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Silly Me

January 19, 2012 by in category Archives tagged as , , , , ,
Okay, show of hands. How many of you thought once the book was through final edits and in the publisher’s fair hands, your job was done? You could rest on your laurels, take a few weeks off, visit with friends, then start the next NYT best seller.

Come on, be honest. At least in the beginning of your writing career? Yeah, me too. I understood the blood, sweat and tears expended in book production, but the rest of it–cover, production, advertising–that was the publisher’s job.

Pretty heavy duty fall when you found out otherwise, wasn’t it? I know I was thoroughly gob smacked (great expression, don’t you think) when I found out only a select few authors got the champagne and caviar treatment from their publishers. The rest were relegated to mid list unless or until they were noticed.

Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, along came the digital age of publishing. Seems like there were indie publishers everywhere, and it was a whole new world. Harder in a lot of ways but at the same time there was a very real feeling of being in control of your own destiny.

Gulp.

Along with sending in a spectacular book, you now have to plan and implement your sales campaign, and build your own buzz. So you set up a blog and/or website, you join writer’s groups if you weren’t already a member, and you push push push your book.

Double gulp.

You can also have serious input into your cover, your blurb, who does your reviews. Now that’s a bit more promising. Might even call it positive. Unless you go into brain freeze at the thought of writing a blurb, or your artistic abilities stop with a rousing game of Hangman. Even so, having read many times about the disappointment in poorly executed book covers (and having snickered at many of them when the author wasn’t looking) cover input is truly in the plus column for me.

Enough to off set the rest of the promotional requirements? Well, maybe not but it is a huge rush to get credit for the artwork on the cover as well as the writing inside. Or in the case of My Killer My Love, to share credit. I knew what I wanted the cover to look like, but I went into another brain freeze when it came time to put it together.

And (sigh) the same thing happened when I tried to put a trailer together. I took this great class, broke down the story into quick bits, started looking for images. Sadly, I am prone to the “ooooh shiny object” syndrome and can become easily sidetracked on any search, thereby losing many hours of what should be writing time. Once I found the images I wanted, yep you guessed it, chilled frontal lobes.

At this point it was time to move forward with this book since I signed a contract with Black Opal Books for the next story. So my Christmas present to myself was an inquiry to Lex Valentine, who put a trailer together for me with no muss, no fuss. I’ll be doing the same with Teach Me To Forget (if we keep that title). In the meantime I’m back to writing.

Really need to do something about the temperature of my gray matter and I don’t mean what’s on top of my head. Especially since that’s silver, as anyone with an artistic eye will tell you.
Oh, yeah, the book trailer: MY KILLER MY LOVE book trailer

Monica Stoner writes as Mona Karel.  Read more on her blog,  Discover the Enchantment in Romance  or buy her books from Black Opal Books.  

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Deadline Extended: Romancing the Pages Anthology

January 18, 2012 by in category Archives tagged as ,

OCC/RWA Members Only!

After receiving a few requests for “one more week,” the deadline for short stories for the OCC/RWA anthology Romancing the Pages has been extended!

OCC/RWA wants your romance short stories! As a chapter fundraiser and to raise awareness of our amazing writers, OCC/RWA is putting together an anthology. Suggested word length is between 1,000 and 10,000 words.
Since one of the anthology’s goals is showcasing our members, the call is open to all forms of romance, from inspirational to erotic, as long as it has an HEA. Each story will be labeled for the reader in terms of genre/sub-genre and heat level.
First-time publications rights for 6 months. Although the book will be up hopefully forever, after six months, contributors can publish elsewhere.
Blind review. The stories will be chosen and peer edited by the anthology committee of members who are published authors and editors. Send submissions to occanthology@yahoo.com, where a non-deciding board member will review, track and then send the story for a blind review for consideration.
No content changes will be made to an author’s story without the consultation of that author. If the author doesn’t like the requested edits, he or she is free to withdraw the story.
This is a fundraiser for the chapter. The money will go to the chapter to benefit all the members. However, this is a good opportunity to get publicity for your work and pick up readers who otherwise wouldn’t have found you.
OCC published and unpublished members only. Submission deadline is January 15, 2012 January 21, 2012! Please have a critique partner or author friend (or two or three) read the story before you turn it in.

We are looking for enough stories to fill a 400-page book. The cover design has been generously donated by member and author, Lex Valentine. Those authors who are accepted will be requested to submit a short bio.


For more information, visit the Members Section of http://www.occrwa.org/

— Louisa Bacio
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What’s Wrong with this Cover?

