At long last, one year after its initial paperback and ebook release, Community Klepto is now available as an audiobook on multiple platforms (and more to come)! I couldn’t be more in love with the voice of Ann Josephson and I hope everyone else will love all six and a half hours of it, too.
Yes, I had to capture the photographic evidence…
I put The Redheaded Stepchild up for free yesterday, to celebrate the 1st birthday of Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. It got over 125 downloads yesterday, and made it up to the #1 spot in the Top 100 free books in its category on Amazon. You haven’t missed your opportunity yet; it’s still going to be free for the rest of the week!
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The big day is finally here! It is a grand book birthday for PORTRAIT OF WOMAN IN INK, courtesy of Bird Brain Publishing. It’s launching in the Amazon Kindle store first, where you can nab it for the special introductory price of $5.99. Next will be Nook, other e-readers, and paperback.
This book comes to fruition (banana flavored) after a near 2-year labor of love. I began writing it in October 2011, sent my first query letter July 2012, and signed a book deal with Bird Brain Publishing January 2013. Today, August 5, 2013, it’s launching in all its glory!
Nab your Kindle copy now by going HERE
1 CommentAs the publication date (though still concretely undetermined) draws closer and closer for Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook, I am playing around with the back cover text, or product description in the digital world. Any writer will tell you that this is one of the hardest things to do, since it is so hard to persuasively and objectively write about your own work. So much so that it’s often outsourced on elance to the tune of $6.00 an hour. While I could certainly afford this (even though I find it insulting), I try to not to make a habit of paying people to do things I am – or at least should be – perfectly capable of doing myself.
That said, I’m certainly not above asking y’all if it’s total crap. Or more kindly, which description piques your interest the most. So have a gander, let me know what you think, and grow your impetus for getting Portrait of Woman in Ink at the first possible moment. I’m not sure that impetus is the right word for this situation, but I digress…
Product Description 1
Whether you’re an avid body art collector or a Luddite who believes tattooed women have thrust themselves into the clutches of Satan himself, there’s no denying tattoos have become a mainstay for Gen-Xers and the Millennials. Thirty years ago, women with tattoos were viewed through eyes that saw them as freaks, while today young women proudly sport ink, even if they sometimes have to wear long sleeves to maintain propriety in less-enlightened professional or family company.
Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook is a series of literary vignettes about real, everyday women and their tattoos that, while they may seem insignificant at the time, are a symbol of the larger struggles and triumphs that make them who they are (and aren’t freaks because of it). The collection also explores the idea of tattoos bringing together women from different worlds, and teaching them how their worlds might not be as far apart as they originally thought. Portrait of Woman in Ink will touch your heart, make you snicker under your breath, and make you rethink the next time you see a woman sporting a tattoo.
Product Description 2
Twelve women, twelve tattoos, and a narrative thread that weaves them all together, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook is a collection of stories that answers the question in the back of your mind when you see an inked woman: what does your tattoo mean? (or sometimes – what were you thinking?) From a parent’s suicide to the birth of an unlikely child, the stories behind why women tattoo themselves are literally worn on their sleeves, and retold on these pages with a literary twist.
Complete with artwork from the original tattoo artists and a foreword by women’s studies professor Dr. Marta Vicente, Portrait of Woman in Ink is a literary celebration of a woman’s defiance of traditional norms, transforming their skin in a way that was once acceptable only for criminals and sailors. These stories will touch your heart, make you snicker under your breath, and make you rethink the next time you see a woman proudly sporting a tattoo.
Product Description 3
Who says tattoos are unladylike? (Besides your mother, your pastor, and your boss…) Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook is a collection of tales from women who so wanted the world to know their stories that they put the words into a picture and etched it permanently on their bodies. These stories are tragic, hilarious, absurd, and touching all at the same time, with a narrative thread that connects each story to the one before it.
Complete with artwork from the original tattoo artists and a foreword by one of academia’s foremost voices in women’s studies, Portrait of Woman in Ink is a series of literary vignettes about real, everyday women and their tattoos that, while they may seem insignificant at the time, are a symbol of the larger struggles and triumphs that make them who they are. The collection explores the idea of tattoos bringing together women from different worlds, and teaching them how their worlds might not be as far apart as they originally thought.
3 CommentsSome time ago I entered The Redheaded Stepchild in The Kindle Book Review‘s “Best Indie Fiction of 2012” contest, in their literary category.
