Insanity Insight

As I peruse the various pages where my books are stored online, I thought I'd pass on insights from this insane business that publishing has become. First off, look at this crazy reverse color image Kobo has turned my pretty Blue Clouds cover into. That's the correct cover on the left. I've asked and asked what's happening but so far, no one has answered. Maybe I should figure out how to reverse the colors and put up the wrong one so it would reverse to right. My head spins thinking about it. I just want to write books, not play games with distributors.

I've been trying to keep an up-to-date list of my recent e-book releases on a website run by authors, Backlist E-books. But it means creating a page and updating links every time I add a new one or change an old one. The links should take you to your favorite online store, if I do it right. And they're now sending monthly newsletters to let readers know what's new. I recommend the site to find all your favorite authors.

I turned four of my backlist westerns over to a publisher who has been running specials on them. So now I have twenty-year-old books on Amazon's bestseller lists. Texas Lily is currently 99 cents and #1. The books that were previously called the Paper series are now called Too Hard to Handle and are following Lily up the lists with special prices. I don't have time to play pricing games, but it's been fun watching someone else do it.

Now I'm studying B&N and trying to figure out how to get reviews on the contemporary romances I just added. Blue Clouds was a NYT bestseller but on B&N, it doesn't have a single review or even a rating. Garden of Dreams was a Rita finalist but it has nary a comment because B&N didn't have e-books when it first came out. But Volcano, my third contemporary romance, has a 5 star rating even though it's listed under damien rice, apparently because it was one of B&N's first e-books. And you wonder why writers are crazed?

So if you have a moment, go "like" your favorite books, add a rating, or a comment, any comment. Your favorite authors will appreciate it more than you can know. The power is with the readers these days. Use it!

And now I'll go back to glaring at The Notorious Atherton until he turns into a book. I hope.