Tag Archives: children’s books

Mar6

Read an Ebook Week March 3-9 on Smashwords

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Available at Smashwords for 50% this week in celebration of "Read an Ebook Week".

Available at Smashwords for 50% off this week in celebration of “Read an Ebook Week”.

It’s that time of year again. No, not for wearing green, but to head over to Smashwords and pick up those free and hugely discounted ebooks. This is probably the biggest promo that Smashwords does all year round, and it is a great tradition to be a part of. If you are a children’s author and have your books distributed on Smashwords, please leave a comment of where your book can be found. If you’re a fan of ebooks, or just want to see what they are all about, check out the many deals going on this week.

Smashwords has several formats that you can download for an ebook. If you want to pick up some bargains in children’s ebooks, Smashwords is the place to shop this week.

Plus, I’ve just received an official release date for my third book. The Lost Secret of Dragonfire is due for release in May this year. So, both books in the Crystal Keeper Chronicles are 50% in support of Ebook Week. Pick up the first two books in the series at an extra discount, and you’ll be ready for the third book in May.

Happy “Read an Ebook Week”. It’s a great way to celebrate literature in the digital age.

*The Lost Secret of Fairies and The Lost Secret of the Green Man are available this week only at Smashwords for 50% off.

Jul2

What Happens When A Villain Turns Good

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Featured Indie Book and Author

Welcome! I am featuring an Indie Author that writes amazing Middle Grade/YA fiction. Author Laura Lond has written a book series with a balance of humor and a twist to the normal hero. Her protagonist is a villian.

I’ve reviewed her first book, My Sparkling Adventure, and have recently reviewed her second book, My Royal Pain Quest. Your blog tour begins with the book review of My Royal Pain Quest. Follow the links below to enjoy an interview with Laura Lond from last summer. Plus, the review for her first book is also linked. I hope you enjoy this fabulous Indie writer.

Characters usually have the problem of not drifting to the dark side. In the second book of the Lakeland Knight series, My Royal Pain Quest by Laura Lond, Lord Arkus has the opposite problem. He’s already a villian, and keeps drifting towards the light, goodness, and all those pesky hero traits. He’s tried his hardest not to be good. But after he is stuck with a sparkling, an inherently good creature, his deviant path of badness keeps leading him to be a hero.

My Royal Pain Quest by Laura Lond

In the first book, My Sparkling Misfortune. Jarvis, the now incognito sparkling, infleunces Arkus with goodly ways. At the end, his sword is used in evil misdeeds, and he is put into a coma state as punishment. The second book opens with Lord Arkus guarding his friend Jarvi, and trying to figure out how to restore him to normal. It’s a very big step to becoming a hero, a very unvillain-like thing to do.

The book takes you on a quest of hero feats, all to help restore Jarvi to normal. Along the way, Lord Arkus picks up a sidekick, a highway woman named Cassandra, that only helps for the right price. Lord Arkus treads down the path to heroism and becomes less of a villain as he completes each task.

The hero elements are there, like having mermen allies after Lord Arkus inadvertently saves a mermaid. He has to work with a previous enemy, Prince Kellemar, as a quest. And lastly, helps with a new group of critters to find a lost boy. The hodgepodge of completing them lends to the humor. Hero acts keep piling on Lord Arkus, and the inner rebellion against being a hero starts to wain.

Cassandra, the highway woman, is an fantastic character. She’s a woman that can kick serious butt with a sword. Prince Kellemar, from the previous book, plays a part in the quests, going through a transformation of his own. All the twists in opposites does keep the plot interesting.

I enjoyed the way the book continued the villain struggle for Arkus. It’s a unique twist in character inner struggles. However, there is a sense of seriousness that seems to lose the humor from the previous book. It does fall in line with the plot of trying to save the sparkling. I also thought the ending was a bit too fairy tale like. It lent to some humor, but I think there could have been more to Cassandra and Lord Arkus building their relationship.

In the end, the plot and characters are so strong, they pull you through the book. My Royal Pain Quest works as a sequel, and I am definitely ready for book 3. This can be a great start to your child’s summer reading list, or for any adult that enjoys a fun read.

***** Five Star Rating
My Royal Pain Quest is available at Amazon.com, Smashwords.com, and Barnes and Noble.

*Link to a Review of the first book, My Sparkling Misfortune.

*Link to an interview with author, Laura Lond.
To continue with your INDIEpendence Day Blog tour event, link back to the Indibles Writers Blog.

Jun21

The Amazon Price Matching Experiment

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Book 1 sold over 9,000 free copies in over a month.

Sometimes you can find some really good ideas on Writing Boards. Some turn out to be fabulous ideas. Back in Dec. 2011, I noticed some posts on kindleboards.com in the Writer’s Cafe about a back door way of getting your books to go free on Amazon. I’ve heard from another author this is even difficult for traditional publishers to do. Amazon tends to not let books go free. Unless you know the back door.

The key ingredients to start the experiment turned out to be Smashwords and having your book on the Premium Catalog. Other authors tried this with having their book published on the Apple Store as well. I don’t have a directly published edition through Apple, but it is something to be noted. This way was possible as well.

