Publishing

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 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…

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…

DESCENT LAUNCH PARTY: July 25th, 2015

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 4 Comments

Who are the mystery authors donating books to DESCENT’s Facebook launch party?

This is all part of the publishing cycle – host a launch party. To energize the party and make it exciting for virtual visitors, I asked other authors to donate one or two of their novels as prizes.

So not to keep you in suspense, in alphabetical order, the contributors are…

But what books will they donate? That’s a mystery to be solved on another blog. Stay tuned…

When is the 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!

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…

DESCENT Coming Soon!

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 10 Comments

I have butterflies in my stomach. Years of hard work and a dream has led to this…Imajin Books has announced DESCENT’s release date: July 25, 2015.

The full cover of DESCENT designed by Ryan Doan…Ta Da!

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Can this really be happening?

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.

Thanks for reading…

Unveiling of DESCENT…A little more…

~ Kristina Stanley ~ Leave a comment

You’ve probably noticed I’m having fun with the upcoming release of DESCENT. So here’s a big piece of the fun. Award winning author of the Inspector Green mysteries, Barbara Fradkin, provided a quote for the cover of DESCENT. I can hardly contain my excitement.

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If you haven’t read Barbara, now’s your chance! Here is where you can find her first Inspector Green novel, DO OR DIE.

For the inside cover, I was very lucky to receive quotes from Brenda Chapman and Garry Ryan. Check out Cold Mourning by Brenda and Queen’s Park by Garry. These are the debut novels in their series.

In case you haven’t seen their quote, I just have to share them again.

“Murder rocks the competitive ski world in Stanley’s layered tale with enough suspects to keep readers guessing until the last chilling chapter.” –Brenda Chapman: Award winning author of the Stonechild and Rouleau Mysteries.

“From the first line, you’re strapped into a Stanley novel. Just turn the page, hang on, and enjoy the ride.” –Garry Ryan: Award-winning author of the Detective Lane mysteries and Blackbird trilogy.

Full cover coming soon…

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.

Thanks for reading.

 

The Unveiling…of…DESCENT

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 4 Comments

Holy Excitement Batman!

The cover for DESCENT is in. I’ve seen it and love it. Today I can share a little piece, just a sneak preview, so you can see what’s coming. This is the bottom quarter of the front cover.

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Later this week, I’ll have the pleasure of sharing the whole cover and the launch date. How cool is that? The good news just keeps arriving from Imajin books.

Now the scary part begins. I have to get my online platform ready. Just so you’d don’t think I’m loafing around this week, here’s what I’ll be doing.

  • post cover in all the relevant places
  • set up and invite people to a Facebook launch party
  • set up a blog hop
  • update author sites (such as Goodreads and Author’s Den)
  • confirm book signing events for later in the summer
  • contact our local paper about an article
  • and just to keep me on my toes, I’m polishing Avalanche, the third novel in the Stone Mountain Series.

I’ll keep a list of marketing activities to share with you and by the end of the process, we should have good to-do list for launching a book. You know me – I love to have a list. Of course, please let me know if you have ideas to add to the list.

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.

Thanks for reading…

Imajin Books Summer Sizzle

~ Kristina Stanley ~ Leave a comment

You are invited…

Oh, yeah! It’s that time of year again and Imajin Books (soon to publish DESCENT and BLAZE)  is gearing up for its annual Summer Sizzles promotion.Things really heat up with the Summer Sizzles facebook party on Sunday, July 12 from 4 – 8 pm PDT (7 – 11 pm Eastern).

Here’s the link for all the info. https://www.facebook.com/events/484341911728130/

https://www.facebook.com/events/484341911728130/
You are invited to attend so visit the event page and click the join button so we know to expect you!

Who will all be there?

Almost the entire Imajin Books crew will participate, from publisher to editors to authors to cover designers, formatters….

Fans of Imajin Books’ authors will be there, eager to ask their fave writers questions and offer support and compliments.

Aspiring writers will be there, schmoozing with those in the industry, asking questions, giving answers.

Other authors will be there.

Family and friends will stop by.

People who like winning things will be there–there are always lots of giveaways.

Those who love drinking virtual margaritas on virtual sunny beaches will drop by. Don’t worry, there will be free virtual taxi service for those who overimbibe! HA HA!

Come on over, join in the fun! If you’ve never attended a facebook party, this is the one to change that!

Thanks to Eileen Schuh, author of of THE TRAZ, THE TRAZ School Edition and FATAL ERROR),  for putting this blog together.

