May 18 2012

Pin This!

by Seleste deLaney

When Emma asked me if I wanted to write a post on Pin­ter­est, I said, “SURE!” and then I backpedaled to some­thing along the lines of, “Uh… what kind of post about Pinterest?”

You see, I’m a big time Pin­ter­est devo­tee and it would be really easy to explain what it is and just gush about how fun and awe­some it is. Oh, and how it doesn’t have to be a time suck… really. (Nei­ther does Draw Some­thing, but that’s a whole other post :P ) So, thank­fully Emma gave me a bit of direc­tion. She wants to know how I use it with spe­cial regard to how I use it for my writ­ing. Now that, I can def­i­nitely do.

First though, for the unini­ti­ated, Pin­ter­est is a lit­tle like a cat­a­log of bul­letin boards where users “pin” things for future use. Using inter­net links, you can pin to arti­cles, recipes, videos, etc. as long as there is a pic­ture avail­able on the page. (They have to be “usable” pic­tures, and I have yet to fig­ure out what that means. So, upon occa­sion, a page won’t work.) You choose which of your boards it goes on: Recipes, Shop­ping, New House, Crafts… You name the boards, so the choices are only lim­ited by you.

As a writer, I use it for more than that. I have boards for each of my series: Blood Kissed, Of Bus­tles and Bad­lands (assum­ing that series title sticks), Cupid’s Con­quests, Para­nor­mal Response Team (YA), and Santa’s Naughty Elves. Within each board, I have images for each of my char­ac­ters (I have a ten­dency to “cast” my char­ac­ters because I think in very visual terms) as well as other things such as set­tings, vehi­cles (if they mat­ter), and images that speak to me as fit­ting with the sto­ries (for exam­ple, the image that inspired Bad­lands is included).

I also have boards for most of my works-​in-​progress. Some of those are much more exten­sive than oth­ers. For exam­ple, for a long time my Drag­ons Don’t Dance board only had char­ac­ter images, which was beyond stu­pid since the story takes place all of Europe in gor­geous loca­tions (those have since been added). That’s for a com­pleted man­u­script though — I have sev­eral of those that each have a board. I also have what I call prep-​work boards. For exam­ple, the boards called “Plan­ning Plans” and “Book I Shouldn’t Even Be Think­ing About” are for sto­ries that are mostly still in the con­cept stages. (I’ve started both of them, but I haven’t gone very far yet.

So, other than because I like pretty things, why do I do this? Isn’t it just more work?

First, yes, it is work, but it’s fun work. Because I have pic­tures in my head already (or want them there for future projects), all I’m doing is orga­niz­ing them to share with the world. And it is shar­ing. If you look on my page it says I have 147 fol­low­ers. That doesn’t seem like much. How­ever, one of the beau­ties of Pin­ter­est is “re-​pinning.” If one of my fol­low­ers re-​pins my char­ac­ter image and leaves the com­ment I put on there (this hap­pens more com­monly than I would have thought), it takes my books to a whole new audi­ence, namely all of their fol­low­ers. Plus, that 147 is decep­tive. I’m pretty sure that means how many peo­ple are fol­low­ing all of my boards. Tak­ing a quick trip over to the “Of Bus­tles and Bad­lands” board shows a slightly dif­fer­ent pic­ture. It has 301 fol­low­ers. Still not a huge num­ber, but it’s more than dou­ble the other. That means a greater chance of re-​pins, and a greater chance that some­one who might not “know” me will check out my books.

In addi­tion, those boards I have that I’m using as prep-​work? I already have friends who fol­low me ask­ing about them and when those books will be fin­ished. It means start­ing promo before the book is even drafted. That’s a pow­er­ful thing. Plus, every time I add to that board, it’s a reminder.

Could I just use Pin­ter­est for recipes and crafts? Sure. But the poten­tial is so much big­ger than that. What about you? Do you pin? And if you don’t, why the heck not?

By selestedelaney • Social media • 12 • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

May 16 2012

Book Review: Tat­tooed by Pamela Callow

The first thing I have to say is that hav­ing read the book, I actu­ally don’t love the cover as much as I thought I did. First of all, Ken­zie has way more tat­toos than that — and sec­ondly, if you’re going to fea­ture a neck tat­too, it really should be a raven. Or at least a peony.

