Taste of Kiwi

I’ve just sold book number nine in my Middlemarch Mates series. That’s right. Another story about the black leopards who live in Middlemarch, but as the title suggests, this particular book is about tigers. Tiger By The Tail is Ambar’s story and it’s a menage a trois with two men and one woman.

Here’s an unofficial blurb:

One plus one equals three.

Tiger shifter Hari Daya takes one look at Ambar Patel’s photo and is smitten. Further research heightens his fascination. An arranged marriage would work, except the lady isn’t buying and tells him to take a hike.

Ambar is already involved with human Jake Quinn. Casual pleasure and lovin’ works best for her since she dreams of traveling the world and delving into new experiences. The frisson of heat and desire she feels for Hari is unacceptable. There will be no tiger mate for her.

Jake Quinn has no idea either his lover or his new friend are shifters, but there sure as hell is something weird going on in his head. As much as he enjoys sex with Ambar, he’s thinking about Hari too. Suddenly there’s kissing and togetherness way past his comfort zone. The slide into sinful pleasure with both Hari and Ambar is easy—it’s the relationship dynamics that give them headaches and make them wonder if they’re making a huge mistake.

I don’t have a release date as yet, but it should be out in the next few months.

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Wild Child has hit the top ten seller list at All Romance Ebooks! I’m so excited and glad that my contribution to the 28 Days of Heart series has sold so well. Wild Child is currently at number 8 (I hope I don’t jinx this and wake to find my book has slid out of the top ten!!)

Purchase Wild Child today – it’s not too late to grab my book or one of the others in the 28 Days of Heart series. Remember all proceeds from sales go to the American Heart Association.

I’m blogging at Access Romance today about my introduction to the romance genre and the first romance I read. Here’s the link to Access Romance.

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Authors, a heads up. SingleTitles.com just relaunched, sporting a full site makeover and a contest to celebrate the new look. They’re offering up $450 worth of advertising as prizes. If you write romance, mystery or thrillers you should head over and check out. http://www.singletitles.com

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I’ve been thinking about my website content recently. Along with my book info and excerpts, I have my blog, free reads, story background info, photos, a video trailer and a couple of travel essays and articles. My next project is to work on a family tree for my Middlemarch series to add to my site.

Do you like extra content on author websites? Do you read it? If so, what sort of extra content do you like to see? What things do you like and dislike on a website?

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I always enjoy the Novelist Inc. blog, and the most recent post is one by Pati Nagle about Five Should Haves on a Website. It’s a great post and well worth reading.

One of the things Pati mentions is an author photo on the home page of a website. She says readers feel more connected if they can see a photo of you, and this might lead to them remembering your name when they’re browsing for books in a store.

I don’t have a photo on my home page because I wanted to focus on my books. I might post photos on my blog and I have my picture in the photo section, but for me, a website should be about the books. Yes, I agree, a website needs a personality, but I don’t believe I need my face to be part of that personality.

In the past, I’ve heard of agents and publishers rejecting older authors because their faces/age/sex isn’t marketable. I don’t know if this is an urban legend or not, but it’s a sad fact of life that models and most people who feature in ads to sell products are young and glamorous. Does this extend to authors? I don’t know.

I wondered what everyone else thought. Obviously there’s no right or wrong answer, merely opinions. What do you think? Author photos – yes or no? Does knowing what an author looks like affect your buying decision?

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I’ve noticed pens are a very popular promotional item with both readers and writers. I certainly like to replenish my pen supply when I go to a conference. Of course, like many promotional items, pens don’t make me want to run out and purchase the relevant author’s book. I haven’t personally ordered pens for myself (mainly because I haven’t found a reasonably priced source in New Zealand) but I look upon pens as an additional tool to help gain name recognition amongst the buying public.

Pens are a good promo item because they’re relatively cheap. Everyone likes pens and uses them on a daily basis, no matter a person’s age, sex or locality. They’re a universal item and appeal to everyone. That’s a big plus.

Pens come in all shapes, sizes and colors. These days you can often purchase pens to match books – a specific color or design. For example: you can buy pens with puppies, in a leopard print, a sea theme or even a holiday theme. If you have a book with a builder hero, how about a builder’s pencil? If you have a book with a magical theme, how about a pencil that changes color with the heat of your hand? The possibilities are endless and limited only by your imagination.

As I’ve just mentioned as well as pens you can order pencils, coloring pencils, Sharpies or highlighter pens to fit your needs. Writers LOVE highlighter pens or this writer does. Most pens I pick up have black ink. I’m not sure why that is but I have a decided preference for blue ink. Most people won’t care but I’m a blue girl all the way!

