FREEBIES!

Too Late! Sorry!
FREEBIES!!

 

 

In celebration of my birth month -- and my inability to write a blog this month -- I'm offering my e-books for free!

 

If you've wanted to read them, but didn't have the money, now is the chance to download them.
 

Or if you live in another country and want to practice reading English, now is your chance to download them.
 

Or if you have a friend who wants to read them, but his/her mom won't let them spend the money, now is your chance to spread the word for the free download.

FEEL FREE TO SHARE THIS BLOG LINK AND THE INFORMATION WITH ANYONE AND EVERYONE!

 

FREE In chronological order:

 

To Gnome Me Is To Love Me -- August 5-7
 

The Fast and the FAERIEous -- August 8-10
 

A Maze of Monster Mix-Ups -- August 11-13
 

 For Whom the Bell Trolls-- August 14-16

Sugar Plum Disaster-- August 17-19 

Lost Leprechaun Loot  -- August 20-22

 

And if for some reason, you missed the free download time, I'm offering

ALL of my books for free on August 23-24!!

They are all here on my Amazon author page, M. A. Golla
 

Hints & Suggestions:

• The linked books above are for the US Amazon store. If you want the Amazon store in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, India, Canada, or Brazil, then click these links and it will take you to my Amazon author page for each country.
• Choose the free book and download to your Kindle or computer/phone with free Kindle app.
• Verify the free book prior to downloading! Amazon runs on Greenwich Mean Time . . . and I haven't a clue as to what that entails for other parts of the world! 
• Did you know that Amazon charges the author for every book returned? So please, make sure the book is free before you download it. I don't want to have to pay Amazon . . .

Enjoy my stories!

As always. feel free to post a review, good or not so good, on Amazon.

Thanks!

Later, Peeps!

 

 



Publishers Sell Directly

The other day I was chatting with my lawyer friend/swim mom, Margaret. I don't know how the topic came up, but she talking about the publishing business and wondered why publishing houses don't do more to sell directly from their web presence.

Her comment was that publishers would do better to change their publishing model to generate search engine activity toward selling their books on their site.

Good point. I agree. I think publishing houses would agree, but I honestly think they don't know where to start with this problem. There are millions of books out there.

Amazon, as we all know, is usually the first or second hit when you Google a book title.

I just tried it with one of my titles. Yep, Amazon. My blog link was around the sixth hit.

Publishers would do better to sell directly to the consumer, because they wouldn't have to pay the middle man (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc). They could keep a smaller stock of books vs. warehouses full of books to ship to all the brick and mortar stores. Plus with the advent of electronic publishing, they could offer eBooks more easily. All they have to do is format those books for each of those particular electronic devices.

Indie authors do it. Why can't publishers?

As much as I love going into Barnes and Noble, there's a dirty little secret concerning bookstores and publishers. Bookstores can 'render' the books (rip off the covers to return covers to publisher for a full refund). The books are supposed to be destroyed, but it doesn't always happen. If, as a consumer, you purchase a coverless book, you are cheating the author out of their money--the only one making money on the deal is the dude selling them out of the back of his car.

Those little pop-up cardboard things that have the newest and greatest? Yeah, that's publisher money paying for it. Also, have you noticed that some books are faced out, while others are spine out--publisher money. And this doesn't include warehousing and distribution.

If Amazon can do POD (print on demand) publishing, why can't the publishers?

With the event of electronic publishing, it's not like they have to typeset each page. Oh, then they could warehouse a smaller quantity of books, and print a new run when they get low. Instead of paying trucks to distribute to all the brick and mortar bookstores, now they can send the book directly to the consumer.

Think of the profit margin!

Then they don't have to pay for returns. And it's not like that comes out of their pocket, the returns come out of the AUTHOR'S POCKET. When an author gets an 'advance', it's full term is called Advance Against Returns. Authors have to 'earn out' their advance before they ever see any royalties. And if you think every author is getting rich with their advances, then you are only seeing the < 1% of the writer population that is getting serious advances. Most authors make between $4000-6000 per book, or less depending on the publisher and book genre, especially when they are starting out, and those monies are usually divided into chunks--acceptance of contract, acceptance of manuscript, and when published. And all these terms can be sticky depending on the slipperiness of the publishing contract!

There are so many angles to look at this, but instead of offering a gazillion bucks for some loser to write a book about their time on a reality show, maybe they should spend more monies in house to update their on line presence, their accounting system (trust me, this is U-G-L-Y!) and paying their editors/authors a decent salary so they can actually live off what they make.

 Well, I opened a bigger can of worms than I intended to with this blog post, so I'll stop right here.

Later, Peeps!