But I digress.

I love Pamela Cal­low. I love Kate Lange. And I love sec­ondary char­ac­ters like reformed alco­holic, crim­i­nal lawyer Eddie Bent and Detec­tive Ethan Drake. So what’s not to love about Tat­tooed? Other than the cover photo…not much.

Lawyer Kate Lange has never for­given her­self for being the dri­ver of the car in a crash that killed her sis­ter, Imo­gen, sev­en­teen years ago. She’d been drag­ging her sis­ter away from a party where Imo­gen had been snort­ing lines of crack. So when Frances Sloane, the mother of the party’s host Ken­zie, asks her for legal advice, she’s a bit con­flicted. Frances has advanced ALS and wants Kate’s help in tak­ing on the law against assisted sui­cide. Ken­zie, who moved away from Hal­i­fax shortly after Imogen’s death, comes back to say her final good­byes to her mother. And Ken­zie knows a bit more about Imogen’s last days — and a bit more about the body found in a nearby peat bog — than she’d like Kate to know. Finally, a recently released pris­oner named John McNally is watch­ing them both. He wants to kill Kate — and he wants Ken­zie to help him.

There’s so much going on in this book. It’s told from mul­ti­ple view­points: Kate’s, Kenzie’s, Ethan’s, and McNally’s. It’s inter­est­ing to see the story evolve from inside the heads of four very dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Even though you know from page one who the bad guy is, that’s com­mon in this series, and it doesn’t ruin any­thing. Pamela’s nov­els are about the HOW and the WHY more than the WHO. They’re about dis­cov­er­ing secrets and never quite see­ing how all the pieces con­nect until the last page.

I like that Pamela spends a lot of time research­ing her nov­els, because they always seem very plau­si­ble. And as I’m plan­ning my next tat­too (it’ll be my third), I had a lot of fun read­ing about tat­too­ing tech­niques and prison tats (although I am not plan­ning to ever get one of those).

If you enjoy intrigue, sus­pense, and pulse-​raising thrillers, you can’t do bet­ter than Pamela Cal­low. If this sounds like it’s up your alley, start with Dam­aged and Inde­fen­si­ble, books 1 and 2 in the Kate Lange series. With a fourth book in the con­tract (and per­son­ally I’ll be keep­ing my fin­gers crossed for more after that), there’s still more to come.

By Emma Cunningham • Book reviews • 0 • Tags: , , , , , , ,

May 14 2012

Feed Your Read­ers with Dig­i­tal Galleys

by Lind­sey Rud­nickas of NetGalley

Allow me to intro­duce myself. I’m Lind­sey, Dig­i­tal Concierge at Net­Gal­ley—an easy-​to-​use online ser­vice and con­nec­tion point between book pub­lish­ers or authors and pro­fes­sional read­ers. We define a “pro­fes­sional reader” as a per­son whose job is to read, review, and rec­om­mend books to con­sumers — such as review­ers, media, librar­i­ans, book­sellers, and blog­gers. Net­Gal­ley is a place where those pro­fes­sional read­ers can request titles from pub­lish­ers or authors, and read them on any major read­ing device or tablet. As the Dig­i­tal Concierge, I help pub­lish­ers and authors max­i­mize their Net­Gal­ley expe­ri­ence — by help­ing incor­po­rate dig­i­tal gal­leys into pro­mo­tional cam­paigns and con­nect­ing them with new pro­fes­sional read­ers who may be inter­ested in review­ing their books.

I was thrilled when Emma asked me to write a guest post specif­i­cally about how authors can use dig­i­tal gal­leys to expand their reach and get more buzz for their titles. The best part of my job is help­ing our pub­lisher clients — and more and more, self-​published authors — use Net­Gal­ley, and use it well.

As a for­mer in-​house book pub­li­cist, I’m a big fan of the dig­i­tal gal­ley con­cept, because I’ve seen first­hand how cum­ber­some, expen­sive, and inef­fi­cient the tra­di­tional print gal­ley process can be. Gal­ley dis­tri­b­u­tion is one of the key pub­lic­ity and mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties per­formed by pub­lish­ers and media agen­cies, and can cer­tainly make or break a cam­paign. Dig­i­tal gal­leys are eco-​friendly, fast, and cost-​effective — espe­cially since they’re the­o­ret­i­cally unlim­ited. A book publicist’s dream: never run­ning out of gal­leys with weeks still to go until the pub date!

