Lily Malone's Blog, page 19

It’s been a busy few weeks in the Malone household, and this is going to be one busy weekend! Queen’s Birthday Long Weekend in eastern Australia (not here in WA where I’ve now moved. No holiday for us but we had ‘WA Day’ last weekend and a Monday off work.)

I have way too much news at the moment and way too much to say, which isn’t unusual for me. In no particular order, here’s a little list of what’s going on for me, and for my characters:

WordPress sent me a little note yesterday that it was one year since I opened the account to start this blog. My first post was on June 12, 2012. It was called “Hello world” and if you’d like to see what was in my brain when I started blogging, take a look here. Next week I think I’ll have to have a recap of what’s happened for me in 12 months!
My second  published work, The Goodbye Ride novella is set on the Queen’s Birthday Holiday Long Weekend in the Adelaide Hills in the tourist mecca of the town that is Hahndorf. This means, in real time, this morning Olivia and Owen are currently steaming up the vine rows of Owen’s aunt’s vineyard.
Later this weekend, I’m a guest at the website www.justcontemporaryromance.com where I’m writing about the pieces of ourselves that we share in our books. The idea came from a post and discussion at Cate Ellink’s website recently, after author of The Yearning, Kate Belle, was asked whether the sex scenes in her novel were based on her own experiences. (I am sure erotica authors want to slap  interviewers who ask that question!)
Escape Publishing’s managing editor, Kate Cuthbert, sent me a lovely note during the week with an introduction to another West Aussie author, Eliza Redgold (author of Black Diamonds ) to invite Eliza and I to write an article about how we use wine and food as inspiration for our books. This is for the Escape blog, sometime soon. (As soon as we can finish it!).
It’s pruning time in the vineyards. My favourite time of the year. I went for a walk yesterday on a track that goes past some of the Margaret River vineyards. They’re almost bare – all straggling and crazy trailing canes just crying out for a good haircut. Very few leaves remain and those that do are golden, so close to falling. Another few weeks here and the pruning gangs and mechanical machines will be out in force.

And meantime, The Goodbye Ride and His Brand Of Beautiful keep on keeping on. The Goodbye Ride is hovering between the 20,000 and 40,000 mark on Kindle Paid on Amazon, and His Brand Of Beautiful seems to be getting a little sales spike to, under the 100,000 this morning. Both books have had some lovely reviews and I feel like the luckiest woman in the world, doing what I do.

Life is good.

My new contemporary romance novella, The Goodbye Ride, is a story about a boy with a secret, a bike with a past, and a birthday. The Queen’s Birthday no less.

Cover design by Wendy Johnston of Bright Eyed Owl.

If you’re in south-east Australia – I hope your ears prick up and you think something like: “But wait. The Queen’s Birthday holiday is THIS weekend!”

Dead right. If you’d like to read about Olivia and Owen and how much trouble they get in while pruning a vineyard over two short little days, grab your secateurs! (Or, well… grab the book).

The action starts on Thursday June 6.

32,000 words may not take you the entire weekend, but it will be a lovely start!

The Goodbye Ride has had some fabulous reviews:

Musing Maddie:

Cate Ellink

Brenda (Goodreads Prolific Reader)

Kylie Kaden

Soggie

Say ‘Hello’ to Liv and Owen and the beautiful Adelaide Hills town of Hahndorf this weekend in The Goodbye Ride. Settle back with a glass of wine close to hand and let Liv and Owen do all the hard vineyard work while you enjoy the vino.

Buy the e-book with a search on Amazon, or I’ll make it super easy: click here. It’s only 99 cents this weekend, so you don’t need to sell your crown jewels to snare it.

If you’ve read my last few posts, you’ll know that His Brand Of Beautiful began with a meeting of Tate Newell and Christina Clay on May 24; then a wedding on Saturday June 1. Yesterday, my H&H flew north to Binara, Tate’s family’s cattle station and today, Christina wakes to find herself deep in the South Australian outback with the prospect of a horse-riding station adventure in the days to come.

