Giveaway books are out the door!

Author copies of Zorya. The paperbacks were for Goodreads and Library Thing Giveaways. Got the lists of winners, some packaging materials, and ran a Click-to-Ship session at the USPS website. Postage was…expensive…but all the books got dropped off to the post office today.

Goodreads Giveaway for Zorya starts October 25

I’m running a Goodreads Giveaway for an autographed paperback of Zorya and a free bookmark. I’ll be giving away seven copies. Check it out when the Giveaway starts!

(Click to go to Giveaway)

 

“Zorya” available now!

Zorya is now available on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover (casebound). I’ll be getting it into more e-book formats soon. See the Zorya website for purchase links.

This book has been marinating for a long time and was sent to many agents and editors. I’m grateful that self-publishing has gotten to be so much easier and inexpensive for authors, although the real hurdles (as always) are in marketing the book after you publish it. Still, I remember when “self-publishing” meant paying a printer, stacking boxes of books in your garage, and trying to figure out how to get them to the readers and stores.

All it’s cost me (so far) was some time, a few skills, and my computer. That may change now that I’m in the advertising zone. I notice, for example, that book giveaways on Goodreads aren’t free anymore.

I used Kindle Direct Publishing for all three Amazon editions. Paperbacks used to be a separate process on Amazon’s Createspace, and they didn’t have a hardcover option at all until recently, but now all three options are integrated into KDP.

The Kindle version was composed on Microsoft Word, and crunched into Epub3 by Calibre. I used the simple “iPod” cover I had generated in Photoshop for my old Lulu editions. The paper editions were composed in Adobe InDesign CS6 and uploaded as PDF files.

Now, we’ll see.

Amazon buys Goodreads

Story at the Goodreads blog.

I’m mostly a Goodreads “dabbler” so I don’t have much of an opinion on it, but reaction in the comments at the link is decidedly mixed.

Goodreads giveaway winners

Over 1,000 entries, and the two winners of copies of Castle Falcon are in Brazil and the Philippines.  Looks like I need to do a little postal research.

Goodreads giveaway

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Castle Falcon

by Tom Alan Brosz

Giveaway ends November 19, 2012.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

The long and mysterious road of social site promotion

One thing I’ve observed about successful self-published authors is that most of them move comfortably through the vast nations of online social networks.  Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and many others.  While quality of writing is important to success, exposure and participation on these networks seems to be important too.  The ultimate word-of-mouth.

A lot of people are social network experts.  My kids are.  So how hard can it be?

I’ll tell you how hard.  I’m like a fish that has just been informed that he has to become an expert bicycle rider.

I’m already on Facebook.  Barely.  I have exactly sixteen “friends” (mostly relatives) and almost everything on my page is restricted to “friends only.”  I mostly joined to keep track of my college kids and other relatives and friends.  Certainly I’m not getting a wide audience, and the idea of opening the page up to more of the world makes me nervous.

I have yet to Twitter.  Or is that “Tweet?”  I hope it’s not “Twit.”

I do post now and then on Litopia, and a few other forum sites for writers.  I started writing this little blog, too, but all of this is more for fun than any kind of organized promotion.

Today I started gingerly stepping into Goodreads, and I’m still finding out about other places.

Wish me luck out here in Networking Noobville.  I’ll need it.