Indie Life: The Inevitable Change

According to the latest Indie Life newsletter, this will be the feature's final month.  I'm sure that the Indelibles will live on, which continues to be a great resource for indie authors like myself. I didn't get a chance to be part of this 2nd Wednesday of the month feature for very long, and I missed the last few months during my blogging hiatus, but I wanted to make sure I gave the feature a proper goodbye.

Change is inevitable. If we as indie authors don't recognize this and are unwilling to adapt to all the change going on around us, then we will be left behind. This isn't an industry where we can get comfortable and coast. There are new developments, new suggestions from other successful authors, and new opportunities opening up every single day. Most of us don't have the time to search for every new idea, but we do need to dedicate a certain percentage of our time to finding a few of these innovations and applying them. The key word is "apply" because it is too easy to become paralyzed by research. I am guilty of that way too often.

One thing I just found out is that Kindle Direct Publishing now allows authors to upload their books in multiple formats, not just a .mobi file anymore. I don't remember this being an option a year ago (though I could have just overlooked it). You can now upload an ePub, HTML, or MS Word file as well. With this discovery, I'll have to experiment which format is the easiest and cleanest for me to upload, hopefully allowing me to reallocate some conversion time to more writing time. My writing time is a precious commodity!

Also, there is less than a week left to enter the Provex City giveaway at Book Divas. I am giving away 3 signed paperbacks and 10 ebook copies of the first book in the Lorne Family Vault series. The giveaway ends February 17th. Visit the official giveaway page HERE. Good luck!

Indie Life: Wednesday Writer's Workspace

Indie Life is hosted by the indie authors of the Indelibles as a 2nd Wednesday of the month feature. It is a great way to discover and reach out to other indie authors--authors working hard and turning their dreams into reality. Share your thoughts and experiences with being an indie author, and speak with like-minded souls by visiting the author links below. Click HERE to sign up for Indie Life.

An important part of the indie life is getting your name out in the blogosphere. There are many social media platforms and the blog is only one, but it's an important one. Blogs are such a great space to connect with readers and other writers. And we indies need those connections to help us spread the word--our words, our books--to reach more people than we could ever hope to reach on our own.

So in the spirit of reaching out and getting myself out there, today I'm over at The Writing Nut, honored to be highlighted on the famous weekly feature: Wednesday Writer's Workspace. Please follow the link, stop by, and say "hi."

Happy writing, fellow indies (and brave NaNo crusaders)!

Indie Life: Changing Seasons, Changing Gears

Indie Life is hosted by the indie authors of the Indelibles as a 2nd Wednesday of the month feature. It is a great way to discover and reach out to other indie authors--authors working hard and turning their dreams into reality. Share your thoughts and experiences with being an indie author, and speak with like-minded souls by visiting the author links below. Click HERE to sign up for Indie Life.

With my blog tour less than a week away, I've been thinking a lot about my next book. I have the new book I'd codenamed Project Winter outlined and started. But I keep going back to my outline for Book 3 of the Lorne Family Vault. It feels so unfinished. And it's been calling to me. And I hate things left unfinished. A big part of me wants to start something new, but another part--a nasty and more controlling part--wants me to finish what I've started.

So after much deliberation, meditation, and confrontation with the nastier part of myself, I've decided to switch gears. I am putting Project Winter aside for now and starting Book 3. I liked the idea of serializing my next book since I can't crank out multiple full-length novels in a year, and I had originally not wanted to change the format of the Lorne Family Vault halfway through the series, but what the hell. I've already figured out how to break up Book 3 into four clean parts, so I can still release in a timely manner.

I've regained the excitement I feel had been lacking most of the summer. Fall is here, and the change of season is refreshing. I look forward to continuing with Oliver on his adventure to discover who he is, what is in the Lorne family vault, and why he can no longer go home. I hope this isn't a mistake (from a business perspective), but then again, writing is never a mistake (from a  writer's perspective).

The SUSY Asylum (Lorne Family Vault, Book 2) blog tour begins on Monday, and will go for two weeks (averaging three stops a day). So I'll be posting on Monday next week with links to all the stops. See you then!

Indie Life: SUSY Asylum Blog Tour

Indie Life is hosted by the indie authors of the Indelibles as a 2nd Wednesday of the month feature. It is a great way to discover and reach out to other indie authors--authors working hard and turning their dreams into reality. Share your thoughts and experiences with being an indie author, and speak with like-minded souls by visiting the author links below. Click HERE to sign up for Indie Life.

The blog tour for my second book, SUSY Asylum, is shaping up nicely, and only a short two months away. It may seem a long way off, but the months have been flying by, so I know October 14th will arrive in a flash. I have booked my tour through Candace at CBB Book Promotions, and she's putting together a great list of blogs, a good number of which participated in my first tour. I'm excited that a majority of the bloggers who read and reviewed Provex City enjoyed it enough to want to continue in the series. Click on the banner below if you'd like to visit the SUSY Asylum Blog Tour page.

It's a lot of work getting the guest posts and interviews finished, not to mention mailing all the review copies. The other big thing I NEED to get finished before the start of the tour is setting up my quarterly newsletter and the free gift short story for those who are gracious enough to sign up. The tour will act as a great kick start for newsletter signups to help me develop an email list of readers. So my goal is to have everything related to the newsletter done by October 1st.

What new indie insights are you willing to share? What goals have you set for the next month? As always, thanks for reading!

Indie Life: A Bowl of Serial to Start the Day

I've read posts for Indie life for the past few months, and as part of my re-commitment to my blog (which has been suffering from inconstancy this year), I thought it would be a great time to join this monthly blogfest. Indie Life is hosted by the indie authors of the Indelibles as a 2nd Wednesday of the month feature. It seems like a great extension of the Insecure Writer's Support Group, which I found shortly after creating my blog a year and a half ago. Click HERE to sign up for Indie Life.

Writing and marketing with a full time job is tough, especially when that job takes up nearly sixty hours a week with my two hours of daily commuting. One of the top success tips I received from Indie ReCon was to write more books, to not solely rely on the release of one or two books, but to have new books released regularly.

Now regularly is a subjective term. But with having two books released in the past three years, I can honestly say that that's not regularly enough and see where that's not enough to generate continual interest and build my brand without the support of a publisher. I want to write more and have multiple releases a year, but my current workload to sustain my livelihood does not allow me to crank out a book every few months...not even poorly edited trash (which I would never allow myself to do).

I've recently looked more into the successes of authors releasing serialized books and series, novellas or book parts fifty to one hundred pages at a time. With the prevalence of ebooks, this seems to be a growing segment in the marketplace...and an opportunity for someone like me, since I can't write as much or as fast as I'd like.

I don't want to change the format of my remaining books in the Lorne Family Vault, but my new WIP, Project Winter, could make for a fun experiment into the serial ebook segment. With the shortened format I could release three to four serialized books per year, plus some Lorne Family Vault short stories I have planned.

The industry is changing rapidly and there is no one path to success, so I believe this is a way for me to better adapt to my current time constraints and still get the stories I want to write out to the marketplace. I'm curious to hear the experiences from other indie authors already releasing serialized books. What recommendations do you have?

Well, I've already made my forty mile drive and it's nearly 8 o'clock, so it's about time for me to get to work. Have a great Wednesday, and as always, thank you for reading!