All posts tagged Amazon

Writer Wednesday


I wanted to make an Random Friday post, but since most of this stuff is writing-related, I might as well do it here. I’ve been checking articles on the Innovation Center site of DayJob and found a few things that might interest writers in the future.

First I read their report on AI and how it will disrupt jobs in the coming years (including mine, yay! I’ll be free to move away from this country and start my micro-publishing venture elsewhere!). That report was generic, mentioning how white collars would lose jobs in finance, insurance, law and medical diagnosis, but Joanna Penn is talking about how AI will disrupt authors, so that’s more specific! 😉

The report mentioned how children of today might have to change seven jobs during their lifetime, five of which haven’t been invented yet. Consider this is very traumatic for Italians who looooove their steady job that gives them a pension. Personally, I look forward to be laid off or quit and start a new career from scratch. Scary, but also exciting.

There was an article on quantum computers and a comment gave me an idea for a sci-fi story, or at least a spark, l’ll have to ponder what the story will actually be, it’s just a premise for now.

Then there were links to articles I found interesting (mostly because they allow me to forego opening an Instagram account, although I’m still on the fence for Pinterest). Forget Instagram, Amazon is the Influencer Platform of the future. Now, how do I get to an influencer who might like my books and help me promote them? That is the question, isn’t it? 😉

And speaking of new jobs, the next gig economy will be on-demand knowledge. That’s as cool as it sounds, although I have no idea of what kind of wisdom I’ll be able to impart, but that’s another story! 😉 I’ll keep an eye on other innovations and keep you posted if I see something that might interest writers.

And then, there’s this awesome post by Kris Rusch on how we should rethink the whole writing business (part one). I’m not yet following the workshop about the Licensing Expo because I’m not ready, but eventually, I will.

So yeah, the future looks bright if I can get rid of the current chains. I’ll also get some input at 20BooksEdinburg, surely, but I won’t attend another business masterclass until I’m ready to actually set up that micro publisher. And I’m signed up for the Anthology Workshop, so here’s to selling a few short stories between now and whenever I can finally take off as a writing business.

In the meantime I’ll finish publishing the Lone Wolves Team stories and the last Lone Wolves short novel, which will take us to Worldcon – my last Worldcon for a while – and I will probably publish The Path of Wood, The Path of Metal and The Path of Dreams (a.k.a. Silvery Earth Kids prose) and the strip Silvery Earth Kids for the Holidays. Mighty editor is busy until mid-October and I have to try something with the much neglected Italian market before the end of the year.

If you want to catch up with what’s already out there, here’s the list of my titles discounted at Smashwords. Also, a new anthology is out, and the theme is MOLES! And stories are not  just about the cute little animals, although that’s the mole I’m talking about. And yes, the Silvery Earth Kids strips debuts there in black&white, so if you want a sneak peek, go get it now! 🙂 There’s even the paperback if you’re a fan of print! 😀 Have a great week!

by Barb on 03/07/2019  •  Permalink
Posted in struggles to get through, writing projects
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Posted by Barb on 03/07/2019

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2019/07/03/writer-wednesday-375/

Writer Wednesday


Last week I wrote 12K words and uploaded Two Stories of the Varian Empire. And while I put the drawings in the Italian version of Beautiful and wrote the next fairy tale revisited, I thought I’d finally give a chance to the Moren Empire. Because I feel that my latest stories have lost emotion, which was present in the older ones when I didn’t bother with depth and setting.

So I will try to mix both ways of writing and see if I can find a new voice with both depth and emotion. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll try the Emotion Workshop. Cause, you know, you never stop learning.

And since I found these Weekend Writing Warriors, I signed up for next Sunday… although it won’t be a regular feature, but if I decide to share excerpts again, why not doing it with them? Once upon a time there was SixSentenceSunday… now we have WeWriWa! 😉

Draft2Digital reminded me of their referral program… it’s been prolonged for another year. The link below directs you to create a free Draft2Digital account.