Jane Porter is an author who does lots of promotions with pens. I have several of her pens.

What Do You Put On a Pen?

Maria Zannini has an excellent post about author signatures at her blog. The taglines you put in your author signatures are great for pens as well. The thing is to keep the info to two, maybe three or four lines maximum. Too much information is confusing and the writing is too small. You should definitely include your name and website and either a tagline or a book title on your pen.

Here’s a few examples from pens I have:

Jane Porter’s pen has three lines of writing.
Line 1 – Jane Porter
Line 2 – (slightly smaller) Harlequin Presents
Line 3 – janeporter.com

Terri Brisbin’s pen has four lines of writing.
Line 1 – Looking for love?
Line 2 – Find it in a Romance by
Line 3 – (large writing) Terri Brisbin
Line 4 – www.terribrisbin.com

Tielle St. Clare’s highlighter has three lines of writing
Line 1 – Exotic & Erotic – Books by
Line 2 – (larger writing) Tielle St. Clare
Line 3 – www.ellorascave.com

Pens are good promo at conferences. They’re excellent for goodie bags. Give them out to friends and family, your hairdresser, vet or librarian. Leave them in restaurants after you’ve signed the check. Add them to Christmas or birthday presents because everyone likes pens!

There are lots of places to purchase pens, especially if you live in the US. The best way is to ask other authors for recommendations. Here are a few websites for you to start with:

National Pens
Pens Xpress
Pens4all
InkHead

Vista Print does do pens as well, but they’re quite expensive compared to some of the alternatives.

Do you like pens for promotional items? Do you favor a particular pen style more than others? Have you purchased pens for promo items? Which company did you use and what was your experience during the ordering process? Do you have any other ideas of places to use your promo pens once you’ve purchased them?

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New authors have a lot to think about when they start promoting their work. One of the questions they invariably ask is about newsletters. Here’s my take on author newsletters, both advantages and disadvantages and other sundry thoughts.

I started a newsletter very early on, close to the time my first release came out because I figured I’d have a captive audience. After looking at what other authors did, I started a yahoo group–a list only one–and did one post a month. Yahoo is simple. It’s a text only newsletter with no frills. Most online readers are familiar with it and are already members so find it easy to sign up.

When I did the redesign on my website in 2007 I decided I’d do the same with my newsletter, and I changed to a new newsletter service, one suggested by my web designer. This allowed me to send out a HTML newsletter with my special web header and I could also include pictures.

I send my newsletter out around the 20th of the month, but it depends on my workload and on the odd occasion, I’ll skip a month. Other authors send their newsletter out on the first of the month. Some send quarterly newsletters or two-monthly. There are no rules. Each author needs to decide what works for them.

I pay about $5 a month for my current newsletter. There are other options and the charges depend on the number of newsletter members. Bravejournal has a newsletter service and you’ll also find author groups such as Access Romance and Writerspace offer to do author newsletters.

CONTENT:

Once again, I looked at what other authors did and took note of features I enjoyed to use in my own newsletter. Most authors have a news section detailing recent or upcoming releases, author appearances etc. I do or have done excerpts, contests, interviews, columns about New Zealand life, recipes and sometimes talk about books I’ve enjoyed reading. Some authors offer serial stories, which can work well.

Experiment with content until you find a mix that works for you. I like to keep my personal life out of the newsletter, so you’ll never hear about the private workings of my marriage or about the wild weekend I had last month. You might hear about travel and I might mention my husband in passing, usually a little gentle fun at his expense, but that’s it. I don’t like to hear about people’s sex lives or intensely personal stuff and apply the same rule to my newsletter.

THINGS YOU SHOULD NEVER DO:

1. You should NEVER sell the names or addresses you collect. NEVER. Just don’t do it because it’s not right.
2. Don’t overwhelm your members with newsletters i.e. something every few days. That’s called spamming.
3. Don’t add people to your newsletter without their express permission. That’s not right either!

HOW DO YOU COLLECT MEMBERS?

1. Have a sign-up place for your newsletters in a couple of different places on your website. Mine is at the top of the sidebar of my blog and on my About Me page. It’s also on my MySpace page (or it will be soon. I’ve just realized it isn’t there!)

2. Make it easy for readers to sign-up, and the despite the fact we want to keep members, make it easy for them to unsubscribe, too. Nothing irritates me more than a newsletter without unsubcribe information.

