ROW80: Summer Sunday

Allen, 1967 Viet Nam

About that surprise: The 'big surprise' on August 1 was a total surprise. For our 40th Anniversary (John says this is the ruby year, which makes me think of that Biblical quote, "more precious than rubies" and "Ruby Tuesday"), we went out to a very pleasant lunch overlooking the Spokane River.

I presented Allen with a proof copy of his Viet Nam era novel, Reaching. And, yes, he WAS surprised. So, now I'll go ahead with self-publishing and hope to find readers for his truly fine coming-of-age novel written almost 50 years ago. Don't quite know where I'll find readers, but one step at a time.

Re pricing lessons: This week, I listed Years of Stone on Amazon's Countdown Discount deal through tomorrow, and the response has been gratifying! Yay, readers!

I've been reading that the 'sweet spot' for self-published novels by unknowns is somewhere between $1.99 and $3.99. To qualify for Amazon's 70% royalty, the price must be set at $2.99. Books under $2.99 garner a whopping 35% royalty. But 70% of nothing equals what? Nothing!

Drag out the calculator. 35% of $1.99 = $0.70, but 70% of $2.99 = $2.09. So, if I look only at returns, I'd have to sell 3 books to make $2.10.

Once the second book in a series comes out, some book gurus suggest pricing the first book in a series lower, to entice those readers into giving that unknown author a read. So I'm rethinking what my prices should be one the countdown deal is over.

I'm such a penny-pincher that I really struggle when I pay more than about $1.99 for any e-book. I know, I know, that's less than a cup of designer coffee. Luckily used book stores, libraries, and interlibrary loan feed my book addiction. But what does this mean for pricing my books? 

Personally, I'm taken aback by those big names that charge $6 and more for an e-book. But I did follow the $4.99 threshold for my books (typically, they take about three years to research and write). But now I am wondering what is the 'best' price for my e-books. Is the question really about money or about attracting readers? What do YOU think?

ROW Sunday check-in:

Writing: Wrote 2,285 on Book 3 this week. Posted a bit about Allen's book, Reaching, on my writing blog. Goal next week: Another 2,000 words, please.

Community/Marketing:  

• That GoodReads giveaway for Years of Stone is rocketing along with 257 folks entering so far (this closes at midnight tonight). 
• Finally got caught up with NOVELS-L critiques on The Internet Writing Workshop (my goal this month is at least 1 crit a week). Received 10 thoughtful crits on my Chapter 1 from WIP: Rivers of Stone. Wow!
• Doing fine with reading ROW80 bloggers. Posted Weds WIPpet here on my ROW80 blog. This has been hard to do in the past, but so far 3x in a row! The feedback from ROW80 and WIPpet readers is so encouraging.  
• Happily, a local book group wants me back! I took the plunge: A local indie bookstore now has Years of Stone on its shelves.

As my mother would say, "Ooofta!" (Swedish background.) I didn't mean to write on so long. So I'll close by saying I hope your writing and reading are going well, that it's not too hot, and IF you like, leave a comment about e-book pricing. Please! 

Have a great week. Take a moment to read what other ROW80 writers are doing HERE.

For a look back, here's The Rolling Stones and "Ruby Tuesday". For some, those were the days . . . 

Weds check-in: Quilting and writing and . . .

This week, the Quilt Show dominates everything, starting Thursday for set-up, Friday and Saturday for volunteering. We expect about 5,000 people over three days. By Sunday, I won't know what will be left over, except we're taking Rachel to the show in a wheelchair (she's better every day). Thank goodness, ROW80 has begun! For it's keeping me focused on my writing goals -- despite all else.

1. Writing. So far, so good, though I wrote only one out of two days. It feels like a mosh pit. I'm jumping back to Standing Stones for the final revisions (Catriona's character has changed and I need a slightly different set up for Book3, final check on dates) and to add all those goodies needed (copyright, acknowledgements, about author, questions for book club,  preview of Years of Stone, photos, and the cover).I'm also still writing a poem a day for Octpowrimo. Where these poems come from surprises me every day. Writing on my blogs is a challenge: daily poetry on the writing blog. 2x weekly on this blog for ROW80, and once a week on the travel blog. So far, OK.

