Advice to Newbie Indie Authors

As a blanket rule I have begun only "fanning" authors that I have read and am actually a fan of on Goodreads. The readers on this sight are savvy people and they are serious about their book reviews and who they choose to fan. As an author you can lose face with them if you try marketing ploys like fanning other authors indiscriminately. You must also NEVER outright suggest they read your book. Don't even hint at it. Some of them are nice and just ignore you. Others will unfriend you and tell their friends how annoying you are. 

I know it's a big thing to spend a lot of time engaging other authors. Don't. Some time is fine, but not the majority of it. Engage potential readers. Who do you write like? Go to that author's page and friend request their fans, those people obviously already enjoy that style of writing. DO NOT solicit to these people either. Take an interest in their posts. Be sincere. Respect their intelligence. 


Secondly, a book giveaway is the best thing you can do as a new author. List a giveaway, it can be small. Five books. Blog about it, post links to your blog on twitter with the hashtag #bgrt #bookgiveaways. In two weeks my unknown book gathered 1100 entries. Be relentless, be engaging. Drink a lot of caffeine. 

If you have $30-40 to spend create a carefully targeted and worded Facebook Ad. Do you have a Facebook Page? You should. Not a profile, a page. You can advertise your page to drive up numbers but often times people will like your Facebook page and never buy your book. That's a waste of money. I run one ad for Barnes and Noble and the other for Amazon. Make sure to include the price, that way people already know what they'll be spending and you don't waste any clicks (it's pay per click). For targeting, again, list authors similar to you, this also helps ensure that you'll have people who are a good fit for your book clicking on your ad. 

It takes time. It's frustrating, I know. Hang in there. Don't throw your energy into things that don't work. These readers don't care if you have a zillion fans, they care if you write well. I use to do the tag my book and fanning other authors...it doesn't work. Do a giveaway, run an ad on goodreads or Facebook (which is really cheap, just make sure to set your overall spending limit AND your daily budget so your ad doesn't run off with your wallet). The best advertising is free. Word of mouth. Get those first, excited readers and you'll slowly be off and running! Blog, facebook, twitter, goodreads...link everything. And somehow find time to keep writing and revising. When you don't have the big bucks to dump into big, flashy ads that are constantly running, YOU have to be the one that is constantly running. Make sure you're spending your energy wisely. 


And do not try to hop on the coattails of other indie authors. It's rude.

Good luck.

For a Change in Pace

Joan the Rouen (it rhymes) being cheeky

There are other things I do with my life besides read and peddle my book and read and research and write. Things like laundry and weeding the garden and laundry. I am also a referee and judge, a defender of justice (or the necessity of silence within the home for certain lengths of time, it's a fine line). There are ducks to feed and water, a coop to muck out (this is also my husband's fault, we only have ducks because they were on clearance and he can never pass up a good sale). And many, many more mundane things (such as dishes and dirty bathrooms) fill my days to overflowing. O and let's not forget having two boys in Little League and two in Scouts. So, I am plodding along, trying to work on Book 2. But honestly, most nights I pass out before getting much done. And then my husband calls me four minutes after I pass out because he's on his way home and it's late and we talk throughout the entire hour-long drive because it helps keep him awake. By the time he gets home it's 1 in the morning (or later) and the ducks and chickens will need to be let out of the coop in five hours (or fewer) because leaving them in too long only irritates them and causes them to make an even bigger mess.
So I am trying, trying to write book 2 for those of you who shake your fists in the air at me and say, "Why!? Why must you leave me hanging in this way!?" But there is research and there are unruly characters who mangle my original idea for the story.
My brain is addled. I will no longer opt to weed the stoopid garden at noon. That was a moronic idea.

The von Strassenberg Saga is also available for Kindle. $2.99. Buy the paperback from Barnes and Noble, it's cheaper there!

