It’s been a heck of a week. I’m sick with a cold and had to cancel all of my appointments this week, unfortunately it was quite a few. My dentist appointment was at 8am Monday so I went there rather than cancel when they opened. They acted like I have the plague, the girl literally left her seat and backed away from the window as they politely asked me to get the f*ck out.
This week started the advertising phase of the Stuff Your Kindle event coming up, so I can finally tell you it’s Dark Mode Stuff Your Kindle, on December 27th. It’s twenty-four hours of free ebooks in the darker genres of fantasy, romance, horror, and sci-fi. You visit: darkmodesyk.com and check out the Master List, then go to Amazon and start downloading. They aren’t free to borrow on Kindle Unlimited, they are actually FREE to purchase on Kindle format. Some of the authors are wide so their titles will be free on other platforms, and it will tell you where to find them on the Master List. I have my very own listing link, I used VioleNt as my free title, and Origin of Violet is free to download when you subscribe to my newsletter.
My goals for this event are to have lots of new subscribers for the free copy of Origin of Violet, and to get new readers, lots of orders, gain footing in the sales metrics on Amazon, and thousands of page reads on KU. I’m also doing another event with Force of Corruption in December, so with a little luck I'll have a good December, sales wise. Inevitably more visibility for my books should lead to more followers on all my socials. It’s a machine that you hope will go into overdrive and it’s a lot of work keeping up with all the constant posting.
You’ve read about her before, but I need to mention her again, my friend Louise Glass, author of Dream Lover, works hard for usually eight hours a day posting and creating content. She’s a Dynamo and I wish I had her tenacity. She makes sales every day from her efforts, and she runs a FB group with engaging content, she’s gaining followers in leaps and bounds which hopefully convert to readers. He second book will be out soon, check out her website and visit her on Facebook. You should also read her award-winning book.
Some of my other author friends approach the marketing by having and joining special events, such as virtual takeovers and signings. I’m not savvy enough to figure out all of those opportunities, but I gladly participate when the offer is made. I’m going to be on a talk show that’s done on Zoom on December 3rd. It’s an opportunity to boost my visibility, they have options to purchase advertising with the video. It’s a legitimate and well-established talk show so I’m comfortable choosing one of the marketing options for the video. It’s Central Valley Talk, Briggs on Books, I'll put some links below. With Thanksgiving next week it'll be here before I know it.
I’m also doing an author takeover of Books for Boos Facebook Group on December 28th, at 2pm EST, which will be during the free period of the SYK event and with any luck I'll be able to capitalize on the free offer for another audience. I’m hoping the other SYK event will coincide with Dark Mode and the takeover over enough to have both Force of Corruption and VioleNt see an up-tick in sales. The author takeover will be on Books for Boos on Facebook, it’s December 28th. I'll be offering a giveaway, and other authors are also taking over during this event with their own giveaways. It could be a windfall of new books and swag for some lucky readers!
Another thing I did this week is join FAPA, Florida Authors and Publishers Association. I find joining associations to be helpful for educational purposes. They offer informational articles, webinars, discounts, and connections. If you’re serious about being an author, you should consider joining one or two reputable organizations. I like to join something national and something local, the point of view is different, and you can learn more from the multiple perspectives.
I've also made a decision to support my local bookstores by advertising them on my socials and encouraging others to do the same in their area. I feel like indie authors and indie bookshops should uplift each other, we’re looking for the same readers and we can both benefit from mutual support. In my efforts to support them I’ve come across some interesting informational articles.
There’s an organization called Bookshop.org that works like Amazon on a much smaller scale. They’re like a publishing house and distributor for indie bookstores. If a bookshop is too small to carry a large stock or have a website, you can go on Bookshop.org and choose your local book shop, then when you make a purchase the shop you designate gets the sale. It’s ike you bought the book from your local book shop, but they didn’t have to worry about shipping you the book. I haven’t made a purchase yet, but I’m going to try it. It’s a way to counteract the machine of the indie shop crushing Amazon, while still having a one stop online shop.
Another topic I’ve been thinking about is the cost and decisions involved with publishing a book. I’m referring to the actual costs of the physical book. Your choices about trim size, font size, and even spacing will all be factors in the cost to print and ship your book. IngramSpark has a few handy cost calculators that will allow you to play around with the options and see the costs associated with the various options.
