – if you are in these networks. Your friends can click on the icons and a post, containing your image, will be automatically sent to these websites.

You might be registered with Goodreads already, but not really connected with it yet. I hope I motivated you to try it soon. No other social network can beat Goodreads if you are an author and if you know how to use this FREE PR tool for your books!

Doris-Maria Heilmann is the writer behind the popular blog for authors:
http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com
. She facilitates seminars for writers, as well as online book marketing coaching
http://www.111Publishing.com/seminar
and has studied e-publishing, business and marketing. Find out more
http://about.me/ebookPR

To Re-Tweet or Not to Re-Tweet…That is the Question. Does it Help Book Sales?

March 11, 2013 by Patrick Jones

tweets logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In answer to that question: Probably not much.

What tweets do is help your SEO‘s. That is important for sales. Re-tweets give you exposure. People that read Twitter get to know an author’s name and book title(s). That is also important.

If I re-tweet to my followers about a book and the author’s name, it is possible that one or two will do the same for me.

In some cases, the readers go and check out the reviews.

Just how important are reviews?

My opinion is that reviews are what authors lives for. I have a few bad reviews on Amazon. That is going to happen. Why the reader picked my book to read, when it is not the genre that they normally read, is puzzling.

I look at the review and say, “God Bless Them.” Then I look at the four and five star reviews and smile. In the case of my novel, “The Wolf’s Moon,” the good reviews far outweigh the bad.

Do I tweet about how many reviews are four and five stars? No. On Amazon I have fifty something reviews and that is wonderful but I have many more from people who emailed me directly giving me five stars.

Many said Amazon would not let them review the book as they did not buy it but got a copy on a free day or a book signing.

Is this true? I never question my readers, but it really doesn’t matter. The fifty plus reviews were statements saying it was a good story.

In the end, yes, book sales are why we write and go through the pains of self-publishing. Yes, I would like to make the New York Times Best Seller list and see book sales skyrocket. I don’t expect that to happen.

When I tweet something about “The Wolf’s Moon” and I have ten others re-tweet it, then I know two things:

1. The name of my novel is reaching more people, and

2. I have met some very wonderful people – mostly authors.

Tweeting is one of many forms of advertising, as is re-tweeting.

Berlin Marathon 2007 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Doris-Maria Heilmann with 111Publishing once said that selling a book is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. To me that means I have to use every method and mode to get my name in front of the public, as well as the name of my novel.

Tweeting and re-tweeting are just a few of the methods that we can use.