How to Bake a Murder Was a Pleasure to Read

Now that I'm part of the older generation, I find it difficult to discover books containing heroines with whom I can relate. Many books seem to be about younger people. 

However,  I did stumble upon a great cozy mystery called How to Bake a Murder by K.J. Emrick. In it, the older heroine is actually depicted as savvy and kindhearted, not a feeble woman who does dumb things. 

If you'd like to read my review, you can find it at this link.

This ebook is available on Amazon and worth checking out.

Morgan Mandel

http://www.morganmandel.com

A Word to the Wise

Since this week is a busy one, I thought I'd just offer a word to the wise for those who are self-publishing on Amazon.

If you need to update your book, if you can, convert it first for your own kindle by using the Amazon convert feature, after saving the book by using a similar, but not the same name as the real title. When it appears on your kindle, read it over and make sure it's how you want it to be. Do this up to the very, very end.

Also, if you're on the KDP Select program at Amazon, when you do have a freebie promotion, make sure to give yourself a free copy as well. If you don't do freebie promotions, it's a good idea to buy a copy of your book, so you'll see what others are getting. In the manage you kindle section at Amazon, click for an automatic update.

Then, after your update is done, see if the book automatically appears updated. If not, remove the old version from your kindle, and then have the new version delivered to your kindle from the Cloud.

Why am I mentioning this? Well, for some reason, both on my convert version and on the real version, when I tried to go to the next page when there were only a few sentences left in the About the Author section at the very end, I got an error message telling me to remove the book and get it again from the Cloud. I did that, but it didn't work.

Well, after over 3 days, and with the help with the KDP people at Amazon, the error message finally went away. That was yesterday. Today, it was back.

So, this morning, I changed things around at the end of my book, and re-sent it to convert. It looked okay, so now I'm downloading it again to Amazon, and am awaiting the results. Will it be right this time?

One never knows what kind of strange things might happen, so we need to be on guard, and do our best to get a quality product out to our readers.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Find all of Morgan Mandel's romances & mysteries at 

http://www.amazon.com/author/morganmandel

  Twitter: @MorganMandel

Spoiled

With well intentions, I created a monster. It started innocently enough. I felt sorry for my dog, Rascal, who would eye my people food longingly. Since she's getting older, I thought she may as well live it up, and enjoy what I denied her before. I started slipping scraps into her bowl, along with the dog food. Unfortunately, the result is she's become very picky and won't eat her dog food unless something for people is mixed in with it. And, even then, she's become picky. Only certain kinds of people food meet her qualifications. However, when she's happy with what I've provided, she grunts with pleasure and snarfs it down, like she can't get enough of it.

I couldn't help relating her experience to mine when it comes to books, especially on kindle. Before, when I picked up a book and it didn't meet my expectations right away, I was content to keep reading and wait for at least one good part to turn up. Sometimes, I would read an entire book, not because it was so great, but only because I'd started it and felt obligated to finish it.

Now, I expect the good part to start right from the beginning, and it has to keep being good until the end, or I'll start another book instead. If the next doesn't work immediately, I'll start yet another, until I find one to my liking.

I'm afraid, like Rascal, I've become spoiled. With the proliferation of books available, either free or at reasonable prices for my kindle, it's so very easy for me to be picky.

I suspect a lot more readers have become as spoiled as I am. Are you?

See Morgan Mandel's books on her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/author/morganmandel

Excerpts & buy links at Morgan's Book Links Blog:

http://morgansbooklinks.blogspot.com

Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/morgan.mandel

Twitter:@MorganMandel 

The Devil's Foothold

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009R7DZ1S

Here's the book I wrote about in my last post. Nice spooky cover for what I'm calling a supernatural mystery only available on Kindle.

It's likely the only book I'll ever do myself. As it turned out, I need a lot of help. I found a great cover artist who definitely got the "flavor" of the book. 

Reading the directions for formatting for Kindle, for me was like reading something in Russian. I went to a friend who has great success and asked for help. Turns out her husband does all her formatting and putting it on Kindle. He helped me through the whole process--and ended up doing most of it himself. I've been calling him an angel.

The book is up there and I've had a few sales, but I need to get busy with more promotion. 

So far there's not a single review which is a bit disheartening, but I suppose they'll come.

My biggest problem is as I said before, I have way too much to do.

Trying to find time to work on my Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery and I've been caught up in fixing the historical family saga. 

And then I realized November was here and I needed to write a post for Make Mine Mystery--and here I am.

