A Stone Mountain Mystery

How to get FREE Advertising for your Novel

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 7 Comments

Besides the obvious guest blogging, tweeting, Facebook etc. there are ways to get exposure for your novel without having to spend cash. We all know it’s hard to make money in this business – okay not all of us – but maybe the newbies, so here is a list of places and methods that worked for me.

Try online magazines that cover your genre. The following showcased DESCENT in the mystery genre.

The Readers Gazette

OMNIMYSTERY News

Crime Fiction Lover 

If you belong to a writing organization such as Crime Writers of Canada, ask for placement on their advertising. This type of organization exists to help you.

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Share your screen shots from Amazon or other sites. Let the big companies do the work for you. For example on July 26, 2015 DESCENT made #8 and one behind Lee Child in Amazon’s hot new releases in Mystery. Use these moments to be excited about your novel.

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Share your success with your friends and thank them for buying your novel. The post below was shared throughout Facebook helping me with visibility in a crowded marketplace. Friends are amazing people who love to help you. Just let them know you need their support to spread the word.

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Another author told me, “If you’re not excited about your book release, why would anyone else be?” So don’t be shy about sharing your news. We all want to hear about it and be happy for you.

Please let me know in the comments below if you have other ideas for free advertising. There have to other places…

If you’re interested, you can buy or download a sample of DESCENT at:  myBook.to/Descent

Thanks for reading…

My Two Cents Worth (Before Inflation)

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Reblogged from http://blog.jamesmjackson.com Author of the Seamus McCree Mystery Series.

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Please welcome Kristina Stanley, a Canadian author who has the screenshot to prove that her novel Descsent had the number one ranking on Amazon’s Canada list of “Hot New Releases of Women Sleuth Mysteries.” (In second place was Sue Grafton’s X !) She describes herself as happy, hard-working, loyal, athletic, and an animal-lover. The five words she uses to describe her writing are adventurous, action-oriented, mystery, wilderness, and multi point of view. Here are her answers to the eight questions she chose…

Click here to read more:

How to Get Support From Your Local Community

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 30 Comments

As an artist, getting support from your local community is easy. Just ask.

I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to ask people for favours, but here’s what I discovered. My community loves to help locals. Last Friday, my local newspaper, The Columbia Valley Pioneer, published an article about me.

I’d sent them an email, explaining who I am (a local author), what my credentials are and that DESCENT had just been published. They responded within the hour saying they’d love to interview me. I’d procrastinated for days before I sent the email, and nowKristina at Library I wish I hadn’t hesitated.

Because of the article, the Invermere Public Library asked me if they could put a copy of DESCENT on their shelves.

So…DESCENT in now available at the Invermere Public Library.

One little email led to two great opportunities, and each day a new milestone moment creates a little happiness in my life.

The questions becomes: what else should I ask for?

If you’re interested, you can buy or download a sample of DESCENT at:  myBook.to/Descent

Thanks for reading…

Tips For Hosting A Facebook Launch Party

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 49 Comments

Exhausted, that’s how I felt when my Facebook launch party ended. Three hours of  chatting online, asking trivia questions, keeping track of winners, and answering questions.

This is the story of how I created and hosted my first launch party.

Preparation for the event.

  • Create a banner to announce your event. I used Canva.com. It’s free.

Release  Day Party

  • Set up event on Facebook. Remember to make the event public or only your friends can see it.
  • Put the back description of your novel at the top of the page with a link to where your book is sold. You can use booklinker.net to create a link that will take the person to the amazon site of their home country.
  • Invite all your friends and ask them to share your post.
  • Send a reminder the day before and the morning of the event.
  • Have something to give away. I had 14 books donated by other authors. My publisher recommended not to give away DESCENT as it is a new release. I limited each winner to two books.
  • Create trivia questions. My questions were all related to the books being given away by other authors, but you ask anything really. I created questions  from the Amazon site for the books donated so people could look up the answers and there would be no confusion about the correct answer.
  • Have winners direct message you with their email address. I only gave away eBooks to make the process easy and less costly for donating authors. People could attend your event from different countries and mailing a paperback could get expensive.
  • If books are being given away, take a screen shot of the book cover from Amazon and post it with the trivia question. Don’t add the link to Amazon as the answer to your question might show up too.
  • Keep the trivia questions and answers in a word document so you can cut and paste them instead of having to type them as you go. Things move fast in a launch.
  • Create a list of pre-posts in word in case things get slow. I only used a couple of the ones I created. This could be a question about reading, your books or anything your guests might be interested in.
Here are a couple of sample threads you can post about 10 minutes before the event starts.
Pin the first thread to the top, otherwise people won’t be able to follows what’s going on.
Welcome Guests (other than authors giving away books): Please check in here. Tell us your name, where you’re from and how you know me ☺ This is our main chat thread.
Have a thread where authors can sign in.
Authors check in: Can donating authors please check in here. Tell us your name, location and the name of the title you are donating. Thank you.
After the launch:
  • send an email to donating authors with email of person who won their book. The donating author will send their book directly to the winner.
  • Watch the site in the days following the launch. Sometimes people come on later just to comment or ask a question.
  • Update your Facebook banner to remove the banner announcing the launch and replace with new banner.

FB Cover

  • Once you add the updated banner, remember to add the shop now button. Again I used the Booklinker.net link so the reader could be taken to their relevant amazon site.
You can see an example of my event (held July 25th, 2015) at: https://www.facebook.com/events/459737280862514/ Feel free to copy any of the threads to use for your event.
If you’re interested, you can buy or download a sample of DESCENT at:  myBook.to/Descent
Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions or suggestions to improve a Facebook launch party.
Thanks for reading…

Tools for Tracking Novel Sales

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 14 Comments

DESCENT was published July 25th, 2015, and I’d like to share some of the tools I’ve discovered since the launch.

Novelrank is free software that keeps track of Amazon sales for you. I don’t know how accurate it is, but it does give an idea of how your book is doing.

Booklinker is free service that will create a link for you book, but here’s the magic. Instead of having to create one link for each Amazon site your book is on, it creates one link and when a user clicks on the link, they are taken to that Amazon of their county. Book linker also shows you how many times the link was clicked for each country. Here is the link for DESCENT:  myBook.to/Descent

Bitly is another way to create links. In one email campaign I used, I sent a specific link to each person using the amazon of their country. Bitly has a useful stats page that will tell you how many times the link is clicked and what day it was clicked on.  Here is an example of the country specific clicks. This doesn’t tell you anything about sales, but it does let you know if people are clicking the link and hence is your campaign working.

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The other way to get an idea of how your book is doing is watch amazon rankings and bestseller lists. Your publisher may also publish a bestseller list. Imajin Books showcases their bestselling authors each month and you can see DESCENT did well in both paperback and eBook.

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If you know of any other useful tools out there, please comment below and let me know.

Thanks for reading…

DESCENT: ‘My stomach knotted…’

~ Kristina Stanley ~ Leave a comment

Reblogged from Magic of The Muses

DESCENT: ‘My stomach knotted…’.

Welcome to Kristina Stanley, author of the brand new thriller DECENT. 

Let’s find out if  doing the final edit on a novel is as terrifying as murder on the slopes…  Read more at Magic of The Muses

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Thanks to Eileen Schuh for hosting me on her blog.

Eileen’s books:

Eileen's Novels

DESCENT Paperbacks Arrive

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 10 Comments

It’s a chilling and exhilarating feeling to see a physical version of my novel for the first time.

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Photo by David R. Conn

Descent is avialable for purchase on Amazon.

I’m just too happy to write anything more today. Thanks for reading…

Mystery Mondays: How to join authors supporting authors…

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Last week I promised to share how you can post on Mystery Mondays, and I will. But first let me show you the schedule till year-end. Check out the Mystery Mondays announcement for the schedule up to Oct 19th.

Mystery Mondays has the pleasure and honour of hosting the following authors:

Oct 26th: Jesse Giles Christensen – songwriter and bestselling author of Pelican Bay.

Nov 2nd: Kat Flannery – bestselling author of The Branded Series.

Nov 9th: C.S. Lakin – award-winning author of too many books to list 🙂 She’s gives us something to strive for.

Nov 16th: Gloria Ferris – award-wining author of the Cornwall & Redfern Mystery series.

Nov 23rd: Jayne Baynard – author of Canadian crime and literary fiction.

Nov 30th: Eileen Schuh – author of adult SciFi novellas and the YA BackTracker series.

Dec 7th: Howard Shrier -award-winning author of the Jonah Geller crime series.

Dec 14th: Laurence St. John – author of YA fantasy series Metatron.

Are you interested in guest blogging?

Due to the overwhelming interest in guest posting on Mystery Mondays, I will be accepting guest blog requests for 2016 stating on November 1st, 2015 so mark your calendar and contact me here on Nov 1st or later.

If you’d like to participate, here’s what you need to qualify:

  • you are a published author – traditional or Indie or any other way that I don’t know about,
  • you are about to publish and have a launch date within a week of blog post,
  • you want to promote other authors and spread success,
  • you write novels with a hint of mystery,
  • you are willing to engage in the comments section when readers comment on your post.

