Getting one of my older titles ready for print

When I decided to self publish my historical westerns, I did well in getting them all up on Amazon but then life interrupted me and I either got lazy or busy or maybe both. Anyway, I managed to get two of my westerns into print format but I failed to do so for the others. With a little nudging from a friend and my mother, I'm making time to finally see the deed done.

I'm happy to report that while it took me a full day to do it, I have finished the first leg with create space and I'm now awaiting an e-mail regarding Eliza's Copper Penny. While it's the third in my Western Treasures Series, it's one of my favorites so I started with this one. I'll do the second in the series next (Julia's Golden Eagle) and last but not least will be Kaitlin's Silver Lining.

So - what took all day? First, I didn't have the gutter size right and had to resize. Next, I didn't have fonts embedded. It took a while to figure out the best way to save in order for the fonts to embed correctly. I discovered that the best way was to first save, then save as Adobe PDF. Before I hit save after selecting this option, I went to Options. I clicked on PDF/A - 1a:2005 and finally managed to upload a file without errors. Thought I'd mention this in case anyone else has difficulties like I did.

The cover took a wee bit of time as well, but hopefully I got the spine dimensions correct and the bleed. I'll post here when it's actually available.

A new look for some older titles

It took a comment on one of my Amazon reviews to spur me to action but I'd always intended to create new covers for self published books. It's just at the time of publication, I could find nothing that suited me, so I painted my own. I'm going to keep the cover of Sarah's Brass Token as is as that one holds special meaning. However, the rest all have new looks.

I kinda wanted to keep the old cover of Texas Forged but I recognized I had problems with some of the perspective so I went in search of a stock photo I thought might work. I found several I really wanted from Inmagine so I sent them a simple query. I wanted to know licensing information in terms of e-book covers. All they had listed were terms for print covers. Everything else was in legalize I didn't fully understand. Their answer was to ask me which photos interested me? Okay, I'll bite so I sent them a list. Their new response was to set me up with an account manager. Hmmm, I just wanted a simple question answered. Needless to say, I did not register with them and their handling of my question spurred me into looking at a different avenue. At this point I could go with www.romancenovelcovers.com/ or www.hotdamndesigns.com

I admire Jimmy Thomas and the work he does, but I felt like I had more variety with Hot Damn Designs. The hardest part for a historical western romance writer is finding images where the cowboy is dressed in period clothing. I think I may shoot them both a note with regards to this. I also had a difficult time finding a male cowboy model with red hair for Eliza's Copper Penny. I figure for this cover, there's enough shadow that hides the model's true hair color.

One would think the stock photo sites would offer writers more choices when it comes to models for our covers. On the other hand, I'm so very glad they do have sites and images for our use.

More Info on Amazon's Fr33bies

And yes, I'm still listing a free book at the end. LOL

So, I did a little more researching and basically, Amazon was losing money with the model the way they had it. The larger websites that offered a listing of free books earned money when folks also bought items within 24 hours of customers downloading a free book. They got a percentage of the profit made.

Amazon has this on their website:

“Associates who we determine are promoting primarily free Kindle eBooks and meet both conditions below for a given month will not be eligible for any advertising fees for that month within the Amazon Associates Program. This change will not affect advertising fees earned prior to March 1, 2013.
1. At least 80% of all Kindle eBooks ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links are free Kindle eBooks
2. 20,000 or more free Kindle eBooks are ordered and downloaded during Sessions attributed to your Special Links.”

It will definitely affect the larger websites who list freebies. I loved browsing through EreaderIQ.

However, I did find a new-to-me site that lists free books in a way that's even easier to navigate than EreaderIQ. The only problem is it's not as well known. I'm sure there are others as well. All I do know is that trying to do a direct search on Amazon yields a list that's not user friendly.

And yes, I do expect that this new change will make it harder for folks to find the Indies. I'm fortunate that I began my publishing career in 2006 with a small press out of Canada. All but my historical western romances are published through Champagne Books. And while it's been tough to find creative ways to get the word out about my books, I've managed to build a small fan base. I can't even imagine beginning a career today. With so many writers wanting to make their mark, you have to shout pretty loud to be heard.