So if you’re not with them yet, please use my referral link to join. They’re awesome to work with and they even distribute to Amazon if you don’t want to fight with KDP support! 😉 Did I mention I go to Findaway Voices through them? Yep, that’s the audio project(s)…

Still feeling overwhelmed with the changes in publishing, so I won’t say much more except… have a great week! 🙂

by Barb on 20/02/2019  •  Permalink
Posted in struggles to get through, writing projects
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Posted by Barb on 20/02/2019

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2019/02/20/writer-wednesday-356/

Writer Wednesday


15K last week and I reached 450K… 🤩 still 50K to reach my year’s goal, but this year I’m going to make it, yay! 😁 Going steady on Post-Apocalypse Chronicles book 3, stopping to research and re-reading Into the Wild since they’re now headed for Alaska! I’m having fun writing something set on Earth with the help of Wikipedia and Google Maps, but I’m much slower than when I can make up stuff, including geography, LOL!

This coming weekend I’m going to try an experiment with large print, since I’ve learned the specifics. As well as publishing a new title, just in case you miss new releases… although… did you hear about KDP books unavailable to international readers? If you’re American, it probably doesn’t affect you – except if you’re an author, of course.

But to all my international readers out there, if Mighty Zon fails you without even informing you, I shall remind you to go to the publisher’s page, where all the books currently available are listed. And if you don’t see it on Amazon.com, write them!

Or, better still, head for Smashwords, they will provide you with a very nice mobi file for your Kindle. Don’t be afraid to shop outside of that ecosystem! 🙂 Look, Smashwords even unveiled a new book discovery interface! 😀

And if you’re an author running Amazon Ads, stop them until the problem is solved… your international readers won’t be able to buy your book anyway!

Me? I’m not ready to dive back into Amazon Ads. Or to try Facebook Ads. I’ve been following a boosted post, it had many likes, but not one sale, so I guess that’s another waste of money. If I wanted to try it, I know I won’t now. And I’m also spending my last 5$ on Bookbub Ads.

If you really want to know about sales, I guess this blog is the best place to go! So Rajveer the Vampire is now at 99c for the time being, since it’s the first book of Vampires Through the Centuries. There are box sets of Silvery Earth if you feel overwhelmed by the quantity of books available in that world. And we got paperbacks for all the Star Minds Lone Wolves, yay!

I made a sorta/kinda priority list of what to implement of what I learned at the Business Masterclass, but it’s probably for next year. Mostly, audio books and BookFunnel (although the large print experiment also comes out from the masterclass).

We talked about the Also Bought and Amazon algorithms, and then those were screwed too. I have too many books out to keep track to all of them and none of them appears on Yasiv.com anyway, so I’m just going to ignore that. I’m kinda tired of fighting Mighty Zon.

Well, I better go back to writing if I want to reach my wordcount! Next week I’m going back to DayJob after 5 weeks… meh! I was quite disorganized this time because of the two trips, so next time I’ll plan it better! Have a great weekend! 🙂

UPDATE on the Amazoncalypse: They seem to be aware of the problem. I still think Kindle users should move over to Smashwords! 😉

by Barb on 14/11/2018  •  Permalink
Posted in struggles to get through, writing projects
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Posted by Barb on 14/11/2018

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2018/11/14/writer-wednesday-343/

Writer Wednesday


And the publisher’s site has been revamped, although I still need to work on it! 🙂 I’m still reading my bundles co-authors, sci-fi, so I guess I’ll keep going in that direction and get back to Silvery Earth when I’m done with the stories I’m currently writing.

