Join the Insatiable Reads Hot Summer Romance Giveaway Hop!

This summer is going to be HOT!

The Insatiable Reads Book Tour is sponsoring the HOT SUMMER ROMANCE GIVEAWAY HOP from July 18-21, and if you’re an author, I suggest you sign up. Blog hops, unlike blog tours, are easy–there’s little effort on the part of the author, no long blog posts, just sign up, grab the graphic, and plan a giveaway. Easy peasy! Readers love free stuff (I know, cuz I’m a reader!) so there’s a great incentive for them to go on the hop and enter all the blog hop giveaways. And while they’re on your site, they’ll check out your books, and if they find something they like, who knows, they just might buy it!

As a reader I love blog hops because, hello!? Free stuff! But as an author I love them for the same reason. I love giving away free stuff! It’s a win-win! And blog hops are a fantastic way to get new visitors to your blog and if we’re all out there fighting for visibility in the sea of available words, you have to love a promotion that brings writers together, and readers too. I’ve never been the most competitive writer in the world. Since Excessica’s inception, I’ve always been more about being inclusive, helping other writers, and letting the power of numbers buoy us all up to the top.

Blog hops are a great way to do that. So authors, go sign up! And readers, mark your calendars, because this summer is going to be HOT, HOT, HOT!

Selena Kitt

Erotic Fiction You Won’t Forget
www.selenakitt.com
LATEST RELEASE: The Dirty Show

Sophomore Effort a Go!

Dr. Cockburn's Medicine is for sale!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0060GBTEY/spea06-20#customerReviews

Please help me tag it - BDSM, bondage, married man, erotica, what else?  menage?  I don't know.

http://www.allromanceebooks.com/storeSearch.html

http://www.excessica.com/books/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6&products_id=469

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1104318398?ean=2940013225268&itm=1&usri=dr%2bcockburn27s%2bmedicine

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/99869

http://www.bookstrand.com/dr-cockburns-medicine

http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/b128669/Dr-Cockburns-Medicine/Mia-Natasha/?si=0

In paperback - http://www.amazon.com/Dr-Cockburns-Medicine-Mia-Natasha/dp/1466324562/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319896601&sr=1-2

Give It Away Now

I started out (or rather, restarted out) by posting stories up on amateur writing websites. Those stories (brushed up) feature in my short story collections. The originals can still be found on the internet. I thought about pulling them down, but I didn’t in the end.

For the past two months I’ve been running a little serial on my blog.

So, why am I doing this? Why am I essentially giving my work away for free?

It’s a fair argument. I could just as easily package up the serial I’m working on now as a novella and charge people 99¢ to read it.

And it could just as easily sit there on Amazon, unread, forever, even at 99¢.

I think sometimes people are too attached to the notion they must receive something from their writing for it to have value. The problem is value is determined by the market. If you’re nobody and nobody wants to read you because you’re nobody (and remember 99% of everything is crap), then your writing has no monetary value anyway.

I like try-before-u-buy. I like to give my readers try-before-u-buy. I think this is even more important for self-published work. There are still some deep-rooted prejudices against self-published work. If 99% of everything is crap, then everything with no quality control must be 99.9999% crap. The best way to counter this is to make sure there are plenty of samples of your work up and easily accessible for people to read. That way they can see how good it is for themselves.

It’s a little easier with short stories. People read the stories I have out on the internet, decide they want more and then go on to buy the books (which contain stories that can’t be found anywhere else).

I started the Locked in with a Succubus serial to drive traffic to my blog and find new readers. I don’t know if it’s actually resulted in more book sales, but it has doubled the number of visitors. Hopefully, some of them will like what they read enough to spend money on my books.

If you're unknown, you need to get known. You need to get people to read your work and get interested in what you're writing. I don't mind giving some of my stories away for free to achieve this.

M.E. Hydra

Double the fun, double the money

And the 17th sails by yet again.