Starbucks--A Story*

 

Normally, I don’t go to Starbucks, but sometimes I have to pry open my wallet open for a cup off something strong in the legal wakey-wakey department. Trying to unglue my eyelids from each other, I staggered into the local Starbucks. At this time of day, the only person at the store was a way too perky barista and myself.

 

“May I help you?”

 

“Small coffee, please.”

 

She stared at me for a second with a look on her face that imitated a cow chewing its cud . . . without the chewing, which left her with a blank, passive stare. “We don’t have small cups.”

 

It was my turn to blink. “What do you have?”

 

She gestured to the sign with the cup sizes listed: short, tall, grande, and venti. Ri-ight. I got this. “I’d like a short coffee.”

 

Again with the cow look. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

 

“It’s just coffee. You mean to tell me that if I ordered a grande Frappa-lappa-dingdong you could make that, but not a plain cup old cup of coffee?”

 

She nodded. “Yes.”

 

Okay, fine. I could play her game. I might not be 75% awake, but for a cup of coffee, I’d take the risk. “What’s the frappe made out of? I’m lactose intolerant and if there’s any dairy in it then I’ll have to eighty-six it.”

 

“Eighty-six?”

 

I inhale deeply and called on the powers that be to keep me from lunging over the counter to grip the perky barista’s neck between my fingers. I spoke very slowly to make sure she understood. “Eighty-six meant to leave out. If there are milk products in it, then I can’t have it.”

 

“Oh, there’s whole milk in it, but I can make it with soy milk.”

 

I close my eyes and count to three. I didn’t want milk in my coffee, soy or otherwise. I just wanted a cup of black coffee. “Never mind, let’s just skip the frappe part. How about the lappa? Is it fat-free?”

 

“No.”

 

“Can I get it fat-free?”

 

“No, but I have 50% lappa.”

 

“Well, let’s skip the lappa. How about the dingdong? Does it have real sugar or can I have it made sugar-free.”

 

“Oh, you can have it sugar-free. So want a grande frappa-lappa-dingdong without the frappa and the lappa, but with sugar-free dingdong.”

 

“Not quite. What’s the sugar-free substitute made of?”

 

The cow look returned.

 

“Is the sugar substitute made from saccharin, aspartame, sucralose, or Stevia products?” Patience was never my strong suit, but I’m almost to the goal--a wonderful cup of joe, black with no other crap in it. I had to try.

 

“I’m sorry. What did you ask? I blanked out for a moment.”

 

“Never mind the dingdong.”

 

“Eighty-six the dingdong?” She grinned at the new term she learned.

 

“Yep, eighty-six it. So what does that leave us with?”

 

“You want a grande frappa-lappa-dingdong without the frappa, lappa, or the dingdong, right?”

 

I nod my head.

 

It took her a few seconds to think it over. “You just want coffee?”

 

I grinned. “Yes, please.”

 

She rings it up on the computer. “That will be $8.64.”

 

I would have given her a ten, but I was afraid I’d miss the rest of my life if she had to count change, so I handed her a credit card. A minute later, I took my coffee and left.

 

What a person has to go through these days just for one cup of black coffee. No wonder the world is falling apart. Everyone thinks Amazon is trying to take over the world, but they would be wrong--it’s all Starbucks fault with their $9.00 grande frappa-lappa-dingdongs.

 

*Not a real tale. This is called writing fiction, people!

 

 

This short story first came to me during one of my daily walks. I thought about it for a while, but then forget it by the time I came back home. As the only coffee drinker in the family, my family has a tendency to make fun of everyone who drinks the fancy schmancy frappa-lappa-dingdong cups of coffee, since that isn’t ‘real’ coffee.

 

Another tiny aspect of this story is the willingness of people to fork out hard earned cash for a frou-frou drink on a daily basis.

 

·         They wonder where their money goes

·         They wonder why they keep gaining weight

·         And they complain over the price of a $7.99 book--and many indy books aren’t priced this much!

 

The drink will only provide a small jolt of stimulation until it’s finished. While the book will provide hours of stimulation during the reading process and for hours afterword as you think about the characters and the plot.

 

It takes a barista only minutes to make your coffee, while it can take an author months or even years to write a book.

 

Food for thought.

 

Later, Peeps!

Happy Birthday to ME . . . and YOU!

FREEBIE EXTRAVAGANZA!

Here's the link to my Amazon profile. For some reason, FOR WHOM THE BELL TROLLS doesn't show up. You will have to type in the title. sorry.

 

My birthday is August 29th, and I'll be turning the ripe old age of 51.

I told you I would be honest on this blog. And no, I don't have any problem blabbing about how old I am. Besides, I dye my hair and I certainly don't ACT old.

The only giveaway is my skin. Yep, I have old lady skin, saggy, baggy and thinning.

And wrinkles. Lots and lots of wrinkles around my eyes, most of the time successfully hidden with Ironman wrap around sunglasses. I don't do the make-up thing. It's not that I can't do it, I simply don't. I'm lazy that way. But I can clean up nicely if needed.

