Book Promoting and How to Help

In my quest for self e-publishing success, I have had the hardest time with promoting my books. Some of that is because I'm not sure how many teens have access to eReaders or credit cards to buy eBooks. Other reasons include how to promote books online.

Here's what I've done so far.

Joined many communities or forums to talk about writing, reading, and publishing. These include:

Kindleboards

Nookbooks

Mobileread

Bookandreader

Absolutewrite

I joined other sites like:

Goodreads

LibraryThing

Shelfari

I joined tagging groups so people would tag my books with the appropriate words. I made an author's page on Amazon and Authorsden.

I have a Twitter page and a Facebook fan page. And of course, I have my new blog.

Help I need from friends, family, or fans. If you've read the book, leave a review. If you know what the books are about, tag them with the appropriate words. If you have a blog, blog about the book - if you do giveaways on your blog and have a YA audience, I'd love to offer a free copy of my eBook.

Any of you who have an account/shelf at goodreads, librarything, or shelfari, add my books to your shelf, leave a review.

Follow my blog and add it to your blog. Leave comments.

Tell other people - neighbors, friends, teens. Or on your Facebook or Twitter.

Thank you!!!

Does Tagging Work?

In the past couple of days, I have joined a few tagging lists. You put your book on the list to be tagged and reciprocate by tagging other peoples books. Most of the time the tags are already up there, so all you have to do is click on the little boxes next to the words "agreeing" with them. In theory, this is supposed to help people searching for these words find your book and hopefully buy it.

So, my question is does it work?

Before I started tagging, I had a few tags with 2 people agreeing with it. Now, I have about 28 people agreeing with some tags. I'm curious to see if my sales will go up at all in the next few days. Stay tuned for an update!

And let me know your thoughts on tagging - has it worked for you?

Teagan's Story

My second book, Teagan's Story, is live on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Teagan's Story is available as an eBook for $2.99.

Teagan Kavanagh's life is shattered when her parents are killed in a car accident. She must move in with her brother and is forced to attend public school for the first time in her life. As if starting a new school her junior year wasn't hard enough, she continues to battle epilepsy and the constant unknown of when and where her next seizure will occur. As this new chapter in her life opens, she gets more than she bargained for. Torn between playing it safe and risking her life to be normal, Teagan must make a life changing decision.

Charli

Although I began Teagan's Story many years ago, when my friend found on me on Facebook recently, I found out her daughter had epilepsy. I immediately thought of my book and decided that I wanted to dedicate it to her.

So, Teagan's Story is dedicated to Charli. Please join her cause on Facebook and help us find a cure for epilepsy.

Charli's Cause

Happenings!!!

There is a lot going on this week! I uploaded Teagan's Story to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Both should be live in a day or two. I made a Twitter page. And I joined a place called Authorsden.com. I'm trying to promote my books. Hopefully, by the end of the week, I'll have two books for sale.

My third book is coming along pretty well. I have a friend reading it now for a first opinion. Then the fun starts. Reading, editing, redoing, reading, editing, redoing... repeat again and again.

Ideas are flowing in my head about another book, but I haven't decided which one to go with yet.

I also started this blog. I took out all my old blog posts from my personal blogs and posted them here. So, now I'll have a writing blog and a personal blog.

Love Writing. Hate Formatting.

I hate formatting. HATE. IT. With a passion. Why - in this day and age - can't someone come up with a program that will take a basic Word document and change it into an eBook? I know, some of it has to do with the fact that Amazon uses Mobi and Barnes and Noble uses ePub. But, come on, people!

I have changed my Word document into everything possible and uploaded it and something is always messed up. I've gone back through my books and fixed anything that looked funny and most of the time it STILL looks funny. My main problem are the indents. They are all messed up!

Now, I've uploaded to B&N, and when looking at the sample, it looks fine. But, I can't see further into the book. So, you download the ePub version of it and their Nook reader for computers, and then what happens, all the chapters are messed up on the top! UGH!

The other thing giving me trouble is formatting a table of contents. I had one that when you clicked on it went to the chapter, but the page numbers are wrong (they are okay on the Word document), but not okay on the eBooks because the pages are different. So, I took the page numbers out, but now I can't get them linked to the chapters.

I've tried some free programs, I've downloaded a free trial of Adobe's ridiculously expensive Indesign. Nothing helps.

Love writing. Hate formatting.

Barnes & Noble

Natalie's Story has been for sale on Amazon since July 2010. Now, it's on sale at Barnesandnoble.com. Same price $2.99. You can get the free Nook app for your computer or phone, just like Amazon. Or if you have a Nook!!

If you could go to the Barnes and Noble page and click the FB like link, that would help me out!

I've been working on formatting Teagan's Story so I can get that out. It's ridiculous. Why hasn't anyone come up with some software that easily converts a document into different things? I finally got the indents looking somewhat normal... but the table of contents... UGH!!!!