‘Binara’ is a fictional cattle station located east of the Oodnadatta Track, south of the Northern Territory border and west of very beginnings of the Simpson Desert. I modelled it loosely on Todmarden Cattle Station in South Australia’s vast arid north.

Hubby and I travelled through this area in 1999, during our Around Oz trip. We camped for a week down the length of the Oodnadatta Track, making a few forays inland off the track, along the way. I remember the wedge-tailed eagles; the different browns and golds of the landscape back then, all with the backdrop of red rock and sand. It must be so different now. Flooding rains through central Australia have filled Lake Eyre in recent seasons, sparking a whole inland sea ecosystem up there and an ocean of green.

For my ‘Reading in Real Time’ post today, here’s an excerpt from the start of their horse-riding sojourn.

“You’ll hold him steady, won’t you, Tate?” Christina had one boot wedged in the near stirrup. The other hopped on the mounting block at the side of a honey-coloured horse.

“He’s a ‘her’, a mare,” Tate said. She could hear the smile in his voice.

“You’ll be okay, Christina,” Shasta called from the verandah where he and Bree had stopped to see them off. “Sunshine is about as scary as a rocking-chair and even more comfy.”

“I’ll remember you said that.” Grabbing a handful of white mane in her left hand, Christina got ready to impersonate a flying sack of potatoes.

Then adrenalin alone almost propelled her into the saddle.

Tate’s palm cushioned the plumpest part of her left thigh. She felt each finger outlined through the thin skin of the borrowed jodhpurs, five rods of warmth, the longest two trespassed onto the swell of her bottom.

“On three okay?” Tate said. “One. Two.” She felt his muscles bunch. “Three.”

Please God, don’t let the pants split.

The earth moved. There was a chestnut gelding tied on a lead rope to the back of Sunshine’s saddle and Christina narrowly avoided collecting its nose with her boot. She landed across the mare’s back, straightened then tugged at the teal-coloured shirt that had got caught beneath her.

Her left boot slipped from the stirrup.

“This side has to go up too, mate,” Shasta called.

Tate tightened the stirrup leather on the near side, the broad brim of his hat floating near her hip. He cupped his hand around her calf and helped slot her boot into the stirrup to check its length. She hoped Shasta and Bree and anyone else watching would mark the pink stain in her cheeks to excitement over the ride ahead and nothing to do with the way Tate’s fingers made her pulse fly.

Sunshine shifted weight. Tate walked around the mare and Christina felt his fingers close around her right calf. He moved her leg out of his way, hauled the leathers higher then slid her foot back into the stirrup.

“How’s that feel?”

Fantastic. “Fine.”

“Here.” He passed up a helmet. Their fingers touched. “Do you need help with it?”

The thought of his knuckles brushing her throat made her squeeze the saddle between her thighs. Sunshine’s ears twitched.

Christina cleared her throat. “Thanks. I’ll manage.” She clicked the catch into place and picked up the reins.

“Heels down, Christina,” Bree encouraged from the second step. “Hands down, too. And keep your hands together. Good. That’s better.”

“Hey. No coaching,” Shasta said.

Shasta, Bree and Tate have made a bet that Christina will last two hours tops on this horse-ride before an aching butt and the dust and flies have her pleading with Tate to return to the station. But this city girl has a few tricks up her sleeve.

To read more of His Brand Of Beautiful and to buy the book, please visit the publisher, Escape Publishing.

It’s been fun re-visiting His Brand Of Beautiful in real time… My new novella, The Goodbye Ride also opens this week. On the East Coast of Australia, this coming weekend is the Queen’s Birthday holiday long weekend – the time and setting for The Goodbye Ride. So I will have more ‘reading in real time’ for you later in the week.

I’m having fun with my ‘reading in real time’ meme this week for both my books, His Brand Of Beautiful and The Goodbye Ride. Both begin with events in late May/early June. 

Today is the first Saturday in June, and that’s the day of Lacy and Michael’s wedding in His Brand Of Beautiful. Lacy is my heroine Christina’s, best friend, and Michael is Christina’s brother. It was at Lacy’s Hen’s Night where Christina first laid eyes on my hero, the very wonderful branding strategist, Tate. (You can see an excerpt from that opening scene in the previous post on my blog). Since that explosive encounter, Tate and Christina have defiantly tried to avoid being the first person “to call” the other. Fed-up with all this dallying about, Lacy plays matchmaker and invites Tate to her wedding.

