Rinelle Grey's Blog, page 26

Rather excited today, the cover to Reckless Rescue is listed in the Feburary e-Book Cover Design Awards over at The Book Designer, with a nice comment from Joel Friedlander. Check it out, along with the other beautiful ebook covers.

Yesterday’s article is linked from today’s KDP Select News, along with some other interesting articles about KDP Select.

Tomorrow, I have a guest interview with Aubrie Dionne, author of the Paradise Reclaimed series, and she’s given me a copy of Colonization, the first book in the series, to give away. Remember to check back!

The post A Few Mentions appeared first on Rinelle Grey.

There has been a lot of talk lately about how Amazon has removed the benifits of free promotions by weighting free downloads less than paid downloads. Some people say this makes free promotions useless, others say that they still work if you get enough downloads. I figured the only way to find out was to try it for myself.

So a few days ago, on the 14th of March, I scheduled a free promotion for Reckless Rescue. I didn’t do it right really. I scheduled it with only two days notice (I made a last minute decision to do it for my birthday), not enough time to get onto any of the big free promotion sites. Given that Amazon has recently changed it’s affiliate policy to only allow a certain number of free affiliate downloads, they’re all reconsidering the numbers they will promote anyway. And seeing as I only have two reviews on Amazon, I didn’t have a great chance of getting on anyway.

How I promoted

This meant the only promotion I did was to mention it on Facebook and Twitter, post on a few groups on Goodreads, and post a few times on various forums. Of these, I had very few clicks on my Facebook/Twitter links. I had a few more hits on the Facebook links friends shared for me. I also had a retweet from @FreeEbooksDaily, but I have no way of knowing how many clicks that gave me. I had 240 views on my post on the MobileRead forums, but only 22 views on Kindleboards.

How it went

Despite the lack of promoting, the free downloads started adding up almost immediately. In fact, by the time I saw that the promotion went live, I already had a download. (Promotions don’t seem to start on the dot of midnight, and can take quite a while to go live.) I had hopes of getting 50 downloads over the 24 hours. Within 4 and a half hours, I’d hit that goal. And the numbers kept climbing at a steady rate.

I was really interested to see that the sales increased steadily. Very little that I did seemed to increase them in any dramatic way. Even the time of day didn’t seem to have a very big effect. I’m not sure if people were finding my book on the automatically updated free sites, or what, but I had expected the downloads to be more random.

Despite the fact that I wasn’t earning any money, watching the downloads mount was so much fun. The thought that my book was making it into readers hands at such a great rate really was exciting.

Even more exciting was watching my rank on the free lists climb. I hit #1,071 on the free list, and even more exciting, #3 in the Sci-Fi Space Opera category 16 hours into the promotion. By the time it finished, I was #778 free, #1 in space opera, and #73 in Sci-Fi and Fantasy. That was a huge jump!

In the last hour, I watched as the numbers neared 400. I was one short! The promotion ended with 399 downloads! I was stoked.

What effect did it have?

What I was really waiting for though, was to see what happened to my Amazon rank. Would it go up?

Right before the promotion started, I had a single download that pushed me from the 300,000′s, to 79,789. When the rank finally came back on after the promotion, I was disappointed to discover that I’d actually fallen to 218,000.

So if there is a tipping point for free downloads pushing you up the paid ranks, it’s higher than 399 downloads.

Would I do it again?

Probably. Going up on the Amazon ranks is only one benifit to the free promotion. I’m already seeing more hits on my webpage, particularly on the extras I’ve put up from Reckless Rescue, which means that people are reading the book and coming to check out the rest of my page. Hopefully this will translate into a few sales once the second book comes out. (One thing I really should have done was set up a mailing list, still working on that due to the cost of PO boxes here in Australia.)

The number of people who’ve added my book to their to-read shelf on Goodreads doubled the day after the promotion. And I’m hoping that over the next few weeks, I’ll see a few more reviews. Best of all though, I’ve had two downloads since, when they’d been almost non-existant (except for friends and family) up until now. Were they due to the promotion? I don’t know, but I like to think so.

What would I do differently next time?

The next time I do a free promotion, I’ll be running it for longer. I only made it into the top of the free lists right near the end of the promotion, so I’m not sure if I would have seen downloads increase a lot more as I made it up the lists.

I’d also plan it further ahead, and try harder to get onto some of the big lists.

 Have you run a free promotion on Amazon recently? How’d it go for you? Any tips to share?