Who Needs Page Numbers? A poll

There is a reason people use publishers. Because publishers know how to print things in a professional manner. I’m a writer. I’m not a tech wizard, though I’m trying to be. Once again the page numbers didn’t transfer from the word–>PDF–>proof. Now, in Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0 the page numbers are there. When I open that PDF in Preview (on a Mac) the page numbers don’t show up. How much flipping sense does that make? Other people who have had page number issues say their manuscripts were rejected because of it. Mine was never rejected, so I don’t know. Others say they didn’t have page numbers in their proofs but in the actual copies they did. Others say I need to complete ten million steps to create a clean file and then re-format everything (E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G). Still others say I must make sure my chapter changes always occur on the righthand page so I don’t look like an amateur.

And there are people who scoff at the idea that writing books for a living is work. Oh buddy….

So I'm conducting a poll on my Facebook page...come help a mommy out!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Filter-The-Von-Strassenberg-Saga/150889648309305

PDF Woes

I just might fall to pieces. Stupidly trusting the previewed page numbers in the doc file I didn't even consider checking page numbers in the PDF. Now that I've ordered the proof for the paperback edition I now see that page numbers did not make it into the PDF again. Excellent. Ive changed all the document settings to 6x9. It could potentially be a MAC OS issue. Who knows. So we will not be in paperback by Wednesday. Too many people are picky about page numbers. Including me. Sigh. Well there's one obvious plus to publishing in a digital format.

Gearing up for Paperback!

Soon Filter will be available in paperback. It's exciting but I am so nervous! I wanted to share the new cover with you (temporary cover, my cousin is supposed to be helping me with something much more awesome than this, but it will do for a beginning).

Mind you, this is just a picture of my computer screen that I took with my phone!

Keeping Untangled

The difficulty in writing a family saga is keeping everything straight. Dates and genetic traits become vitally important. This is especially true for those super-analytical readers who are turned off by one wrong detail. The von Strassenberg Saga spans more than 200 years. And then add to the tangled troubles of family trees the issue of historical accuracy. When you have characters who were once real people (such as the young lady featured here), you have a greater responsibility to keep your facts straight.

I have so much more respect for Diana Gabaldon now and would love to be able to buy just a smidgen of her scientific, organized mind. Fortunately, it does help that history was my original major. So I have some idea of how to conduct historical research and apply it....The scientific aspect may present more trouble but there I am blessed to have a brother who studied genetics and an aunt who's a nurse. As a writer, it helps to know people, especially people who don't mind being bombarded with technical questions! So now that we are waiting for the paperback proof, I have begun carefully plotting out book 2. Because once you put it in one book you have to hold to it throughout the rest of the series.

After next week there will be no more avoiding it though. My internship will be over and there will be no more excuses. Work on Book 2 will have to begin in earnest. For now I am working on a highly detailed family tree on Ancestry.com. It helps me organize my thoughts and strengthen the plot.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Filter-The-Von-Strassenberg-Saga/150889648309305

Katherine Searches for Viktor

Filter: Book One of the Von Strassenberg Saga

Katherine was considering becoming a suffragette. She would wear split-skirts and burn her corset and get a job as a clark in a bank. She would smoke those little cigars and shove her pretty white gloves down the throat of whoever had come up with the blasted idea in the first place.

“A man, most likely,” she snarled in cursing tones. The wood behind the mansion was thick with under-growth, most of which sported tangles of thorns. She imagined he also had a moat with hungry reptiles lurking in its depth. “And he feeds them,” she huffed. “In a pool in his dungeon where he has locked Viktor away. Because he knows,” a mosquito dived toward her face and she swatted at it. “Viktor wishes to marry me, so he locked him up and threatened to feed me to the beasts if he escaped.”

Her ramblings continued as she fought the thorns and briers and blood-sucking parasites. Was there no end to this stone wall? Her strength, she knew, would soon give way.

(C) Gwenn Wright 2010

Waiting for Spring ~ An Author's Review

It’s one of those things you do as an independent writer. You offer to read other people’s self-published books and write a review because you need to support each other. Added to that, the author is a friend of a friend of a friend and you kind of virtually know each other, so you want to do the right thing.