3. Offer incentives for readers to join – maybe the chance to win a prize or a free read are a couple of the options.

4. Some author group sites offer competitions where they collect the names of everyone who enters and they forward them to you at the end of the contest. Examples are The Romance Studio book-a-day contest. Cataromance ran a special contest over Christmas where readers signed up to win a prize and agreed to be added to author newsletters. Fresh Fiction also sends out a list of entrants’ email addresses once a contest is completed. NOTE: be careful to check the wording of a contest before you add names to your newsletter. For example in TRS contest not everyone agrees to be added. Some opt out.

SUNDRY:

1. There are rules that govern newsletters, especially in the USA. You should have contact details and unsubscribe information. I tried to find a link to the rules and regulations but couldn’t. If anyone has the exact details please let me know.

2. Subscribe to other writer’s newsletters and see how they do things. How often do they send out newsletters? What content do they offer? It’s a great learning tool.

3. Content is king. Basically a reader will keep receiving your newsletter if you give them good entertainment value.

4. Just because you have a newsletter member, it doesn’t mean they’re going to read your newsletter. Unfortunately there’s no way to make a reader look at your newsletter. I know when I’m busy I hit the delete button. I’m sure other subscribers do the same thing. That’s life!

5. A newsletter isn’t for everyone. You might not have many releases and therefore have nothing to put in a newsletter. I’ve already mentioned good content attracts readers, so if you have nothing to say, it’s possible you don’t need a newsletter.

6. Club together with two or three authors who write similar books and do a joint newsletter. Take turns at doing a feature column. This will work well for authors at the same publisher and there’s cross-promotion for all of you.

If you have any questions or anything to add let me know, and meanwhile, what do you like to see in a newsletter? Are there features you particularly like or dislike? Are there any author newsletters you’d like to recommend?

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One of the most difficult things for a writer is the promotion side of the business. There’s so many variables with promotion, and it’s hard to gauge what works and what doesn’t because royalties are often received months after the event. Sometimes it’s hard for a writer to juggle the time because there’s no doubt about it, promotion is a huge timesuck! It’s also difficult to know what will work for you. Each writer and book is different, and what works for one will not necessarily work for another.

Today I’d like to look at the pros and cons of promotion companies where the writer pays a company or individual to do their promotion for them. The theory is that this will free the writer to do what he or she does best. Write.

Advantages of a Promotion Company

1. They take over the chore of promotion for an author and therefore the stress.
2. A writer can save time and focus on their writing.
3. They (supposedly) have expertise and know exactly how to tailor a promotion for an author.
4. They can take care of both online and “real world” promotion, depending on the company.
5. A company can tailor make a package to meet your special needs.
6. A promo company knows all the right places to promote and all the posting rules on loops.
7. They can also help with printing needs i.e. banners, postcards, bookmarks etc.

Disadvantages/Cons of a Promotion Company

1. They can be expensive.
2. Some readers consider promotion posts are SPAM and delete them unread.
3. Sometimes overbooking clients can mean all clients are at a disadvantage and don’t get value for money.

Here are some links to a few author promotion companies:

Topaz Promotions
Millennium Promotion Services
Heartfelt Promos

In addition to promotion companies are author communities. These are groups of writers who pay to belong to a community. The owners of the community promote the authors together and individually. The theory is that a group of authors will attract readers and hopefully those reader visitors will discover new authors. Once again, it can be expensive to join a community and all communities are not equal. Some are over committed and not very good at communication. Some don’t attract readers as well as others. Some communities such as Writerspace attract large numbers of readers and have thousands of readers receiving their newsletters.

Some examples are:

Author Island
Writerspace
Access Romance
The Romance Studio
Eye On Romance
Fresh Fiction
I Read Romance

I am a current member of Access Romance, which I really like. They’re pleasant and efficient with a professionally run website. I’m also with Erotic Romance Writers, a sister site of I Read Romance. I found the owner friendly and efficient and the cost is very reasonable. I joined these two communities to help spread the word about my new releases, to gain traffic to my website and hopefully gain more name recognition. It’s hard to tell if I’ve achieved the name recognition, but my website traffic is up on this time last year, and I think more readers know about my releases. I’ve also had favorable dealings with Author Island and Fresh Fiction.

Readers: I’d like to know if you enjoy visiting author communities, and if you visit them on a regular basis. What is it that attracts you to the communities and which are your favorites?
Authors: Have you had dealings with either promtion companies or author communites? Good or bad? Do you have any questions?

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