Giving stuff away for fun and profit

Whether authors are publishing their own books or they're with a traditional house, a central concern is how to get more books sold and into the hands of readers. And that's exactly what I'm obsessing about lately. Since the spring when I released STONES OF ABRAXAS and its sequel HEROES OF ABRAXAS under my Kissing Frog Books imprint, I've been trying to figure out how to effectively promote them. And what I've discovered is that promoting a self-pubbed book is even more of an uphill battle than getting a traditionally published book out there.

I've had a few books traditionally published (including the original edition of STONES OF ABRAXAS in 2006), but I've never done the self-pub thing before. So I did some research and asked other authors who've been successful with publishing their own books. The authors all generously gave me advice that worked for them. I implemented their advice, everything from using social media (including this very blog here), to trying to get reviews, to setting the price for the first ebook in my Abraxas series at free so people will get hooked and want to buy the next book. Then I sat back and waited for the royalty checks to roll in. I'm still waiting.

I had especially high hopes for the tactic of setting the price of the STONES OF ABRAXAS ebook at free, since it's worked so well for many other authors. So I priced it as free at Smashwords, then found out I can't make it free at Amazon's Kindle store unless I join the Kindle Select program. On its surface, Kindle Select sounded great because among other things your book is part of a lending library program and you earn royalties every time it's downloaded through the library. But I learned that the problem with Kindle Select is that you have to promise to exclusively publish your ebook through them for at least 90 days. I didn't like the idea of shutting out other booksellers, so I published my books for Kindle, but didn't enroll in Kindle Select.

Did that mean I couldn't set the STONES ebook price at free? Not necessarily, according to fellow YA author, Megg Jensen. She told me that Amazon wants people to let them know if a book is available for less than their price at another website. So I let them know it was free at Smashwords. That was a month or two ago, but it hasn't changed yet at Amazon. Not to worry, says Megg. She said that I might have to make a nuisance of myself until the price eventually gets changed. So Nuisance Land, here I come.

That's where I'm at right now as far as trying to promote my three self-pubbed books. If anyone has any suggestions that might help further, please let me know. Obviously, I can use all the help I can get.

You Now Have Timeline

"You Now Have Timeline." Are there any more dreaded words in the Internet universe? For people who are into social networking, these words can inflict the same horror as "You're being audited." Given a choice, everyone would much rather hear "It looks like triplets."

Today started out fine, until I made the mistake of checking out Facebook. That's when I saw the message. My nice, neat, easy-to-understand profile is being forcibly relocated to the Evil Land of Timeline. It's a barren wasteland where it's impossible to understand who your friends are or what they're doing. You don't know what you like and what you don't. Your pictures are lost in the ether. And you have no choice about any of it.

I knew it was hopeless, but I still went to Facebook's help topics looking for some glimmer of hope that maybe I could prevent the inevitable. I searched in vain using topics like, "Get rid of Timeline," "Timeline sucks," and "Why do you hate me?" But there weren't any topics to help me. If those topics exist, they're locked up in Timeline where it's impossible for anyone to find them.

So my question is "Why?" Why would anyone purposely make something suck this badly? And it's not like FB is unaware that people hate Timeline. I sent them an email and commented that I’m no doubt the one billionth person to complain about it. That's probably an understatement. The idea of taking something that people think is OK and turning it into something incomprehensible that your customers despise doesn't make sense. It's like if McDonald's got rid of its hamburgers and started only selling ground-up cabbage patties. They wouldn't. There would be no point. So why Timeline? Why inflict the social media equivalent of ground cabbage patties on the world of FB users?

If anyone has any answer to that question, please let me know. Because right now I'm forced to conclude that this is an elaborate practical joke designed to find out how much obnoxious crap the public will put up with. You know, along the lines of red-light cameras and info-mercials that offer to give you something "free" as long as you pay a "separate handling" charge.

Signing off in the Evil Land of Timeline,

Kim

Olympic Athletes Need Love, Too

In a never-ending attempt to avoid working on one of several manuscripts that I should be dealing with, I've been watching the Olympics. Who knew that professional trampolining (is that a word?) exists outside of the circus industry. Anyway, with the upcoming release of the relationship book I wrote with my aunt Louise Helene, I SAW YOUR FUTURE AND HE'S NOT IT: A PSYCHIC'S GUIDE TO TRUE LOVE, I got to thinking about whether any Olympic athletes have met their spouses through the Games. Turns out, there are a number of them. And apparently I'm not the only one wondering about this question because I found a photo segment that the Huffington Post just had on the same topic: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/24/olympic-marriage_n_1655143.html

Of the couples listed, the one that surprised me most was Olympic gold-medal gymnasts Nadia Comaneci and Bart Conner. I had no idea they'd gotten married. Even if you're too young to have seen Nadia earn multiple scores of perfect 10 in the 1976 Games, you've probably heard about her. And American Bart Conner won men's gymnastic gold at the 1984 Olympics.

I was intrigued by Nadia and Bart, so I did a little research about them. It seems their romance wasn't exactly love at first sight and smooth sailing forever after. They met for the first time at a gymnastics competition several months before the 1976 Olympics. A 14-year-old Nadia won a gold medal for the women, and Bart, who was 18 years old at the time, won the men's medal. They stood next to each other on the award platform, and a photographer suggested Bart give Nadia a kiss. He did, but if sparks flew, it would be a long time before anyone found out about it.

Nadia went on to endure a great deal of turmoil in her home country of Romania, which was ruled by the oppressive Communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu. In 1989, she fled Romania for the United States. Once there, she made contact with old friends, including Bart Conner. The two of them became engaged in 1994 and married in 1996. Twenty years after they first met.

That happily-ever-after story puts a huge, goofy grin on my face. I hope you like it, too.
Kim