So, groaning inside, I offered to read a virtual friend’s eBook. The cover art looked dull and not promising and then I remember, my cover art isn’t so hot either. Good cover art is difficult to come by when you’re an Indie. The story didn’t seem to be my normal reading…not that I have narrow tastes but this didn’t seem to be a fit.

But I’d made a promise. So I started reading.

Waiting for Spring is indeed outside my usual genres but Keller’s characters got their claws into me. They slipped off the page and burrowed into my brain as people I knew and cared about. The story itself is gritty and raw and so real I swear that Keller followed me around and implanted a recording device in my head, capturing my own thoughts and experiences as I dealt with my ex-husband and my own childhood issues.

I kept thinking, how much longer can this story go on, because it’s so real? What else could possibly happen? And it was obvious. Nothing good could happen. So, one day I avoided the book, because I didn’t want to know what bad things would happen to Tess. She had become more than a two-dimensional character. She was me. She was my best-friend in high school, the one who popped a bunch of niacin to get the crank out of her system before the impending drug test she faced. But at the end of the day Tess called to me and I had to know what happened to her. It was a story I couldn’t stay away from.

Waiting for Spring made me laugh. It made me angry. More than once it made me blush and then concede, “Yea, that’s how it is.” And more than once I cried, though I tried desperately not to. As soon as it was over I wondered what the second book would bring and nearly decided not to read it whenever it comes out because I don’t want to know when anything else bad happens to Tess.

But I will buy it because I know Tess, she is so strikingly solid, as are all of Keller’s characters, that she cannot be ignored.

Keller’s powers of observation and her ability to communicate that to the written page are stunning and unsettling. If you have lived a life of any kind of hardship you will feel as though Keller was there, hiding in the bushes, taking notes. I told my husband, “What Gabaldon does with minute, physical detail Keller does with emotional detail. And sometimes it feels a little too personal, as though she’s airing my own dirty laundry.”

But dirt and grit and all, you can’t help but love Tess.
**If peppers were indicators of how explicit a book is....1-5, 5 being the hottest...this one might have six! For Language and ....sexual encounters. 

A Snippet

From Filter: The Von Strassenberg Saga

My hand shoots up, palm flat and smacks Kevin’s flushed and sagging face square in the nose. Stunned, he releases me and reels back, profanities hurling from him with his blood and mucus. Not bothering to wipe the gore away, he spins on me, trying to catch me as I dart passed the immobile rhino and head for my room. My room with its flimsy door and busted window. For a jacked up drunk man Kevin is fast, too fast. He’s at my back grabbing my hair as I try to leap the last few feet into my room, slamming the door behind me. White lightening slices into my brain and a scream rips its way out of me as those wide-awake five senses tell me everything I already know. My hair is caught in the door. The other end is still in Kevin’s all too strong carpenter’s hands. Strong, unforgiving hands. He yanks and yanks again, expletives flying without pause for breath. With back pressed tightly to the door, out of necessity, he has me painfully pinned, I turn the lock. My tiny room is sparsely furnished. The twin bed will only fit against the wall with the busted window. And my desk, my beautiful, white knight desk, is here beside me, crammed into the small space between bedroom and closet doors. Two nights ago I had started working on that stupid project for history. A battle scene, complete with corn syrup blood and cardboard trees. And there beside the last fallen soldier, still waiting silently for his place on the battlefield, are my scissors. New and sharp.

Copyright Gwenn Wright 2010

70,989 to Go!