Two are shorts that can be submitted (and they will be submitted as soon as the Mighty Proofreader has a pass on them) but they are tied to the next book of the sub-series, so I guess I can start working on that one in February. I’m still pondering if making it a trilogy and other separate books about other characters or what. Writing series, it is a bitch! 😉

I’m not really concentrating on publishing and marketing this year, but I do keep an eye on the marketplace. And if “likes” don’t really sell, let’s hope that the partnership between Kobo and Wallmart will bring in more sales! Mighty Zon badly needs some competition in the U.S. of A. and I hope the nippo-Canadians can do it! 😉

Speaking of Mighty Zon and Author Earnings… I’m glad to be just a blip in that pie chart (with still zero sales on Amazon this year). If you have the time and inclination, go study the latest report… and there are still no answers about their wish to sell authors’ earnings to whoever can shell that kind of money. Again, makes me happy I don’t earn much, LOL! 😀

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or don’t read at all, you must have heard of the passing of Ursula K. LeGuin. I did not finish her Earthsea trilogy (but I bought it at the end of last century, when my English wasn’t so good – I only remember that it was boring and I gave it away at the library of the school for foreigners I was attending for a two-week course back then), but I enjoyed The Dispossessed (which I read this century, although at this time I don’t remember any of it, only that I finished it, while the previous one I bought was given away barely started).

So, yeah, not such a big mourning for me. But then the reason why I write died in the 1970s, so… I guess I don’t care anymore about meeting my writing inspirations… 🙂 Still, check these words of wisdom by her, carefully compiled by Chuck Wendig – an unmissable “best of” (and another book to the ToBuy list, sigh!)!

Now I better go back to writing… still not in that prospected routine, darn it! Hopefully when I start working on longer works, or as soon as I finish the current story! 🙂 Have a great week!

by Barb on 31/01/2018  •  Permalink
Posted in struggles to get through
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Posted by Barb on 31/01/2018

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2018/01/31/writer-wednesday-302/

Writer Wednesday


Trying to get into the new writing schedule that is supposed to concentrate the writing in a couple of hours per day and leave the rest of the procrastination – I mean, the rest of the publishing and social media out of it. I also set up a spreadsheet for Team Wordcount (two people is still a team, right?) to keep track of new words written.

I started keeping count in 2015 when I reported weekly to a list. I did the same in 2016. And then last year I decided to just keep count, report here once a month, and that was it. And I wrote even less than the previous years. So this year I’m reporting again to my teammate and we cheer each other onward.

I have completed one short story of the intended few and working on the second. Both will be sent out next month after a pass by Mighty Proofreader, just in case! 😉 It was so hard to get started on this one (unrelated to any of my series, so some worldbuilding to do) that I was considering keeping those shorter ideas as fillers when I’m done with the novel of the month, LOL!

Anyhow, we’ll see how this week proceeds. Now some writerly links! 🙂

An article about Amazon that says it’s updated, but it doesn’t look updated to me. The top 10 things all authors should know about Amazon doesn’t seem to consider the birth of KU/KDP Select and the demise of the Createspace store (and keeps calling the algorithms “logarithms”, but that’s another story, LOL!). But I agree with most of it – except I don’t seem to get any reviews. Meh.

And I certainly won’t give them exclusivity ever, especially since they keep messing up. I don’t know how any author can put up with that shit. New year, old problem and Mighty Zon does nothing to correct. I’m almost scared to do anything on there, and I’m wide! 😦 I even tried KDPprint, and deleted the book after a failed attempt. Back to Createspace for the time being.

And of course, like many out there, I hope one day to do like Tracy Cooper-Posey who went wide and quit her day job. You might remember her interview on this very blog for the bundle that is going away soon, so grab it before the weekend, since I’ll archive it on Saturday.

Yes, Sci-fi July is going away for good, but Remembering Warriors is now live and I’m still working on the Valentine bundle. And Mythic Tales will also go away at the end of the month, so grab it now! 🙂

l got the most important cover (for a new titke, the other one is for a collection of published stories) by the awesome San and here you have a cover reveal!

 

Weekend formatting and upload, stay tuned… Have a great week! 🙂 Oh, and Happy Birthday to Da Muse… here’s to hoping that his sabbatic year from Bollywood is over!! 😉

by Barb on 10/01/2018  •  Permalink
Posted in struggles to get through, writing projects
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Posted by Barb on 10/01/2018

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2018/01/10/writer-wednesday-299/

Random Friday


Mostly about writing, since while I was away all hell broke loose at Mighty Zon! 😉 Just kidding, but here are two links from two authors who had problems with KU and Amazon policies. A romance writer leaving KU and David Gaughran’s missed planned promo.