I listed my first book, The Lost Secret of Fairies, as $0.00 on Smashwords. It takes a few weeks for it to set to that price on the other websites like Barnes and Nobles. But I noticed that it went free on the Nook within 2 weeks. Once it hits a big site like Barnes and Nobles, Amazon will often price match it with the Kindle edition. Then the fun really begins.

By the end of January, I’d sold 400 free books of The Lost Secrets of Fairies. Amazon matched it on Jan. 24, 2012. I watched the numbers climb to 1,739 to 2,037 by the next day. I noticed it averaged about 200 free downloads in one hour. As I tracked the numbers, it slowed down to 100 free downloads an hour over the next few days. By the end of January, I had 5,386 free downloads for my first book. The second book in my series, The Lost Secret of the Green Man, had 21 books sold.

February was a fun month. The sales continued with free downloads changing to 100 a day for The Lost Secret of Fairies. Sales of the second book followed. My first book returned to its normal price of $0.99 by March 15. The total free downloads for Feb. included 3,642. There were only 9 refunds in that time. Making the total free downloads for end of January, February, and beg. of March at: 9,894.

To see if all this would benefit my second book sales, I crunched some numbers. There were 21 sales of the Secrets of the Lost Green Man in January. February had 35 paid sales, and March had 24. The grand total of sales was 80. So, for about every 125 free downloads, I had a paid sale for my second book.

The Lost Secret of Fairies became the top in the Free Store for several listings. On Feb. 6, it listed as #1 children’s books/social situations. On Feb. 7 it was #1 children’s books/self esteem and respect. I witnessed it topping out at #110 in the Kindle Free Store around the same time.

After my first book returned back to $0.99, the free bump kept it selling at 2/3 higher than normal. My average sales is about 10 books a month. In March, it was at 64 sales, and for April dropped in sales down to 29.

About the end of March 2012, other authors noticed drops in sales ratings even with free book sales. After a while, people reported back trends on the Writer’s Cafe board that Amazon must have changed their algorithms in regards to free book sales. Free book sales were no longer being counted the same as paid book sales. The ratios seemed to work out to 10 free book sales equaling 1 paid book sale.

For the month of May, things returned to normal. The Lost Secret of Fairies had 12 Kindle Ebook sales while my second book, The Lost Secret of the Green Man, had 9.

What did I learn from this experiment? I’ll benefit from the over 10,000 sales of my first book, free and paid. I have an awesome reader base now. This will help when the third book is ready for release this fall(2012). Plus, for every 60 copies downloaded for my first book, a second book was bought. The Free Download bump raised my sales for two months. I even received 3 new reviews on Amazon, and 4 new reviews for the Nook. They were all positive. In addition, there were fewer refunds than I thought.

The most important thing I walked away with; I have thousands of new readers introduced to my series. That, in itself, is priceless.

Crystal Cluster**The Crystal Keeper Chronicles are available on Amazon.com as paperback or Kindle editions.
Also available on Smashwords.com. and the Nook by Barnes and Nobles.

Jun24

J.K. Rowling is Self-Publishing Ebooks through New Pottermore.com Website

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Amazing as this sounds, it’s true. J.K. Rowling announced yesterday in a press release and a YouTube video on her new innovative website to be launched in October 2011. It’s called Pottermore.

J.K. Rowling has developed an on-line experience to hearld Harry into the digital age. Armed with new writing material, the website will feature a way to interact with the characters/places/objects found in the Harry Potter books. It will soon include an Ebook Store that will sell the series in ebook format. It is in partnership with Sony and her publishing partner, Scholastic.

What makes this such a phenomenal milestone in self-publishing is that Rowling’s publishers get a percentage for assisting in marketing and promotions. She’s calling the shots now, especially since she owns her digital rights. She is also bypassing big on-line retailers such as Amazon.com, to sell directly from an on-line ebook shop on her website.

What does this all mean? First, I’m stunned. I knew self-publishing was starting a new age, but now that an author as big as J.K. Rowling has started to take advantage of publishing herself, keeping her digital rights, and launching a site like this. There. That stunned moment again.

For children’s authors, it might mean a lot. She has changed the face of children’s publishing and created a series in which she broke and created rules. Now she’s out to create a new publishing platform, shaping a future generation by reaching out through technology. I love the possibilities of what she can do with her site; the building of a Harry Potter world on-line, feedback from her readers, that creative control so often enjoyed in self-publishing and doing things yourself.

I wish her the best, and await to see what will happen next in the publishing world. Look out, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Jan2

Took Me Back to My D & D Days

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The Legend of Witchbane by Kevis Hendrickson


The Legend of Witch Bane is a D & D adventure come to life, but of course more with a Norse Mythology twist. The first thing that struck me about this book was the Grimm’s Fairy Tale narration style of the novel. It took some getting used to, but it grew on me. I loved the characters relating to the world of fairy and crossing over into Norse Mythology. It was good fun traveling along with the three children to solve the curse of their kingdom. I felt I was 13 again playing D & D. I think kids will enjoy this, and some adults too, esp. if they’ve played a few role playing games.

Available in Paperback and Kindle Edition

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars