Day: November 12, 2013

Book Blogger Spotlight: Cath ‘n’ Kindle Book Reviews

I’m pleased to feature Cath ‘n’ Kindle Book Reviews in the Book Blogger Spotlight this week. The blog is run by Cathy Speight. Cathy is a wife, mother, and grandmother. When she’s not skiing or cycling or cooing over her grandchildren, she’s reading on her Kindle. Though she read a lot in her youth, she says life got in the way, and she didn’t really find her way back to it until she bought a Kindle. Now she describes herself as “hopelessly Kindlestruck.”

In addition to being a top-notch book reviewer, editor, and beta reader, Cathy is also one of my favorite people on the planet. I first became acquainted with her through the Facebook group Book Junkies, where she also serves as an administrator.

Cathy was one of the early reviewers of my novel Upgrade, and was a reviewer for Bad Book and Triple Dog Dare as well. In each instance, I have been amazed at the great pains she took in providing me with excellent, highly detailed, and thoughtful feedback on the writing. By going above and beyond, Cathy has helped make me a better writer (to the extent I am trainable).

As a reviewer, Cathy is in the friendly but fair part of the spectrum. She has a genuine appreciation for the talent and work that goes into creating a book and tries always to see positives as well as opportunities for improvement. Continue reading “Book Blogger Spotlight: Cath ‘n’ Kindle Book Reviews”

Indie News Beat: The times, they keep on a’ changing

Indie Publishing NewsIn a month when the top story should have been the Frankfurt Book Fair, what excited many people was the news that UK retailer W. H. Smith suddenly removed all self-published books it had only recently started carrying. It did this because a customer complained that a search for children’s books with the keyword “Daddies” returned titles of an adult, and in some cases gross, nature. From this naive filter failure, it was only a short but entirely predictable step to the retailer reassuring its UK middle-class customer base that they would not have to suffer such distress any further, and blaming the uncontrolled orgy (pun intended) of self-published books for the problem.

While many commentators pointed out the hypocrisy in this stance, there can be no surprise. Independent Authors continue to suffer the most outrageous discrimination as mainstreams use their influence to defend their shrinking market shares, in this case by having a major UK retailer pin the blame for its own simple mistake on the perceived tawdry subject matter of many self-published books. Clearly, the message is that adult material is only acceptable if it first has the mainstreams’ seal of approval. Continue reading “Indie News Beat: The times, they keep on a’ changing”

Martin Crosbie Interviews PeopleReads

As authors, we have access to a number of professionally-run book promo sites where we can effectively promote our work. Some offer paid services and others are free. Some will post information about your discounted book and others only feature free books. Here’s a pretty extensive list of book promo sites I shared with Indies Unlimited.

There are blogs and websites that help you gain followers or connect with readers, and that’s great, I appreciate the help. Branding is important, and I participate in those sites from time to time, too. But, if I purchase advertising, or post my discounted or free book on a site, I have one goal – I want to make sales.

Bookbub and the others have built their subscriber lists and done a great job. I love dealing with them, but it’s become fiercely competitive to be considered for one of their spots. So, if you’re preparing your advertising in anticipation of the upcoming Christmas buying frenzy, you’ll want to focus on new book promo sites that are growing very quickly.

I thought it would be interesting to talk with some of the actual people behind the scenes in these sites to get a feel for what goes on and where they are headed. This week, I interviewed Van Heerling, who runs the site PeopleReads.com. Continue reading “Martin Crosbie Interviews PeopleReads”

How to use Pinterest to attract new readers

I am one of those people who has struggled to see the point of Pinterest. I followed the tutorials here on Indies Unlimited, put up a couple of boards related to writing and got fed up with it. I couldn’t see how it would help me as an author. [L.A. Lewandowski has blogged about Promoting Your Brand With Pinterest and more.]

Imagine my surprise when a few weeks ago I discovered that Pinterest is a fantastic marketing tool for writers and I have been a complete dummy not to see its potential. The key is to think visually. [Here’s an article on Visual Social Networking with some helpful links.] We spend all our time describing places or people in our books but Pinterest allows us to actually put up pictures to help our readers. We can now show readers the locations in which our books are set. We can use our boards to give an idea of our characters and much more.

Yes, you can load your book covers onto Pinterest but to attract more interest in your books, what you should be doing is producing interesting storyboards about your novels. These can also be rewarding for your fans. Continue reading “How to use Pinterest to attract new readers”