All I ask from you is that you follow my blog, comment on author’s posts and help share via Twitter and Facebook.  If you’re interested send me a message via my contact page.

The guidelines:

You’ll have to send me your bio, back text of your novel, author photo and book cover. I’d like you to write something about yourself, your novel, your research, a writing tip or a publishing tip. Please keep in mind I am a family friendly blog. I do reserve the right to edit anything I think might be inappropriate for my audience, which I will discuss with you first. I think anything under 700 words is great, but it’s your book so up to you.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you and sharing your novel with the Internet world.

Thanks for reading…

Descent’s Launch: Seven Sleeps To Go

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

DescentCoverI’m nervous. I’m excited. I’m flattered.

Check out the authors who are donating eBooks as prizes for DESCENT’s online launch party on July 25th, 2015.

Melodie Campbell donating THE ARTFUL GODDAUGHTER (A Gina Gallo Mystery) and A PURSE TO DIE FOR

Jessie Giles Christiansen donating PELICAN BAY (The Captain Shelby Trilogy Book 1)

Michael James Conn donating THE RIGHT TURN

Kat Flannery donating LAKOTA HONOR (Branded Trilogy Book 1) and BLOOD CURSE (Branded Trilogy Book 2) – 2 copies of each!

Debra Purdy Kong donating OPPOSITE OF DARK (Casey Holland Mystery #1)

C.S Lakin donating INNOCENT LITTLE CRIMES

Susan J McLeod donating  SOUL AND SHADOW (A Lilly Evans Mystery)

Rosemary McCracken donating SAFE HARBOR (A Pat Tierney Mystery)

Cheryl Kaye Tardif donating Devine Intervention (Devine Trilogy Book 1) and E.Y.E of the Scorpion (E.Y.E Spy Mystery Book 1)

That’s nine authors and fourteen books. If you don’t want to wait for DESCENT’s launch to read one of these fabulous authors, click on the title of their book and you’ll be taken right to Amazon.

When is the party? July 25th, 3-6 PM EST

Where? Click here to sign up.

I’d love to chat with you online on the 25th, so come on by and sign up. Maybe you’ll be the lucky winner of one of these books.

One big happy thank you and shout out to the participating authors!

Thanks for reading…

Descent’s First Official Review

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

DescentCoverEvery day, it seems like the publishing journey sends me a present. But before I tell you what today’s present is, let me talk about what I learned this week.

Imajin Books taught me reviews are important for the success of a novel. This includes online reviews which Amazon won’t allow until the book is released – a good thing since how can someone review a novel if they haven’t read the book. These reviews have to come later.

The other important aspect are reviews from professionals who publish on blogs, in magazines and in newspapers.

How do you get a review? Well, you honed your skills writing query letters, didn’t you? That’s the big ask. The first letter to an agent or a publisher is the hardest. The asking gets easier with time. If you’re self published you’ll still want reviews and still need to ask.

To write a letter to a reviewer I included:

  • What I was asking for
  • The back jacket description of DESCENT
  • Who my publisher is along with release date
  • What my credentials are (award wins and nominations)
  • Early praise for DESCENT
  • And finally, I asked if the reviewer would read an Advanced Reader Copy of DESCENT. I didn’t send a copy until the reviewer said yes.

So now you’ve waited patiently to see what my present is. It’s my first review. You can hear a drum roll, can’t you?

Don Graves is a long-time mystery and crime reviewer. For many years he wrote a column for the Hamilton Spectator and has won an award for his Spectator reviews of Canadian mystery novels. Here’s what he had to say about DESCENT

Descent is the first in a series of Stone Mountain mysteries. It’s an action packed story. Testosterone, stress, dangerous corners and pain lead to murder on the slopes of this remote ski resort. Kalin Thompson, head of security is ordered to investigate by her boss. A growing list of suspects leads Kalin to wonder if the dead Olympic calibre skier got what he deserved.  Descent, a mystery that keeps you riding the lift for one last read and the killer’s identity. – Don Graves, Canadian Mystery Reviews

If you’d like to help me celebrate , Descent’s Facebook launch party? July 25th, 3-6 PM EST. You are invited and most welcome to join us to help celebrate. Come and win a book from one of the amazing authors donating their work! Click here to join.

DESCENT is now available for pre-order in eBook format. The paperback will follow shortly.

If you haven’t read my blog before, I’ve signed on with Imajin Books and will blog about my publishing adventure. I’ll share what I learn and hope it helps someone out there get their novel published.

Please feel free to share this post and help me get the word out.

Thanks for reading…