I have to admit it made my July when I looked at their list of semi-finalists this morning and found my name. They’ll announce finalists in September – but for now, I can smile knowing I have a nice gold sunburst to add to my very short list of accolades.
Happy July, everyone 🙂
Leave a CommentI finally finished writing my second novel, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook on Saturday. Yes, hooray. No, hold the champagne. Now is when the *really* hard work begins: engaging my beta readers, rearranging stories, revising, and editing, editing, and more editing.
Not to mention, deciding how I want to publish, revising my shameless query letter, and beginning the soul-sucking process of sending out queries to publishers. As faithful fans of the Kelly Hitchcock literary flavor know, I self-published my first novel, The Redheaded Stepchild. I don’t have anything against traditional publishing, I just grew tired of the querying (and rejection) process and believed what everyone turned around and said about it – that it wasn’t marketable enough. Yes, this was a nice way of saying “Your first book is about you, which is a little self-indulgent, don’t you think? Plus, you know no one gives a shit about you, right?”
Portrait of Woman in Ink is quite a bit more marketable, I think, and has a much more focused appeal (for those not familiar with the literary adventures of Kelly Hitchcock, it’s a collection of short stories about women and their tattoos). As such, I think it’s more geared toward a more traditional publishing road to perdition. Since this site is wholly my personal ramblings, I feel no shame in saying that it is my personal opinion that authors should not limit themselves to one method over another: self publishing versus traditional publishing. How can you extol all the virtues and bitch about all the drawbacks of each form if you haven’t done them both?
I’ve traditionally published shorter works – short stories, poems, essays, but I have yet to traditionally publish a book. I want to give it a try with Portrait of Woman in Ink, even though I know it’ll be a soul-sucking process full of rejection and self-loathing. Why? Because it’ll be worth it. And yeah, when it goes out of print and I am 80 years old (but still hot), I’ll turn around and self-publish it. By that time, I’ll have a rabid fanbase of no less than 37 people who crave the Kelly Hitchcock literary flavor with a ravenous bloodlust, except for word blood.
Also, I turned 30 last week. Go me.
What do you think? Is it truly an “Us V Them” (indies vs. traditionals) world out there, or should all serious authors dip their feet into both?
Leave a CommentThe end of March marked the end of my three-month enrollment for The Redheaded Stepchild in the KDP Select program. If you’re unfamiliar with the program, I explained the crux of it in an earlier post. There is an option to automatically renew enrollment in the program, but I’ve decided I’m done with KDP Select. Here’s why:
Don’t get me wrong, The Redheaded Stepchild is my first book and I don’t expect to make a fortune on it. It’s just the first step in building my “long tail” of success. But if I really want to get my book into the hands of more and more readers, I need to be on more and more sites. And I think $2.99 is an impulse-friendly enough price that I can keep building on that success. Not to mention that if I decide to offer my book for free sometime, Amazon will price-match it.
Because I am a huge nerd, I wanted to look at the data of my promotions and see what kinds of trends were there:
The first day, the KDP Select giveaway was fairly new, I tweeted like crazy, blogged, and it paid off. The second day, I decided to see how much impact my own efforts had, and only sent a couple tweets. The third day, I stepped up the efforts, made sure I was featured on a few promotional blogs (before they figured out that they could monetize on this process), and again tweeted like crazy. The success was pretty unparalleled, as you can see. I did a 2-day promotion while I was at SXSW because I wanted the people I met to have the opportunity to download it for free. I didn’t have much time to tweet about it, plus the network was overloaded with tweeting nerds, so the success wasn’t as big. I also wanted to see if consecutive free days had any compounding impact.
Also, my best dates were about a month apart. I’ve heard from other KDP Select authors who’ve expressed that subsequent promotional days didn’t yield as big a return as a previous one a couple of weeks earlier. This seems to be the same for me. I did, however, sell more books in February than any other month, so I can’t complain.
It was an experiment, more than anything else, and I wanted to try it out so I could see if it worked. I can’t say it was a total failure or anything, but I don’t think I’ll be doing it again for awhile. I want to get my book back in other channels, and I’m not too worried about how this will impact getting my book into the hands of more readers. The common denominator in all my successful days wasn’t KDP Select – it was me. The more effort I put into getting the word out about my book, the more downloads I had. It’s been fun, KDP Select, but I think we need to see other people for awhile.
1 Comment I knew the day would come when I got my first bad review for The Redheaded Stepchild. That day happened to come today, which was also my first day back in the office after vacation, and the day that Peyton Manning signed with the Denver Broncos. Blech!