Readers, especially voracious romance readers, please take action like Krista suggests:

So, dear reader, unfortunately, I have to leave Kindle Unlimited.

I hate doing this to you. If you want me to come back, tell Amazon. Tell them that they are not providing a good customer experience. Tell them that you want authors to be paid fairly. Tell them to get a grip on their business and not let fake books take all the money from real authors.

Email Jeff Bezos himself. (jeff@amazon.com)

If you want to help me, tell a friend about my books. Tell them I’ll be on iBooks now.

Aaaand, on a happier note, voting on the Amaranthine fan fiction (including yours truly) is open! Go vote, it’s anonymous! 🙂 I’m not telling you which is my favorite, but please note it’s not mine! 😉 Great stories, all! 😀

I subscribed to  the Maim Your Characters email course after reading the umpteenth writing tips of mistakes to avoid when injuring fictional characters.  Now I’m going to use the current work for the homework, since us Sadist Authors love to hurt our characters, don’t we? 🙂

Oh, and I found out by pure chance that Love Magik Glow is on sale… but I don’t know for how long, since the curator didn’t answer my query. I think the sale is valid also for the retailers, not just Bundle Rabbit. That you should check every now and then, since new bundles keep popping up every day.

My TBR pile will never go down… Now I could ramble on some more, but I still have that novel to finish… so I’ll get back to writing! 😉

Closing with a very short gallery of Helsinki souvenirs… Have a great weekend! 😀

 

by Barb on 18/08/2017  •  Permalink
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Posted by Barb on 18/08/2017

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2017/08/18/random-friday-270/

Writer Wednesday


I have added a couple of rewards (at the lower tiers) for writers. So if you’d like to hear some tips or experiences or other writerly stuff by yours truly, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon. If you’re just a reader who enjoy my fiction (bless you), you have even more choices. Either way I’d greatly appreciate it, even if you pledge only 1$ a month! 🙂

Last week of may and I’m prepping for the Novel Challenge while writing a fan fiction – clearly a crossover between vampires mythologies! 😉 I won’t say anything about it, but anyone familiar with my vampires will recognize my submission when it goes live. The voting is anonymous, so feel free to vote for somebody else, LOL!

This week writerly links. A hot steaming sack of business advice for writers by Chuck Wendig. Although I should take him off my blogroll, since he enjoys hunting unicorns. The Lady of the Unicorn, here, can’t really allow that, can she? 😉 And you probably all know that I don’t agree on anything about agents, but if that’s your thing…

I’m still studying the series about branding. That homework is tricky, though. It will need some percolating in my slow mind. I think I said 2011 was the year of the Sloth, but this year things got even worse, haha! 🙂 I have worked on a cover this weekend, and I’m keeping the fonts consistent for the series and sub-series (like you can see in the Silvery Earth trailer, each sub-series had a different font and frame).

If you still need some motivation, and while you wait for my own post on the topic (I hope I can write my own in 3 to 5 years, but I’m not there yet, haha!), here’s 20 things learned from writing full-time for three years. Wait, I actually do write full time (except for those wasted hours at the part-time office chair), but I don’t earn a living from it… mm, complicated stuff.

Anyway, if you need a boost on productivity but don’t want to pay an online workshop, that post is excellent advice. And don’t get depressed when you read “You’re going to get hacked!” or someone’s frustration and disappointment. Re: Amazon (I guess that author went through this Amazon Alert and decided to back out of it) I also had problems with them in the past.

When I was publishing SKYBAND with Lulu, I had someone selling it on Amazon without buying it from me at 100$ (a 10$ single issue) and the representatives weren’t really helpful. One of my ebooks is still in Draft form because they didn’t receive my copyright ownership and had blocked my KDP account.

