Tuesday, December 24, 2013

What's Special for YOU at Christmas Time?

Mark Koopmans came up with the idea for 50 States of Pray, and even though I'm not in one of the 50 States, here's a Christmas message especially for YOU all the way from South Africa :-)


For me, the best thing about Christmas is family time. We all live in different parts of the country now, so it's great to get everyone together, have fun, exchange presents, and eat fantastic food!

I hope you all have a wonderfully blessed Christmas with your loved ones, and a fun new year! I'll be back in mid-January, after my husband and I have completed our move across the country to Cape Town. Woohoo!

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Indie Life: Finding New Sales Avenues

Indie Life is a monthly feature hosted by the fabulous Indelibles where we get to share something related to indie writing life.

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My books are obviously on sale at the traditional places - Amazon, Barnes & Noble etc online, and in real life I've managed to get them into a few book stores. But as indie authors, with no publisher or distributor to get our books out there, it's up to us to find new avenues in which to sell our books.

So when an email came around advertising a local Christmas market, I thought, Why not? Everyone will be shopping for Christmas presents. Maybe a set of books would be a cool gift for parents/grandparents to buy for the younger people they know. So I signed up for it. Then I saw another market advertised and signed up for that one too. (The fee for a stand wasn't huge, so I didn't have much to lose by trying this out.)

The first market was held outside a small private gym kind of hidden away down a long driveway. There's no way you'd know a market was happening if you drove past, so the only people who came were people who'd been told it was happening. The second market was held at a cafe many people love. It's been well attended in the past, so the owners were expecting the same thing this year. But the weather was horrible! Grey, wet and cold (which is what the whole of December has been like so far, even though it's supposed to be summer!). So I guess the bad weather kept people away.

So how did these markets go for me? I managed to give a number of bookmarks away and tell people who'd never heard of Creepy Hollow all about it, but as far as numbers of sales went? Hardly anything! I could sell way more ebooks online and get a day's work done at the same time! But I don't see those two days as a waste. Spreading awareness about our books is important, even if it doesn't result in a sale right now. And without the massive marketing budget that a traditional publisher provides, we need to take every opportunity to spread the word about our books :-)


Market at Aqua Bodyworks





Market at Tea on 23






One of my fans came to visit :-)

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Brand New Covers for the Creepy Hollow Series!

I am soooooooo excited to reveal these new covers! I love, love, love my original covers in print. They look so cool on the paperback copies on my shelf. But these new covers look super kickass on the ebooks. So without wasting any more words (because I know you'll just scroll down anyway ;-) ), heeeeeeeeeere they are!!



THE FAERIE GUARDIAN
Amazon | Barnes&Noble | iTunes



THE FAERIE PRINCE
Amazon | Barnes&Noble | iTunes


THE FAERIE WAR


A little more behind the process...

Any designer who is also a writer will tell you that the hardest book covers to design are one's own. I struggled to come up with a set of covers that I LOVED! Several months ago, before I revealed the print cover for THE FAERIE WAR, I designed a new set of covers for the Creepy Hollow ebooks. Here they are:



I really liked these covers, and they looked super cool close up, but I realized after a while that at thumbnail size it was difficult to see what was on them. There wasn't enough contrast between the background and the model on each cover. So ... I started again. And here's what I came up with the second time:


I liked these covers too, and I really wanted them to be the final version after all the time I spent on them, but when I was honest with myself, I still didn't LOVE them. *sigh* So it was back to the beginning AGAIN. And this time I decided to go with something simpler. Those other covers were cool, but there was just too MUCH happening on them. You know what they say -- less is more ;-) And this time, when I was done, I LOVED the covers. Third time lucky!



Giveaway time!

My Facebook page recently reached 1000 likes. Woohoo! So I'm having a little giveaway to celebrate. You can enter below :-)



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Sunday, December 1, 2013

November: Both a Fail and a Win!

The Fail



So ... NaNoWriMo didn't happen. I didn't get further than a partial plot! I was pretty bummed about this, but there is a reason for it ...

The Win


I started receiving loads of Morgan Media work at the beginning of November. This stressed me out at first because I kept feeling guilty about not writing. I mean, it was NOVEMBER! The month in which I was supposed to write a whole NEW BOOK! But about halfway through the month I told myself to get over it and just enjoy doing the other work without feeling guilty. I probably needed a break from writing anyway!
Here's the number of projects I received in November:

Ebook interior formatting: 10

Print interior formatting: 5

Completed book covers: 15

Book covers still in progress: 5

Social Media graphics: 3

Bookmarks: 32

Animated web bookmarks: 1

Here's a sample of what I did!

Book covers

Ebook formatting

How did your November go?
Did you complete NaNoWriMo if you were a participant?


UPDATE
My author Facebook page has reached 1000 likes, so I'm having a giveaway to celebrate!

a Rafflecopter giveaway