Because I knew this day would come, I’ve done some reading up on how best to deal with negative reviews and how to cope with them. We writers are a sensitive bunch, and it’s hard to not take these kinds of things personally. Luckily for me, my bad review was pretty mild as far as bad reviews go. The guy (or girl, but I’m pretty convinced it was a dude) who wrote the review could have ripped on the writing, on me personally, or on the character’s personal lives, but he/she didn’t. Really, the book just wasn’t the person’s cup of tea.
To be honest, it was actually much less soul-sucking than the “Dear Author, After carefully reviewing your work we find it does not meet our needs at this time. Good luck.” letters I could line a litter box (if I had a cat) with several times over. I know my book’s not going to be for everybody. I’m in good company – all the top selling authors have a few God-awful reviews under their belts. So what am I going to do about it? Not a damn thing. Except listen to Radiohead, eat a whole pint of Blue Bell Orange Dream, look at some pictures of cute baby animals, and move on.
And hey, my bad review sold me two books today. Could be worse right? They say it’s even good to have a few not-so-great reviews. People like balance, and a book with all fantastic reviews is a little misleading. Makes it look like all the author’s friends ganged up and told everyone how much awesome sauce was smeared over the book, not that they’re biased or anything. So, now I can say I don’t know all my Amazon reviewers and they’re not all what you’d consider “mom reviews”. Though my mom didn’t like the book, so that doesn’t apply in my case.
3 CommentsHi all,
Since it’s the last day of South by Southwest Interactive, and I’m in the giving mood, I’m going to go ahead and use my remaining two KDP free promo days today and tomorrow. Get your Kindle copy here.
Enjoy. And please leave a review. It’s free, y’all… help a sister out.
Maybe it’s just because I’m a big cheap-o, but I am pretty selective about what I will and won’t buy for my Kindle. Granted, I still buy more books now than I ever have, but I got to wondering what the formula was for me moving on to the next book on the digital shelf, and I think I’ve got it figured out…
5. Your product description sucks.
I know as much as anyone how hard it is to talk about your own work and summarize what could very well be a decade’s worth of blood, sweat, and tears into a 2-paragraph blurb that will make me want to buy it, but you’re a frakking writer. Think outside the box or something. If your product description has all the punch of a 200-year-old sea turtle, I’m gonna move on. Oh, and if you describe your work as a Hitchcockian thriller, at least spell Hitchcockian right (yes, I actually saw that one). As a Hitchcock, this offends me greatly.
4. Your book cover sucks.
If your book cover looks like it was created in Microsoft Word, uses Papyrus font, or clip art (yes, I have seen clip art), you probably need my money so that you can hire a real designer, but I’m still not gonna give it to you. Also, if your book cover is a romance that explores no territory beyond rippled chest and heaving bodice or a thriller that doesn’t go beyond crime scene tape and a bloody knife, I’m pretty sure I already know everything I need to know. Pass.
3. Your price sucks.
I don’t care if your ebook price was set by the publisher, if it’s more than about $7, I’m not buyin’ it. If your ebook costs more than your paperback or even worse, your hardcover, then I’m really not buyin’ it. There’s absolutely no reason for an ebook to cost that much. If you’re big enough that your publisher is charging more than $8 for your ebook, I can probably get it at my library.
2. You told me to in your Twitter Auto-DM.
“Thanks for following me! I know you’re just gonna love my sci-fi fantasy adventure novel! Go buy it right this minute!” Um, no. Did it ever cross your mind that maybe I don’t particularly like sci-fi? Or fantasy? Or novels, even? I could be an attractive porn star who wants to be your “friend” for all you know. And guess what… I don’t know you. I don’t know jack about your writing style or if it would be my cup of tea. Why don’t you let me trade some tweets with you and let me decide for myself. If I like your snarky wit, I will buy your shit. But you auto-DM me, I’ll never give you or your work the time of day.
1. Your reviews suck.
Yep. Reviews matter. If I read in your review that your book is filled with point-of-view shifts, verb confusion, and spelling errors, I’m going to run in the other direction. If you manage to pull off a brilliantly interesting product description but 17 out of 20 people say your book is boring, I’m going to be inclined to believe them. On the other hand, I’m not going to be turned off by a couple of honest, but bad reviews. I understand that my book isn’t for everybody, so if a negative reviewers talks about painfully introspective and action-lacked your book is, I might just open up my wallet for you.
Take heed, authors. Oh, and thanks for following me! I just know you’ll love my book…
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