This is espe­cially impor­tant now, when com­mu­ni­ties of influ­ence are larger than ever. One of the great ironies of print gal­leys is that their dis­tri­b­u­tion is often lim­ited by bud­get, and restricted to a per­ceived “A” list of influ­encers. We’re always hear­ing pub­li­cists, mar­keters, dig­i­tal mar­keters, library mar­keters, sales reps, and authors say that they’d like to expand the num­ber of peo­ple who can get a gal­ley, and that they’d like to know with more cer­tainty the influ­ence and reach of those broader com­mu­ni­ties. This is not only pos­si­ble, but some­thing we’re actively per­fect­ing at NetGalley.

The Net­Gal­ley com­mu­nity is cur­rently over 60,000 pro­fes­sional read­ers. The largest seg­ment is review­ers — includ­ing blog­gers — com­pris­ing just over 50%. Librar­i­ans make up 19% (we have a part­ner­ship with the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion), with the remain­der split evenly between book­sellers, media and edu­ca­tors. Our com­mu­nity is an active, book-​loving bunch. They talk to each other, they talk to us, we talk to them, and they can’t wait to hear from pub­lish­ers and authors about the next big book, so they can spread the word.

It’s no sur­prise that new books have a bet­ter chance of suc­cess when they’re launched into ded­i­cated com­mu­ni­ties of inter­ested read­ers. When pub­lish­ers and authors list their titles in the Net­Gal­ley cat­a­log, allow­ing mem­bers to request access, they are iden­ti­fy­ing and cul­ti­vat­ing new influ­encers as well as con­nect­ing with exist­ing con­tacts. Plus, pub­lish­ers and authors can use our tools to incor­po­rate dig­i­tal gal­leys into all they already do for their titles, includ­ing pitch emails, give­aways, book­seller and library mar­ket­ing, events, blog tours, social media mar­ket­ing, inter­ac­tion with online read­ing com­mu­ni­ties (like Library­Thing and Goodreads), and more. This is the fun part, and we love to help!

Emma asked me to specif­i­cally address how authors can use Net­Gal­ley. We’ve found Net­Gal­ley works best for self-​published authors in con­junc­tion with a larger marketing/​publicity cam­paign — either through a free­lance PR pro­fes­sional, spear­headed by the author them­selves, or through one of our mar­ket­ing pro­grams. We’ve seen pub­lish­ers and authors alike use dig­i­tal gal­leys in cre­ative ways through­out a cam­paign to help build buzz quickly and cost-​effectively, but not sur­pris­ingly, there’s never only one tool to guar­an­tee suc­cess. Like­wise, if you have a tra­di­tional pub­lisher, ask if they’ll use Net­Gal­ley for your title! Many authors direct their con­tacts to dig­i­tal gal­leys — through their blog, book events and speak­ing engage­ments, email mar­ket­ing, Twit­ter and Face­book, etc — and really par­tic­i­pate in the over­all cam­paign with the in-​house publicist.

Cus­tomer ser­vice — to pub­lish­ers and espe­cially to read­ers — has grown to be a key piece of our busi­ness. Unfor­tu­nately, access­ing a book on a device can be more con­fus­ing than it should be. We help nav­i­gate the dig­i­tal land­scape — not just for our client pub­lish­ers and authors, but also for their read­ers. Our team of Concierges under­stands that a timely, pro­fes­sional response is essen­tial, par­tic­u­larly when deal­ing with a media con­tact. Every day we help pro­fes­sional read­ers down­load and enjoy titles suc­cess­fully on their favorite devices. For pub­lish­ers and authors, we help them with the DRM (Dig­i­tal Rights Man­age­ment) for their files in Net­Gal­ley and explain the dif­fer­ent read­ing options, and assist in gen­er­at­ing “wid­gets” to use when invit­ing their own con­tacts to view a title on NetGalley.