The post My Experience with a KDP Select Free Promotion appeared first on Rinelle Grey.

It’s my birthday today, and to celebrate, I’m giving Reckless Rescue away for free on Amazon for one day only! Download your free copy, share the link with your friends, and if you enjoy the book, please leave a review!

I’m going to be spending the day quietly with my hubby and daughter. :) Hope everyone has a great day.

The post A Birthday Present – Free Ebook appeared first on Rinelle Grey.

You may have heard the saying before, it’s advice often given to writers just starting out. Write what you know.

Trouble is, I don’t know any writers who do! Unless you’re writing an autobiography, chances are you will have to write about something you don’t have personal experience with. If you’re writing sci-fi or fantasy (my two favourite genres), then you really can’t get by without it. There will be magic, swordfighting, space travel, and who knows what else.

In Reckless Rescue, aside from the obvious space travel, I had an unexpected unknown – snow. Here in Australia, especially in sunny Queensland, we don’t see much snow. It has, on a very rare occasion, snowed in Toowoomba, about a two hour drive away, and the Snowy Mountains are about 12+ hours away.

What I’m trying to say is that I’ve never seen snow. And there is a lot of snow in Reckless Rescue. Marlee’s planet has a very harsh winter, where being snowed in, blizards and frostbite are all very real dangers.

So how do you write about something that you have no personal experience with?

It’s all about the research.

The first port of call is your old friend Google. I managed to find astronauts descriptions of what takeoff felt like, the risk factors for frostbite, what it felt like to be burried in snow, and what sort of plants will survive the cold.

When that fails, I turn to forums. I like NaNoWriMo for this, especially during November, but the site is still active (albeit quieter) at other times of the year. There is a huge range of people with very varied experiences there, and chances are, someone will have an answer for you, or an idea of where to look for one.

How about you? What things have you had to research for your writing? What other places can you look for the answers?

The post Should You Only Write What You Know? appeared first on Rinelle Grey.

I’ve just finally added the extra’s for Reckless Rescue. Check them out from the menu above, or click here for the FAQ, character bios, and deleted scenes.

Note, they do contain spoilers, so I strongly suggest you read the book first.

The post Reckless Rescue Extras appeared first on Rinelle Grey.

I have a confession to make. I wasn’t terribly interested in science fiction when I was younger. I was far more into romance and horse stories! I discovered fantasy in high school, and read everything I could get my hands on, but I thought science fiction was too heavy, too hard to understand.

Sure, I saw movies like Jurassic Park, but I didn’t see that as science fiction. I was late seeing ones like Star Wars, and I thought Star Trek was old and boring. *hangs head*

I didn’t really discover science fiction until my husband introduced me to it. It started out innocently enough. I watched Stargate occasionally, when I caught it on TV, so he started taping the episodes and bringing them over to watch together, just to make sure I didn’t miss any. Then he suggested we watch Star Trek Deep Space Nine.

What can I say, I was in that new stage of a relationship when you’ll happily watch anything if you get to watch it with a certain person. And thus I was hooked!

Even now thirteen years later, sharing new science fiction TV shows is one of our favourite things to do as a couple. Now I’ve seen all the Star Trek movies and series (except the Original Series, which I still can’t bring myself to watch), all the different Stargate series, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Firefly, and probably some others that I can’t recall at the moment.

Even with loving sci-fi shows, I haven’t read much in the genre. A couple of Asimov novels, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and some Anne McCaffrey novels (which I still see as more fantasy than sci-fi).

It was somewhat of a surprise to me to find myself writing one. But Tyris insisted that he needed to have a spaceship, and who am I to argue?

I’m making up for my lack of sci-fi reading now, or trying to. Check out my Goodreads profile (link on the right), to see what I’ve been reading.

The post My Sci-Fi and Romance Story appeared first on Rinelle Grey.

There is a lot of advice around the web on formatting kindle ebooks. Some people say never use Word, others say word Works fine. Some say do all of it in HTML. Some suggest using other programs (such as Calibre). I don’t know about you, but I found most of it confusing! I can’t say that my way is the best way, but it worked for me, and seems to have produced an ebook with no formatting errors.

Why not just use Word?

I tried converting word to filtered HTML (as per the instructions on the Kindle Direct Publishing help page), and tested it using the Kindle Previewer (which I 100% recomend downloading and installing), and it transferred pretty well for a book that was mostly text. But the bloating that remained due to Word’s messy HTML just bugged me. And one version did show large segments of text italicised at one point (though I couldn’t replicate this a second time?)

