"ReLaunch Across The Galaxy" Blog Hop

In January 2011 I published Across The Galaxy.

January 22nd to be exact - (Happy Birthday Lisa! <--- my sister)

13 months later Across The Galaxy has sold hundreds of copies and has allowed me to become part of the BEST online community of writers and bloggers I can imagine exists.

I am so grateful to this story in my head and the One who gave me the passion to get it out onto paper (or comp screen). I'm also grateful to my mentor and sensei: Warren Murphy. (Author of The Forever King, one of my top 5 fav books ever!) Without him, I would've never heard of JA Konrath or the e-publishing revolution that was already underway when I came into the picture.

And mostly - thanks to everyone who has bought and read this book. I wouldn't be here without readers. Its still sort of surreal to get 'fan mail' and letters from people who just want to thank me for writing and providing them with a way to escape their every day 'stuff'. Surreal but awesome!

Now, even though this reads like a sappy acknowledgement page in a book, I'm not usually the mushy type so let's move on...

Marking a year as a self-published author is pretty exciting when not only has that much time passed already, but I'm now making the kind of money writing that I would've made off an advance from NY for these titles. Woot Woot!! And I am sooo happy doing it myself because that means I can do something fun and crazy like change a cover anytime I want.

And since I can, I did. Here's the background on that decision.

Across the Galaxy's original cover was made by a professional photographer. He used a stock background and snapped a really cool pose of my cousin Krystle (Twitter name: @KrystylePole if you want to tell her how awesome she looks!) - who, by the way, is in Vegas this weekend competing in a Pole fitness competition. Go Krystle!!!!

Okay, back to the point. Anyway so my love for ths cover is deep and completely biased because of the story behind the cover. That being said, the marketer in me knew this cover needed... something. The cover competition out there is hard, and even though I love this one, its not necessarily competing to get your attention like so many other YA fantasy covers.

Enter Char Adlesberger. College student from Colorado and GENIUS cover artist! She took my book description and my request for something "edgy" and gave me this!!!

A-MA-zing!!!!!!!!!

So, now that I've caught your eye, on to the details of the HOP. Because I can't do something as cool as a new cover and NOT give stuff away!!!

The schedule is listed below. Each blogger will feature the book and brand new synopsis along with a giveaway of an e-book version of the book. Some will also host a review, interview, or fun facts about yours truly. On the last day, head over to Accendo Press' site (my publishing group) to enter to win a Kindle cover with signed bookmarks!!

2/26/12 - Cambria Hebert, A Diary of a Book Addict

2/27/12 - Nightly Reading

2/28/12 - AwesomeSauce Books

2/29/12- Magnet 4 Books

3/1/12- Fiktshun

3/2/12- Taking It One Book At A Time, Bookish Babes

3/3/12- The Readiacs

3/4/12- Sassy Book Lovers

3/5/12- Talk Supe, A Book Vacation

3/6/12 - Accendo Press  - giveaway of a Kindle cover and e-book of your choice!

And now for the BEST part of this post - You can enter here to win a prize pack from me that includes signed bookmark swag for Dirty Blood (pictured above) and Descended By Blood by Angeline Kace - and a signed paperback of Across The Galaxy with the brand new cover!!

check it:

Here's how to enter:
Leave a comment with your email address below. For an extra entry you can 1- become a follower of the blog and 2- tweet about the giveaway and new cover. Mention me: @HeatherHildenbr in the tweet so I can track your entries.

The contest ends 3/12 and the winner will be announced 3/13. Good luck! 

Multiple Personalities, Numbers, and a Reminder from our Sensei

     For those of you waiting, I am still working on the compiled list of reviewer-ish sites that you can use to promote your book. It's going to be a pretty nice list, so give me a little longer. It'll be worth the wait!

     I wanted to update you on what I've been doing. Happily, writing again! Whew. After all last week(end) getting sucked into msg boards and e-marketing, I'm finally back to what I should be doing. And I'm really excited that I've got a rough draft ready for beta readers for chapters 1-5 of Dirty Blood. Woohoo! I also started a new project over the weekend, working title: Fairy Godmother.

     The main reason I started it was because I needed a breather from Dirty Blood. I swear, a job qualification of a writer is multiple personalities. And don't worry. If you don't already have them, they'll develop as you write! Anyway, my "editor" personality had gotten ahold of me; snuck up on me really. Usually I see him coming (yes its a him, is that weird?) and knock him over the head with a heavy object when he starts getting obnoxious. I mean, I can't totally get rid of him because I do - grudgingly - need him sometimes. But this time, I was blindsided and before I knew it, I was buying into what he was saying. Which was: this story sucks, its not even worth revising, who would want to read this crap? etc.

     Has this every happened to any of you? Usually its a cycle I go through a few times in the process of writing a story. When I'm in this part of the cycle, no new ideas flow and it depresses me to work on the project. Then I finally cycle back out into the confident (possibly a little egotistical) cycle and everything's great, including the story and where it's going, and ideas pour into me so fast I get light headed. Needless to say, that's where I am now. Whew. Thank goodness. Nobody at my house really likes me when the editor takes over.  *insert evil laugh here*

     And I checked my final numbers for January this morning and we are tied!
Across the Galaxy 9
DreamKiller          9

*Sidebar: These numbers are Amazon only. Still haven't sold any from B&N. Also- I uploaded DreamKiller via Smashwords to see how they worked and it's still not even live (it's been almost a week). Anyone have any words of wisdom about smashwords? Are they any good?

Woohoo! Keep in mind, the novel didnt go live until Jan 23rd so that's only about 8 days of sales. I dont know about you, but I'm pretty happy with that for my first 8 days of being published. And I know as I do more marketing, those numbers will only get better. But I also know that most importantly (according to our 'sensei' Joe Konrath) I NEED to get another book out there. ASAP. So... back to work.

Tips from the Black Hole

     I have learned my lesson!

     In my last post, I said that I needed to hop on the marketing train and get moving. I also said I wanted to assemble a list of e-spots to hit up and get the word out about my novel. So, I decided to kill two birds, so to speak, and assemble my list WHILE doing the items, so I could check them off as I went. Thus, I descended into the all-consuming BLACK HOLE that is e-marketing. I've spent the last two days hopping websites and blogs and also still trying to correctly format my cover for CreateSpace (that was a headache I don't even want to talk about.). I realize now how seriously I have to manage my time so as not to get sucked into the marketing hole - and so I can still set aside time to write! Because that was ridiculous. It would feel like twenty minutes of websurfing - on discussion boards and such - and I'd look at the clock and it had been two hours. Geez.

     At any rate, here is what I've found as good "first steps" to complete as soon as your story is available:
1. Announce your book in the Book Bazaar section of Kindleboards.com
2. Get added to the 'official kindle author list" on Kindleboards.com. All you have to do is PM the right guy with your info and he'll add you.
3. Facebook/email/Twitter (whatever you use) ALL of your friends and family and ask them to post links and share with everyone they know, the happy news.
4. Get it up on CreateSpace. This may fall into the 'publishing' aspect, which comes before this list, but if not, do it now - because all of my friends/family that don't have a Kindle yet (they don't know what they're missing, I know.) WILL buy the paperback version and that's guaranteed sales you're missing out on.
5. Sign up for Goodreads and upgrade to an 'author' page.
6. Do Book Reviews. On Amazon, Kindleboards, Goodreads - and anywhere else you can think of, in the genre you write, and always sign your name 'Name, Author of Book Name'.
7. Get some readers who will leave reviews on your book pages. Important: If they are family/friends, they need to state that in the review. Or if they got a free copy for doing so, state that too. From what I've already learned, the serious book reviewers on Amazon get pretty pissed off if you don't do that. If you don't, they consider it false advertising at worst, and manipulative, at best.
8. Write up a press release and send it to your local paper.... This one scared me, but the worst they can do is choose to not print it. Best case scenario, they'll want to support their own 'local' and they'll run it and give you exposure. It's worked for several self-pubbing Indie's and I got the idea from their testimonies, including Terri Reid, who just guest posted on JA Konrath's blog this week. Besides, a friend once told me that if you're goal/dream doesn't make you want to throw up, it's not big enough.
9. Find blogs that post reviews or book features regularly and ask to be included. I did this with Karly Kirkpatrick's BOOKADAY, and am already on the schedule to be featured in Feb. She has over 100 followers, not including FB and Twitter, so that's pretty good exposure for one site - and it's FREE. So I'm going to find more blogs like this and try to do more of these features.
    
     Okay, I'm sure I'll have more to add to the list but this is a good start for now. What I'd like to post next time is a compilation of different reviewer blogs like Karly's that you can go to, to get your title featured. If anyone knows of any, let me know, so we can throw it all into one big list. Because my only consolation for spending so much time on this lately, is that the first time is my learning curve. And hopefully the research I'm doing now will result in making this process much quicker every time from now on. Hopefully. Maybe. Ideally.
    
     Now, it's back to what I love best: writing. And I might have to disable my internet connection for awhile to do it. Otherwise, the addiction is too strong! Oh and as for numbers:

Across the Galaxy: 4
DreamKiller: 7

Shared Ideas

     To say I've learned alot from my fellow writers/bloggers about the e-publishing process would be an understatement. It's like taking free online career classes, for which I am so thankful. Blogs like JA Konrath and the others I have listed to the side here (Gniz, Scrittore, etc) have helped me stay plugged in, so thanks guys. I'm learning something new every day.

     But the one thing I feel like we should share more of is marketing strategies. I know that one of the major ways to get the word out about my novel is to have an "online presence" as they say. And I have a list of a couple of sites I can go to and ask for a review or just join in discussions and let my name become familiar, but I think it would benefit all to share information on this subject. Because in my opinion, the first time I'm doing this should make all of the rest of the times easier. Therefore, by the time I release my second, third, and fiftieth books, I should have a working list of sites/blogs/book reviewers to contact and get the word out. It seems like it would seriously reduce my online 'homework' time if we all shared ideas on this. So- any ideas anyone?

     I'll share the idea I've already put into motion for me: Karly Kirkpatrick has a BOOKADAY program on her site. If you email her, she'll feature your book including synopsis, price, where to find it, etc on her website where she currently has over 100 followers -not including facebook and twitter. So I emailed her yesterday and she'll be featuring mine in February. She's also a self-pubbed Kindle author and is more than happy to help out the rest of us by doing this, which is much appreciated. I definitely want more ideas like this!

Also, don't want to leave this part out: My numbers are:
Across the Galaxy - 3
DreamKiller -          4