With so many new and cre­ative sites pop­ping up online for review­ers, blog­gers, book lovers and book buy­ers, there’s never been a bet­ter (but more over­whelm­ing!) time to launch a new book suc­cess­fully. Good pub­lic­ity and mar­ket­ing can be the cor­ner­stone to a fan­tas­tic launch, and it’s our plea­sure to watch so many new books soar.

By Emma Cunningham • Guest blogs, Marketing • 4 • Tags: , , , ,

May 11 2012

Lever­ag­ing StumbleUpon

I was never a big Stum­ble­Upon user until a few months ago. And it’s been fab­u­lous for increas­ing expo­sures to this blog (mainly the book reviews).

Think of dis­cov­ery engines like Stum­ble­Upon as brows­ing through a book­store, whereas a search engine like Google is equiv­a­lent to order­ing the book you want and hav­ing it shipped directly to your address. Both are great, but they’re not inter­change­able. It’s hard to find new authors and books you’ll love if you don’t wan­der around.

So how do you get Stum­ble­Upon work­ing for you?

The first step, obvi­ously, is to get active on the site. Like every other social media plat­form known to man, using it solely to mar­ket won’t do any­thing for you. Start stum­bling. Select inter­ests. Tell Stum­ble­Upon which sites you like, and which ones don’t do much for you. Then, add your own con­tent to Stum­ble­Upon. This marks it as one of your “Likes” and it will be shown to peo­ple with sim­i­lar tastes to yours. You don’t want to do this with every blog post, so choose care­fully, and keep an eye on which ones get the most hits. For me, that’s my book reviews — so that’s what I sub­mit 90% of the time. And I make sure that every time I sub­mit my own con­tent, I Like sev­eral sites by other peo­ple. Lastly, add a Stum­ble­Upon Share but­ton to your con­tent so that your users can share it, too. And if there’s a par­tic­u­lar thing you really want to push, like a cover art reveal or a new excerpt from an upcom­ing book, you can sign up for a paid dis­cov­ery account to get huge increases in traf­fic.

And hey, if you want to thank me for my awe­some wis­dom, you could always sub­mit my posts to Stum­ble­Upon or click on my Social Share but­tons below, hmmm? ;)

By Emma Cunningham • Social media • 8 • Tags: ,

May 9 2012

Book Review: Guilt by Degrees by Mar­cia Clark

When Spe­cial Tri­als Deputy D.A. Rachel Knight wit­nesses a pros­e­cu­tor screw up the case for a mur­dered home­less man, she’s furi­ous — so furi­ous that she takes over the case her­self. But when she learns that the home­less man is actu­ally Simon Bayer, the brother of a police offi­cer who was axe-​murdered two years ear­lier, the stakes are raised, since his accused mur­derer was his wife Leila — who walked on a jury deci­sion of Not Guilty. Not even just that there had been rea­son­able doubt as to her guilt, but that the jury had hon­estly believed she was inno­cent. And nobody has seen Leila since the trial.

What Rachel and her best friend, Detec­tive Bai­ley Keller, find, is that not every case boils down to a guilty party and a vic­tim. And that psy­chopaths really will do any­thing to avoid being caught.

I’ve reviewed Mar­cia Clark before, and hon­estly think that she gets bet­ter with each book. I think the best mark of an “author to watch” is one who makes a point of improv­ing her writ­ing and sto­ry­telling skills with each book, and Clark absolutely makes each book top the last. Although I don’t par­tic­u­larly like Rachel (which says noth­ing about Clark’s char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and every­thing to do with my taste in peo­ple), I do love the insight scoop on what it’s really like to work on a high-​profile case.

I don’t want to post any spoil­ers here, so I’m just going to say that this is one of the coolest ideas I’ve seen in a mys­tery novel in a long time. There are twists and turns I never guessed and I’m still not quite sure who the bad guy really is. I also like that there were a few loose ends left dan­gling, so another Rachel Knight tale seems likely.

One thing that was miss­ing for me was the love story. Rachel had been on the verge of patch­ing up a bro­ken heart in Guilt By Asso­ci­a­tion and I didn’t really feel that this book con­tin­ued the story of her heal­ing and mov­ing on. I would have liked to see more per­sonal devel­op­ment there.