Why Dreamweaver?

I wanted a different option. One that was somewhere between completely coding my novel in HTML, and letting Word do all the coding. I picked Dreamweaver because:

It has a reputation for generating clean HTML
It allows you to switch between editing the raw HTML, or WISWIG (what you see is what you get) editing. I like to have a split window, showing both at the same time.
I could shortcut some of the tedious HTML coding by using the Dreamweaver commands, and enter in Kindle specific formatting using the code editor.
I could download it free using the Adobe Cloud subscription I have for work

The Process:

Creating the document:

First, I created a new document, which puts in the necessary HTML tags such as the head and body tags (head is for commands people won’t see, body is for your actual text).

Adding the novel:

Then I copied and pasted my text, chapter by chapter, from Word, into the design view window.

I did it chapter by chapter mostly because Dreamweaver objected to the size when I tried to do it all at once. I have no idea what size it considers acceptable for a webpage, but apparently it’s less than 97,000 words! Doing it chapter by chapter though, allowed me to add in the images for my chapter headings (using the Insert->Image command), and to make sure there was a page break (by pasting the kindle specific tag into the code window) between each chapter.

Copying it into the design window (instead of the code window) turned Word’s curly quotes into the correct HTML codes (“ etc). It didn’t unfortunately, copy paragraph tags properly, using the tag rather than

and

tags. These I fixed by using a find and replace in the code window.

Then I set a CSS style by pasting the code

<!–

.tab { text-indent: 1EM; }

–>

I selected the paragraphs in bulk, and applied the style (by selecting the option in the properties tab at the bottom of the window). I choose the 1M indent, as I read that it was the industry standard. It is set at the width of the letter M, and thus will adjust with text size.

To avoid the indent on the first paragraph of each chapter or after a scene break, use the command

in place of the

tag at the beginning of the paragraph.

Kindle specific bookmarks:

Paste the code at the beginning of  your first chapter. This will enable the user to click on the ‘Beginning’ link on the kindle. It will also take the reader directly to the first chapter when they open your book for the first time.

does the same thing for your table of contents.

Note: These won’t work in the kindle previewer or the .mobi file it complies, but will work once you’ve uploaded.

Creating a Table of Contents:

First, you need to set the bookmarks that the table of contents refers to. Click at the beginning of your chapter, then use the Insert->Named Anchor command to add in each bookmark. Name them something easy to remember. I called mine ‘Ch1′ etc.

Then type in each chapter in a list wherever you want your table of contents. I’ve put mine at the back, and  used line breaks (, or shift->enter) to keep them closer together and use less space). Highlight each chapter, and use the Insert->Hyperlink command. This opens up a little box and the only part you need to worry about is the ‘link’ field, where you choose the appropriate link from the drop down box.

And that’s pretty much it. Download the Kindle Previewer, check that it all looks good (especially check that all the paragraphs are indented properly, I managed to miss a few in my find and replace). I recommend downloading your book (using the .mobi file the previewer will create in a subfolder) to your kindle or other reading device, and doing a final proofread before uploading.

A couple of issues I noticed. In some formats, the Kindle Previewer cuts off the edges of some images. This seems to be a problem with the previewer, and doesn’t translate to the final ebook. The other one I’ve noticed is that the beginning and table of contents links in the .mobi file that it produces doesn’t work in the previewer, but they do once your ebook is uploaded.

The post How I Formatted my Kindle Ebook using Dreamweaver appeared first on Rinelle Grey.

It’s done! My book is live on the Amazon webpage! Check it out, download the free sample, and let me know what you think.

I’m elated, and I’m also exhausted! I’m sure I’ll be more talkative tomorrow.

The post Published! appeared first on Rinelle Grey.

Today, to celebrate uploading Reckless Rescue to Amazon (waiting for it to go through their upload process now, apparently it can take up to 48 hours), I’m posting an excerpt from the first chapter. Hope you enjoy.

The phone buzzed on the bedside table. Rubbing his eyes, Tyris rolled over to pick it up. The bed was empty beside him, the covers thrown back. Trying to focus, he stared at the message on the screen, ignoring the little niggling feeling in the back of his head telling him that something wasn’t quite right.

“Appreciate the help, Tyris. Hope you enjoy these tickets to the show next weekend as thanks.” It wasn’t signed, but he knew who it was from. A tingle of anticipation ran down his spine.