The wedding scene is one of my favourites in the book because it gave me opportunity to trap my hero and heroine together for a few hours as wedding guests and make them talk. Did I mention I like writing dialogue?

Christina doesn’t like weddings. Prior to this excerpt beginning, she has just sat through a conversation with a sympathetic Aunt who believes she’s been stood-up because Tate is running late. Then she runs into a smarmy Politician ex-boyfriend who remains a friend of the family and delights in knowing Christina’s business.

I hope you enjoy this extract.

Near the stage, the three-piece band—shiny shoed, Beatles’ haircuts—began two, one-two sound-checks and strummed guitars. Waiters moved through the tables, collecting plates, pouring wine. The room hummed with conversations far more conventional than her own.

“How did you break your nose?” It was the first thing that popped into her head that wasn’t please take me home.

He looked away. “A horse bucked me into a fence post when I was fifteen.”

“What did you do to piss it off?”

“It wasn’t what I did. It was the five-foot King Brown who didn’t like hooves.”

She shuddered, no fan of snakes, and asked the second question that popped into her head. “Do you have children?”

“No.”

“But you want kids?”

“What is this? Twenty questions?” He swished swordfish in coriander and lime sauce, but the light in his eyes softened the answer: “One day, sure. You?”

For a simple syllable, the question stung. “I hope so, one day. Yes.”

She waited until he brought his fork to his mouth. “So how come you’re still single?”

He almost choked. “Jesus. Don’t we have weeks to sort all this stuff out?”

“I’m too old for small-talk. If you have huge spooky skeletons in your closet, I’d rather just know.”

He reached for a bottle of Handcrafted Sauvignon Blanc and tilted it towards her. She put her hand over her glass. “I’m running tomorrow.”

“Running?”

“Don’t say it like that. Running. Jogging. Millions of people do it every day.”

“You don’t mention running on your blog.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You’ve done your homework. Lacy has me on a fourteen-week training plan. She’s like a greyhound, I take about three steps to her one. There’s a breast cancer fundraiser being held with the City to Bay in August. We’re raising money for that.”

He paused with the fork halfway to his mouth. “You get on well with your sister-in-law, why aren’t you bridesmaid?”

She tore her gaze from his lips. “Me? God, no. I hate weddings.”

“You don’t want to get married?” His eyes crinkled with amusement.

“Aren’t we supposed to spend weeks sorting all this stuff out?”

“Touché.” He downed the fish, eyed her beef. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“I ate your entree.”

He swapped his empty plate for her steak. Ice chinked as he filled two water glasses. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I wouldn’t have picked you for the type of woman who goes running.”

“A little less padding wouldn’t hurt.”

“Your view. Not mine.” His gaze dipped to her collarbone, grazed the cleft between her breasts. If Abraham Lewis MP had looked at her like that she would have kicked his shin.

“Lacy said the endorphins will hit me at some stage and I’ll start to crave the exercise but I don’t think that happens until about week ten.”

“And what week is this?”

“Week two. Stop laughing!” She kicked his shin.

The microphone burped. Lacy’s father, red-faced and stiff, tapped it. Christina groaned and sliced her finger across her neck.

“Let me guess. You don’t like speeches?”

“I hate wedding speeches.”

Someone hushed them then like they were noisy spectators at a tennis match.

 

There are reasons why Christina doesn’t like weddings, and hates wedding speeches. My sister hates wedding speeches. You can almost count on the fact that once the speeches start, you won’t find her anywhere in the room. What about you? I will admit to being a Twilight fan, but the wedding speech scene in Breaking Dawn Part I has to be the worst wedding scene I’ve ever watched (let’s face it, the entire movie wasn’t much better)

If you’d like to read more of my debut novel, His Brand Of Beautiful, or buy the book please click here.

Do you remember the day you first laid eyes on the love of your life? For Tate Newell and Christina Clay, hero & heroine of my debut book with Escape Publishing His Brand Of Beautiful, it was this week.

Actually, it was last Friday, May 24th. It was supposed to be this Friday, May 31st. And because Christina mucked the dates up in her diary, all hell broke loose.

If she looks back now, I don’t think she’d mind the consequences.

It might surprise you to know that I am really not a winter girl. I love summer. I love the heat. I even like humidity, and one day, I’d love to have a tropical garden in which to potter. But for now, both my novels have been set in a Southern Hemisphere winter. His Brand Of Beautiful in May; and The Goodbye Ride novella is set over the Queen’s Birthday long weekend in June. (Which by the way, happens to be Saturday week in Australia – June 8, 9 and 10).

So you can read both my stories in ‘real time’ if you’d like to, over the next couple of weeks.

But this week is about Christina & Tate.

Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter of His Brand Of Beautiful. Christina is hosting her sister-in-law’s Hen’s Party and she’s waiting for the evening’s entertainment (the stripper) to show up. When he does, he isn’t being particularly enthusiastic about getting the party started.

 

His Brand Of Beautiful 

“Miss Clay, there’s been a mistake.”

“I beg your pardon?” She smoked him with her best glare. No way was he wriggling out of this now, she’d paid her deposit.

“Do I really look like a stripper to you?”

“Actually, yes. We ordered the Billionaire Businessman.” She crossed her arms over her chest and a caterpillar-row of bracelets clanked on her wrist.

He held her gaze for a long moment, slipped a hand in his shirt pocket — a beautiful blue Italian silk a shade brighter than his eyes — and extracted his business card. “Christina, I’m Tate Newell. Outback Brands. Tate, not Nate, I thought I misheard you earlier. We have an appointment.”

Something rolled in the pit of her stomach. “Yes we do. Next Friday.”

He fished in his suit pocket, found his mobile and scrolled. “Here. Christina Clay. 5.30pm, May 24. Initial consultation re: Clay Wines’ brand.” He held up the screen. “I thought those balloons on the gate were your idea of a joke.”

“A joke?”

The corner of his lip curved. “I thought you were celebrating that you’d finally got me out here, Christina. That the five hundred phone calls worked.”

Two thoughts flashed through her mind: Dear God. This party’s going to hell in a handbasket and Dear God. My new brand. What she said was: “It wasn’t five hundred.”

With that, her brain started working again, only it couldn’t decide whether the best thing she should do was say shit or sorry and it was still trying to work that out when a voice hollered from the kitchen: “Don’t start without us, CC.”

“Just a minute,” Christina yelled back down the hall and her hand shot to her temple. “Shit.”

Tate chuckled.

Her gaze snapped to the suit-clad body making her hall feel small.

Male.

On the premises.

It was a short list.

“Blind Freddie could see what you’re thinking. N.O.” He shoved his briefcase into his opposite hand and leaned his weight toward the door.

“Wait! Tate? Please? I’m trying to think outside the square here. Could you help a girl out?”

“You’re not thinking outside the square. You’re outside the damn hemisphere.”

“You don’t have to get your clothes off. It’s just a paint party. It’s my step-mother’s idea—she lent me all the stuff. There’s just an itty-bitty room full of easels and amateur painters, very low key. You’re a graphic art guru. I bet you’re a dab hand with a paint brush.” The words tumbled from her lips.

“CC! While we’re young, hey?” Marlene’s voice foghorned up the hall and Christina knew she wouldn’t sip champagne and wait. Marlene would come and investigate.

There was an echo of cheers. The girls getting restless.

“Please? It’s my best friend’s Hen’s Night. It’s the only one she’ll ever get.” She ignored the small voice in her head that wanted to add: I hope.

Tate exhaled. “I can’t believe you’re playing the guilt card.”

“You should feel guilty. I’ve been trying to meet with you since February. Every time I called, your receptionist fobbed me off. I don’t think you want my business at all.” She stabbed her finger at his chest. It felt good to be on the offensive. “If you hadn’t been avoiding me, we would have had this appointment weeks ago—months ago—and no way could it have got mixed up with tonight.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “You can’t keep a diary straight and that’s my fault?”

She stomped hard on her temper. Tonight, as everybody kept saying, wasn’t about her, and if Tate Newell walked out she was up the creek, sans paddle, in more ways than one. She could kiss Lacy’s party and her new wine brand goodbye, because right now the odds of a follow-up appointment with Tate were slim.

“Ready or not, CC, I’m counting to ten…” Marlene’s voice boomed up the corridor.

How far Christina is prepared to go to get Tate to fill-in for the no-show Stripper takes up much of Chapter 1, and in Chapter 2, things get steamy. If you’d like to read more about His Brand Of Beautiful, you can browse the book and buy it by clicking here.

And if you do remember when you first laid eyes on Mr Right… feel free to share in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

 

Let me be blunt. I write books. I’m an English brain. I hate math.

I’d go so far as to say: If math were on fire, I’d stand beside it with a placard chanting “burn, burn, burn”…

Yet this is a post about numbers. It has to be. I want to treat my writing as a business, and much as I’d love to put my head in the sand when it comes to numbers, the numbers are important.

So here’s a few for you.

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that my new contemporary novella, The Goodbye Ride, launched with a free promotion last Thursday. It was free for three days with the free promotion finishing on Saturday.

The best that I saw the novella rank was on Saturday morning when it reached #282 on the Free in Kindle Store rank (see below).

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#282 Free in Kindle Store

#13 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Women’s Fiction

#14 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction

In total, 2650 people took advantage of my free promotion to download the book over three days. I am over-the-moon thrilled with that.

The US was the most popular (1812); UK next (617); Germany (145); Canada (55); France (16); Italy (4) and Japan (1). The US would include Australia, and I’d say a big part of that 1812 would have been Aussies – wonderful RWA members and friends, and friends of friends.

An Aussie author I admire, said she’d heard that to break into the top 100 Kindle Free list, an author needs to be downloading about 1000 copies per hour. How spooky is that figure! For me, it felt like my sales averaged about 30 per hour, with Saturday (Friday night Australia time) probably hitting about 40/hour when the ranking reached its highest. You’ll forgive me at this point if I say, it isn’t an exact science. (I don’t like science either).

Now the real trick for The Goodbye Ride is what happens now. When the ‘Free’ status dropped out, the next figure I saw was something in the 300,000s… that’s bounced back today and last I checked, was in the 50,000-60,000s.

So if one begins talking about writing as a business, one must have a business plan. Right? And for me, The Goodbye Ride was a choice I made to put a second Lily Malone product into the big library in the sky – in hopes that would help boost my ‘brand’, find me more readers and in turn, help my debut novel, His Brand Of Beautiful, and the novels I’ll write in the future.

One of the great things about self-publishing is the ability an author has to control their own e-book content. I was able to put brief reviews for His Brand Of Beautiful at the back of the book, and mention this title in my author bio, along with my social media links.

When I look at Goodreads, since The Goodbye Ride launched, the number of people marking His Brand Of Beautiful ‘To Read’ has jumped by about 25-30. I can only attribute that to the ‘noise’ I managed to make (with the help of many friends) for The Goodbye Ride. I’ve also picked up two new reviews for His Brand Of Beautiful. 

They are small numbers, but they are massive to me, and they’re massive in percentage terms. It was only November 2012 when His Brand Of Beautiful was picked up by Escape; and it is only March this year that it released. So two titles in two months feels pretty special.

Today I read a post by Mark Coker, the CEO of Smashwords. Talk about timely! Whether you’re into self-pubbing or traditional publishing, a lot of what Coker says will be of interest to you, particularly when it comes to pricing. Many of the Escape Publishing titles (including His Brand Of Beautiful) are priced at $3.99 on Amazon, which has to be 20% cheaper than anywhere else. Coker says the $3.99 price point is the ‘best place’ to be in at the moment (although this might change)… and he says $1.99 is a pricepoint to avoid.