Life is too short to worry about pirates and Amazon and whatnot. Like I said more than once, I might one day give up publishing and start another kind of business, keeping my writing private and/or for my few readers. One day. I’m still trying to think long term. It can’t be considered a career until 10 years have gone by, and they have not. Not yet. They’re flying by, but I still have a few years of experiments and attempts at finding my readership.

Ending on a non-writerly note because Da Muses’ alerts were kinda funny lately for opposite reasons. One is reknown for his immortality (yeah, right) hence the only 50+ worth watching and the other was given for dead at 43… I’m sorry I missed that Facebook hoax! 😀

Hoping I made at least the ladies smile with the last paragraph, I wish you a wonderful week! 🙂

by Barb on 24/05/2017  •  Permalink
Posted in real world inspiration, struggles to get through, the Human being
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Posted by Barb on 24/05/2017

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/writer-wednesday-267/

Writer Wednesday


Okay, first here’s the Booklinker Amazon Link of the latest title, click on it before Booklinker starts sending me emails that I didn’t put it to good use and I’m missing sales. Since I have no way to unsubscribe to those, I’d rather you just click on the damn link so they’ll shut up.

I’m doing it for all the new titles, but sometimes I set it up before I actually publish the title on the Publisher Page, and so a week goes by before the link actually goes live and I get those silly reminders. I wonder what happens when I start making the links for the old books. I guess I’ll make a post with all of them and kindly request you to click on them even if you don’t have a Kindle or an Amazon account! 😉

So, Amazon Fall is slowly coming out on all retailers. I’ve had sore throat and fever over the weekend, so I’m late in uploading (and there’s a holiday in Canada, so Kobo is slower than ever). I guess I’ll let the publisher announce it properly along with whatever else is planned for the site! 😉

Putting back my writing hat on – current WiP is definitely a novel. Part 1 is around 45K (and I’ll have to change slightly that map I posted on Saturday) and then there’s part 2 that I think will be around 20K or 30K. So the whole novel will come out after the summer, I guess. Part 1 will be in the Tales of the Nortern Kingdoms (volume 1) and Part 2 in More Tales of the Southern Kingdoms (volume 2) as well.

With the Blog Hop I didn’t have time to check other blogs, but on a mailing list I was sent these two links on how Amazon works, so I thought I’d share them with you: part 1 and part 2. Now I better send out that prize for the Blog Hop.

I will give a special mention to one reviewer who wrote a very poignant blog post for the hop – I assure you that I will always write the stories I want to write, not the stories that sell! 🙂 I will probably have more ACE characters from now on, except on Silvery Earth they don’t have those labels, so you’ll have to look for them! 😉

Have a great week!

EDIT: blog hop winner contacted with special thanks to Random.org. Thanks to all who stopped and left a comment during the hop!

by Barb on 25/05/2016  •  Permalink
Posted in struggles to get through, writing projects
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Posted by Barb on 25/05/2016

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2016/05/25/writer-wednesday-219/

Writer Wednesday


Getting the first and last cold of the season in this crazy March weather means that I’m not really writing. Cough is disruptive to concentration and besides I had a meeting with the offline writers group (that I hoped to turn into something more of a critique group, but so far only one person agreed on most of what was said of critique groups) and then Aunty Duty and then I’m off to Iceland for five days, so… I guess I’ll just resume writing when I come back.

I already know how I want to start on Kaylyn’s novel, but while I’m traveling I hope to re-read my historical shelved novel to see if I can get back into the 12th century Europe atmosphere before continuing! 😉 I was also reading a steampunk novel until Monday night, so that didn’t really fit the mood of what I was supposed to write.

Yes, I flirted with Mr Procrastination this week, but I’m not in a hurry, I know next week I’ll get back on track! 😉

Writerly links: Copyedit from Heck and other copyediting problems… And yes, there’s always too much to do, either trad or indie published! 🙂

For those of us who worked in traditional publishing, we know the amount of work is massive, even though it seems it shouldn’t be. And I often hear beginning writers talk about how they want to go to traditional publishing because it will be less work.
I actually have to keep from laughing and snorting at that. But there is no way to tell the poor deluded souls the truth because even if I tried, it wouldn’t make sense, so best to just let them go and lose a few books and a few years to the experience.