He’d got them.

Tyris smiled and lay back on the pillows, resting the phone on his knees. An image of the screen projected above it, and he swiped his fingers across it several times, checking for the best space fares. Finding a good deal from Urslat to anywhere else in the galaxy wasn’t easy these days, what with the scarcity of anysogen, but price was no object.

He’d thought long and hard about how to top the anniversary gift Milandra had given him last year. A slow smile curved his lips. He’d been so disappointed that he couldn’t make the shuttle races on Milat, but his leave application had been denied. He didn’t know Milandra had already arranged with General Harrington for him to have the time off, and had already bought the tickets in advance. Sometimes, being married to a general’s daughter had its advantages.

He hadn’t even minded that they’d spent five of the seven days shopping. The race had been amazing. Hard to top. But he’d done it. Exclusive, invitation only tickets to a show by her favourite designer on the faraway moon of Pilar. He didn’t understand what was so wonderful about making new clothes out of old ones from three decades ago, but that didn’t matter. Milandra loved the stuff. Luckily, the designer’s assistant owed him a favour.

Tickets booked, he set the phone on the nightstand, jumped out of bed, and went looking for his wife.

He found Milandra in the kitchen staring into the freezer. The picture she presented, bending over, white silk dressing gown lifting to show most of her thighs, made him smile. He crossed the room and kissed the back of her neck as she stood up, sliding his arms around her waist. “Good morning,” he said huskily.

Milandra laughed, and twisted in his arms to return his kiss. “Good morning to you, too.” She wriggled out of his arms and poured herself a glass of orange juice. “There’s a letter for you.”

Her words sent a sudden chill down Tyris’s spine. “There is?” His voice sounded faint, even to his own ears.

Milandra nodded towards the kitchen bench where she’d thrown the mail. Tyris stared at it from across the room. The pile contained mostly junk mail, but hidden under the stack was an official-looking letter with a government seal.

Why did bad news still come by mail when for years everything else had arrived by e-mail?

Want to read more? Keep an eye out for Reckless Rescue in the Kindle store.

The post Chapter 1 appeared first on Rinelle Grey.

This blog post isn’t about how to format your ebook (I’ll be writing one of those next week, now I’ve actually worked it out!), it’s about design. An ebook, like a print book, has several design elements besides the cover and the actual text, and how you handle these has a lot to do with the difference between a professional looking book, and an amateur.

Title page: every book has one of these. It follows the cover, and has the title and authors name. In its most simple form, most people just type and centre align these, and move on. But stop and take a look at a few traditionally published ebooks, and you’ll soon see the pretty fonts and publishers logos. Take the time to make this page look pretty, even if you have to use an image to do it.

Copyright page: again, at it’s most basic, this just needs the copyright symbol, your name, and the year. But again, there’s more you can add. A link to your webpage/blog, the designer of your cover if you have one, a small quote or note.

Table of contents: I’m still debating whether I’ll include one of these. (If you have an opinion on it, head on over to my Table of Contents post, and weigh in.) Obviously, these are essential for a reference book, as it not only gives an overview in your sample chapters of the topics covered, but helps a reader go straight to the section they’re after. In a novel, it’s simply a list of “chapter 1, chapter 2″ and so on. It takes up room on your sample, offers no information to the reader, and really, do you ever use contents for navigation in a novel? I checked several traditionally published books, and only about 50% included one, so they’re definitely not a necessity. But if you do make one, what can you do to make it stand out?

Dedication: if you include one, keep it short, or put it at the end. You don’t want to take up pages of precious room in your sample with information the reader may skip over.

Chapter headings: just about all the self published books I looked at had simple, centred, headings for chapter titles. Some did really badly though, and had left justified, normal text for headings. The worst didn’t include page breaks, so that one chapter started right under the last, some with the first chapter starting half way down the dedication page!  True, after the first one or two, most people ignore chapter titles (or I do anyway, I don’t even see them after a while), but it’s still worth doing something to pretty them up. Add a little colour, use italics, or for some real pizzaz, use an image.

Scene breaks: some books I saw used swirls or other graphics for scene breaks, and I really wanted to do the same, unfortunately, when I tried this, it only looked good in the white view on my iPad. If you choose to set your iPad to the sepia tone, or even worse, the white text on black, they look very unprofessional. So reluctantly, I’m sticking with the traditional five asterisks.

How do you jazz up your ebook design? What design features have you liked in ebooks you’ve read, and what have you hated?