Enter my next mathematical problem. What do I price The Goodbye Ride? It’s a novella of 32,000 words. I’ve seen novellas of 14,000 words priced on Amazon at $1.99. I’ve seen books of 100,000 words priced at 0.99c and of course, there’s everything in between.

I really wanted to go with $2.99, for two reasons.

I think it’s worth it.
Amazon’s royalty options.

Yes, Amazon gives you options! You can “choose” (their word, don’t you love it?) whether you go for a 35% royalty or a 70% royalty but there are strings attached to the 70%. One of which is, books must be for sale above $2.99. (I think it was $2.99 to $9.99). The minute you price below $2.99, the 70% royalty rate is no longer an option for you. If anyone out there knows why Amazon does this – I’d love to know?

But, much as I’d love to put The Goodbye Ride in the $2.99 (because 70% sounds so much better than 35%); my gut tells me that’s too high to be competitive on Amazon. So if I revisit my goals for the book, and the plan is to use The Goodbye Ride to complement His Brand Of Beautiful and get a Lily Malone product in more reader’s hands.. then it doesn’t make sense to over-price The Goodbye Ride.

Coker also says:

“When an author sells a book, they receive two primary benefits.  1.  They earn the royalty from the sale. 2.  They earn a reader, and a reader is a potential fan, and fan is a potential super-fan who will rush to buy anything you publish, and who will evangelize your book to everyone they know. I’d argue that readership – the key to building your author brand and fan base, is more important to your long-term success than a dollar in your pocket today.”

I agree with Coker’s premise. So that’s my decision to make now, or over the next weeks and months. Where to price the book? How long to leave it at once price point before changing? I see no point in being stubborn about it and leaving it at $2.99 if it isn’t moving. No sales achieves me nothing.

I’ve chosen the Kindle Select program, which means The Goodbye Ride is exclusive to Amazon for 90 days, and within each block of 90 days (should I renew), an author can access 5 free days for promotion. I’ve seen people advise that if you’re going to make your book free, bump the price up so that people think they’re getting a real bargain… along the lines of, if it’s 99 cents normally, they’re really not saving a lot by getting it free.

There’s so many tips and tricks to learn. It’s lucky I like marketing. I like marketing much more than I like maths!

In the meantime, if you’d like to check out The Goodbye Ride, please click here. And for His Brand Of Beautiful, click here.

p.s. I just joined the Twittersphere… something else for which I have The Goodbye Ride to thank. If you’d like to connect with me on twitter, you can find me @lily_lilymalone

Let me be blunt. I write books. I’m an English brain. I hate math.

I’d go so far as to say: If math were on fire, I’d stand beside it with a placard chanting “burn, burn, burn”…

Yet this is a post about numbers. It has to be. I want to treat my writing as a business, and much as I’d love to put my head in the sand when it comes to numbers, the numbers are important.

So here’s a few for you.

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that my new contemporary novella, The Goodbye Ride, launched with a free promotion last Thursday. It was free for three days with the free promotion finishing on Saturday.

The best that I saw the novella rank was on Saturday morning when it reached #282 on the Free in Kindle Store rank (see below).

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#282 Free in Kindle Store

#13 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Women’s Fiction

#14 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction

In total, 2650 people took advantage of my free promotion to download the book over three days. I am over-the-moon thrilled with that.

The US was the most popular (1812); UK next (617); Germany (145); Canada (55); France (16); Italy (4) and Japan (1). The US would include Australia, and I’d say a big part of that 1812 would have been Aussies – wonderful RWA members and friends, and friends of friends.

An Aussie author I admire, said she’d heard that to break into the top 100 Kindle Free list, an author needs to be downloading about 1000 copies per hour. How spooky is that figure! For me, it felt like my sales averaged about 30 per hour, with Saturday (Friday night Australia time) probably hitting about 40/hour when the ranking reached its highest. You’ll forgive me at this point if I say, it isn’t an exact science. (I don’t like science either).

Now the real trick for The Goodbye Ride is what happens now. When the ‘Free’ status dropped out, the next figure I saw was something in the 300,000s… that’s bounced back today and last I checked, was in the 50,000-60,000s.

