Launch Day Giveaway - loveahappyending.com

Launch Day Giveaway

http://loveahappyending.com/

– your chance to win a free copy of a book and be featured in the loveahappyending.com Review Chair…

The Rules are simple:

1. You can enter any time between 29 June 2011 and 3 July 2011.

2. Entries are limited to one per book, but feel free to enter for every book on offer.

3. Winners will be picked by the individual Authors themselves, there are no ‘right’ answers – this is fun and ‘luck of the draw’.

4. You need to provide an Email address and by entering, give permission for us to contact you to notify you if you have won; winners will then be contacted again within 3 months to be interviewed for the loveahappyending.com blog. Your Email addresses will not be passed on or used for any other purpose. All winners will be notified by 17 July 2011.

How to enter:

Simply post a comment below stating which book you want to win, and tell me why you want to win a copy! Don’t forget to leave a full contact Email address. Thank you for joining in and I hope you will visit my blog as well as the loveahappending.com website in the near future.

Who will interview you for your review?

Janice Horton is the loveahappyending.com Review Chair Editor. As a Featured Reviewer, everything you say will be passed on to the Author and your interview will talk about the book you've read and tell everyone a little bit about YOU.

We're sure you are going to love the loveahappyending.com’s hand-picked group of new and soon-to-be published authors and they are certainly going to be delighted to hear what you have to say as we encourage them along their path to success!

Are you a more avid reader and interested in linking more closely with loveahappyending.com’s new Authors? Then please consider becoming an Associate Reader to one or more of the website’s Authors, details on the right-hand side of the loveahappyending.com website. This interactive website is aimed at READERS who want to join in and make a difference, become involved in the process of raising the profile of the Featured Authors and have some fun at the same time!

If you’ve got to this blog on your own remember to check out http://loveahappyending.com/ to see what else is happening as part of the official launch celebrations.

Giveaway Titles

I have 3 books in the loveahappyending.com giveaway. One of them is a paperback, the other two are ebooks. If you enter for the ebook giveaway competition, tell me what kind of ereader you have and the correct format will be sent.

You can read the first chapters of each book on my website http://www.chrislongmuir.co.uk/ Go to the Novels page and click read more. There are also some reviews on my author's page on http://loveahappyending.com/chris-longmuir/

Good luck with your entries.

Books

1  Dead Wood - Paperback

2  Night Watcher - ebook, available for Kindle, Sony Ereader, or Nook

3  A Salt Splashed Cradle - ebook, available for Kindle, Sony Ereader, or Nook

Please state which book your entry is for. You can enter for all three books if you wish, but please make them separate submissions, ie one book per comment box. Don’t forget to read the competition rules at the start of this blog, and don’t forget to include your email address.

NB - Some people have been having trouble leaving comments on Blogger sites. If this happens to you there is an easy fix. When you are taken to the Google account sign in page make sure that the ‘Stay signed in’ box does not have a tick in it. If it does, remove the tick.

The book giveaway competition has started. Submit your entry now. You have until the first stroke of midnight on the 3rd of July. Don't miss out.

  
http://loveahappyending.com/win-win-win-new-authors-books/

loveahappyending.com

This week, on Wednesday 29th June, sees the launch of a new interactive website where authors and readers come together to celebrate books and reading.

What is loveahappyending.com?
….. a website to help promote new Authors and the formal launch is on 29 June 2011. Readers will be invited to take part in the ‘launch giveaways promotion’ and that is your chance to become a Feature Reader by winning a free book so you can do your first review!

This is what loveahappyending.com says about its featured authors -

loveahappyending.com authors are here to bring you novels you will want to curl up with on the sofa in winter, or read beneath that shady tree on your summer vacation. You may laugh, you may cry, but when you turn the last page it will remind you why you ‘love a happy ending‘. Positive, uplifting and feel good – a tonic!

And this is what it says about readers -
Welcome to all loveahappyending.com readers! We want readers to take an active part in providing feedback to our new authors, as they launch themselves into the world of publishing.

Appear in the ‘Review Chair‘ and loveahappyending.com author Janice Horton will interview for your thoughts on what you have read and give everyone a little bit of background information about YOU. Why? Because our Readers are equally as important to us as our Authors.

There will be giveaways and special offers - all aimed at giving our readers the opportunity to follow these new authors, support their work and grow our little community!

We also want to offer our group of writers the chance to ask YOU, the reader, the questions that will help them write the stories you want to read.

Readers can become Feature Readers or Associate Readers linked to one or several authors.

What is a ‘Feature’ Reader?
loveahappyending.com  says -
….. someone who loves reading books and would like the opportunity to really make a difference to a new Author’s career.