Anyhoo, when I decided to self-publish The Goblin's Apprentice stories, I just wanted to get these stories into the hands of kids who wanted/needed to escape the realities of their lives. If I made a buck on it, then BONUS!

Well, I'm not making money on these stories. Shoot, I think I sold only a handful of them each month--literally. When you tally the amount earned against the amount I paid on cover art, the result is still negative. Giving them away hasn't resulted in much bigger numbers.

I stink at publicity. The freebies I gave away haven't been shared with others. No one is really bothering to give me reviews on the books, good or bad. Overall, the response to The Goblin's Apprentice has been "meh".

So as my final hurrah, I am giving away ALL SIX OF THE BOOKS from August 28-30. 

Three days of freebies for six stories.

Why?

Because of Greenwich Mean Time. I mean, really?

Trying to calculate when books will be free and off free around my birthday just made my head hurt. So I decided to take three days to do it.

All of these books should be available on Amazon's various incarnations: US, UK, DE, FR, IT and ES. I will link these books to the US Amazon store, but if you live in one of these other countries you might need to dig around a little for them.

The sequence of the books is:
TO GNOME ME IS TO LOVE ME, Book 1
THE FAST AND THE FAERIEOUS, Book 2
A MAZE OF MONSTER MIX-UPS, Halloween short story
FOR WHOM THE BELL TROLLS, Book 3
SUGAR PLUM DISASTER, Christmas short story
LOST LEPRECHAUN LOOT, St. Patrick's day short story

And the events of LEPRECHAUN will lead into the beginning events of book 4, tentatively titled DRAGON DAYS OF SUMMER.

Enjoy my birthday, Peeps! Because I'll be at the kidlet's back-to-school night. Rah!

 

For Whom the Bell Trolls is LIVE!

***for my blog readers only***

TROLL will beFREE on July 24 for one day only!!

When I finally set a release day for TROLL, I knew I had to kick it into high gear to edit the darn thing. I might have written this story in 19 days, but it took almost 26 months until I was truly finished with it!

And I have to say that it was worth it. Out of all the stories, I've written this is the best one . . . yet.

I stayed up late last night doing one last read-thru before I uploaded it. I think I cut over 200 'that' words, added 76 missing words, and tweaked numerous confusing sentences.

With luck, I managed to fix most of the piddly little typos. I spent hours formatting this story, bookmarking and hyperlinking the chapters, blah, blah, blah, and I thought it would take 24-48 hours to be approved or it would bounce back to me because of some mistake.

Well, I was wrong. It took less than 6 hours for Amazon to wave their magic wand.

Here's TROLL's Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008NZTA0A

If you are unsure about whether or not you want to buy the story, then click the picture on the Amazon page and read the first few chapters before you decide.

While you're on the page feel free to click the LIKE button or scroll down and add any 'tags' that you feel will help describe the book.

Oh, and FAERIE is still free today! Enjoy!

Thanks so much!

Amazon's KDP Select

Early in December 2011, Amazon rolled out their new program for authors--KDP Select. Enrolling into this program had a list of pros and cons, which each author needs to weigh before making a decision. If you are happy with your current sales and movement of your book, especially on the other online sites, then opting in to KDP Select might not be in your best interest.

My pros or cons might not be the same list as yours, but you do need to think things out depending on your sales and situation.

CONS:

• the author has to UNPUBLISH each book from the competition's sites, limiting sales to Amazon only
•  your book will be part of their Amazon Prime program that allows for indefinite 'lending' to customers

PROS:

• increased visibility
• ability to offer five (5) 'freebie' days within your three (3) month obligation
• small monetary percentage of all books lent to readers (the #'s they gave were seriously laughable to me, since my books haven't been generating ANY numbers worth mentioning).
• only one place to keep track of your work--trust me, it's time-consuming to hop all over the place promoting and checking your status

For me, it was a no-brainer, as I knew I would enroll one book in this program to see what happened to my sales. I had to do something to shake it up. I signed up and enrolled TO GNOME ME IS TO LOVE ME, book one in The Goblin's Apprentice series.

I check my Amazon stats about every day or two, and usually there is very little change, but for some reason on December 19th, I already had 63 downloads. I had totally forgotten about using my freebies pre-Christmas! GNOME went as high as #4 for Children's free Kindle downloads, with very little effort on my part. I posted a few FB notices and I had a friend retweet the freebie deal, and that's it.

Here are a few observations:

•  By day two/three, the downloads had peaked with 1200 for North America and 300 from Amazon UK. I took the rest of the freebie days and used them after Christmas. There was a little movement, but not much. Don't offer your book for more than 3 days at a time.
• Though I had 'given' GNOME away, Amazon still gave me a little bit of $$, okay, a lot of money compared to the previous $ I earned. Not enough to break even, but enough to give me hope.
• My overall Amazon ranking went from #263,483 to #53,628 (1/16/12). After the freebies, my ranking sat around #6,000 for a couple of weeks.