So if one begins talking about writing as a business, one must have a business plan. Right? And for me, The Goodbye Ride was a choice I made to put a second Lily Malone product into the big library in the sky – in hopes that would help boost my ‘brand’, find me more readers and in turn, help my debut novel, His Brand Of Beautiful, and the novels I’ll write in the future.

One of the great things about self-publishing is the ability an author has to control their own e-book content. I was able to put brief reviews for His Brand Of Beautiful at the back of the book, and mention this title in my author bio, along with my social media links.

When I look at Goodreads, since The Goodbye Ride launched, the number of people marking His Brand Of Beautiful ‘To Read’ has jumped by about 25-30. I can only attribute that to the ‘noise’ I managed to make (with the help of many friends) for The Goodbye Ride. I’ve also picked up two new reviews for His Brand Of Beautiful. 

They are small numbers, but they are massive to me, and they’re massive in percentage terms. It was only November 2012 when His Brand Of Beautiful was picked up by Escape; and it is only March this year that it released. So two titles in two months feels pretty special.

Today I read a post by Mark Coker, the CEO of Smashwords. Talk about timely! Whether you’re into self-pubbing or traditional publishing, a lot of what Coker says will be of interest to you, particularly when it comes to pricing. Many of the Escape Publishing titles (including His Brand Of Beautiful) are priced at $3.99 on Amazon, which has to be 20% cheaper than anywhere else. Coker says the $3.99 price point is the ‘best place’ to be in at the moment (although this might change)… and he says $1.99 is a pricepoint to avoid.

Enter my next mathematical problem. What do I price The Goodbye Ride? It’s a novella of 32,000 words. I’ve seen novellas of 14,000 words priced on Amazon at $1.99. I’ve seen books of 100,000 words priced at 0.99c and of course, there’s everything in between.

I really wanted to go with $2.99, for two reasons.

I think it’s worth it.
Amazon’s royalty options.

Yes, Amazon gives you options! You can “choose” (their word, don’t you love it?) whether you go for a 35% royalty or a 70% royalty but there are strings attached to the 70%. One of which is, books must be for sale above $2.99. (I think it was $2.99 to $200). The minute you price below $2.99, the 70% royalty rate is no longer an option for you. If anyone out there knows why Amazon does this – I’d love to know?

But, much as I’d love to put The Goodbye Ride in the $2.99 (because 70% sounds so much better than 35%); my gut tells me that’s too high to be competitive on Amazon. So if I revisit my goals for the book, and the plan is to use The Goodbye Ride to complement His Brand Of Beautiful and get a Lily Malone product in more reader’s hands.. then it doesn’t make sense to over-price The Goodbye Ride.

Coker also says:

“When an author sells a book, they receive two primary benefits.  1.  They earn the royalty from the sale. 2.  They earn a reader, and a reader is a potential fan, and fan is a potential super-fan who will rush to buy anything you publish, and who will evangelize your book to everyone they know. I’d argue that readership – the key to building your author brand and fan base, is more important to your long-term success than a dollar in your pocket today.”

I agree with Coker’s premise. So that’s my decision to make now, or over the next weeks and months. Where to price the book? How long to leave it at once price point before changing? I see no point in being stubborn about it and leaving it at $2.99 if it isn’t moving. No sales achieves me nothing.

I’ve chosen the Kindle Select program, which means The Goodbye Ride is exclusive to Amazon for 90 days, and within each block of 90 days (should I renew), an author can access 5 free days for promotion. I’ve seen people advise that if you’re going to make your book free, bump the price up so that people think they’re getting a real bargain… along the lines of, if it’s 99 cents normally, they’re really not saving a lot by getting it free.

There’s so many tips and tricks to learn. It’s lucky I like marketing. I like marketing much more than I like maths!

In the meantime, if you’d like to check out The Goodbye Ride, please click here. And for His Brand Of Beautiful, click here.

p.s. I just joined the Twittersphere… something else for which I have The Goodbye Ride to thank. If you’d like to connect with me on twitter, you can find me @lily_lilymalone

SQUEEEEEEEEE!

Today is the last day of The Goodbye Ride free promotion. By my very bad mathematics, it finishes at 5pm West Australian time today.