2. Community. Goals = writing that poem a day and reading at least 5 others. Reporting in for ROW80 and reading 5 others a day. Last night the Coursera course on historical fiction ("Plagues, Witches, and War") began, and I'm one of 12,000 students. What a fascinating experiment with teacher videos, a discussion board, and reading and writing assignments. Watched the first two videos and will discover this week's assignment tonight.

3. Reading/Craft/Research. I'm reading Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones in small bites (up to page 15) and appreciating very much her sense of writing as practice. Process, not final product. I'm behind on reading, though another great book came in from interlibrary loan, excerpts from Letitia Hargrave's diary with photos and maps of her time at York Factory in the 1840s. Van Kirk's academic study of country wives is simply difficult to pick up, though I'm loving the subject. When the day is done and I have those precious 15 minutes before falling asleep, what do I read? True confession, I'm reading cozy romances. I do like happy endings, despite the darkness in the world (i.e., government shutdown, violence everywhere).

4. Marketing. Oofta! Pending for awhile BUT I do have a sense of direction AND my e-book Mermaid Quilt will be featured this Friday on World Literary Cafe as a free e-book. We'll see how that goes as I'm supposed to promote it like heck! The LINK won't be LIVE until Friday but this could be your chance . . .

5. Personal. Because I'm needed as a babysitter especially this month, I feel like I've picked up a part time job. It's temporary, but all else goes on hold, cooking, cleaning, even exercise. Allen and I walk daily, but swimming only 1x this week. Rachel has finally started to walk -- with a walker and a cane for very short bursts. She can go up and down the stairs with these aids.16-month-old Leda greeted me yesterday with, "Oh, boy!" And I know I'm going to be OK because my office doesn't look like a bomb hit it and I have an hour now to write.

May your week go well, and your characters surprise you.

Breakfast in Buenos Aires (Camp 2009)
Why can't I have a breakfast like this in the states?

Mid-Week Check-in and a Reveal . . .

One of the highlights this week has been seeing other ROW80 folks reveal their new covers, so just to share the excitement, here's my cover for Years of Stone, a tale of loss and redemption set in Van Diemen's Land, a prison colony 'beyond the seas'(present day Tasmania, just off the coast of Australia). I'm planning to self-pub this fall.

So, what do you think? The cover shown is front and back with book blurb, author info, and hopefully review info to be added to the back.

This color lithograph, Plate 6, "Hobart Town, from Kangaroo Point, Tasmania," now in the public domain, was created by Austrian Eugene von Guérard (1811-1901) and published in his Australian Landscapes, 1866-68. Guérard had traveled to Australia in search of gold.  

I wanted the cover to capture a sense of the times, 1840's, yet not so grim an image it would push readers away. I'm still not sure that the font is large enough to be read at thumbnail level, but after 6 hours of working with my graphic design friend who drove 440 miles to visit me, we were both happy. We're still dinking around with pica placement of the subtitle (moving that subtitle slightly to the left). but that's to be expected. What's really exciting is that we got this far, and this work sets the design template for all three books.

One strategy I used that may help you to test your cover: I searched for historical fiction in Amazon and 'read' covers for several hundred top selling books, copying the covers of those I liked into a temporary Word file so I could analyze the features that drew me. I analyzed images, colors, font size, readability at thumbnail size, and overall appeal. I didn't like covers with images that showed too much sex (wrong genre), cut people into sections (made them into objects, here, I'm talking about a man's body but not his head); or that were too busy.

For the other two covers, images have been selected, but I need to get copyright permission for one. Here's my progress on ROW80.

Progress on ROW80 goals so far this week:
1. Cherish each day.
2. Continue final read/edit for Standing Stones. Not this week . . . yet.
3. Work on marketing plan. Jotted a few ideas down. Requested 2 Beta reads/2 blurbs. Need more.
4. Write 5 sentences a day for Rivers of Stone. So far so good, 2 out of 2 days, 750 words + 30 pages of research.
5. Continue supporting ROW80 as sponsor to read 10x this week. Read 5x so far.
6. Continue the battle to reduce electronic clutter. Deleted 150 e-mails so far this week.
7. Exercise x3 this week. Yoga x3. 1x swimming. Lots of running around, but that doesn't count.
8. Catch up ALL of pending WSQ (quilting assn) public relations projects (program, psa, article, promo). Steady progress here with planning ad campaign and drafting articles.

