Christmastime

This is usually a difficult time of year for me. My birthday is Christmas Eve and it always makes me think of my mom and the fact she used to send me cards, and we had talked about her visiting for Christmas once she got better (she used to come around Thanksgiving).

This year it’s also difficult because I have a damn sinus infection that has been plaguing me for about ten days and the doctor was reluctant to give me any antibiotics, saying they are so overused, (yep, I know, but not by me), they can cause digestive issues by killing good bacteria, and not every sinus infection is caused by bacteria. So I am on another day of rinsing my sinuses, using sprays and Sudafed hoping my body can shake it off – if I am not showing progress, he will probably call something in, he said.

But it has made getting excited for Christmas – and ready for it – difficult. (Then there’s also the neighbourhood association that has decided now is the best time of year to get on people about their yard. Sigh). That being said I did make cookies last night, much to the boyfriend’s delight, and I only have a few more presents to wrap – so I’m not a total slouch.

To make it even more interesting… the boyfriend was born on Christmas DAY, so it is a bit crazy. =) We’ve been together a while, and have had to merge our traditions and find the right balance. On Christmas Eve I make Chinese food, (what his family used to do), and on Christmas Day I make a rib roast, which is a nod to the roast beef and scallop potatoes for Christmas Eve my mom would splurge on. We also have a friendly argument of who was REALLY born on God’s birthday – it’s a silly, meaningless fake argument we have every year. Each time we try to think of a new point to prove our side – it’s actually pretty funny!

Even though the double birthdays on a holiday are chaotic, he’s the only one who understands what it’s like to never have a birthday party, what getting shafted on birthday gifts at Christmas means, how you can never get that ‘free birthday meal’ from your favourite restaurant and all the other weird things associated with a Christmas birthday. And you know what else it means? We both try very hard every year to give each other a special day – thoughtful gifts or a little surprise. I do ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’  for him by getting an inexpensive present (usually $5 or less per day), putting them in festive bags and for the twelve days prior to his birthday, he gets to open one every night. They’re sometimes silly, like a plastic dinosaur – he loves dinosaurs – or a mini grow your own Venus flytrap kit. He opened the bag with the dinosaur in it the other day and when he saw what was inside his face lit up – it made the extra planning worth it, and the velociraptor has joined Gwar, (our first plastic dinosaur), and his family on the kitchen table next to the boyfriend’s place setting.

Whatever traditions you have – I would love to read about them – I hope you have a lovely Christmas and if you don’t have any traditions, it’s never to late to start one! Donate food to a pet shelter or vow to hand write your Christmas cards, (when I send them off that’s what I do), or bake a spice cake for Christmas Day dessert. It’s lovely to have something to come back to year after year, to remember fondly, to make the holidays seem more intimate and well, yours.

I wish you all the best for the remainder of this year, and hope 2017 is a banner year for you and yours.

Love,

Holly

Reviews and Reviewers; Pricing

I’ve been really fortunate to have many of my books rated highly by readers, and although I’ve made friends with some of my readers, I have never paid, coerced, traded favours, etc to get positive reviews.

I know that negative reviews are inevitable – no matter how good a book, there will be someone who doesn’t like it. The novel may not be their cup of tea, be written in a style they don’t like, have content that upsets them or any number of other things.

I appreciate it when someone takes time out to rate and review my books, even if they have an issue with them. I think, (and if you look at Amazon you can see for yourself), even when the rating isn’t perfect I have often thanked reviewers or explained why I did something, and in a few cases, I’ve altered my books to make things a little clearer.

So it’s frustrating when I get a review that is one star and slags my book and mention incorrect things. (In the case I’m thinking of, my book is written in present tense but they say it’s written in past tense.)

I don’t know why it bothers me so much – maybe it was the parting shot that, ‘there’s a reason it’s free’ that stung and I thought was unnecessary, especially since the reviewer got their fact wrong. With over seventy ratings on Amazon, I have a 4.2 average rating, which I think is great! I know it is inevitable that some readers won’t like it, and I think constructive criticism benefits me as a writer. When one reviewer thought I let Stuart off a little lightly in book five, I added some extra bits to flesh things out and hopefully give more context. It is easy to be myopic, especially when you have spent a lot of time around a set of characters, because after a while you know them intimately and understand so clearly who they are, you forget the reader doesn’t have that same experience.

There is a lot of talk among authors whether you should respond to people reviewing your book. I think if a person has a point they have made or a concern, it is perfectly reasonable to open a dialogue. I like people, am generally a friendly person in real life, and am humbled readers are interested in my books and have taken time to think about them and consider what I’ve presented; I want to honour that time. I was also brought up to show appreciation when someone does you a kindness – to display gratitude, humility and return compliments, so I have an urge to respond when people post a generous review. Some authors are horrified their fellow writers respond and think it’s poor form because it invites difficulties, but others see things similarly to the way I do.

It’s difficult to tread that line. For example, some readers have grumbled about pricing for example, for my five book series that it cost $14, (it’s less than that now). There is a huge disparity in pricing of books, particularly erotica. I’ve seen 25 page ‘books’ that sell for the same price as my 250+ page Lily books, and I recently came across a 170 page Indie erotica book for $7, whilst my 1300+ page compendium of Lily and Stuart is $8.99, discounted a dollar. Some authors argue that selling around the $2.99 price point further reinforces the notion that Indie authors suck, because no self respecting ‘big’ author like Rowling would EVER sell anything that low. I think you need to know your audience a bit, and I hope the audience understand that Indie doesn’t mean you get almost the whole cost of the book.

I tried to price more according to the length of the book, but that caused pricing differences in the same series, so I ended up just pricing all the Lily books $2.99 after the first one, which is free. Unfortunately it is difficult to sell directly to B&N, iBookstore and some other places so I use Lulu for that, and whilst Lulu takes a small cut – usually no more than thirty-five cents – B&N and Kobo in particular take a flat percentage which means that for the $8.99 compendium, I receive less than HALF of that price as revenue. It’s crazy, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Big publishers have this system figured out, and readers expect mainstream to cost more, so I think they are more comfortable with paying extra. They price in marketing and labour, and have infrastructure in place that grinds into motion when a book is released, so their overhead goes to somewhere. The overhead for publishing through Kobo for instance, is basically a vig for the right to be listed on their site, and that’s it.

I don’t want to sound like I am complaining – I am trying to give a little insight into what is behind the curtain, some of the moving parts and thoughts that affect an Indie writer, in this case me. I am grateful I am selling books, that most readers seem to like what I write, and I fervently hope to be able to make enough so this is my job, full time. There is a lot a to manage, and a learning curve no doubt, but the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step and I’m already several steps down the road… and excited to see where it all leads.

 

 

Book Blitz!

The book blitz is on and in honour of it, the Compendium is on sale for $8.99. For some reason Amazon has discounted several books in the series so the anthology wasn’t as good of a ‘deal’ as I meant it to be, so I will keep it at $8.99 until I sort out this with Amazon, unless they have decided to permanently discount the books.

Links:

Amazon

Lulu

ITunes

Kobo

Barnes & Noble (waiting for update to pricing, still at $9.99)

Holly