Look what I just saw on my Kindle rankings this morning!!!!

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #304 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

#13 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction >  Women’s Fiction
#14 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction >  Contemporary Fiction




I’m so very excited. (Could you tell?)
If you’ve bought the book thank you! Thank you to everyone who shared news about it with friends!
My Lily Pad blog hop continues this morning at the wonderful Jennie Jones site. Anyone who knows me would know I’m not that much of a Country Manor type of girl (I’m a bit more blundstones & beanies), but Jennie is teaching me culture and civilisation and her blog is just lovely. Please come visit!
http://www.jenniejonesromance.com/1/post/2013/05/lily-malone-came-knocking-on-my-country-manor-door.html

What an amazing 24 hours it’s been!

The Goodbye Ride (my new contemporary romance novella that released today) is on Day 1 of its Release ‘Free’ promotion. This 24 hours has been beyond my wildest dreams… (and my dreams get pretty wild).

Here are my stats:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #610 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

#34 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction >  Women’s Fiction
#44 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction >  Contemporary Fiction


502 people (including myself *blush*) have downloaded the book in the first 22 hours of my ‘free’ promotion. I don’t expect that to hold as I don’t know that many people (or I didn’t think I knew that many people) and I am absolutely thrilled with that.
I looked at where my book sits on one of those lists today (either the women’s fiction or the contemporary fiction), and the two authors before me were Jennifer Weiner and Liz Fielding… then good old Lily Malone!
That felt pretty special!
I want to thank with the biggest hugs you can imagine, the support cast that is Romance Writers’ Australia and its members who have all helped to share news of my free promo, and three very special book bloggers/reviewers (Monique, Marcia & Bree) who have reviewed, tweeted, blogged etc. I can’t thank you all enough.
And to you – for taking some of your precious time to download my book and hopefully to read it in the not too distant future: I hope you enjoy it and thanks for taking a chance on The Goodbye Ride.






















Take advantage of the FREE promotion by clicking here.

My new novella, The Goodbye Ride, is free for Kindle at Amazon to celebrate its launch today.

I’m doing a mini blog hop – a Lily Pad hop if you like.

Thanks to Australian Romance Readers Association for hosting my new release today. http://australianromancereaders.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/release-day-the-goodbye-ride/

You can catch me at Jennie Jones Country Door tomorrow (Friday) and over the weekend. Amazing that Jennie had any time to spare with visitors as her new release House On Burra Burra Lane comes out on June 1. http://www.jenniejonesromance.com/jjromance-blog.html

Lilliana Anderson and Laylah Jade (Luscious Laylah Release Day) are also hosting The Goodbye Ride in its release week.

And look!!!! SQUEEEE moment!

The Goodbye Ride: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #677 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

#35 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction >  Women’s Fiction
#45 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction >  Contemporary Fiction

Promo image by Lilliana Anderson, author of new release, Alter! Thanks Lilliana!

A few words about the book:

Olivia and Owen both want the same thing: the collector’s item 650 Ducati Pantah motorbike that once belonged to Liv’s brother, and now sits on a front lawn in Liv’s hometown with a For Sale sign at its tyre.

The Goodbye Ride is a story about a boy with a secret, a bike with a past, and what two people can get up to on a birthday weekend (The Queen’s birthday, no less).

Its first review:

“The Goodbye Ride is a novella and the romance takes place over 5 days – so it’s quick … and beautiful.

Lily Malone has some fantastic lines in this novella – my particular favourites were one about a penguin, another about firemen. The writing is smooth, full of the beauty of the South Australian wine growing region, a joy to read.

If you’re looking for a sweet romance, where you can laugh and maybe shed a tear, then this is a great one.” — Cate Ellink (Goodreads review 5 stars)

Free books are a great way to try new authors. Please download, tell your friends, share the love. If you enjoy the book please consider giving it some ‘star love’ on Amazon and Goodreads or any other blogs/sites that you follow. Whether you loved it, or it wasn’t quite for you, I’d love to hear why.

Please drop me a line at [email protected]

Thank you!!