When you make your first book sale on your website…you scream with excitement and wake up your exhausted husband. True story. Thankfully he’s very forgiving and was happy for me. The virtual author event is coming up quickly and I have a discount running for the event. 50% off the entire order plus free shipping on my website. If you register for the event, show me your confirmation, and I'll send you the discount code. A reader took advantage of this pre-order opportunity and bought signed copies of both of my books and a Beautiful Badass sticker. It’s my very first successful website sale and it went perfectly!
I had a previous sale when I did the New Year’s Author Event, but there was a glitch, and it charged the wrong amount. I refunded the order, fixed the problem, and the customer didn’t return to redo their order. It was a bummer, but I understand, she lost interest, or realized she shouldn’t have spent the money, it happens.
I’ve been advertising the event like crazy, posting on all my socials and I updated my website to have a special banner about it. There’s also a link to register for the event. During my social media blitz, I’ve come across some interesting things. I’m going to be doing a live TikTok interview this week. I’ve never done one before and I have no idea what she’s going to ask me. I found a TikTok reviewer who actually reads your book and doesn’t charge a fee to post about it on her socials. She’s going to post mine September 14th, which should be right after I release book two, Force Majeure.
I also found a dark fiction site that does special events for dark books by female authors, including fantasy, romance, and horror. The romance was already filled, and I don’t think Force of Corruption qualifies. However, she was really hoping for horror entries. I decided to submit Haunted Hunting Camp and I'll find out June 14th if it’s accepted. If yes, I’ll need to make my E-book temporarily free, and she’ll include it in her Stuff Your Kindle Event. She has 6,000 readers signed up to participate. Hopefully someone will download my book and I’ll get some reviews, but I should get page read credits and get paid by Amazon/Kindle for any pages read. So, it's a win if I’m chosen.
Lastly, I found an interesting group that does a virtual Book Fair. I had to pay to join but it’s only $30. I allow myself $30 a month in advertising budget, so it worked out okay. If I don’t use it one month, I can spend $60 the next month. I use it for boosting posts, or Facebook, Google, or Amazon ads. I don’t do them often because I haven’t seen any success from them. But the post boosts do seem to help my social media grow with likes, followers, and friends.
I have over 1,100 followers on Facebook, over 1,100 on Instagram, and over 220 on TikTok (it’s so hard). Lately I seem to have hit the Facebook algorithm just right because I’ve gained over 300 followers in the past month, no clue what I did to have that happen. If I figure it out, I'll let you know. I’m getting super excited about the upcoming releases of Force Majeure, Origin of Violet, and Violent.
Got my new covers for the Violet series, they’re awesome. My cover designer is a miracle worker. I give her a stick person drawing on a napkin with a vague explanation of the picture in my head and she brings it to life. Ampersand Book Covers is top tier!
Got an update on my medical stuff. The good news is I don’t have breast cancer, the biopsy was okay, thankfully it won’t delay the disaster of my right hand from being screwed back together. You think I’m joking, I’m not. My wrist and fingers will mostly be held together by screws with borrowed body parts to patch it together. I will have Frankenstein’s hand. I keep praying for the Terminator hand, you know the indestructible metal one. Nope, I’m going to be lucky to use all my pieced together digits. Surgery is scheduled for mid-July. I'll try to write some extra blogs to have stuff to post while I recover.
Since the anthology I submitted to was cancelled, I’m publishing my story myself. I'll be giving it out at the author event coming up June 22nd. Then I'll put it up on Amazon, most likely. I want to have a romance available on KU. It may become another reader magnet at some point, but that’s the plan for now.
I've been meeting some lovely authors, very funny authors. I enjoy their posts so much. I’m usually accidentally funny, but these authors are practically stand-up comedians. I wish I had that quick wit. I’m the type of person who goes home and three hours later a funny response comes to me.
Have you tried the magic of Canva yet? I’ve been trying to make more graphics to use on my socials. I’ve made a few for the cover reveal of Force Majeure. I’m planning the reveal for the Readers Break the Internet author event. I also have a special surprise planned, so shhh! My awesome voice artist friend has recorded some excerpts from Force of Corruption for the event. I’m going to read one excerpt and play his two excerpts. I’m so happy for him to have this experience. He’s super new like me, and hasn’t done anything like this before. I hope it helps him connect with more authors and get paying work. We’re collaborating to support each other and reach new readers/listeners, we'll see what happens. His voice is amazing, I think he'll do well if he keeps going. His name is Raven Morningstar, you can find him on YouTube @corvusmorningstar (link below)
I’m hoping to practice this weekend, so I don’t have any screwups during the LIVE event. I’m also nervous about being on screen. I’m not in the best shape since my health has gone so far over the cliff. The photo I use is old, and probably the best I’ve ever looked in my life. I had a makeup artist do my makeup for a special occasion. That chick made me look like a supermodel compared to my usual face. Now my face is older and fatter. Don’t you hate that? I need to get over it, nobody cares. They only want to read what I write; my looks aren’t a factor. Thank goodness!
I wanted to fill you in on my TikTok interview. The host, Shelby, is a sweetheart, she goes live on TikTok ALL day. I don’t know how she manages that, but God bless her, she does it. She sent me an invite to her live session, and I signed in, thankfully even I could handle the easy tech steps. I ended up not being on camera because I had to be on my phone and with my hands like this, I can’t hold my phone, so everyone would’ve been looking at my ceiling. She asked me a bunch of questions about my books, my process, my characters, and we talked about the Readers Break the Internet event. As a result of the interview, she bought a copy of Haunted Hunting Camp. She signed up for the live event, and she wants a signed copy of Force of Corruption. She also got pretty excited about my upcoming releases of Force Majeure and the Violent books. It was a great experience and I enjoyed it very much. I'll definitely join her again; she invited me to return any time.
I’m going to include links below for the live event, Shelby's Live TikTok site, Ampersand, and Raven Morningstar’s Youtube. As always, thanks for reading!
Raven Morningstar on YouTube-
www.youtube.com/@CorvusMorningstar
Shelby of Thorin&Nugget4ever on TikTok-
https://www.tiktok.com/@fl_nugget128?_t=8mzO8uEYklr&_r=1
Ampersand Book Covers-
Ampersandbookcovers.com
Readers Break the Internet Romance Author Event-
https://facebook.com/events/s/readers-break-the-internet-onl/797504215772748/