‘Art & Grace,’ Spring Promotion

I realised a while ago that I’ve now self-published over half a million words of fiction. I’m not a prolific writer so this represents quite a milestone! It’s still chilly in the UK but Spring is just around the corner so I’m feeling restless to get working on a couple of new writing projects. However, the process of adapting many of my past publications for audiobook means that I’m also spending considerable writing time looking back.

‘Art & Grace,’ my novel set in Regency England, is now available as an audiobook from several retailers so it seemed timely to run a promotion of the ebook. Until Monday 4th March, the ebook is priced at 99p / 99c or equivalent from all its retailers. Here’s the novel’s Books2Read page, with links to main retailers for digital, audio and print versions of the book.

https://books2read.com/b/artandgrace

New Year, New Markets

As 2024 commences, I’m getting back to working on producing auto-narrated audiobooks of my works, through Google Play. I started the process in 2023, initially converting my short stories, to test the waters. I’ve really enjoyed the process. From an author’s perspective, it’s an interesting way of reviewing work you wrote some time ago. Initially, I had reservations about using AI voices but, so far, reader reviews have made no negative comments about these.

So I’m pressing on with adapting my longer works to audio but, in the meantime, check out four of my short stories that are available as audiobooks free on Google Play: ‘Opening Night;’ ‘The Ramblers;’ ‘The Office Party,’ and ‘The Family Tree.’

https://play.google.com/store/books/author?id=Catherine+E.+Chapman

‘The Fight for Dolores’ – Mostly Free!

Summer is on the wane here in the UK but there’s still time to digest a short contemporary romance! ‘The Fight for Dolores’ is 99c / 99p on Kindle and free from other retailers. All retailer links are at Books2Read:

https://books2read.com/thefightfordolores

‘The Fight for Dolores’ – Contemporary Romance Novella

For authors who haven’t discovered Books2Read, it’s Draft2Digital’s site where authors can upload their books and keep links to retailer sites current and in one location. As Smashwords merge with Draft2Digital, I am eagerly anticipating a day when I no longer have to keep updating the links in the end matter of my ebooks!

‘The Knight’s Falconess’ – now widely available!

‘The Knight’s Falconess’ – ebook now widely available

After a long break from literary activities, I have finally got back to writing by publishing ‘The Knight’s Falconess’ digitally beyond Kindle and embarking upon a print version of the book. Doing this has been interesting as I’ve also started to embrace the implications of the forthcoming merger of Smashwords, through whom I’ve previously published, and Draft2Digital. I will post more on that another time but for now, here is the link to all the stores where the ebook is now available. It’s priced at $1.99 (USD) or equivalent in other countries.

https://books2read.com/theknightsfalconess

Review of ‘Art & Grace’ by Elodie’s Reading Corner

‘Art & Grace’

Many thanks to Elodie for her very thoughtful review of ‘Art & Grace.’

Elodie’s comments about the relationship between the sisters being of greater significance than the romantic plot lines in the book are of interest to me as ‘Art & Grace’ is a novel that I keep chopping and changing the generic categorisations for.  It’s not a generic Regency romance but, since the romance is a very significant part of the story, I alternate between Historical Romance, Historical Fiction and Women’s Fiction in categorising the book.  What I think best describes it is the label, ‘Women’s Romantic Historical Fiction’ but that’s not a categorisation on Amazon!  And, as fellow authors will know, Amazon requires two categories (a primary and secondary one).  I have yet to settle for good on two of my three possibles!

Here’s a link to the review on Elodie’s Facebook site:

http://www.facebook.com/429830134272830/posts/483251052264071?sfns=mo

Anyway, for anybody who’s interested in reading a work of Women’s Romantic Historical Fiction, ‘Art & Grace’ is on Kindle Countdown until 23rd October, so is only 99c and 99p on Amazon .com and UK.  Elsewhere it is the equivalent of $2.99 USD.  It is also available on Kindle Unlimited on .com, UK and in various other countries.  And it is available in print from Amazon, Book Depository and various other retailers.

My Interview on Rita Lee Chapman’s Blog

I’m delighted to have recently been a guest author on Rita Lee Chapman’s blog.  Read the interview here:

Rita Chapman’s Guest Author page

Many thanks to Rita for hosting me and featuring ‘Art & Grace.’

How to Fight the Commoditization of Books

Interesting discussion from Smashwords’ Mark Coker and The Passive Voice:

Source: How to Fight the Commoditization of Books

Promoting Free Smashwords Books

I recently re-blogged a post of Grace Risata’s about her experiences of using Kindle Countdown Promotions. As Grace’s blog suggests, if you are promoting a book on Amazon the challenge is to decide how to do it from the many possible sites available. My experience of promoting books that are free on Smashwords suggests that the reverse is true: there are very few sites interested in listing a Smashwords book that is free, if it isn’t also free on Amazon.

In the past, I have primarily been looking for free means of promoting free books and I have found that almost all sites dedicated to ebook promotion require the free deal to be on Kindle as well as other retailers. It’s often the case that if a book is free on Smashwords, it will go free on Amazon too but, in my experience, it can revert to paid on Kindle even if it’s still free on Smashwords, so you need to be aware of this if you’re scheduling a post for the future.

Good ways of promoting free Smashwords books are: to use Goodreads, most of whose Groups have dedicated discussion threads where author promotion is permitted, and to use other book forum sites (Library Thing, Mobile Read and Book Barista are all included in my links). Free Online Novels.com will list your book if it is permanently free.

In part, I am writing this post in the hope that someone will tell me there are ways of promoting free Smashwords books that I’m unaware of. Personally, I’ve never come across dedicated sites to promote books on iTunes (to whom Smashwords ship) and I’ve found that many book pages on Facebook and Twitter are very much Amazon-oriented.

 

RONR is Nearly 3! ‘High Sea’ Promo, Free Book Listings Sites and Book Review Blogs

‘High Sea,’ short Victorian romance, free on Amazon 12-16 November

As Romance Or Not Romance approaches its third birthday, I have decided to celebrate with a free promotion of my short Victorian romance, ‘High Sea.’  This will be the last one on Kindle Select so, Kindle users, grab it while you can!  The book will be free from Wednesday 12th to Sunday 16th November.

The impending anniversary has given me cause to reflect that the blog is now morphing somewhat from its original purpose as a platform to publicise my books, into a bit more of a writing / self-publishing blog.  Having now had some experience of the trials and tribulations of self-publishing, it seems natural to use RONR to summarise useful information I’ve found and, to some extent, to seek to inform other indie writers who are starting out or looking for guidance / inspiration.

To that end, I’ve improved my lists of links to other sites.  There is a category for Book Blogs and Other Sites, which contains links to the blogs of reviewers who’ve helped me along the way and to various sites that I have found useful, in terms of providing writing opportunities and guidance or services to authors.

I’ve also created a list of links to sites providing free listings for authors.  These are sites that may also provide paid promotional services but do have an element of free listings that I have found to be effective.  Some are sites where your book needs to be free to be included.  They all have their own submission criteria, so please study these carefully before submitting.  Many are forums that also provide scope for indie authors to promote their work.  Please bear in mind that forums have etiquette that you must observe – only posting promos in the designated threads, for instance.

I will keep these link lists updated and hope that writers find them useful for promotional purposes and that readers find them a rich source of free and bargain books!