So - here's a new place to try for finding your free ebooks and discovering new authors. Free Amazon Kindle Books

And yep, Eliza's Copper Penny is still free today and tomorrow.

Amazon's new policy likely to affect sales for Indies

Please note, I'm offering a FREE book at the end of this article.

Amazon has a program that most Indies take advantage of to help boost sales. If an author enrolls their book in the kdp select program, the book becomes available to prime members to borrow for free. In turn, the author will make a small amount from money Amazon has set aside. Alas, the author splits this money with all the other authors signed up and it all depends on how many books are borrowed.

But - by doing this, the author has 5 days they can use to offer their book free to the rest of the reading public. Before March 1, there were websites that listed these free books and made it easy for readers to find these new authors. I believe websites that offered this service made money when readers also bought products using product links on their sites. Offering the book for free and having it listed for folks to find really helped readers connect with an Indie or self-pubbed author. It helped get Texas Forged out there for folks to find.

However, as of March 1, Amazon no longer allows these websites to list the free books. If you do a search for "free" books through Amazon's search engine, you get the books that have never been offered at a price other than free. And there is no way to search for books by the date they were offered for free. You have to click through each page until you get to the end of 68+ pages worth of free and not all of these are free.

Granted, an author who wants to make writing a career should find creative ways to promote in order to let the reading public know the book is out there. But let's get real, there are way too many self-published authors to count. And then there are the smaller publishing houses. Most of those have been able to make their "mark" on the reading public and are in a better position to compete with what used to be known as the Big Six (though it's now twindled down to the Big Five).

So - there are two rules of thumb. Either give away work in hopes of snagging a new fan or never give away your work as it has the potential to diminish its worth. Me, I write because I have to and I publish because I might as well. I want folks to get the same enjoyment out of reading my stories as I get from writing them. With that in mind, I want my work to matter. I want it in the hands of as many readers as possible.

That said, today, tomorrow and Friday, I'm offering Eliza's Copper Penny for free through Amazon. I'm hopeful folks will be able to find it as Amazon isn't making it easy to find.

And because they have made it hard for folks to find my books, once my term is up with the select program, I won't be participating any longer in the program. On a brighter note, I'll be able to place my five self pubbed westerns at other places and that's a good thing.

A good start to the painting

I thought it might be fun to take photos of a work in progress. I'm determined to get Eliza's Copper Penny up on Amazon within the week so I started working on the cover painting yesterday. I started by asking my husband to pose so I could have a picture of the body. I kinda messed up the proportions on Julia's cover so I knew I needed to start with a much better photo. Julia's Golden Eagle was made up from a whole bunch of images. Oh well, it still works but I knew I could do better. Anyway, here's the start in progression.

After sketching it first in chalk, I start by doing the background. I eventually ended up with the hat too tall so I had to add more sky. Bummer but it's okay. Anyway, I worked on the face next. I sorta did this from my own imagination and my husbands photo and ended up with a hero that looked a little like my son and a little like my very first boyfriend. 

I didn't want the shirt to be all black so I added some reds in it. The shirt took the longest to paint due to the folds. And the black I used was old so a bit sticky. It spread nicely as long as I had white to go with it.

I love the immediacy of acrylic but I think I could make it look more photo realistic if I used oils. But I'm still happy with the result. For the various coins, I've been using photoshop. I didn't want to use the real thing as I though just a vague idea of the coin would be better. I'm hoping each book will also have a sense of the various seasons. This one is for spring, Julia's Golden Eagle is for Fall and Sarah's Brass Token is for Summer. When I get around to doing Kaitlin's Silver Lining, I'll try to capture winter. As that book isn't as tightly connected as these first three, I'm not in as big of a hurry to get it out. With my schedule, I'm hoping for March when I have spring break to work on it.

I'm working hard to revamp and tighten the original. I don't make big changes; I just want to take out some of the redundancy. If all goes as plans, my goal is to have it up tomorrow, but....