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AmazonCrossing, BookTrack, SELF-e Updates

January 15, 2016January 13, 2016Business of Writing, Uncategorized

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve been experimenting with or pursuing different avenues for distribution and visibility. Here are updates on what I’ve been working on with links in case you want to check these things out, yourself.

AmazonCrossing—Amazon is now publishing translated fiction for international readers. You send them a pitch and they consider your work for translation by their publishing arm. As I suspected, it’s tough to get in—I got a rejection email last week. But the email also invited authors to keep sending them other work to pitch, so I may give another book a go. Who knows? Maybe they’d be happier with my zombie book. If you’re interested in checking it out, the link is here: https://translation.amazon.com/submissions Continue reading

Curating Links and Scheduling Them

August 31, 2015August 30, 2015Business of Writing, Uncategorized

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve seen several articles and post comments online recently where writers have stated they’ve used services like Buffer to schedule tweets because it’s very cumbersome to mass schedule on Hootsuite.

Buffer is a popular scheduler. It just didn’t work for my purposes because I like more control over when I’m scheduling tweets and I wanted to schedule more than 10 updates per day, which would require a paid Buffer subscription. I also needed to be able to download weekly lists of all of my updates for my weekly Twitterific link roundup. I’m on Hootsuite Pro : a paid subscription that allows me to download reports/lists of my updates.

You can mass schedule on Hootsuite Pro with limited trouble. These how-to posts can be really dull if you’re not interested in the topic explained, I know. But I do think that scheduling our social media updates saves us a lot of time. Continue reading

Blogging and Facebook Tips and Other Updates

August 28, 2015August 27, 2015Uncategorized

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Sometimes I spend so much time thinking about really big ideas that I forget about some of the small things we can do to either gently promote ourselves/get our names out there, or just make life easier online. Here are a few of those things…and a sort of interesting note at the end of the post on something Wattpad is doing.

Gravitars. Gravitars, Globally Recognized Avatars, are basically avatars that are used to identify us online (primarily blogs and web forums). I was having coffee with my author friend Lauren de Lanier and she mentioned that she would likely spend more time commenting on blogs if she had a more personal way of appearing on sites, particularly WordPress sites. This is one of those things that we can quickly take care of through
WordPress (you’ll have to sign up for WordPress in the process, but you’re not setting up a blog, only a profile). This WikiHow will lead you through the process if you’re not sure how to do it.Continue reading

Raising Questions in Our Stories

August 24, 2015August 23, 2015Uncategorized, Writing Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

One thing that can trip up even experienced writers is giving everything away in the story too quickly.

It’s always a temptation for me. I tend to want to reveal things too quickly in my story. I want to explain everything as it happens so that readers won’t be confused.

But when I reveal too much, I end up halfway through the story without enough material to make a full-length novel.

Areas where it may help to raise questions:

Questions about character behavior. Sometimes character motivation isn’t clear. But as long as that character is behaving consistently, readers will want to learn why the character is acting that way.Continue reading

Marketing and Publishing Updates

August 17, 2015August 16, 2015Business of Writing, Uncategorized

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

A few odds and ends and updates:

Draft2Digital: I’ve used Smashwords since I started self-publishing. It’s been convenient for me to upload one file there for distribution to multiple retailers. But I’ve experimented lately with Draft2Digital, a similar distributor (these distributors are paid a percentage of our book sales for our convenience). I really like its user interface: it’s a nice, clean look and the site is fairly easy to navigate.

I’ve found I especially like the email updates they send that let me know when my book has gone live on the different retailers or when my price changes go through on the various sites. It’s also nice that I can make my book free on Nook through Draft2Digital…that seemed to make Amazon move very quickly to price match when my book was free on the Barnes & Noble site.

I’m also paid more frequently with Draft2Digital than I am with Smashwords (payment is quarterly at Smashwords).

Pen name tidbit: Apparently, my readers got an email from Amazon about Race to Refuge, which I wrote as Liz Craig. I did list myself as the publisher, but didn’t put myself as a contributor in the author section on the KDP dashboard. I’m thinking the reason readers received emails is because I linked to the book on my Amazon Author Central. I guess, since Liz is a nickname, there was no trouble claiming it. I never had such luck with my Riley Adams series for Penguin, which has a different Amazon Author Central page. Continue reading