May you reach ALL your goals this week!

Read a little more:
Eugene Von Guerards' Australian landscapes here and about his life here.

Weds May 1: ROW80 Check-in

This week has been a bit hectic, but hubby is doing a little better in getting doctor appointments, that sun is shining, and it's warm enough now to go out walking. So here's a quick update. I didn't make all my goals, no quilting done, added a few new distractions, but the African Violets got watered and they look gorgeous.

WRITING: Made the quota of a poem a day (one day late) for April. Got totally distracted and put all my April poems up on SCRIBD just to see if this venue would work. Has anyone else done this? This week I miraculously recovered photos and PowerPoints from teaching humanities that I thought had been lost forever, so I may make them available via SCRIBD. I'm also pretty happy that the plot-hole-search for Years of Stone is complete for Sections 2 and 3. Now working on Section 1 by Sunday.

I'm calling May "Plot Hole Month" to complete final revisions on Years of Stone. 

Came up with a new writing exercise for writing BLURBS. Most blurbs I read sound slightly hysterical. Mine tend to read more academic, but I don't want to put a potential reader to sleep!  So I photocopied several blurbs from historical fiction I like, and I rewrote my blurb from scratch, thinking about the style, tone, and syntax of other blurbs. The result has been a blurb with hopefully more reader appeal -- and a little more dramatic.

Check out A Month of Poems at SCRIBD and let me know what you think of the preview (if you like).

BLOGGING: Several people commented on my April 29 post "What Impels You to Write?" over at the ROW80 Blog, which was very, very nice. A few e-mailed comments. Every step takes courage. Today was supposed to be recipe day over at my travel blog. Nada. But it's not midnight yet. Writing every day on the blog remains a challenge, but participating in various Blog challenges seems to help me. So far, the A-to-Z Challenge and NaPoWriMo are over. What are other writing challenges? 

MARKETING: Success! After months of nattering away and worrying, I finally posted reader questions for the Mermaid Quilt. In fact, this is how I discovered SCRIBD. The questions are up, the publications page is updated, and I learned a little more about promotion along the way. One author makes herself available to Book Clubs by SKYPE. Hooray for technology that keeps paving the way.

PUBLISHING: Not ready. No progress.

All else goes reasonably well. May spring bring you sunshine and good gardening and good progress on your WIP.

Mystery flower spotted at a roadside rest in Oregon. 

Any ideas?

Sunday: April 28: ROW80 Update

Sunday night. Still light outside at 7 pm. Time for ROW80 check-in. It's too late for coffee but how I wish for a nice cuppa.

WRITING: Did stay current with writing a poem a day this week. As the month winds down, I begin to see that I cannot write fiction AND poetry at the same time. I'm feeling "blue" (today's NaPoWriMo poetry prompt), but I do mean closer to worn down by the press of other deadlines. But I did make progress with Years of Stone this week. Mapped out all key characters/locales for Section 3 (yes, I'm working backwards). REVISED GOAL: Complete same for Section 2 by WEDS.

BLOGGING: Keeping up with posts and reading posts by others (between 5-10 a day). When people comment, I visit their blog and comment there. Sometimes I respond on my blog. I'm not sure which is more appropriate, but I seem to run out of time when I do one or the other. Unless someone subscribes, say, to my blog, how would they ever see my comment? So which is preferred: to comment in response or to visit the person's blog? I'm beginning to realize I can't do both.  My "motivational article" for ROW80 is supposed to go up on April 29. That's tomorrow. Still need to read ROW80 posts tonight.

MARKETING: Holding my first ever Rafflecopter give-away on my writing blog (which ends tonight at midnight). Posted Mermaid Quilt on craigslist. Met with local author to talk about marketing (2 hours over coffee) and got invited to do a guest blog. Actually sold two books at a quilting guild meeting (and 2 more at a local book store this week). Allen says the book is not officially "launched" until Amazon's wider distribution goes into effect (about 4-6 weeks). REVISED GOAL: Post those Book Club questions by Weds.