All in all, Guilt By Degrees is a great novel. Since it’s set in the Spe­cial Tri­als divi­sion, it reads a bit more like a police pro­ce­dural than a legal thriller since Spe­cial Tri­als pros­e­cu­tors inves­ti­gate cases along with the detec­tives from the moment the body is found. How­ever, if you like police pro­ce­du­rals, Mar­cia Clark is one of the best to read.

By Emma Cunningham • Book reviews • 4 • Tags: , , , , , , ,

May 4 2012

Should you self-​publish ebooks for your traditionally-​published novels?

by Chantel Guertin (aka Chantel Simmons)

Back in 2005, when I signed the con­tract for my first book, Stuck in Down­ward Dog, no one was really think­ing about ebooks. I cer­tainly wasn’t. In my con­tract with my pub­lisher, there was a clause about elec­tronic rights, but thank­fully, my agent had the savvy smarts to strike through it. She did the same for me a few years later when she sold my fol­lowup novel, Love Struck. What this meant was that I retained the elec­tronic rights to my novels.

Flash for­ward to 2010. I’d got­ten a Kin­dle the year before, and loved the con­ve­nience of read­ing on the go. While I’ll always love read­ing tra­di­tional books – and see­ing my books in print – I started to think about mak­ing my books avail­able elec­tron­i­cally. But I had no clue how.

I went to a talk at U of T, by an author who’d kept her rights and put her book online. I still didn’t under­stand how to do it. I bought a book on epub­lish­ing, but the steps were labo­ri­ous and time con­sum­ing and I thought there must be a bet­ter way, since even a recently pub­lished book could already be out­dated by the time it hits book­store shelves. I asked some friends in pub­lish­ing. A friend sug­gested a friend, who offered to help me.

Since I also couldn’t find the final elec­tronic word file of either novel, we decided to use the printed ver­sion, which is even bet­ter because it ensures you’re using the lat­est pos­si­ble ver­sion of the book – and hope­fully, the ver­sion with the least amount of typos. But even though my books had been edited, copy­edited and proof­read – mul­ti­ple times – and even been reprinted in the case of Stuck in Down­ward Dog – I knew there were still a few lin­ger­ing mis­takes. So I hired two proof­read­ers. First, I paid them to read the printed books and find any typos and fix them on the elec­tronic file. Then, to go through the ebook ver­sions and find any new errors that appeared due to the trans­fer process from scanned book to ebook file.

Sure, I could’ve cut costs by proof­read­ing the books myself. As a mag­a­zine edi­tor for more than 10 years, I could prob­a­bly do a bet­ter job than many authors whose day job isn’t work­ing with words. But I also know that the best proof­reader is one who is a) trained as a proof­reader and does this as her day-​job (which I don’t) and b) is unfa­mil­iar with the work she’s proof­read­ing. I knew the story (obvi­ously!) and I knew what I meant to say even if I was miss­ing a word here or there. So I knew that when it came down to catch­ing the very last typos, I’d likely still miss them. It was well worth the money to pay a proof­reader to do the job.

While the proof­ing and type­set­ting was hap­pen­ing, I worked on the cov­ers. I didn’t own the rights to the orig­i­nal cov­ers – my pub­lisher did. Again, I could’ve done this part myself, by going to a stock image site, buy­ing an image, plug­ging it into Pho­to­Shop and design­ing some­thing myself. But I’m not a designer – and cov­ers really do (or don’t!) sell a book. So instead I hired a designer, and gave her some input, but let her cre­ate the final result. While I loved both my orig­i­nal cov­ers, one was illus­trated and one was a photo, and they weren’t con­sis­tent in style. I wanted the two new cov­ers to be sim­i­lar in appear­ance, so I could start to build a branded look and my read­ers could rec­og­nize my books by their covers.

Once the books were ready, I signed an agree­ment with Ama­zon first – sim­ply because I owned a Kin­dle and was most famil­iar with the plat­form. The agree­ment with Ama­zon is really straight­for­ward; you set the price, and in what coun­tries you want the book to be avail­able. You also set how much of the book to make avail­able as the free sam­ple. The process only took a few min­utes – lit­er­ally. Then I repeated the process with Kobo. I didn’t own a Kobo, so I bought one – a small invest­ment (which I could claim on my taxes) to make sure the book looked good, that noth­ing was wonky, and that it would be a good read­ing expe­ri­ence for the reader.