Marilyn     

Off on Anothr Writing Adventure...

Not having enough to do, she said with tongue firmly planted in cheek, I've decided to put an older, out of print book of mine on Kindle.

Previously, I swore I'd never do it because I hate learning how to do new things to do with formatting etc., because I usually foul things up and have to do it all over, and over, and over. But I kept hearing what great results people were having, how many books they were selling etc.

I have two books that have been sitting dormant with a publisher and at first I thought I'd ask for the rights back, but then I remembered I had another novel with a publisher who has gone out of business (For very good reasons) and I could start with that one.

It took a while to find the book on my computer--it was in a Word Perfect program and I have three versions. When I did locate it, I copied it to Word. When I started looking it over, I realized it needed some major editing. First, because there were some errors that came to surface by just doing the spell and grammar check. Second, once I got into it, I saw it needed some updating with things like computers and phones that aren't attached to a cord, and of course cell-phones. I've only gotten to about Chapter 8 as I write this, so no telling what else I'll run into.

What's interesting about this book, is it began as a Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery--long before I knew it would be a series. And as I kept writing about Tempe in subsequent books she changed. Another thing about this particular story is rather than being a mystery it's more of what I call Christian horror. Horror because it is really scary--with definite Christian elements. It could also be called Supernatural Horror--because it's  full of the supernatural--the scariest kind.

So way back when, I knew it didn't fit with what Tempe had become (it took me several books before I found the first publisher for this series) and so I made some drastic changes beginning with the location of the book. It's still in the foothills of the Sierra, just farther north, above Modesto in an imaginary town. The names and descriptions of the characters changed--though not the two major characters occupations. There are still a lot of similarities which Tempe fans will recognize, but the main theme of the book is much different and I think will appeal to a different audience.

I really need to be writing my next Rocky Bluff P.D. crime novel which I've started--but I'm going to finish this project first. I have someone who will format it for me and a cover artist lined up, so I'm committed.

So, if I don't turn up in my usual haunts, you'll know I'm submerged in fixing this scary book for Kindle.

Marilyn

A Look at the KDP Select Program

When I put the first in a trilogy of Post Cold War thrillers on Amazon for the Kindle, I decided to opt for the KDP Select program. I had heard lots of interesting chatter about how the free book option could affect sales. If you're unfamiliar with KDP Select, the author agrees to make the book available exclusively for the Kindle for ninety days. During that time, you have five days to offer free downloads. Also, Amazon Prime customers can borrow a copy from the Kindle Owners Lending Library free and the author shares in a pot of money that runs around $600,000 a month.

Sounded like a good deal. For authors like my friend Tim Hallinan, who has a new Poke Rafferty Bangkok thriller, The Fear Artist, coming out next week, it's a great deal. He gives away multiple thousands of books on free days, and he sees an uptick in sales of his other books. He also collects cash on borrowed books.

Unfortunately, I'm not in the same league as mega-sellers like Tim. I'm a small press writer with small press sales numbers. A couple of weeks after my book became live on Amazon, I used two free days. I promoted it on several groups, including mystery list DorothyL, in my blog, Facebook, and anywhere else I could think.

I checked my rankings frequently during those days, and it went down to double digits. My KDP Report showed almost 500 free downloads. Although it didn't approach Tim's numbers, I was elated. But as I kept checking in the days that followed, I found no uptick in sales.

I had hoped one result would be at least a few reviews. Didn't matter whether they were good, bad, or indifferent. After nearly three months, there has been none. Ditto for Prime borrowers. With the ninety days running out next week, I'm preparing to put the book up on Smashwords where it will be available for all the other ebook readers.

With three free days left before my time runs out, I decided to do a little experiment. I scheduled the gratis downloads but did no promotion. The only mention of it is on my blog, which has had only a handful of readers so far. Guess what I found. At 10:55 p.m. last night, the first day of the giveaway, 140 copies had been downloaded. It ranked number 49 in the suspense category.

How did people find out about it? Beats me. But I suspect the results will be the same as before. The Kindle will hold up to 1400 books. I expect most of those downloading my free book will leave it buried deep in the device's digital innards until God knows when. It was an interesting experience, but I don't think the Kindle Select program is for people like me. For those with a name that commands respect in the marketplace, go get 'em.

