This Friday, 10th August, and Saturday, 11th August, one of the five fantasy finalists from the 2012 Readers’ Favourite Book Awards (announced in September) will be offered free for Kindles as part of the KDP Select promotion on Amazon.
Those of you who know me will know that Gisborne: Book of Pawns had its first ever free promotion last weekend.
So what, you might say?
Indeed, so what?
It was an enormous thing for me to do as an independent author. The KDP Select programme is a scheme devised by Amazon to potentially give a book high visibility – a chance to advance in the ratings. For the writer, (more so for me because I am essentially an anxious individual) it is quite nerve-wracking because one worries if anybody will download the book to their Kindle. Or if one will have any sort of ranking. Or if any sales will follow-on to other books.
Carol Davis Luce offered up some succint and profound words when she sent her Indie Chicks piece to Mesmered – facts that seem overlooked so often by the mainstream publishing trade.
This is what she says: ‘Agents and editors think they know what readers want. They don’t always know. Readers know what readers want, and they’re expressing their wants by buying books written by indie authors. Give yourself a hardy pat on the back if you’ve completed a manuscript, but the big applause goes to our devoted fans and readers. Without them, we would be nothing.’
Mel Comley is astonishing. After re-establishing her home, her life and her business in France, she became bored and began writing. And writing and writing! She has never ever looked back, or if she does, it’s purely to find added inspiration for characters and settings for her works. Read on…
What is a villain?
If one looks up #904 ‘villain’ in Roget’s Thesaurus, it will list a plethora of alternate names ranging from ‘malefactor’ through ‘snake in the grass’ and ‘rogue’ to ‘knave’ and ‘cutthroat’ and many more besides.The word derives from the 1300’s from the term villein from the Anglo-French http://bit.ly/yPB6uF No doubt the upheavals of the peasantry during the Middle ages created a far more sinister meaning to the word.
Gisborne: Book of Pawns
The book that has dominated my life for the last eighteen months has finally been published as en e-book with the print version following in May. To say that I have enjoyed writing it is a given – Guy and Ysabel have become very close friends. But as with any book I write, whilst I have a loose plot outline in my head, I always love seeing where the characters will take me. At its inception there was absolutely no chance that there would be a second volume. But a chance writing of a tiny short-story for a miniature book laid a whole new plot in my head. And thus volume Two will be available in early 2013. This current e-book will be available at Amazon.co.uk within the week in an enhanced form with colour plates throughout: designed for the new colour e-readers. It will be available for all other e-readers (eg: Kobo, i-pad, Nook etc) in the next week.
Perfection… a word that means many things. More than anything, I think it means a struggle and I know what that feels like. I also know that failure is the other side of the coin. Susan Tyrpak’s story on perfection and the holes that it burns into the fabric of one’s life is a lesson that we should perhaps all pay heed to. Read on…
My guest in the Red Chair surprised me in our initial chat when he stated outright that he felt he was born with the ability to write. What surprised me was not that he said such a thing, but that I had never thought of writing that way. Some time ago I was asked whether I thought writers were born, not made and I sidestepped the issue by saying I felt at the very least, writers must have imagination and creativity. I remember saying that knowing all the so-called RULES of writing, didn’t necessarily make for a good story-teller. Was I saying the same thing as my guest? That writers are born with the ability? Read on and see what Matt Posner has to say…
The New year introduces some changes to the Big Red Chair on Mesmered. Rather than limiting it to just indie writers, I have decided to extend it to people I meet in real life and virtually who fascinate me, in the belief that something of their choices and their activities will interest you as well.
