The Gemstone Chronicles

Sorry I’m a little bit behind on my posts. Been a crazy couple of weeks! And the crazy weeks started with Suwanee Fest 2016!

Suwanee Fest? What’s Suwanee Fest? Well, as many of you know, I live just north of Atlanta, GA in Buford, GA. Just south of Buford is Suwanee, GA, Suwanee is a small city of about 18,000 people. Every year, the city hosts Suwanee Fest. The event website refers to the festival as “Two days of family, friends, food, and fun!” I can attest to the fact it was all of that!

Saturday:

There was a ton of entertainment (including my favorite Who’s Bad – The Ultimate Michael Jackson Tribute Band), great food, almost too many amazing exhibitors to count, and The Gemstone Chronicles!

Yep, I was there with books in hand to meet and greet new friends and readers of the series. And it was a blast! Not only did I sell a few books, but I also met so many awesome people. I talked about gemstones for hours, referred a few to my favorite gem hunting spot (Gold n’ Gems Grubbin’), and got to spend a couple of hours with my brother John and my niece Aidia. Overall, not a bad way to spend a Saturday! Below is the picture of my booth before the fun began.

Book interest was at an all-time high, and my editor extraordinaire Abby (who doubles as the City of Suwanee Public Information Officer) tried to stop by a few times to say hello. Every time she tried to stop by, though, I was interacting with new friends! Like I said, not a bad way to spend a Saturday!!

Sunday:

Unfortunately, Sunday was not the best day. Despite the great entertainment, the rains came and wouldn’t go away! Nonetheless, The Gemstone Chronicles staffed the booth in hopes of meeting more new friends. Alas, it wasn’t to be as the rains kept visitors away. On the plus side, though, John came by (and helped me pack up during one of the few breaks in the rain) and I had the chance to talk with Abby for a few minutes.

Suwanee Fest 2016 was a great event and I hope to attend again next year! If I met you, sold you a book (or 4), gave you a gemstone, or simply talked about gemstones, thanks for stopping by the booth! I truly appreciate each and every person who took time out of their celebration to visit with me and buy a book. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! If we did interact, and you have my contact information, give me a shout and let me know.

Connect with me:

In case you didn’t pick up a card or a bookmark, you can connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads. You can also email me here at bill@williamlstuart.com!

If you recall, a few months ago I did a post about some new (at least to me) marketing opportunities I had discovered. One of those was IndieBRAG and the BRAG medallion. BRAG is an acronym for Book Readers Appreciation Group and the organization brings together readers and book club members from across the United States and ten other countries to evaluate submissions of Indie books. I submitted The Gemstone Chronicles Book One: The Carnelian for consideration. The criteria for the BRAG medallion includes:

• Plot
• Writing Style
• Characters
• Copying editing
• Dialogue
• Cover/interior layout

According to their website, about 50% of books submitted are rejected in the initial screening, with another 40% being rejected during the review process. Only about 10% of the books submitted receive a BRAG medallion. Well, guess what? The Carnelian was awarded a medallion!

When I received the email announcing the award, I was chuffed (to use one of my Irish writer friends favorite terms)! And, they sent me files so I can add the medallion to my books covers! How cool!!

One of the other perks of being a recipient of a BRAG medallion is that I can submit my book to Awesome Indies as a pre-qualified submission. This opens up another avenue to get my book(s) noticed! I have to wait until early October to submit, and it may take a fair amount of time to get a response. And I will be sure to update everyone on that progress, too!

I hope my successful submission will encourage other Indie authors to submit their works to IndieBRAG and take a chance on getting their own BRAG medallion!

Have you submitted your book to IndieBRAG? If not, what are you waiting for? If so, let me know how you progress!

Connect with me:

I think that is enough BRAGging for now. If you want to connect with me, I’m on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, or just email me at bill@williamlstuart.com. I look forward to interacting with all of my new connections (and friends)!