Maybe it’s desperate, but my heart soars every time someone actually pays to read my YA novel. The idea that anyone would give of their time and money to read something that I poured eight months of my chaotic life into is simply thrilling. Well, including the marketing and editing it’s been almost a year. I actually sat on the idea of Filter several months before even beginning the research. All the girls on campus were going gaga over Twilight and it seemed like every time I picked up a new release at the bookstore it had some plot line very similar to Twilight’s…or the Vampire Diaries because really, how can you not see the similarities between those two? So I decided that for the first time in nearly a decade I would begin writing again. It would be a story filled with teen angst and the wicked darkness of the human heart, but no fur and no fangs. There was actual research involved. My husband bought, “Genetics for Dummies” for me (he’s a brave man..but genetics isn’t exactly my forte, so it was appreciated) and I scoured the internet for my historical research and supplements to my scientific research. The beginning of the story formed itself in my mind as I was reading Austrian history but I began at the end and in the middle of the story. The roots you will have to wait for. And it will not be what you expect. It’s fun and difficult not to let on, to not give you too much, but it will make you gasp in the end and you will say, “Take that, stupid vampires!” Because what I write is actually real and could actually have happened. And that is more unsettling than any paranormal tale you could ever spin. Reality is more unsettling than many of us want to realize.

….The title refers to the number of books remaining to sell before I can pay off my student loans, mind you, I don’t get the full cut of the $2.99 it costs! Payments begin in two months…ug. And keep in mind, reviews are Indie Author’s bread and butter!

Visit me on Facebook too! https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=108780859177556&ref=ts

Facebook Fan Page

The Joy of One Sale

Well, actually it was two sales! In one day.

As an independently published author (fancy way of saying I gave up on finding an agent and don’t have the granola to print physical copies so I only epublish), I cannot tell you the sheer joy when one person says, “Yea, all that work you did for ten months….that’s worth $2.99 to. Granted the hope and excitement that springs up with that one sale often fizzles out quickly, but it sure is sweet at the realization of it. I wrote Filter in opposition to the vampire craze. Everybody was writing vampires and then witches and then zombies…. It was my hope to write a book that could be just as terrifying and darkly romantic without all of the cliche. Of course if more people left reviews I would know if I have succeeded. Readers, if you buy an independently published book PLEASE be kind enough to review it. We rely on them for two reasons. First, it’s the cheapest publicity there is. Second, we need to know if we’re failing in our craft. Be truthful but in a constructive way. We don’t have professional editors combing through our manuscripts. We have good friends and wonderful big brothers (who I still can’t believe read my YA romance/thriller!) and the few people who take the time to curl up with their Kindles or Nooks or other eReaders. You are vital to our success. 

To whoever actually purchased my ebook today: Thank you, thank you

If you want to try it before you buy it just sample it!

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COUPON FOR FREE eBOOK!!!

I have discovered that smashwords.com will generate coupons so that authors can offer discounts to readers. That seems pretty nifty to me. So maybe we can help each other out.

I will give you this coupon code: XG65H

And you, wonderful person and avid reader that you are, will go to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/20957 and download Filter to your Android, iPhone, Kindle, Nook, or other eReader and read Filter and be so enthralled that you will write an awesome review. Right? Even if you don’t leave a review (please do!) just the fact that you downloaded Filter will help.

If you’re in the MidWest, particularly the St. Louis area (it takes place in St. Louis), it will be a perfect weekend to read this one. It’s supposed to be raining and storming, excellent background for Filter and its dark goings on.

Ex-Indie Novelist

It may be temporary, it may be permanent, but I have pulled my ebook off the web. I have unpublished myself. Why? It takes too much time and energy to self-publish. And money, which I don't have. I also don't know the right people. I've been spending all of my so-called free time marketing myself to people who don't want to pay for an eBook from an unrepresented author. This means that I haven't had time to write on Book Two or ponder the weaknesses of Book 1.

Yes, I nearly have a degree in Business management and one in Marketing. But I don't like doing those things. I like to write, to spin webs and create emotions. 

So I have yanked my book in an effort to find an agent and/or publisher so that they can do the nasty promotional work while I spin another web. 

Live Interview

Dang! I'm going to miss the live interview on Twitter between @ninatypewriter and @goodrandomhouse at 11 this morning! Maybe I can direct and follow??? No my multitasking skills are not fired up due to my current bout of the plague! Well, if you have time between 11-12 hop on Twitter and follow the interview. There's supposed to be a write-up at http://www.independentpublisher.com by 4pm. It will probably be the highlight of my day!