Read some of Amelia Thorne's latest: Beneath the Moon and Stars

Beneath the Moon and the Stars is released on October 18th, the gorgeous new debut from Amelia Thorne. Here's the blurb:

Home, sweet home…

Joy Cartier has been to some of the most beautiful places in the world – but none of them have ever felt like home. So moving into a tiny cottage in the idyllic village of Bramble Hill, walking distance from her childhood home, seems like the perfect plan.

That is, until she gets there. The surly inhabitants of Britain’s Friendliest Village are anything but welcoming. Even her neighbour, reclusive Hollywood star Finn Mackenzie, takes one look at her and walks in the other direction.

But when the village animosity steps up a gear, it is the infuriatingly brooding Finn who keeps coming to her rescue. Slowly Joy begins to realise that maybe a happy home isn’t about where you live, but who you’re with…

Read this preview of Amelia's newest novel:

A Rocking Interview With Nikola Yanchovichin

Today we have author Nikola Yanchovichin. Find out what he has to say about the world of writing.

 Smashwords/ Barnes & Noble/ Kobo/ Scribd

What made you decide to go Indie and self-publish?

I just wanted to join this fever. 

Maybe the next time I will send the stuff to a traditional publisher.

What do you think is the benefit of going Indie and self-publishing your own work?

It's not the money, I think, to me is more the desire. To me, that's creating the opiate of writing - just the pure possibility to feel big.

What do you think is the biggest challenge an Indie author faces?

Competition. Maybe the're are millions of readers out there, but the're also so many books.

And the situation is getting harder and harder.

But every author should give it a try.

In my country, due to numerous circumstances, people are buying less then one book in entire year.

But believe it or not, every single day books are being published.

What are you working on right now?

Few short stories and one novel.

What advice can you share with other Indie and aspiring Indie authors?

Every word and every dream is a struggle, but the end is totally worth it.

Which author inspires you?

Maybe the author which has inspired me the most is Nikos Kazantzakis. With simple words, he tells you how to be become a man. And that, folks, means a lot.

What genre do you write in?

Fantasy and horror for now, but I want to create Sci-Fi/ action adventure books too.

Why do you write in the genre that you do?

I like the freedom in it.

If you want, you can create a god, demon or man.

And that's something no other source will give you.

Is there anything else you would like to add that you haven’t included?

Don't forget to download my e-book. It's free.

Grab a free copy of "Crematorium for Phoenixes" and tell me what you think.

That's all I want.

Evolution Cover Reveal: the second book in the E series

Outpost Three is still standing… barely. But the deadliest threat it has ever faced is on its way– a violent force that will annihilate every man, woman, and child.

With the Sentries under his control and Grey’s army defeated, Matt is more powerful than ever. Eden is little more than his prisoner, but that line is blurring as her affection for him grows. Now, as the Outpost faces total destruction, Matt must sacrifice the possibility of attaining Eden’s love in the vague hope that her past might hold the key to saving them all.

Eden’s journey will begin to unravel the mysteries of her previous life, reveal dangerous new questions, and change not only the future of Outpost Three, but shape the course of history.

This eagerly anticipated sequel to Kate Wrath’s E begins an epic quest into the dark, dystopian landscape of Eden’s world.

Reviews

Reviews

The Holy Grail of the writer.

We seek them out, desperately hoping that if enough good ones pile up they will finally help us reach more readers.

But how do you get them?

The sad fact is, most people who read your book won’t leave a review. I know I don’t review every book I read. Most people unfortunately only review if something blows them away, either by how good it is or by how bad it is. And as much as we want reviews, we certainly don’t want the latter!

For most indie books building that review pile can seem impossible. We see the sales, but if feels like they’re disappearing into the ether, because there’s no feedback. Whilst part of me subscribes to the no news is good news idea, I also hunger, like any other author, for more reviews.

Now you can sit back and let them come in naturally, or you can try and generate some more yourself.

How?

One option is book bloggers, blogs like this one that offer a free and honest review of your book in exchange for a free copy. There are plenty of sites, like World Literary Café, just as example, that have forums to connect authors with bloggers looking for books to review. The downside is, a lot of those bloggers have huge to read lists, and it can take a while for them to get to you. But if you can be patient you might be rewarded with a nice full blog post about your book.