I have been posting information about my promos and marketing efforts and promised I would provide some updates on results. I mentioned in an earlier post about two opportunities that I decided to try. Here are the results!

ebookdiscovery:

I submitted my first book to ebookdiscovery.com and it was featured in their Read & Review Club ezine on July 14th. They limited the downloads to 50. The goal of this promotion was to get the book into readers’ hands and generate some reviews. I have received a few new reviews (now up to 25 for The Carnelian with a 4.3 average Star rating on Amazon), and I am waiting on the stats to see how many copies were downloaded and perhaps where the reviews were posted.

ereadernewstoday:

My second promotional effort was at ereadernewstdoday.com. I ran a special price of $0.99 for the first two weeks of August to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of The Carnelian and ran a promo at ENT for August 7th. The results were quite nice! For the month of August on Amazon, I sold a total of 84 books, which is about 4 times my normal sales. Most of them were The Carnelian during the special price, but I sold the others at full price. A very big thank you to all you readers out there who bought the books!! Below is the breakdown of my August Amazon sales:

•  The Carnelian – 67 downloads
• The Amethyst – 7 downloads
• The Emerald –  6 downloads
• The Ruby – 4 downloads

The buzz generated in August has carried over into September, too! As of September 4, I have sold additional copies of both The Amethyst and The Emerald.

ENT was a great promo for me, and I will use them again in the future!

Book Barbarian:

Another opportunity for me will be Book Barbarian. This service focuses on fantasy and science fiction books, and my promo will run on September 10, 2015. The Carnelian will be on sale for that one day for $1.49 (half price), so we will see how well it does! I will provide an update after the promotion runs.

And some exciting news to share, too! I decided to explore audiobooks (as I mentioned in my post about what I have gleaned from the Atlanta Writers Club) and have found a producer for The Carnelian! I will have the first 15 minute segment by September 7th and should have the entire book by mid-October. Stay tuned for more updates!

Finally, if you recall from my shameless self promotion post, I have evidence that at least 2 people saw the magnet sign on the back of my truck and bought books because of it! I thought that was very cool!!

Connect with me:

As always, you can connect with me on social media at Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads, or just email me at bill@williamlstuart.com. If you don’t want to miss a post, please subscribe to the blog!

As many of my readers know, I joined the Atlanta Writers Club early this year. I have been attending the monthly meetings regularly and I have learned a ton! Each month we have a couple of guest speakers and a member minute. I try to listen closely and take notes at each session so I can take advantage of the knowledge and experience these authors are sharing.

Ignore the “voices:”

Here are a couple of interesting tidbits from some of the meetings. I realize that many of you may already know these things, but they were new and exciting to me. Patti Callahan Henry was one of the speakers at our last meeting and here was a great takeaway for me. How do you separate from the “voices” in your head that impede your writing progress?

What Patti explained was that each of us as writers have influences in our lives that impact our stories. For instance, what if you’re writing a war scene and soldiers are fighting in hand-to-hand combat and you have to drop the F word as part of the action? And all the time you are thinking that your mother, grandmother, or preacher might read the book. So, you take it out and then put it back in and repeat the cycle. The advice given was to be true to your characters and use the word. As a writer, I understand the dilemma, and as a reader, I would rather have the characters act as they should. In short, I agree with the advice (sorry Mom).

Audiobooks:

Another interesting topic from the meeting was audiobooks. We had a representative from ListenUp Audiobooks in Atlanta give us a presentation on the process of creating an audiobook. Fascinating stuff and so much to learn about how to create my own audiobook for The Gemstone Chronicles! Inspired by the discussion, I consulted some of my author friends to see what experiences they had with their own audiobooks and decided to go for it. I just sent out my request for auditions on ACX and I hope to start hearing narrators reading The Carnelian in the next few days. I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am to hear it!

Other perks as a member of the Atlanta Writers Club include the opportunity to interact with agents and editors at twice yearly writer conferences, interact with the other authors who are members of the club, and have many other chances to pick the brains of talented writers from multiple genres. As a relatively new writer, these are golden opportunities to learn and grow as a writer!

This is a small sampling of what I have learned. I know I’ll continue to learn more as I attend upcoming meetings. If you are an author, what writers club(s) do you belong to and what new things have they taught you? If you’re a reader, do you go to writers club meetings to discover new authors and their works? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Connect with me:

If you want to connect with me, I can be found on Twitter, Facebook, and, Goodreads, or just email me at bill@williamlstuart.com. As always, new friends, shares, and comments are welcome!

The Gemstone Chronicles – 3 years old!!