In my defence, my second book, “A Succubus for Valentine’s Day and other tales of Perilous Pleasures”, came out on the eleventh of February and most of my attentions have been spent on hyping that. Or rather, quietly whispering it’s out there if any kind soul would be so good as to purchase a copy.

Here’s a simple tip. If you want to boost sales of your first book, write a second. January was largely dead for my first book, which was a little unfortunate as this is the time of year most people load up the shiny new kindles they received as Christmas presents. Then my second book came out and the first suddenly started to pick up sales again.

Actually, the first book started to pick up sales even before the second came out. I think this might have been because I spent the two weeks leading up to the second book’s release putting excerpts from the new stories up on my blog. In building up interest for the second book, I also built up interest in the first book for anyone that missed it first time around. This was very encouraging. I’ll do the same for my third book when that comes out later this year.

Also encouraging was to see both books come up in each other’s ‘Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought’ lists. That means someone liked them enough to go back for the second. Always a good start for anyone hoping to have a lengthy writing career.

Damn, I still have to work harder at the whole making them run away screaming thing.

I’m still in the bits’n’pieces section of Amazon’s rankings. That’s fine. I wasn’t intending on quitting the day job for some time anyway. I’m thinking long term. Maybe it will pan out, maybe it won’t. Doesn’t really matter so long as I still enjoy writing the stories.

M.E. Hydra

A Start

In a few days time I’ll be entering the next phase of my writing adventure. On Friday my first book, “A Succubus for Christmas and other tales of Devilish Delights”, will come out from eXcessica. In one respect it’s the finishing line of a long-cherished dream, in another it’s only the beginning. Now I have to sell it...

This is the hard part. There are a lot of books out there and tons more being published all the time. Somehow I’ve got to get my book noticed amongst all those and then persuade YOU to part with your hard-earned cash to buy a copy. Some writers only get as far as selling to friends and family before drowning in the forgotten 1’s and 0’s of search result page #101. I don’t even have that to fall back on as my friends and family don’t know I write this kind of thing and I’m not about to tell them either!

It’s not all black. There are a couple of things which will work in my favour. I hope!

I’m not a completely unknown first-timer. Okay, I’m an almost completely unknown first-timer, but it’s still a start. For the last three years I’ve been writing and posting stories up on the internet at sites like Literotica. Some of these stories have picked up a lot of views. One of them placed in one of the regular contests. I’ve topped Lit’s All-Time list in the Erotic Horror category for the past year and a half.

Okay. I know, I know. In real life terms this is all small beans, amateur coupons, or whatever you want to call it. No matter, it’s getting my stories read. That’s the important thing—finding readers. I think of it as kind of like a new rock band touring their local pubs and clubs to build up a name. If people like what they read (and I know some have) then maybe they’ll buy the book (and I know some have said they will)

It’s a start.

The other thing going for me is I’m targeting a fairly unexploited niche and I know it fairly well. If you want to write about vampires, zombies or werewolves then you’d better roll up your sleeves and get ready to swing your elbows and bellow your lungs out to get noticed amongst the thousands of other people writing about vamps, brain-munchers and woofs.

I specialise in succubi. They’re familiar enough to be a recognisable horror trope, but they rarely show up in books or films, despite being popular in both computer games and Japanese anime/manga. I have more elbow room. It’s easier to get spotted by the web sites and forums that are interested in this kind of thing. These are the same places that potential new readers will stumble upon during random internet searches. So, getting this kind of write-up from possibly the most comprehensive information repository on succubi in media on the internet is fantastic word-of-mouth (thanks Tera!).

Will it translate to lots of sales?

I don’t know. I’m still a newbie at all this. There might be a very good reason why the niche is unexploited—there isn’t enough interest. I don’t know.

At the moment I’m trying to keep myself grounded. The book might only sell a few copies. Short story collections are traditionally hard sells.

I don’t care. It’s mine. It’s out there. I’m looking forward to the next stage of the adventure.

M.E. Hydra