Another option is Goodreads. There seems to be a growing trend for R4R discussion groups where you can find readers who are willing to write reviews in exchange for a copy of the book. Find groups that fit your genre and market and join up. Try and be a part of the community, and you may soon find you have a steady stream of people willing to review your book.

The one path I don’t recommend: paid reviews. It might seem like a tempting idea. Pay for a few reviews to boost your rankings and ratings, and hopefully generate some real sales. But what this means is that you’re lying to your reader, and that’s hardly the best way to start out a new ‘relationship’.

So what about you? Do you love reviews or hate them? What are your tips for bumping those reviews on Amazon and Goodreads?

A Rocking Interview With Chloe Testa

Today we have Chloe Testa sharing her thoughts on writing and publishing. Find out more about Chloe on her website, and on Goodreads.

What do you think is the biggest challenge an Indie author faces?

Probably one of the biggest challenges is definitely marketing - creating a name for yourself as an author and gaining readership for your book. Your book may be an absolute masterpiece, rivaling Dickens, Stoker and Shelley, but that doesn’t mean people are going to immediately start buying and reading it – you need to promote! And this takes a lot of time because as an indie author, you don’t have the contacts or know-how that someone in the ‘big leagues’ of mainstream publishing does have. And more than this, it can soon work out quite expensive to market your work. Not that it has to! There are plenty of free services out there run by some fantastic people all willing to help the indie author (such as the wonderful Rock the Book), but it takes time trying to find these, and even then their schedules may be swamped with requests and work or your genre may not quite fit to what they do. You’ll set up a Facebook page and a website and any other form of social media in an attempt to gain readership but of course this is also really complex at times and needs to be regularly maintained and promoted and pushed. It’s tiring. It’s hard. It’s never ending. But it needs to be done, and trust me, when you start seeing the fruits of your labour, you soon forget the pain! 

What are you working on right now?

I’m currently really busy focusing on the marketing of my most recent release, Blood Roses. Marketing really is a full time commitment and, around my second job teaching in a high school, it’s hard to find time to write. I can however reveal that I've started plotting and planning the sequel to Blood Roses. I've given myself a deadline of 18 months to finish it and get it ready for publishing. It’s no small order!

Do you work to an outline or plot, or do you prefer to just see where an idea takes you?

A little bit of both. I always have a basic outline to my writing – I know the beginning, main conflict/climax and ending and these are my guides throughout my first draft and are, normally, the only things to not change as I write and edit! Once I've got this clear in my head/on a sticky note stuck to my laptop, I do let the idea flow and try and see where it will take me. This does lead to a lot of editing later, as I find I just blabber on trying to get as much of the idea out as possible, but then this is what the editing process is for and it’s why it is such a crucial stage in publishing. I do also spend a lot of time jotting down notes and ideas, developing portions of the plot on sticky notes or whatever sheet of paper I can find but that doesn't mean I’ll ever use what I've written down. 

Amazon
Tell us about the cover and how it came about.

I spent a lot of time looking at covers of all the different books currently available in my genre, both world renowned titles as well as many indie pieces, so I knew what to expect. It’s really important to do some research on these things and size up other works because, despite the old cliché, people will judge a book by its cover – it’s the first thing they see after all. Hence I knew I needed something eye-catching that would stand out. As one of the biggest themes across Blood Roses is the colour red, particularly blood red, I needed that to be a predominant colour. Originally I was toying with the idea of a black background, as most fantasy novels seem to have black covers but decided, with guidance from my photographer, that white would not only stand out more on the ‘shelf’, but would also help the red pop. I’m very lucky to have a partner who is also a fantastic photographer so we used her professional skills to take a high quality image of some beautiful red roses covered in ‘blood’, which she then edited into the stunning photographs you can see on the front cover. They encapsulate the theme of the book and it’s dark nature, but are also eye catching and mysterious enough to capture the reader’s attention and encourage them to pick it up, check the blurb and hopefully purchase!

What’s your views on social media for marketing?