So, my dear friends, take it from a pro. Dean knows what he says! 🙂

Mighty Zon’s latest – how they aim at scammers but hit authors. I have downloaded the sample of Walter Jon Williams book, but I still have so many books to read on my TBR Kindle virtual list! 😦 I have only one title in KU/KPD Select, but that’s another lesson for authors – don’t put all your eggs in one basket! 🙂

As for Amazon’s reply to the topic – methink that long ToC at the beginning of the book taking away half of my sample is a very bad reader’s experience, but that’s just me. Often I haven’t bought a book for which I downloaded a sample, because half of the sample had unnecessary stuff (usually in trad pubbed books) and it didn’t give me enough insight of what I was buying.

So there, that’s my reader’s experience.

And continuing on this topic, since I’m a proud Kindle Keyboard owner, I thought I’d let others know about Amazon’s software update on old and old old Kindles. Mine is updated since I charge it on the laptop and I guess it “sees” the wi-fi when charging. In fact, in the past couple of months I’ve seen it doing weird things and feared it was about to die.

Hope “K.K.” survives a little longer, I hate my smartphone touch screen enough, I wouldn’t want to deal with that on my e-reader! 😉 Have a great week!

by Barb on 16/03/2016  •  Permalink
Posted in struggles to get through, writing projects
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Posted by Barb on 16/03/2016

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2016/03/16/writer-wednesday-209/

Random Friday


Let’s make it Reading Friday! 🙂 There’s the post on reading by Dean Wesley Smith and also another on Shannon A. Thompson’s blog. I’m not a huge reader, but I do read, in most genres – as long as there’s a plot. And while I go through my SFF bundles, I took a break to read my other reading love – comics and graphic novels.

Last year two classmates gave me an Amazon gift card. I finished using it this year, with the following purchase.

2016-02-24 13.34.18To the bookseller bemoaning Amazon – if I ever get to London, I’m not setting foot in your shop, since I doubt you’ll store graphic novels. And I don’t drink whiskey. If I buy PAPER books on Amazon it’s because local bookstores don’t stock them (and not only because they’re in English and I live in a non-English speaking country – we do have English bookshops).

Now, to my purchases! I am I known fan of Colleen Doran (see my sidebar, LOL) and I’ve wanted to check Gone to Amerikay since it came out. I wasn’t disappointed, the three intertwined story-lines (1870, 1960 and 2010) are beautifully rendered by Colleen with the nice colors of José Villarubia. The story is a nice mix of history and fantasy, with ghosts and historical events. I like mostly the splash pages that show New York in the three timelines – and how it changed throughout the years.

Drawing the Line was brought to my attention by a Goodreads friend who had read and reviewed it. Being a little leery of underground comics, I did a quick google check for more about the stories inside the book. I don’t like all the drawing styles, but most of them yes. With comics and graphic novels, if I don’t like the art, I don’t enjoy the story, so that’s why it’s critical that I see something in the drawings.

None of these ladies has an hyper-realistic style like Colleen Doran, but some were really neat. An Ideal Girl and The Poet, Sharmila reminded me of some French BDs, and the simplicity of Asha, now made me wish I could see it in colors. Lots of nice stories by very nice women – highly recommended for India lovers and not only! 🙂

Final thoughts on reading. You may have heard that Unberto Eco is dead. 60% of Italians read less than a book a year, but 98% are mourning his passing… will we get “distilled” Eco novels at newsagents now? 😉 I have never read him and I don’t know what to think of this. Definitely a leap year that’s taking away a lot of artists and writers and creators and actors and… but this year too shall pass!

Happy reading – I have a beta-reading weekend ahead, so… I won’t be idle!

 

by Barb on 26/02/2016  •  Permalink
Posted in reading
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Posted by Barb on 26/02/2016

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2016/02/26/random-friday-200/

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