January 12, 2012 by in category Archives tagged as , ,

The creation of a book cover is a collaboration of the author (most of whom claim their suggestions are ignored), the editor, art department and marketing. Sometimes things go wrong.
One of the most infamous cover calamities happened to Christina Dodd, author of Castle in the Air, an historical romance. The hero on the cover is standing behind the heroine in a lovely red gown, holding her with, um, all THREE of his arms. Amazing fellow!
Jill Marie Landis, who writes western historicals circa 1880, got an early peek at one of her covers. It featured a cabin in the woods with a TV antenna. Oophs! The publisher had to reprint ALL of the covers. Boy, was that an expensive mistake.
I think my cover for Big Sky Family is both appealing and charming; the colors are positively lovely. It’s hard to beat a cowboy hero (Arnie), the heroine’s young daughter (Torie) and a golden retriever (Sheila) for getting reader attention. But there’s just one small problem.
                   
Arnie, our hero, is sitting on the porch steps. He’s a paraplegic. In every scene in the book he is sitting in a wheelchair (with the small exception of rounding up cattle on a specially equipped ATV).
I’m guessing, and I really don’t know, that marketing has ‘discovered’ that heroes portrayed in wheelchairs don’t sell. Okay, I really want to sell lots of copies of Big Sky Family.
But what will readers think when they get to page 10 and find Arnie in his wheelchair? Will they blame me for the misleading cover and write nasty notes? Ouch!
And what about readers who read Big Sky Reunion, a previous book which featured Arnie’s brother Daniel? Won’t they remember that Arnie was a paraplegic in that book? When they see the cover will they think he’s been cured? And write nasty notes? Oh dear . . .
So do you think marketing is right? Would you be more or less likely to buy a book with the hero on the cover in a wheelchair?
Let me know.
Happy reading…….
Char…..
Big Sky Family, Love Inspired, available 10/19/2011
Written With Love, working title, Love Inspired, 10/2012
Books that leave you smiling by
www.CharlotteCarter.com
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How Much Money I Made Self-Publishing in 2011

January 10, 2012 by in category Archives

Happy Monday! As part of the changes this year at Routines for Writers, I am now starting the week there with news and information about my self-publishing journey. Since it’s tax time and time to finish planning out the new year, I thought I’d compile my revenue and expenses and share them with both my friends there, and here as well. 

In the following list, I did not include any revenue or expenses for 2011 that were not directly related to self-publishing. All the things I bought or paid for that I would have spent money on anyway – books, DVDs, conferences/speaking events, online classes, web site, software, etc. – are in addition to these numbers. 
EXPENSES
In April I started thinking I would probably self-publish if I didn’t hear good news about my genre at the Romance Writers of America national conference, so I started buying books and ebooks on how to publish ebooks. (That still sounds funny to me!) I spent $12.74 on five ebooks between April and August. I self-published Little Miss Lovesick [link] in September. Then I spent $67.59 on three books and three ebooks between September and December. I also bought a copy of my book for $0.99 at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble so I could double-check the formatting.
My husband is a former graphic designer so I paid $9.99 for the photo we used to create the cover, and my husband gained a lot of points to leverage against chores in the future. 🙂  I spent $15 on an online class where I learned how to format my book for Kindle, then I did all the formatting myself. 
I decided that I wanted to own my ISBNs, and I wanted enough of them to continue publishing years into the future with consecutive numbers assigned to my “publishing company.” So I paid $575 for 100 ISBN numbers. I also paid $57 to file a DBA (Doing Business As) form with the State of California to use Daydreamer Entertainment as my company name. (It’s not a corporation or an LLC, it’s just permission to use a name that is not my own.) 
PUBLISHING THE BOOK
I uploaded the book to Amazon on September 17. But I was pretty sure I had a formatting problem, so I asked all of my friends not to buy a copy until I fixed it on September 22. I decided I wanted to price books the way I like to buy DVDs at Best Buy and Target: on sale when they first come out, and then full price after that with occasional sales. So I set the price at $0.99 for 30 days…which really means 5-6 weeks by the time you wait for your changes to take effect across all venues.
The book went up on Barnes & Noble on September 22 and Smashwords on September 21. If you aren’t familiar with Smashwords, they distribute my book to the iTunes store, Kobo, Diesel and more. There are a couple other venues I want to use, but with the move and the holidays, I haven’t been able to complete the work yet.
SALES AND REVENUE
I think the minimum that you have to earn before getting paid (on all three sites – Amazon, B&N and Smashwords) is $10. You can download a spreadsheet showing your sales and revenue from Amazon and B&N, which I have done every month. I’m not sure about Smashwords; I have a spreadsheet with all of my sales across all their distribution channels, but I’m still reading it over and figuring it out. It looks like their spreadsheet is only available by quarter, but it includes what countries you’ve sold to. Cool.
For September through December, 2011, I’ve earned $5.39 on 17 sales from B&N, and $8.11 on 8 sales from Smashwords (for sales to Smashwords and Apple customers only, so far). Again, I won’t get paid by either of them until they owe me at least $10. As seems to be so often the case, the biggest sales are from Amazon. I’ll break it down by month.
September – $13.65 in earnings on 39 sales, paid on November 29th; $0.26 on 1 sale in the Amazon UK store, unpaid until I reach $10.
October – $12.15 on 33 sales, paid on December 23rd; no non-U.S. sales.
November – $22.05 on 9 sales, not yet paid; no non-U.S. sales. (The price from the end of October on is $3.99.)
December – Reports are generated on the 15th of the month (next week), but it looks like Dec numbers are approximately $9.65 on 4 sales. That means I won’t get a check in February. 
THE BOTTOM LINE
My total earnings for 2011 is $71.26 on 111 sales. (Of course, that’s not what I’ll report to the IRS. That number would be $25.80, the amount I actually got paid in 2011.) Total expenses for 2011 per the above is $739.30. (That is the number I’ll report to the IRS, in addition to other expenses, because I really did spend it in 2011.) That gives me a net loss of $668.04 for the year. (Again, not the number that will appear on my tax form because I had other writing-related income from teaching online classes. I just want you to understand the difference between the numbers as I’ll be presenting them to you throughout the year, and the way you report a cash-basis business.)
You can look at these results from a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty perspective. People who have been doing this longer than me seem to agree that it takes about a year for you to really see progress, and it’s quicker if you have multiple books out. I’ve heard that nonfiction sells better than fiction; I’ll let you know if that’s true for me when I put out my nonfiction ebooks. In the “corporate” small business world, common wisdom is that it can take up to five years to start seeing profits and have a business that supports you financially. I expect I’ll be closer to the one-year than the five-year mark, but only time will tell.
On days when I feel despondent about the numbers, my awesome husband reminds me that a few months ago I’d sold zero books and earned zero money from my fiction. This, from a self-proclaimed pessimist, so you can see why it cheers me up so much.
Today’s a new day, it’s a new week, a new year, and I’m feeling optimistic. I have a lot to do and some days I don’t know how I can possibly do it all. But every journey is one foot in front of the other, one mile after another, so I have to focus on what to do NOW and what to do NEXT and leave the rest of it on my To Do List.
Again, ask any questions you want and I’ll try to answer. And if you’re interested in planning out your 2012 writing year with me, sign up for my online class. We start next Monday. 
Until next time, Happy Writing!  🙂


