February 12, 2012

Self-publishing my novel as an ebook (4) Details details details

Getting to grips with the marketing thing means letting people know the book is available, how to get it, and encouraging them to buy and read it. I tend to focus on the first two, and have a ‘handout’ in both electronic and printout form that I am distributing. Here it is:


Where the HeArt is by Pat Rosier
Published: Jan. 22, 2012 Price: 4.95USD
Blurb
Will travel fix Ann's broken life? Suddenly bereft of both partner and job, Ann needs to find a new direction. Connecting frayed threads of family and finding herself in what she calls "art events" in America is rewarding, but no preparation for the totally unexpected—in more ways than one—things that happen in London. Ann returns home to New Zealand both shaken and stirred.
Extended description
It was her mother's idea that forty-year-old Ann should go traveling. Ann's parter has walked out and she's been made redundant from a university job she enjoys, teaching the Romantic poets. She can combine her love of art museums with visits to family members in Washington DC, New York and London, mending frayed connections. A final few family-free days in Paris will round off her trip. Travel will give her a break from well-meaning advice and a chance to think about future directions for her fractured life. After all, she has a willing father to take care of the sale of her once-shared house, and the dog was always more her partner's.
Unexpected "art events" begin in New York, where her experience of the art works she admires take on a whole new dimension. In London, Ann finds that her cousin's competent wife could actually use some help with two-year-old twins, so she extends her stay and her knowledge of young children. A decidedly non-familial encounter with a dynamic librarian in London and an impetuous mistake in Paris mean that Ann returns to New Zealand and her future both shaken and stirred.
For sale for 4.95 US Dollars as an ebook on both the smashwords site and the kindle site. The URLs are:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/125647
This is the Smashwords site, where you can get versions for all different kinds of readers, (including Kindle) including a pdf for your computer if you want. One purchase gets all versions.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0073O5DVC
This is the Kindle site itself. You can buy it here, but only the Kindle version.

I’m keeping a log of what I am doing to get the news out about the book, both to avoid repeating myself and for future reference should I do this again. I trawl around the internet looking for likely places to announce it. Each place I approach, usually by email, wants something different and has a different way of doing things. It can take a LOT of time with, I suspect, little return.

I have discovered that (in New Zealand) you can get ISBN numbers for self-published ebooks from the National Library, just as you do for print books. They issued me with separate numbers for pdf, mobi and epub versions. It costs nothing and makes books findable. They also operate legal deposit for ebooks, so have sent mine in.

Nielson book data is another place to make books findable, and I am awaiting a reply from them regarding whether they list ebooks.

I’m not writing anything new while all this is filling my mind.

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