Why you should shop at Smashwords

Since discovering the site in my own research to self-publish this year, Smashwords has personally become my own go-to site for buying ebooks. Of course you may wonder why.

To my knowledge, most if not all of Smashwords is self-published work. This is a huge plus for me as a fellow self-publisher. What this means is, to an extent, more freedom of choice. Their page layout might not be modern, fancy, or pretty, but what you get is a pretty easily searchable site with tons of content in just about any genre. Self-published work doesn't get buried under E.L. James and Stephanie Meyer, it's right there on top!

Personally I own a kobo for my ereading. The main reason I got a kobo was it's the number one brand in my area. It's owned by Indigo and is the most easily found ereader in this market. I liked the features, the backlight, and the size. All good things. What I'm not liking is the censorship on kobo at the moment. I haven't browsed their site in months because I don't like the variety it's limiting me to.

So I use Smashwords. Smashwords let's me download a book in any file format I chose, in my case ePub. After downloading the most helpful software called Calibre (get it here) I can easily put the file on my ereader and I'm ready to go.

Something else I love is how Smashwords gives a much higher royalty rate to authors than other platforms. I know, I know, of course I love getting more money. What I also like is making sure most of the money I spend on my books is going to the authors who wrote them in the first place!

Right now Awake My Soul is in the top 10 of the Bestsellers list for Historical Romance and I'm really proud of that fact. It's certainly a site worth checking out if you're a fan of indie romances!

Smashwords and Distribution

When I published Awake My Soul I put it up on Smashwords and Amazon, mostly because those seemed like the best two options. For Amazon, it was a given. It makes up anywhere from the 50-75% range on ebook downloads.

Smashwords I went with because of the distribution. Through them they would upload to Nook, Kobo, Sony, Apple, and so on. Awake My Soul has been available for three weeks now and I'm just starting to see it on other sites through a TON of searching on google. I couldn't find my book simply by typing in my name or title on the sites. I had to google it to find anything, and even then I haven't had a ton of luck.

Amazon is by far the best seller, but I don't want to shut out people without a kindle. So as I find the links, I'll add them to my blog here. Hopefully that helps people wanting to buy Awake My Soul.

Nook/Barnes & Noble

Ebook Eros

Kindle Freebie is Almost Over

It's a Friday night and I am absolutely bagged! I've been staring at the computer all day and yet I'm forcing one more blog post for this week. I'm hoping to publish another short next week so I did some editing on that, followed by finishing up a chapter of Lay Me Bare, plus I finished an article I was working on for a freelance gig I have.

My eyes... they BURN. As much as I know I should keep writing over the weekend, I might take a break away from the computer. Heck, even my phone. Not that I don't have other things to do. This weekend marks my first Christmas party of the year and that means I better do some baking. I already made some chocolate biscotti and tomorrow my husband and I are making fresh cheddar bay biscuits!

For next week, as I said I'm hoping to publish another short. This one is a contemporary erotica featuring a hot cop and a damsel in distress, yum yum! I haven't settled on a title, but I might try the kindle exclusive again, or I might put it up on smashwords as well. It's a tough call!

Next week I also plan on doing an update about how the free period on Welcome to the Black Room did and if it affected sales at all.

Have a wonderful weekend!

24 Hours of Kindle Freebie

The Masquerade Affair Volume One: Welcome to the Black Room has been free on Amazon for just over 24 hours now and I can't deny that I'm pretty pleased with the results so far. In the first few hours I gave away around thirty books on Amazon and a few on the foreign sites. Pretty good.

Then I started advertising. I took to reddit, twitter, stumbledupon, and tumblr to advertise that the book was free until December 6th. I tried not to go overboard on twitter because I hate being sold to on twitter, so why would I expect anyone else to like it? Instead I did one sales post and then just posted my thoughts on how excited I was to see people buying my free ebook.

During the day I kept an eye on my sales. When I cracked the top 10,000 of the free ebooks on kindle I got really excited. Then Amazon started showing how far I was in subgenres. Then I saw I cracked the top 100 in erotica. Then the top 75. Before my husband left for work he checked too and texted me a picture that I had cracked the top 50. When I got to the computer (about an hour ago) I was at number 17 on the free erotica chart. That's the FRONT PAGE of erotica.

Not only that, but I've cracked the top 100 of genre fiction and the top 1000 of free ebooks overall. Without advertising over the last 12 hours those numbers are huge.

Now what has it done for sales? Yesterday I sold twice as many copies of Awake My Soul as I had the rest of the month. Not huge numbers, but a nice boost. Does this have anything to do with Welcome to the Black Room being free? I have no way of knowing. I have yet to receive a review on Welcome to the Black Room either, but I doubt most people who've downloaded it have had a chance to read it.

After the free period is over I plan to do a more in depth look at sales numbers and how things have been effected by my trial of KDP Select. Here's hoping it's worth it in the end!

Welcome to the Black Room is FREE until Friday December 6th!

That's right, The Masquerade Affair Volume One: Welcome to the Black Room, is up on Amazon for completely, 100% free right now! It's a 7000 word historic erotica short and I hope it gets your motor running. After Friday it will be only 99 cents, so it's still a great deal.

In non-book news, my new favourite (well, not so new) obsession is tea, especially from DavidsTea. If you aren't familiar with them, you should get acquainted! Yesterday they had a friends and family deal and my husband brought me home SIX bags of my favorite teas. What a sweetheart! Right now I'm sipping on some Lime Gelato. Plus he surprised me with a comic book. I love it all so much I of course had to take a picture.

Cover Reveal!

My wonderful husband made a cover for my new short. As long as I stay productive today, it should be available on Amazon as early as tomorrow (December 3rd) morning!

The Masquerade Affair Volume One: Welcome to the Black Room will be priced at $0.99, but it will also be my first KDP Select enrolled title, which means it will be available for free for a period of time. Pretty exciting!

And here is the cover! I'm really happy with this one.

First Month's Sales

Well, to be honest it's not a full month's report. Awake My Soul was on sale for eleven of the thirty days of November, but I'm pretty proud of how well my first book sold during its first month. Without stating actual numbers, I did sell between Amazon Smashwords almost 100 copies. That might seem low, but over eleven days for a self published novel, I'm pretty proud.

Though now is not the time for me to sit back and wait and see. I've been fairly productive this week, but I could have definitely done better! My husband has been off and we've been enjoying time together. That said, I did get a short finished.

This week I will be publishing Welcome to the Black Room, #1 in a series I'll be calling The Masquerade Affair. It's a historical erotic short with some light BDSM and F/F elements, though it's mostly M/F. After the cut is a preview of what I'm working with for the cover!