It’s sometimes hard to believe, but almost 3 years ago, I published the first book of The Gemstone Chronicles! That’s right, The Carnelian was published on August 12, 2012. What a day it was! I remember the excitement, happiness, and sense of accomplishment that accompanied hitting the publish button on Amazon. Just as clearly, I remember how nervous I was. I mean, here I was, a person who never really had a goal of becoming a writer and now I was about to put my first novel out there for public consumption. What if it flopped? How will I handle bad reviews? These and many other questions floated through my mind as I uploaded the manuscript. As I celebrate that event from 3 years ago, I wanted to give you readers an update on how things have gone!

How have the books done?

Let me start by saying that I doubt I will ever be able to retire from the proceeds of book sales. Remember, too, that I didn’t write the books to become a bestselling author (although if it happens, I’m fine with it). I wrote the books as stories for my two amazing grandchildren, so any financial gains from them are simply a bonus. However, if I look at how much I spent to have a cover designed, and how much I paid my awesome editor, and then compare it to the book sales (for all four of the books in the series), I’ve just about broken even. Not bad!

In addition to The Carnelian, I also published Book Two: The Amethyst, Book Three: The Emerald, and Book Four: The Ruby. I’ve made a few changes to the covers, and made some edits to the manuscripts based on feedback from my readers. Such is the advantage of being a self-published author – I have complete control over my content.

What did I learn?

I have learned to do better marketing, made some amazing friends (both authors and readers), and have grown my social media presence. I’ve always enjoyed reading and now post reviews for most of the books I read. I didn’t do that until I became an author and realized the importance of doing reviews. I joined the Atlanta Writers Club and have learned a ton just from listening to the guest speakers. I’ve been fortunate to attend literary festivals, book signings, and was recently recognized by a reader (which was very cool and totally unexpected). I also started this blog at about the same time and I hope it continues to entertain readers. I even tried my hand at a book trailer!

That’s has what has been going on with me and my books for the last 3 years. I’m working on a new book (though it is going slowly). It will be completely different from The Gemstone Chronicles. Stay tuned for updates as it progresses.

Connect with me:

What was your favorite part of The Gemstone Chronicles Book One: The Carnelian? Which character did you like best? You can comment here, or find me on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads, or simply email me at bill@williamlstuart.com.

Oh, and to celebrate the events from 3 years ago and to give deep and heartfelt thanks to those of you who have read the book (and thanks in advance to those who will), The Carnelian is on sale for $0.99 from August 1 – August 15, 2015! Get your copy and consider leaving a review. I love to know what you are thinking!!

If you recall from my last post, I listed a couple of new promo sites I found (ebookdiscovery.com and TheBooksMachine.com) and talked about the magnetic sign I was ordering for my truck. Well, the sign arrived yesterday and I am very pleased with how it looks! Time for shameless self promotion!

I’m even more please by how it looks on my truck’s tailgate! Here goes the shameless self promotion!

I placed the sign in the middle of the tailgate and it almost blends in with the truck paint. I like the look of it!

Shameless:

Yes, I know that I’m going to be accused of shameless self promotion for riding around Atlanta with a sign promoting my books on the back of the truck, but I’m okay with it. After all, it really isn’t any different from a lawn service or other business advertising their business or service on their vehicles. And, as an Indie author, I don’t have publicists or other such folks doing this kind of work for me. When it comes to marketing and promotion, I’m about all I have and I have to do it on a slim budget.

I ordered my sign online and it cost about $25 for a 12 x 18 magnet (including shipping). I got it in a week or so. It was easy to do (especially since the lovely and adorable Lana did the design work for me). I took the .jpg Lana designed and scaled to the proper size, loaded it on the website (I used Vistaprint), and it was done. Easy!

Of course, I have no idea if this will work at all. I may simply be out $25. But, I figure that I pass (or get passed by) hundreds of vehicles every day to and from work and I can have the magnet attached every time I go to the mall, a bookstore, or even the hardware store. Readers are everywhere, and maybe one will take notice, read one of the books, and recommend it to others. If nothing else, I may get a few new friends on social media!

Connect with me:

Speaking of social media, if you want to connect with me, I can be found at any of the following: Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads, or you can email me at bill@williamlstuart.com. I welcome comments, shares, and other blogs to follow, so don’t be shy!

What do you think of my shameless self promotion idea of the magnetic sign for my truck? Too much? Not enough? Leave me a comment and let me know!