And that was that. Every month, both Ama­zon and Kobo send me reports on how many of each title sold, how many returns, and your net rev­enue. Every quar­ter or so, both com­pa­nies send me a cheque. While I’m happy that the process has allowed me to sell more books, I’m mostly pleased that I’m able to make my books avail­able to read­ers who pre­fer ebooks or aren’t able to find my book in tra­di­tional stores.

Chantel Guertin is an author, beauty expert and mag­a­zine edi­tor. Her first novel (writ­ten as Chantel Sim­mons), Stuck in Down­ward Dog, came out in 2007, and was a Win­nipeg Free Press best­seller, a Chate­laine Best Beach Book and Book of the Month, and a Van­cou­ver Sun Editor’s Choice. Her sec­ond novel, Love Struck, came out in 2010, and was also a best­seller in Canada.

By Emma Cunningham • Editing, Get published, Guest blogs, Self-publishing • 1 • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

May 2 2012

Switched, but Still the Same: A Com­par­a­tive Review

Cover art for St Martin’s Press

by Mar­i­anne Su

Few peo­ple would argue that Amanda Hock­ing is a lead­ing suc­cess story in self-​publishing. Once a strug­gling writer, receiv­ing noth­ing but rejec­tion from tra­di­tional pub­lish­ers, she ven­tured into self-​publishing. Hock­ing defied the odds when she found huge suc­cess self-​pubbing her books, includ­ing Switched, the first in the YA Trylle Trilogy.

Switched is a story of Wendy, a seventeen-​year-​old raised by a fos­ter fam­ily after her mother tried to kill her as a child. When Finn enters her life, he con­firms what her mother always sus­pected, that Wendy was switched with another baby, and that she belongs to a dif­fer­ent world.

When Switched and the other two books in the series were picked up by St. Martin’s Press, many fans and observers were eager to see how dif­fer­ent the books would be after the edit­ing of a tra­di­tional pub­lisher. I admit that I am one of these curi­ous observers. I read Switched in its orig­i­nal indie for­mat and have picked it up again since its release by St. Martin’s Press in Jan­u­ary this year. To com­pare the two, I would read a chunk of the self-​published ver­sion, then review the same sec­tion of the St. Martin’s Press ver­sion. If this sounds time con­sum­ing, that’s because it is, but I was intent on find­ing what’s been changed. Know­ing that as more authors turn to self-​publishing, this is not likely the last time we’ll see a pub­lisher pick up a book that has found inde­pen­dent suc­cess — but when this hap­pens, how much gets changed?

Hocking’s book has many things going for it, like the world build­ing and her unique troll-​world. She also hits the romance mark with a hot for­bid­den love inter­est. But aspects of the plot­line, Wendy’s char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, and, to some extent, the nar­ra­tive style, were things I thought might get adjust­ments. What I found instead were mostly small changes in word­ing and gram­mat­i­cal cor­rec­tions dot­ted through­out the text, like a comma added and an excla­ma­tion mark removed (yes I did notice these). Short sec­tions here and there were added, taken out, or re-​worded slightly, but not as much as I expected.

Orig­i­nal cover art from the self-​published edition

What about the story and char­ac­ters? While no chap­ters were added and no large sec­tions deleted, there were some smaller mod­i­fi­ca­tions, some mak­ing a dif­fer­ence to the story. One para­graph was inserted when Wendy vis­its her false mother and they dis­cuss Wendy’s birth. Also, when Wendy breaks into a locked room and Finn finds her, the St. Martin’s Press omits a line where Wendy “stared sheep­ishly” at her feet, feel­ing shame and guilt. This dele­tion changes the tone of their encounter and the impres­sion the reader has of Wendy. But the more sig­nif­i­cant changes appear at the end of the book. After the Vit­tra attack, an addi­tional four para­graphs explain how the Markis and Marksinna need to learn to fight, set­ting up the key strug­gle that takes place in the rest of the series. Also, the last para­graph of the novel (which feels like an add-​on) is deleted, end­ing the book on a more appro­pri­ate note.

All this is in keep­ing with what Hock­ing admits on her web­site. She notes that there are fewer errors in the St. Martin’s ver­sion due to more “inten­sive edit­ing.” She says the story is more “pol­ished up” and “smoothed out”.