Early Praise For Descent: A Stone Mountain Mystery #1

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 4 Comments

On the twisted and bumpy trail of getting published, I’ve sent out my advanced reader copy of DESCENT for review by other authors. The idea is to get a blurb for DESCENT that can be published with the novel and used for marketing in the early days of release.

As difficult as it was to ask others to read and create a one to two-line sentence about DESCENT, I’m glad I did. Three talented Canadian mystery authors took time out their busy schedules to help me out. I’ve read every book by each of the authors and have been a long time fan of all three. Imagine how great I felt have them not only read DESCENT  but then to write  such wonderful reviews for me.

Here is what I received (in alphabetical order)  from Brenda Chapman, Barbara Fradkin,  and Garry Ryan::

Brenda Chapman: Award winning author of the Stonechild and Rouleau Mysteries.

“Murder rocks the competitive ski world in Stanley’s layered tale with enough suspects to keep readers guessing until the last chilling chapter.”

Barbara Fradkin: Author of the Inspector Green Mysteries and two-time winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel.

“In this impressive debut, Kristina Stanley weaves a vivid, chilling tale of jealousy, secrets, and betrayal in a close-knit mountain ski village. Like its likeable young heroine, Kalin Thompson, DESCENT is both tender and tough.”

Garry Ryan: Award-winning author of the Detective Lane mysteries and Blackbird trilogy.

“From the first line, you’re strapped into a Stanley novel. Just turn the page, hang on, and enjoy the ride.”

Brenda has authored:

  •  Cold Mourning,
  • My Sister’s Keeper,
  • Second Chances,
  • The Second Wife,
  • The Winter’s Grip,
  • Trail of Secrets,
  • Where the Trouble Leads,,
  • Hiding in Hawk’s Creeks,
  • Running Scared and
  • When Boomers Go Bad.  

For more about Brenda and her books click  here.

Barbara’s novels include:

The Inspector Green Series: 

 The Cedric O’Toole Series:
For more about Barbara and her books click  here.
.
Garry’s works include:
The Detective Lane Series:

Garry has written the first two of the Blackbirds Trilogy:

For more about Garry and his books click here.

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.

Thanks for reading…

How to Blog Hop

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 6 Comments

Imajin Books asked me to host a blog hop as part of publishing DESCENT.  Of course I said yes. So now I have to figure out how to do this.

First, I needed a goal for the blog hop. I’m currently blogging about my publishing experience, and every day I discover there is more to learn. A priority for me is learning more about marketing a book, and this is how I came up with my goal.

Blog Hop Goal

To  improve my knowledge of marketing a book.

To share that knowledge with other writers.

Blog Hop Theme:

Based on the goal, I’m going to ask other bloggers to answer one simple question.

What is the most important book-marketing  tip you can give other writers who are about to publish a novel or who have recently published a novel?

Who am you going to ask?

The importance of building a network rises to the top of the to-do pile once a again. Long before you publish, you need to have a network of people who can participate in your launch and people who you can help in return. As you can see, I’m using this blog to encourage participation. I will also contact other authors personally via LinkedIn, Facebook, and email.

Why would other bloggers join the blog hop?

As with most things, it’s best to give something to people who participate. The participating bloggers should answer the marketing question at the top of their blog.  The blogger can follow the answer with a promotion of their novel in whatever style they feel is appropriate. The blog hop is about marketing after all.. Not published yet? How about promoting your upcoming novel or your blog?

Now to the technology behind a blog hop or blog party.

Linky Things:

I use WordPress (obviously) so I’ll use a tool recommended for WP. You may need something else. LinkyTools and InLinkz are two options. InLinkz has a good blog post on How to Throw A Successful Blog Party, so I won’t go into details on that topic, but I do have to decide if I should do both a blog hop and a blog party. See HandMadeTechnology for a description of how blog hops and blog parties differ.

I’m not sure yet which one I’ll go with. Any advice?

Test blog: One tip on the InLinkz site is to create a test blog site. I plan to use this, so I can practice, make a mess and get it right before I post to this site. I understand Linky Things don’t go live until the post is published, hence the test site.

If you’re interested in joining this blog hop, I plan to run it sometime in July when DESCENT is published.  Just comment below and let me know. Or access my Contact Information  and send me a private message.

Let me stress, I am new to this blog hop experience, so please share any advice you have on how to host a successful blog hop.

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.

Thanks for reading…