Electronic Publishing

By Jean Henry Mead

I’ve waited up to 18 months for a book to be published, but that was before publishing on demand technology greatly enhanced publication time. POD is still considered second class by some in the publishing industry, and I don't understand why. It's much more efficient than traditional publishing and isn’t it great that the wait between submission and publication is only a few months? Your books aren’t languishing in some warehouse, perhaps never to be delivered to the bookstores. That's happened more often than publishers care to admit. It’s also the reason bestselling authors have delivered pizza and donuts to warehouse workers. It insures that their newly published books leave the loading dock.

Young writers have time to wait for a major publisher to produce their books. But as you grow older and wonder if you’re going to live long enough to see them in print, you think POD is the greatest invention since the computer.

I came to that conclusion when the first novel of my Logan & Cafferty mystery/suspense series was orphaned. Who would want to publish a series that had already been published? I received an almost immediate response from Avalon to my query letter, but I waited and waited for a go-ahead to my submission. Seven months later and tired of waiting, I decided to go with a small POD publisher that is very accommodating.

My first three books were published within three months of submission and released not only in print but Kindle and Fictionwise multi-format. Not on the bestseller list, by any means, but they remained #1 in sales for a couple of months at Fictionwise-epress. That made it worthwhile. The ebook edition of my first novel, Escape, a Wyoming Historical Novel, is currently number one in sales as well as the most highly rated although it was published in July 2008. Is it better to be a big fish in a small pond or lost in a sea of small fish? I'll take the big fish any day.

Next week my Mysterious Writers book will appear first in Kindle, Sony and B&N ebooks, featuring some of the interviews I featured on my blog site, Mysterious People. Sadly, not all of the interviews made the cut by Poisoned Pen Press. Although PPP is not considered a POD publisher, they accepted the manuscript via email. So there was no searching for a mailer or standing in line at the post office to see it on its way.

You can teach an old dog new tricks and I'm happy to embrace electronic technology. When are the large publishing houses going to catch up with the innovative smaller ones?

E-book breakthrough?

There is e-book news from several fronts this week. First, the Texas legislature has passed a bill that allows school districts to use their textbook money for e-readers. Second, news leaks tell that Amazon will unveil a new, larger size Kindle for reading newspapers and textbooks. The unveiling is set for tomorrow (as I write this) or today (as you read this.).

The textbook news out of Texas should cheer all e-book lovers. Texas is the second largest purchaser of textbooks. Now, school kids in Texas may get their books electronically. The savings will be felt by the districts who won't have to store textbooks, who will be able to replace them easier and cheaper when they wear out or become outdated. Children will feel the weight of all those books removed from their bookbags. I have always believed the spear point of the e-book revolution is in textbooks. The generation that goes to school on e-books will be the e-book market of the future.

The Kindle news is also exciting in this regard. The large format of the new Kindle is intended for textbooks, which are printed in a larger format than trade books. The larger screen will allow for presentation of graphs and other illustrations. It's also rumored to have the ability to make annotations to the text—to write in the margins, in other words. The large format will make reading newspapers easier, too.

Is this the breakthrough e-book authors have been waiting for? Perhaps. It's certainly a significant step. However, I believe the biggest breakthroughs are yet to come and they are not in technology or legislation, but in marketing. The breakthrough will be in the selling of e-books, or more specifically, getting the book in front of a potential buyer's face.

The genius of the Kindle, in my opinion, is not in the electronic ink or other razzle-dazzle, nor in the ability to carry your entire library in your hand. No the genius of the Kindle is that you carry an entire bookstore in your hand. With a Kindle, you can buy a book whenever the mood strikes. Say you've just finished a Michael Connelly. You can immediately purchase the next one and within minutes plunge ahead into the series. No having to head to a bookstore, or start up your computer. A flip of the switch and you're connected. Another book purchased. Genius.

The shortcoming of the Kindle is that it connects to the Amazon store, which is not an inviting store. I like bookstores and drugstore racks and airport displays and newsstands as a means of selling books. A bookstore with shelf after shelf and tables piled with books and end displays with the covers facing out is a pleasure palace, full of temptations. The Amazon store, on the other hand, is like a bookstore with sheets over the shelves and tables. You can see what's inside only if you peek behind the sheets. Even then, you only see a small part of the stock. That's what the Amazon search engine feels like to me.

You sell a book by putting the cover in the reader's face. That's what a bookstore does. That's what a book signing does. Until publishers, booksellers and writers can figure out how to put the book cover in front of a reader's face, instead of at the end of a search function, we won't have a breakthrough in e-books.

What do you think?

Mark Troy
http://hawaiian-eye.blogspot.com
http://www.marktroy.net