Seeking Reviews for (New) Releases

by Christine.

It’s exciting to release a new novel – all of your invested time, hard work and research has come together!

It can be disappointing to release your book and find that nothing is then happening; people may be reading, but you aren’t seeing any feedback in the form of reviews.  Seeking reviews for your novel can be a great way to increase anticipation of a story, to give you feedback and to gain new readers.

My Debut Novel, Horse Country

If you have the patience and organisation to be able to send out review copies prior to your book’s release date, you can be rewarded with reviews on the date, or even before the book is available for sale.  This can be a great way to build interest and boost sales.

Alternatively, you can set a competition (on your website, Goodreads or Facebook page) and provide free copies to a limited number of readers on release date on the condition that they provide an honest review.

If approaching people about reviews, consider:

-         Have they reviewed other books in a similar genre?

-         Are they likely to enjoy your story?

-         Do they ‘consume’ books, resulting in a quick review after you’ve provided the story to read?

-         Will they post on mediums you require, e.g. Goodreads, Amazon, LibraryThing, a personal website?

Many readers love to receive a book prior to it’s release date and will work hard to have it read and reviewed for you as an author, in time for your much anticipated release.  Consider the value that seeking out reviews can provide for your latest release – or even an older release that needs a boost!

What book have you had the privilege of reading prior to release day?  Interested in reading Christine's next adult horse fiction due for release in 2016? Leave a message!

Marketing Yourself as an Author

by Christine.

There are incredible resources online today that authors can use to sell their products, promote themselves and acquire new readers.  As an aspiring author or one who has many novels under their belt, are you using all that you can?

There are more than I am aware of, but I thought I’d list some here and their associated benefits:

• Goodreads
  So many people today are keeping track of what they’ve read, what they thought, and what they would recommend.  As an author, you can add your books to the Goodreads database, list them in appropriate lists (e.g. best horse series), offer giveaways to promote your latest release and best of all, create an author page where all of your public works are listed.
  This list allows people to mark them as read, rate them out of 5, leave a review and even mark down that they want to read your books in the future!  If you’re not using this feature yet and have published works, I encourage you to look into it. 
• Amazon
  Again, you can have an author profile and list all of the books that are authored by you.  Your profile can also include a biography, photo, recent blog posts from your own blog feed and Twitter updates.  It’s a great way for fans to keep in touch with your latest news and books.
  As an added bonus, if you have your books on Amazon, you can keep tabs on monthly sales, see how your book/s are faring on the best sellers lists and get reviews and ratings from purchasers. 
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• Authorgraph
  This is a nifty way to interact with your fans for free and offer them something they may not have the chance to request in person – an autograph!  The images of the covers of your published works are made available and you can create an autograph that is then placed across any of these images that a fan may request.
  For example, a reader of Horse Country – A World of Horses may fancy a signed copy of the cover from Christine Meunier.  Authorgraph is set up so that your signature is created by you and then saved – this is then sent out whenever you approve a request from a fan.  You can also personalise messages! 
• Lulu
  If you are interested in creating paperback versions of your books, then I encourage you to check out this print on demand set up.  Lulu’s service is free to set things up – they can even help you out with book formatting, ISBNs for free and cover creation.
  You can determine if your books are available to yourself only, to only those who you invite or to the general public.  And from here, you can submit your works into bigger selling networks like Amazon and Barnes and Noble – all for free!
  They make their money through earning a percentage of your profit whenever a sale is made, not before.
  Once you have books set up on Lulu, you can set up your own author store and provide a biography, links, profile image and of course details of your released paperbacks.  You don’t have to pay to have your books printed (except for proof copies), but instead they are only printed when people order them (print on demand).  It’s a great way to cater to the one off buyers all around the world without making a dent in your pocket!

What author platform do you use that has benefited you greatly in the form of sales, reaching out to fans or keeping people updated on your latest releases?

L. R. Trovillion
www.lrtrovillion.com

It is my turn to post and it happens to be Mother's Day. I would be remiss if I ignored the opportunity to say something about the influence of mothers on this, their day.  I'm posting a picture of my mother that I especially like because it was a time when she was young and happy and had all the promise of life in front of her...also, because she is sitting on a horse.

My mother was not an accomplished horsewoman, but she had a love of horses, especially in her youth.  I hope I've passed that on to my own daughter, whose first horseback riding experience was "in utero" (perhaps not such a smart idea) and who later spent years in pony club, junior equestrian teams, and eventing.  By high school she traded in her ratcatcher and boots for a rugby shirt and cleats, but I believe her years of riding, training, and showing horses gave her a certain mental toughness that is hard to duplicate. More than that, competing in a sport with a horse--another living thing as your partner--teaches you that you are not the center of the universe.  This is often a critical lesson to learn during certain teenaged years. Thank-you to the horses. Here's a picture of me and my daughter from years ago, at a time when we were both able to enjoy riding together. (Yes, I know my hair should be tied up under the helmet. I had taken it off, and just popped it back on to mount and pose for the picture.) 

Horses have figured in the mother-daughter relationship in our family for two generations now, so it is no happenstance, I suppose, that it figures prominently in my novel, False Gods. Relations between mothers and daughters have been endlessly explored, examined, picked and pulled apart under the microscope of the novelist as well as the movie producer.  It has provided rich, fertile ground to till for stories...and yet, there always seems to be more to say about the myriad and diverse relationships between these two female family members.  The mother in False Gods has difficulty with her two daughters, but instead of it being the teenagers who are the troubled ones, it is instead the mother who suffers from emotional problems to the extent that she doesn't even notice the damage she's inflicting until it is almost too late. I won't give anything more away, except... speaking of giveaways (warning: this is where the self-promotion comes in), a contest is now running on Goodreads until May 13th to win one of seven copies of False Gods for free.  I'd love to hear what other people have to say about their mothers, their relationships, and whether horses were a part of it. 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23846365-false-gods?from_search=true&search_version=service