I tend to download quite a few books to my Kindle and then spend 6 months reading before I look for books again, so I didn't expect to see a trickle down effect from the freebies for at least 4-6 months. I've already seen a little movement in my sales. Still not many, but in the first two weeks of January, I sold more books than I did in Oct. AND Nov.

 Will I enroll the rest of my books?

I really don't know. If I do, I'll wait until my three months obligation is up with GNOME before I pursue the option.

As I mentioned before, every author has to weigh the pros and cons before committing to this program. I'll keep you updated if something interesting happens.

Later, peeps!

FREE BOOK!!

Now is the time to take advantage of FREE downloads for your Christmas Kindles! Only two days this time, and time's a-flying! *tick-tock, tick-tock*

Good for only until MIDNIGHT PST DEC. 27th! Share the news with your friends and family, share the link, post the news on their Facebook walls! If you don't have a Kindle, then download the FREE Kindle App! Yes, this offer works for Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es, AND Amazon.it!

Merry Christmas, my friends! :-)

Dealing with book reviews, or lack of them

I must confess that I'm sorely remiss about posting reviews of my book because,

1) I don't google alert myself. I tried, but it was old information and boring, so why bother? I know there's a trick to it, but I'm not really THAT interested. I should be, but . . .

2) I don't stalk my reviewers--well, not anymore. Stupid restraining order . . .  Just kidding! Again, this is a time consuming process. Many reviewers won't review electronic books and/or self-published books. There aren't that many reviewers of children's books who still review. Many of their sites are defunct.

3) I don't look my books up on Amazon that often. I used look them up, but when there are days and days of no sales and no comments. Again, why bother? I don't need to depress myself--I need to write the next book! Oh, I'll check Kindle DTP every now and then, but won't check Barnes and Noble's PubIT or Smashwords. Why? Because it takes FOREVER to log in.

4) I've learned that even when promised a review, it doesn't happen 85% of the time for various reasons. Disappointing, but true. I offered a number of my stories on various kindle boards and had a few people jump on the chance to read a free book by an unknown author. One of these kind reviewers was JML. No, I didn't pay her/him. No, I don't know her/him.

My first Amazon review of FAERIE: . . . uhm, YAY!

5.0 out of 5 stars Fast and FAERIEous, May 20, 2011
By JML - See all my reviewsThis review is from: The Fast and the FAERIEous (The Goblin's Apprentice) (Kindle Edition)

The Fast and the FAERIEous is another spectacular book by M.A. Golla. Continuing the story from To Gnome Me is to Love Me, 11-year-old Kyte has to cope with the drama of 6th grade while learning about and interacting with faeries, water nymphs, goblins, and the rest of the Mythical beings. These books keep getting better.

I do have a prequel to #3 called, A MAZE OF MONSTER MIX-UPS, which is a Halloween inspired short story that I plan to publish by the end of September.

I plan to publish The Goblin's Apprentice, book three, FOR WHOM THE BELL TROLLS, by the end of October.

AND I have another short story, SUGAR PLUM DISASTER, a Christmas inspired short story I will publish by the end of November.

So here's the dealio (guess which movie I stole borrowed this from?) I still need book reviews. I still need people to click, LIKE on my Amazon pages. I still need people to scroll down to the tags and agree with my tag cloud or add more tags. Tell your friends. Tell your family. Even if you aren't interested in reading this type of story, maybe you know someone who would be.

I will give away my books for any and all of these requests, BUT I want proof that you posted a review before I give away a free copy of book two, or Leprechaun.

And if you 'LIKE' my Facebook author page, you'll be the first to know when the other stories are up and I'll be giving away freebies through there.

That's it for today! Inspiration has struck and I'm writing The Goblin's Apprentice, book four, IT TROLLS FOR THEE.

Later, Peeps!

Taking a Leprechaun Leap

Well, I did it.

I made a foray into the world of self-publishing.  Yes, it made my brain hurt trying figure out all the stupid little formating things that I had to to and reading all the fine print of the contracts.  I don't even want to think how much my head would have hurt trying to clean up a full novel--ugh!  All I had was a simple 5500 word chapter book story, or short story, which wouldn't have seen the light of day any other way, I might add!

Anyhoo, I want to thank all the people who helped me along the way. I'll blog about my story when it becomes available.  Right now, it's in the hands of Amazon and Smashwords for them to do their 'magic'.

But I have to give Laura Morrigan a shoutout for my incredible cover:

Don't you just LOVE the dragon's eyes!  I know I do.

Later, Peeps!