What is an ‘Associate’ Reader’
loveahappyending.com says -
….. a Feature Reader who actively supports loveahappyending.com’s Authors by spreading the word using social media, review websites (Goodreads, Amazon etc) and maybe their own blogs. Actively telling other people about our exciting new Authors and how much they enjoyed reading their books. If you see a good website and think it should feature one of our Authors, suggest it to them! You could also support individual Author’s websites to give encouragement and feedback. Our blog will tell you what our Authors are doing and when they have promotional events. You can Twitter and Facebook links to loveahappyending.com to help us increase exposure for our Authors.

All very exciting isn’t it. If you want to find out more about this exciting new project why don’t you pop along to http://loveahappyending.com/ on Wednesday 29th June and take part in the fun.

Oh, and don’t forget to enter the competition for a chance to win a free copy of the books on offer. Post a comment on my blog for a chance to win one of my books, but don’t do it before Wednesday or it won’t count. I’ll post a copy of the rules of the competition on Tuesday night so you’ll be all ready to go on Wednesday. In the meantime check out http://loveahappyending.com/ it’s a fabulous site.

NB - Some people have been having trouble leaving comments on Blogger sites. If this happens to you there is an easy fix. When you are taken to the Google account sign in page make sure that the ‘Stay signed in’ box does not have a tick in it. If it does, remove the tick.

Marketing your E-Book

Okay, you’ve published your e-book and it’s sitting up there on your virtual Kindle bookshelf, as well as floating out to other e-bookstores via Smashwords or your distributor of choice. What now? There are thousands of e-books out there, maybe millions for all I know. How do you get your book noticed by the e-book buying public when it’s sitting at 357,668 in Amazon’s listings, which is what Night Watcher is sitting at on the US Amazon website. As you can see I don’t do very well in the American market. Luckily both of my books are doing a bit better in the UK and they regularly slide on and off the best seller lists. Night Watcher was even number 22 for a time.
 
Now, don’t expect me to be an expert on marketing or promotion, I’ve only been an e-publisher for a little over two months so I’m still learning.
 
The first things that spring to mind are Facebook and Twitter. I already had a Facebook presence but I was reluctant to promote too much to my FB friends, although a judicious posting of specific events was in order. A little hunt around and I found the Amazon Kindle Facebook page, however a word of warning, promotion is not welcome on this page. I think they restrict it to once a week, and the unwary can get flamed if they try to promote too much on this page. A further two pages have recently been started. Readers and Writers United, and Kindle UK Reading Group. Promotion is allowed on these pages but I noticed that it was starting to be a problem, and if readers are anything like me they will tend to skip the promotional posts. So, although I’ll promote occasionally on these pages I try to take part in the other discussions and sometimes set a discussion thread going. It can be good fun with the spin off that your name starts to become known. Whether this will result in sales is a different thing, there is no way of telling.
 
Twitter is a new experience for me and I’m not sure I know what I’m doing with it. However, when thinking about promotion, I am told that Twitter is a good vehicle to get your name out there. So I tweet occasionally. Maybe I’ll get the hang of it sometime.
 
Forums are supposed to be a good way to get recognized, but again, like Facebook pages, caution is advised. One forum, however, where promotion is not frowned on is KindleBoards http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php this is a fairly large forum with pages devoted to introductions, and all kinds of discussions and chat pages. It’s well worth a look. Most authors use their book covers as their signature, so every time a post is put up the books are advertised. In terms of promotion though, I’m not sure how effective it is, as I certainly haven’t managed to crack the American market.
 
Okay another bit of advice I listened to was to get a website, I already had one so that wasn’t a problem. Start writing a blog. You can see the result here. Visit other people’s blogs and leave comments. Well I visit them, the ones I like I tend to follow, similarly I comment only when I feel I have something to say, so I can’t actually comment on whether this tactic is successful.
 
Blog interviews are fun and supposed to help sales, maybe they do, maybe they don’t. Anyway I’ve had several. I’ve been interviewed on Melanie King’s, Celtic Connections (a Canadian blog), Michael Malone’s, interesting blog May Contain Nuts, and several others. My most recent interview is on LK Watts Confessions Blog  http://lkwattsconfessions.blogspot.com/p/author-interviews_24.html I have a couple more interviews lined up, plus I’m currently being featured as one of the books on the Sinclair Books Blog http://sinclairbooks.blogspot.com/?zx=b9e84df104a21e5b Book of the Month competition. A different book is featured every day throughout the month and my slot is on 15 June, although voting is open all month. Night Watcher is currently sitting with 23 votes which comes about the middle of the votes cast, with some books higher and some lower. If you like my books and feel you want to support me, your vote would be very much appreciated.
 
Before I finish I just want to say that the best response I had to promotion was after a feature in my local press, a newspaper which is widely distributed throughout this and neighbouring areas. However, I do have a fan base in this part of the country, so if I’d been a complete unknown I’m unsure how effective this would have been.
 
And that’s about the sum of my knowledge as far as promotion goes. If anyone has any tips for me I’d love to hear them.