I personally choose to go with a trim size of 6x9”, it’s the next size bigger than your standard small paperback. By choosing this slightly larger size, my covers are a little bigger and more visible. But the cost savings come from fewer pages in the book. The font standard of 12pts is not a place I’m willing to buck against the system. But I have played around with line spacing. 1.5 (one and a half line spaces) seems to be the most common, and many authors choose to go with the single space option. I usually write in a line spacing size of 2 (double spaced) as a way to have room to see the mistakes easier. I prefer to print in 1.5, but with my larger books it made the number of pages unmanageable, and I had to go with single spaced.
So, if you make your book a little larger trim size, and you’re thoughtful about your spacing choices you can save on printing and shipping costs. More pages equal more printing costs. But you need to remember the shipping is by weight, so is a bigger cover a heavier book? And what about paper choices? There’s a lot of discussion about paper colors and thickness preferences. I usually choose cream paper because I think it’s softer on the eye of readers. By choosing cream, I’ve limited the paper thickness choice to only one. If you choose white paper, you have a few more options. Do you want your book to feel more expensive with a thicker, higher quality paper? Or do you want to go with something more affordable? You can fool around with these options and see how the costs change on Amazon, but once you hit “Publish” you’re locked in so choose wisely.
The IngramSpark calculators will also let you check out how the costs change with the different options before you make the final choice and publish. If you recall my test of the various publishing and distributors earlier this year, you'll recall IngramSpark was the worst quality and most expensive. Barnes and Noble came in second, and Amazon gave me the best quality for the lowest price. Amazon was faster too. I’ve since used Amazon as my printer for author copies of my books I have on hand for website sales and giveaways. However, I did encounter a printing delay through Amazon that impacted the ARC copies for VioleNt, so take this advice with a grain of salt.
Vile, the final installment in Violet’s Tales duet and a half, is almost finished. I've just completed the big final climax scene, in more ways than one, now I’m wrapping everything up and there might be one last twist. The costs for printing and editing are on my mind as I climb over 130k words with the story. But Violet demands her story be told the way she wants; don’t forget I thought her story would be a novella back at the beginning. In all honesty her story could continue in a longer series, but I kind of like the idea of leaving her future up to the reader's imagination. She’s got more bad guys to kill, but how will her reverse harem fare as time goes on? Is she destined to grow old with three partners? Will she have children? Will the kids join the family business? All questions I'll let the readers decide on their own. However, she may not be completely gone forever, there might be a reason to check in with her later. Only time will tell.
But as I toy with her story, or maybe Violet’s toying with me, I can’t help thinking about the upcoming expenses to send her final volume out into the world. Editing is charged by word count; the cost is growing along with the story. I have the cover; it’s been paid for thankfully. But those printing choices will be another expense. When you have a series it’s best to make each volume the same size, fonts, and cover style. You want readers.to be able to spot your stories by the covers. Let’s say you have a series, and the brick-and-mortar bookstores are carrying physical copies on their shelf, when you add a new title to the series your readers will be able to know immediately it’s a book in that series. This will prompt them to purchase the next story, they may not have even heard you added to the series. But because you made your series look a certain way, they can find your books and any new editions. Plus, it just looks uniform and cohesive when they have a similar aesthetic.
What should you take away from this information? Make thoughtful choices about printing your books and the costs those decisions will impact later. Think about the attractiveness of your covers, readers definitely judge a book by its cover. But you also want your readers and future readers to immediately know it’s a book by you, what genre the book falls into, and if you make it alluring, you’ll attract new readers. How many times have you bought a book because it has an incredible cover that would look fantastic displayed on your bookshelf?
I’m going to include several links below, please check them out and as always, thanks for reading!
My website: www.enchantingauthor.com
The Stuff Your Kindle Dark Mode Master List: www.darkmodesyk.com
My link for Dark Mode: https://www.darkmodesyk.com/winter24/violent
The FAPA organization: www.fapa.org
The indie bookshop link: www.bookshop.org
Central Valley Talk, home of Briggs on Books for my interview:
Channel: CentralValleyTalk.com
Our YouTube Channel: YouTube.com/CentralValleyTalk
Our Facebook Channel: Facebook.com/CentralValleyTalk.tv
IngramSpark calculators: https://myaccount.ingramspark.com/Portal/Tools/ShippingCalculator?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Shalene Marie’s Plot Twisters FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/907005587511214/?ref=share