I was part of a New Year's party on a book and author group called The Bookish Girls. It was a great experience. I had a 15-minute window that was mine alone to post what I wanted. They requested that two of the posts be interactive and one be a giveaway. I decided to give away a $25 Starbucks gift card. On one interactive post I asked, “What are your New Year Goals?” On the other one I asked, “Who is your favorite author and what’s your favorite book?” I got so many wonderful answers to both questions. I chatted with a bunch of really nice people; it was fun.
For my giveaway post I asked people to visit my website and subscribe to my newsletter to be entered in the drawing. I got 54 new subscribers in that one day. I sold one book from my website. My first sale on there. I interacted with hundreds of people. It was completely worth the $25 for the gift card. I highly recommend this type of event if you have the opportunity. I hope I will be invited to join more.
I also had my own special New Year's giveaway for the people who posted a review after reading my ARC for Force of Corruption. I used it to prod my readers to post their reviews and it worked great. I sent out two emails about it and each time I got a few new reviews posted on Amazon, Goodreads, and Instagram and TikTok. I gave away a $50 Barnes and Noble gift card and a $25 Starbucks gift card along with a signed copy of both of my books and a few book swag items. I initially planned to give some bigger items like a FOC book bag and coffee cup. But when I started adding up the cost of everything it was too high. I cut back and just included a few stickers, earrings, a drink cozy, a scrunchy, that type of stuff. I think it's a great prize as is and I hope the winner is happy with it.
I found a wheel to spin for the winner online. It was a Google wheel and it worked great. I just entered everyone’s name and spun it. Then when it stops the winner is announced and confetti shoots across the screen. It was pretty cute. I filmed the spin and posted it so everyone could see how the winner was chosen. I didn’t do that for the new subscribers drawing because it was 54 names, and they didn’t give me any info except email addresses. For that one I just closed my eyes and pointed at the screen to choose. Both recipients responded quickly so I was able to close out the drawings and I have their items packed up to ship out tomorrow.
I lucked out and the person who won the reviewer drawing is someone who inquired about being a beta reader for my next book in the series. She is a “team member” now so I was glad to reward her. She only gave FOC four stars but wrote a nice review. She liked it enough to inquire about reading for the next one so, it’s a good thing. My reviews have been pretty good lately. I got one three-star review since that one star, and the rest have been four and five stars. My average rating on Amazon is 4.27 and I think it’s about 4.8 on Goodreads. I can’t complain.
I’m feeling like I have finished working on FOC for now. I think the giveaways were the last big thing for FOC. But that’s not really true because I can never stop promoting it. When Force Majeure comes out I will have two to promote. I don’t even want to think about it right now. Yikes!
I’m so close to being finished with FM. I know what’s going to happen and how it ends. I just need to get it written down. I’ve still been dragging my feet a bit. I think the procrastination is fear of finishing. That sounds so weird. But hear me out. What if it’s not as good as FOC? What if nobody likes it? What if I wrote this HUGE book, (double the size of FOC) and it gets trashed? If I don’t finish, I don’t have to face any of those possibilities. I have psychoanalyzed myself. I wish I could charge my insurance $200!
The other thing I realized is that this book is going to be gigantic for a romance. I’m thinking about breaking into two books. Book 2 and Book 2.5 and releasing them simultaneously so nobody has to wait for the next book. I’m not sure if that’s a good idea or not. I won’t know for sure until I read it myself. I will need to find the right place to cut it in half. I will probably ask in several groups what they think. I just can’t fathom a 160k plus book for romantic suspense. Plus, if I cut it in half, it would be two 80k word books which is theoretically ideal. I started thinking about how enormous the proofs will be and how much the proofs and the author copies will cost me. Then the shipping costs for such a big book would be so high for me and readers. It just makes sense, but then readers will have to buy two books instead of one even though it would probably be twice the price. Definitely need to do some market research.
FOC has some very descriptive spicy scenes. I originally tried to keep the fact that I was writing a secret, mostly because of this. My daughter literally “caught me” writing and I won’t lie to her, so I admitted I was writing a book. She of course immediately wanted to read it. At first, I told her no. I explained the genre and the explicit parts and told her it was too embarrassing. She still wanted to read it. If she decided to read it with a very detailed warning, I decided I would need to get over it. I eventually relented. She loved it and offered to edit it for me. She’s an award-winning writer and an attorney so it seemed like a great offer. We worked really well together, and she made fantastic suggestions. I hope she can work on FM; her life is quite busy now that she passed the bar.
Unfortunately, her support knows no bounds and because she is very proud of me, she posted on FB that I was writing a book. When it came out, she posted about that. At Thanksgiving she bragged to her mother-in-law and our other guests. My brother found out on FB, and he told my mother. She wanted to know why I didn’t tell her. That was a fun conversation. Thankfully she understood when I told her what I was writing and why I didn’t tell her or anyone. I’m still not telling anyone else. My best friend knows of course and my close family. That’s it and I try to keep it that way. My pen name helps.
My mother tried to read Haunted Hunting Camp, my horror short story. She said it was too scary and she couldn’t go on. She’s never liked horror movies or books, so I get it. I mean the bad guy is a psycho serial killer, definitely not her thing. But my brother bought her a copy of FOC. I would have given them each a signed copy, but he beat me to it. Anyway, when I spoke to her today, she told me she was on chapter three! She said she can’t believe I wrote it and she wanted to know how I know about all the things I wrote about.
She thought I must have done a ton of research. I hate to admit this, but I didn’t do much research at all. I asked someone I know about some of the gun specifics, and I asked my husband a couple times how a man would react to something, but that’s about it. I told my mother that and she was shocked. She wants to know how I could possibly know those things. Thankfully she wasn’t referring to the spicy parts. Even so, my face was red. I read a lot; I know a lot of interesting people, I guess. And I have experienced places, people, activities, and the world for more than a half century. I just know stuff. I wrote what I know, without really knowing how I learned it.
My best friend likes to tease me about the spicy parts. She thinks it’s hilarious that I am the quiet one who rarely curses and was essentially a children’s librarian for ten years. When she read my book, she was shocked by the graphic spicy parts. She doesn’t normally read romance; she reads horror and fantasy. It was a whole new experience for her and to think that her shy quiet friend wrote it is the funniest thing ever. I think it’s funny that it tickles her so much. I used to get teased when I worked at the library because my husband was a long-haired heavy metal musician back then and I frequented bars to hear him play. It was also common to find me in a miniskirt and heels at the club, the complete opposite of my conservative work clothes. She thinks that’s funny too. These days I’m more of a hippie than a rocker chick, but I still love heavy metal music.
If I had known the biggest challenges of writing a book would be telling people, I know and marketing I wonder if I still would have written it. I want to believe I would’ve forged ahead, but who knows? My tip for future authors, consider your genre and how you will discuss it with your family and friends.
As always, thanks for reading.