Kitty Bucholtz decided to combine her undergraduate degree in business, her years of experience in accounting and finance, and her graduate degree in creative writing to become a writer-turned-independent-publisher. Her first novel, Little Miss Lovesick, was released in September 2011 as an ebook and will be available soon in print format. Kitty has also written magazine articles, devotionals, and worked as a magazine editor. She is the co-founder of Routines for Writers where she blogs every Monday. Her next novel, Love at the Fluff N Fold, will be released in Spring 2012.
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Greetings, New Year’s Grinches

January 6, 2012 by in category Pets, Romance & Lots of Suspense by Linda O. Johnston tagged as , , ,

Admit it–are you a New Year’s Grinch?

Okay, I realize there really isn’t such a thing. That’s certainly not the background of the character created by Dr. Seuss who despises Christmas in the book How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
But the term Grinch has been extended somewhat in common use to mean more than that nasty, greedy and cute character. It can also mean someone whose holiday spirit is lacking.
So why not a New Year’s Grinch?

Most of us have looked forward to the New Year as a new beginning. We like to think that whatever went wrong for us in 2011, or wasn’t ideal, or even could just use some changes or tweaks, will get resolved in 2012. Sometimes it’ll just happen, and sometimes we have to work on it, but this year can definitely be better than the last.

Can’t it?

What about if you just let one year run into the next? I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, so although I may aspire to changes, mostly those that I cause, they don’t rise to the level of promises to myself the way resolutions might.

What about people who just figure January 1 is just the day after December 31? Those who may enjoy taking time off over the holidays because everyone does (well, everyone but writers) but don’t really consider the upcoming year to be different from the one that just expired?

Tell you what. All you New Year’s Grinches: since you don’t believe in the magic of the New Year, make your resolution now. This year, you’ll vow to stop Grinching and start working on changing all those things in your life that need improvement. And admit it. There are some.

Silhouette Nocturne BITES
November 2011
Like–if you haven’t read any of my Pet Rescue Mysteries or my Harlequin Nocturne Alpha Force miniseries books, that’s something thing you can start in 2012. Or if you’ve read some, pick up some more! Then there’ll also be my first Harlequin Romantic Suspense book in July…

Okay. Enough BSP. How about your own writing aspirations or career? What can you change in the upcoming year to improve wherever you are? Or what about your family life? Your home? How can you improve our environment? Help save some homeless animals? Whatever!

Tell us all, right here. Are you a New Year’s Grinch? And are you resolving to change that?

In any event, to all of you OCC members and friends, whether you’re Grinches or not: Have a very happy and productive 2012!

Linda O. Johnston
http://www.lindaojohnston.com/
http://www.killerhobbies.blogspot.com/

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