So despite the editor’s input, the book isn’t changed sub­stan­tially. I fig­ure this is a good thing. As a writer, it is com­fort­ing to see how much of Hocking’s work was left intact and that the pub­lisher respected the book’s orig­i­nal suc­cess. The series gained a loyal fan fol­low­ing and sold well, prov­ing itself in the mar­ket, and after all, how can you argue with success?

(Torn, the sec­ond book in the tril­ogy was released in Feb­ru­ary this year. Ascend, the final book, was released on April 24, 2012.)

Mar­i­anne writes urban fan­tasy and hor­ror. She has recently fin­ished her first novel enti­tled Shadow Dreams, a young adult para­nor­mal romance, and is at work on the sec­ond in what is a planned trilogy.

By mariannesu • Book reviews, Guest blogs • 13 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Apr 30 2012

5 rea­sons authors need a YouTube channel

  1. Fans, espe­cially of YA, looooove to make videos cast­ing famous actors and actresses as their favourite char­ac­ters from books (on an irrel­e­vant note, I like this person’s cast!). So why not host a con­test ask­ing read­ers to do exactly that?
  2. Book trail­ers may not be the #1 way that avid read­ers find their books, but they DO open up a whole other mar­ket. Per­haps your trailer will catch the eye of more casual read­ers who tend to favour the visual and they’ll be inspired to crack open a book.
  3. You’re an expert in your sub­ject area, so why not share your exper­tise? Run a once-​a-​month lec­ture, whether it’s on writ­ing, the sub­ject of your book, or any­thing else that might inspire view­ers to pick up a copy of your newest release.
  4. You can post video reviews of your favourite books. If you chat about Emma Donoghue, per­haps her read­ers will find your review and decide to check out your books, too.
  5. Have an event? Let fans who don’t live nearby in on the fun by post­ing footage of your read­ings, sign­ings, and fan meetups.

By Emma Cunningham • Social media • 4 • Tags: , , , , ,

Apr 27 2012

Vora­cious Read­ers Make the Best Writers

by Olga Kwak

We’ve all been there. Read­ing along and all of a sud­den you notice some­thing in the book you’re read­ing: some­thing you love, some­thing you hate, some­thing that makes you feel some­thing. What­ever it is, it’s a thrill. You want to write about it.

What causes that inspi­ra­tion? I’ve been a reader all of my life and through­out it I’ve pep­pered my time with bouts of writ­ing as well. Some readers-​cum-​writers start out with a bang, like romance nov­el­ist Vicki Essex who’s career started at the age of six! Whether you write a lit­tle or a lot, there’s a rea­son you do and that’s because you read. Here are my five top rea­sons for why vora­cious read­ers make the best writers:

1. They’ve read a lot and they remem­ber the books they read

Well, not always, but the ones that really stick in the back of your mind are the for­ma­tive ones. Those are the books that your own writ­ing shape them­selves around. Maybe not con­sciously, but the words that you read over all those years are all locked in your own per­sonal vault, wait­ing to come out.

2. They talk about the books they read

I’ve been a Good Reads mem­ber for years and years. Occa­sion­ally, when I read excep­tional fic­tion, I want to let oth­ers know about it and so I write an ama­teur review. Per­haps read­ers aren’t always the most artic­u­late of sort to try and con­vey why they like a book. I strug­gle over descrip­tors for nov­els that are generic enough that peo­ple won’t get the story spoiled but hold enough tan­ta­liz­ing hooks that make you want to read the book your­self. Some­times it works, some­times I just aban­don the review entirely. Regard­less, I get to exer­cise my writ­ing skills through these forums because I’m com­pelled to write some­thing about the book that I’ve just read.

3. When they’re read­ing, they com­pare their own style of writ­ing to the author.

I like to think I write as well as Ernest Hem­ing­way, only far more intro­spec­tively. I’m sure he would be dis­gusted by my girl­ish sen­si­bil­i­ties. Alter­na­tively, I have read enough bad fan­fic­tion to know, or think I know, when I can write bet­ter than the author. Some­times I can, some­times I can’t. I only know this because I’ve tried.