PUBLISHING: I think I will waffle forever between indie publishing and self-publishing. Identified 3 more potential independent publishers. GOAL: Will sub to one by WEDS.

PUBLIC RELATIONS VOLUNTEER WORK: Finished article on charity quilts by deadline. Waiting for comments. Exhausted after 9 am to 10 pm meeting Thurs this week. Need to rethink my stamina and commitments. GOAL: Send rewrite of quilt show and pics of 'block of the month' to webmaster by WEDS.

PERSONAL: Doing OK with exercise (2x water aerobics, 1 long day hauling books around). Not as well with meditation. Continuing to clean out (let go) of papers in office. Still behind. Got to quilt some on my cowboy charity quilt. This is fun, rather like a story without a plot, where I make blocks but the final pattern is not yet clear. I did make a reading goal at GoodReads, but I find that I read crap when I'm tired. I'm talking about romantic suspense and romantic cosies. Somehow I don't think that should count toward my reading goal. I feel guilty. Then I just don't care. BY WEDS: Make a dent in T. C. Boyle's San Miguel.  Hubby's health somewhat improved.

May your week go well! 

Do you find your goals shifting each week???

Blue = my favorite color
Blue = how I'm feeling just now

Blue Poison Frog, Brazil (Wikipedia)

Sunday April 21: Update

I'm really liking this blog set aside just for ROW80 because I can also set aside my fear of boring someone by nattering on about writing goals. The only folks who visit here will be ROW80 writers (more or less) who are just as passionate about writing as I am. So, without further ado, here's my update:

WRITING: Nothing, nada, zilch, and blank page. Except I'm still writing a poem a day for National Poetry Month and participating with NaPoWriMo and the A-Z Challenge. And I did set up this ROW80 Blog this week.

BLOGGING: On track with posting daily on the writing blog. I'm having a surprising amount of fun on my travel blog. Since we're not traveling anywhere exotic for the short term, you'll find a recipe of the week every Wednesday, inspired by my travels. Last week's readers actually tried the recipe -- and liked it! What could be better than that? Finding an agent or publisher?

MARKETING: Wrote a press release for The Mermaid Quilt & Other Tales -- and (wait for it) actually sent it out! Got an immediate positive response and an invitation to raffle off a copy. I'm thrilled as that means a bit more than an announcement. Made a little progress reading and analyzing other Book Club questions to draft my own (also for The Mermaid Quilt). Paid real money to amazon/KDP to expand my distribution (takes 4-6 weeks) because I was told by a B&N spokesperson that I could have a reading at their store once I'm in the 'database'.  Also paid real money for a business-card-sized ad in a quilter's newsletter.

The real challenge in marketing for me is to make a specific plan. I've found so much contrasting information and the whole process seems so complex. I'm repeatedly finding out I should have done more PRE-LAUNCH. But that's what publishing The Mermaid Quilt was about -- a learning experience. Whew!

PUBLISHING: Went through 25 possible publishers of historical fiction recommended by Poets & Writers and by other online sources. So checked checked websites, Absolute Write's water cooler, Preditors & Editors. Eliminated 24.  Found just one possible publisher (closed for reading until June), and they prefer fiction up to the Renaissance. So I'm wondering if I should query or not, since Years of Stone is set in the 1840s. Some of these 'publishers of historical fiction' had 2 or 3 books listed, and one website was so cute and difficult to navigate, I couldn't find the author submission page.

WASHINGTON STATE QUILTERS:  Sent a press release out that resulted in a reporter and photographer interviewing a wonderful quilter who makes quilts for kids with cancer. I'm dancing about that one! Prepping now for articles due May 1.

PERSONAL: Doing OK with family time. Exercise not so much (bad cold now gone, but no walk today; it's pouring). Today I will check out whether I can pull photos from CDs on hubby's computer. And I spent a few hours in the kitchen making a famous Arabic dish for Wednesday's post on the travel blog.

My office still looks like a bomb hit it; haven't caught up with all the mail, but overall, I'm feeling so much better. I hope your week goes well.

And if anyone has suggestions about marketing, please, please comment!