C. Gockel's Blog, page 142

Hey Everyone — I Bring the Fire Part I has topped 110 Reviews on Amazon, and I want to put out a big round of thanks to the reviewers: Diva, Mary E. Carter, Jana Boardman, Tracy Fleming “The Written Universe”, andra, R. Lynn Shell, snowsoft, Shannon Sandstrom, William C. Bullock, Deborha Anderson, and James Conway. Also, thanks to people who reviewed on Goodreads: Nita, Ron, Heidi, Denise and Jenn—and everyone who popped over to just leave some stars (I’ve got a 4+ Stars there now! Whee!) 

Thanks LHW for your review of Monsters on Amazon, and Ron for your review on Goodreads.

Thanks Ron for your review of Chaos on Goodreads.

Thank you Porscheman, Melissa Alicea, Mariah Mercer, princess4 and Aneezo “Anne” for your reviews of the I Bring the Fire Anthology on Amazon.

And thanks to Lysha, Porscheman, Kathryn, Christine Smith for your reviews of In the Balance on Amazon.

Reviews are the best way to convince shoppers to give my books a chance, so I’m really indebted to you all.

Thanks so much again!

mererecorder:

The Wagner god Wotan by andrekosslick

Just moments later, Amy is pulling a large tome on troll anatomy from the shelves. The illustrations and neat cursive scrawl light up as her eyes traverse the pages. She sniffs. Magic aside, the pictures aren’t as good as Netter’s.

Bohdi peers over her shoulder, and then ducks away. She’s vaguely aware of him climbing up a ladder. She’s just reviewing the troll’s anterior cruciate ligament — more human than orangutan, definitely, when she hazards a glance up at Bohdi. He’s sitting on the highest rung of a ladder, nose buried in a book. The title on the spine makes her eyebrows hike, Mating Rituals Among the Elvish People.

Stifling a snort, Amy licks her lips and says as innocently as she can manage, “What ‘cha lookin’ at there?”

Not looking at her, Bohdi says, “Oh, you know…dry, boring, anatomical…stuff.”

 ………………………

Anyone get the Netter reference?

“The Cool Big Half-Brother" by Hellanim

Unfortunately, only find apps that work with FB.

…will look for one that accepts email only.

I have a winner for the Giveaway! Giving out a name seems like a violation of privacy — but she is in France! My stories have international appeal. Yay!

vasundharaa:

no0000oo00oo

*insert fictional character here* has coloured/pale eyes!!! there’s no way they can PoC!!! it’s not accurate!! stop sacrificing integrity for your political correctness whaaa whaaa

PLEASE SHUT UP FOREVER

How to Be a Happy Indie Prawn with Patty Jansen | Lindsay Buroker:

We’ve got a guest entry today from one of my old critique buddies from the SFF Online Writing Workshop, Patty Jansen. She first posted a version of this

An excellent post on Lindsay Buroker’s blog for all my writer friends out there. It’s an excellent article in finding HAPPINESS in writing. She also talks about having a job and how it can be HEALTHY for an author to have a “full-time” gig. I couldn’t agree more. I like my job and my clients, and I know that interaction with them makes me a better writer.

What is the Advertising Blitzkrieg? Instead of spacing promos over the course of a month, I scheduled all my promos through FreeBooksy, BargainEbooks, BookBlast, and DailyFreebook and just about every other advertiser I could think of over a couple of days.

The Goal: to drive downloads of my free first book up high enough so that Amazon’s own internal ranking system would help me. If you haven’t noticed, Amazon puts the most popular books higher on the page in their categories. That makes a lot easier for people to stumble across your book and give it a shot. 

Results: Nothing like BookBub which shot me up to #11 overall, but I made it up pretty high in the Mythology, Fairy Tales, and Mythology rankings. My sales for the month of November were very decent.

December, for a number of reasons, isn’t going as well. I had to divide up my promos. Also, I had to go with some untested advertisers…that really didn’t pan out. I’ll be updating my master list of advertisers accordingly.

“You can feel good about failure. Failure means you did something. You finished the story even if it wasn’t what you’d hoped. Failure means you’re learning. Growing. Doing.”

- Chuck Wendig - Terribleminds (via wmilam)