4. They never back down from a challenge

Some­times it takes a few tries to climb that sum­mit, but even­tu­ally they might make it. Yes, I said might. You see, I’ve never read all of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. I wish to know the end­ing very badly, but I haven’t been able to reach it yet. While I know of the movie based on the book, as there always is in these sit­u­a­tions, I feel com­pelled not to see it until I’ve reached my summit.

5. They’re not afraid of eye-​strain

Today I dis­cov­ered that I have mis­placed my eye­glasses. Yes, it’s filled me with a state of agi­ta­tion, but I still strug­gle on. Why? Because I’m used to that old pulling feel­ing at the back of my eye­balls. I don’t like it, I know why it’s there, but it doesn’t hurt as much as it ought to.

There are loads of rea­sons why read­ers make such good writ­ers. Every­one knows the old Mal­colm Glad­well the­ory of 10,000 hours—that’s the amount of prac­tice time needed to achieve exper­tise in a skill. I think some would argue that read­ing isn’t quite the same thing as writ­ing so that’s not really gain­ing expe­ri­ence in the prac­tice but I dis­agree. After all, you read the out­come of all those hours of prac­tice by some­one else. What bet­ter way to inspire you than to head to the source?

Olga Kwak is a free­lance writer, dig­i­tal mar­keter and jazz singer. You can find more of her writ­ing on The Pun­nery and you can fol­low her @olgakwak. She also main­tains the Har­le­quin Blog.

By olgakwak • Guest blogs, Writing • 7 • Tags: , , , ,

Apr 25 2012

Audio­book review: If I’m Dead by Mar­cia Clark

Some­times there’s no way to get my eight-​month-​old daugh­ter Jes­sica to nap other than to put her in our Free­hand mei-​tai baby car­rier and go for a walk.

Yes, I totally glommed on to an excuse to post a cute baby photo.

The prob­lem with that is that it’s kind of bor­ing. So I thought…what if I down­loaded some audio­books and lis­tened to them while I pace around the neigh­bour­hood? And that’s how I ended up lis­ten­ing to Mar­cia Clark’s If I’m Dead. I like Rachel Knight books, and am inter­ested in how the Spe­cial Tri­als divi­sion of the DA’s office works (almost like a police-​lawyer combination).

First, the story: Melissa Gibbons-​Hildegarde, the social activist daugh­ter of multi-​millionaire Gib­bons fam­ily, is miss­ing. Her car has been found aban­doned, and evi­dence has found a drop of blood match­ing her DNA as well as evi­dence of a fight in the garage and a mar­riage gone wrong. But with­out a body, can D.A. Rachel Knight prove that there WAS a murder…and that the victim’s hus­band, gold-​digging pseudo-​activist Saul Hilde­garde is to blame?

This was the per­fect story to lis­ten to while Jessie napped. At just over an hour and a half long, I fin­ished it in two naps. It’s com­pelling enough to keep me inter­ested, and yet since it pri­mar­ily takes place in a court room, there aren’t any thrilling car chases or life-​and-​death crises that kept me so enthralled that I couldn’t pay atten­tion to where I was walk­ing. It was clever and an excel­lent stand-​alone story (mean­ing, it’s a cheap intro­duc­tion to the Rachel Knight series if you want to test it out and see if it’s for you) but also a nice bridge to the new book (which I will be review­ing in May).

I liked Jan­u­ary LaVoy as a nar­ra­tor. She has a pleas­ant, low-​pitched voice that car­ried well and sounded just right for a high-​profile lawyer. She has a nice read­ing style and was able to mod­ify her voice enough to sig­nify another character’s dia­logue with­out mod­i­fy­ing it so much that it sounded fake. I also like her because she was on Law & Order: Spe­cial Victim’s Unit, which links up fairly nicely with the Rachel Knight series (and one of my favourite shows).

I would def­i­nitely rec­om­mend this, either as an ebook or an audio­book. If you do decide to lis­ten to it rather than read and you’re not already an Audi­ble sub­scriber, check out the Book Girls spe­cial Audi­ble deal to get a free audio­book when you sign up for a free trial!

On another note, con­grat­u­la­tions to Nicole W. who won a social media cri­tique! Check back next week for a vblog where we’ll take a look at her blog.

By Emma Cunningham • Book reviews • 7 • Tags: , , , , , , ,

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