Social media can be an invaluable tool for marketing if used in the right way. It can take up an inordinate amount of your time but it really is something completely invaluable to marketing, especially for the indie author. Social media is such a big thing in today’s world that you do need to consider using Facebook and Twitter to reach out to your fan base, even if that fan base is, initially, just your family and close friends. Sharing, liking, retweeting - all of these then present your posts to another selection of friends beyond your initial circle; this helps you gain more exposure and also give your readers a place to 'touch base' with you, get to know you as the author and know your work better. Social media also works really well if you run a promo or giveaway as people love freebies and will share and share alike, getting your work known and out there even more so. Furthermore you can buy advertising through these websites so that your posts/page/feed is shared to a specific target such as a genre, age group or country. Of course this needs to be used with caution, as I’ve found it didn’t particularly do as much as I had hoped in promoting my page, but for some it does work. But on the whole, with the entire world connected at the touch of a button through social media, it needs to be utilized in your marketing strategy. 

My First Foray Into Paid Advertising, Part Two

It's been an exciting week.  Having E on promo has been fun to watch, though excruciating at times.  It's all part of the lead-up to my next book release. You can still sign up to be part of the release:  http://goo.gl/forms/tjSVtfH3yp  Anyone with access to a blog or social media can take part.

As promised, here's my sales chart during the promo.  Now that I'm up to $1.99 the sales have slowed tremendously, but I did get a decent boost from the advertising.  I also did a lot of Twitter promo, shared on Facebook and Google+... so it is hard to separate out those factors.

My conclusions:

• Not sure the Fiverr promo did anything for me.  Tweeting + Facebook + Google+ +Countdown Deal could have easily resulted in 6 sales on its own.
• Ereader News Today was definitely a good one.  I had 21 sales the day I advertised.  Now, I have seen people do A LOT better than this with EReader News.  There are a lot of factors that can affect this.  One thing I didn't know about was that there was some pretty steep big-name promo competition in the same genre going on as my promo ran.  So yeah, not the best.  Another factor could have been the list I advertised through.  I chose the YA list.  Next time, I probably will try a different one.
• The numbers:  I spent $20 total on advertising.  Royalties off of sales so far amount to $29.10, so yeah, I broke even and made a small profit.  But more importantly, I got a nice handful of people to read my book, and hopefully they will want to continue on to the second one.  I'm calling this a success.
• Rank:  I made it to #7 in YA/Sci-fi/Dystopia (possibly higher, I didn't look at the peak).  I made it up to #9,573 in ebooks overall.  Not enough to sustain, but a nice little hop for a while.

I hope this is helpful to some of you!  Please feel free to comment about your experiences with paid advertising!

A Rocking Review of The Tale of Atterberry (The Faire Pendant Series, Book 1)

     

Genre: Middle Grade Fantasy

Rating: 5 Guitars

Find it on: Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes and Noble

Synopsis:

Glenna's life is anything but ordinary.  The daughter of Renaissance festival vendors, Glenna's days are filled with magic and medieval reenactments as she travels the faire circuit with her family.

Then one day, Glenna's life changes forever.  With the help of a pendant, she discovers Otherworld.  An enchanted realm, Otherworld is the land in which all of the myths and magic woven by the Renaissance players comes to life!

Suddenly, Glenna is thrust into a quest filled with danger and deception when Atterberry, a great and powerful magician in Otherworld, needs help recovering a stolen item.

Can Glenna find the item in time?  Can she summon the courage to become the medieval hero the residents of Otherworld expect her to be?  And perhaps most importantly, can she jugle both her life in the real world and her life in Otherworld without damaging either?

Why it Rocked:

This book reminded me why I should get back into reading not only YA Fiction but also middle grade fiction as well.  The characters in this book were what caught my attention from the start.  Glenna and her friends were all unique and interesting in their own way.  Glenna especially was very energetic and likable as a character, which made the story that much more enjoyable to read.  I love it when characters are interesting and unique because it brings the story to life rather than having it fall flat.  

I also really enjoyed the setting of the book.  The description of the world and the encounters that occur are vivid and envelope the reader in Otherworld and the Renaissance location.  It made me feel like just outside my door was this magical location, which I love in books!

Overall I found this book to be very enjoyable.  I would highly recommend it to adults and middle school age children alike!  I left this book craving more and I'm definitely anxious to get my hands on more work by this author!