FREE LOVE!

First Loves Blogfest hosted by Alex Cavanaugh
Ignore the date...

Maybe I'm taking my chillin' challenge for May too literally, keep missing deadlines. Here is one blogfest I meant to take part in, the First Loves Blogfest. My first loves are:

Movie:

I don't remember which movie I loved first, but I do remember the first one that made me cry:

Song/Singer:

After the Disney album of Bambi, I fell in love with the songs from this hunky dude. At 14 I swore I'd marry him! My friends thought it was creepy 'cause he was all like old and stuff. My first song I loved was Coward of the County - but the one below became one of my favourites.

First Book:

I was reading before I started school, so I can't even remember which book I loved first, but two stand out:

Still a favourite, and sits on display on a little shelf I have halfway up the stairs. 

But when I was eleven, I read this book (Mum had no idea what it was about until she saw the mini-series...)

First Love:

Ugh! This one's shameful to remember. Stephen Joseph Abbot - I met him when I first moved to the Gold Coast and I followed him around like a puppy. I would even ride my bike past his house at night and just watch the family interact through their window (oh oh, did I say too much?). I threw myself at his stonewash jeans and vinyl velcro shoes! I even wrote him 'anonymous' poetry (yeah, like who else would it be from?). Give him his due, although good old Abby was a bit sleazy with the girls, he only ever treated me like a little sister and saved my virtue many times. 

Now, let us never speak of it again!

This is my more current love interest, which is convenient, seeing as he's also my husband and father to my children... we met at the Department of Environment and on a work night out he sang a Kenny Rogers song to me... that'll do it!

But wait there's more...

This weak I had the privilege of being a RAOK recipient (Random Acts Of Kindness). I was gifted a critique from Lynda Young at WIP It.

To commemorate the release of their book The Emotion Thesaurus, Becca and Angela at The Bookshelf Muse are hosting a titanic Random Act of Kindness BLITZ. 

I tried to pick a candidate to pass this onto, I really did. But every time I'd visit one they seemed to already be 'RAOKed'. So I decided to dedicate this to anyone who would like it. And your gift?

If there is anyone out there who does not already have a copy of my book MY ZOMBIE DOG, then leave your email in a comment, and I'll send you the Kindle book FREE. Got a friend who'd like it? That's fine, send their email through and I'll send them one too. I'll leave this offer up until my next blog post goes up, so you have a day or two. If you don't like to show your email, you can just email it to me instead at charmaineclancy@gmail.com

And feel free to tweet and share this, I don't mind how many copies I give away :)

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F is for Free

F is for Fossil, the inspiration for the MY ZOMBIE DOG

If you've been following my blog, twitter or wireless telegraphs, you'll probably know I've release My Zombie Dog and have tried a few different promotions with this book. One of those promotions was the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) FREE day. For the three months that you sign your book solely to Kindle, you can elect up to five days to have your ebook available for FREE on Amazon. 

I have no concerns about trying different marketing/promotions with this book. It's my first release and I'm happy to learn from the experience for the next books coming out this year. I do have concerns sometimes about the bigger picture. I need to make sure the decisions I make are not positive for this one book but detrimental to the Indie ebook industry as a whole. 

My concern with free is an old philosophy I have, 'don't think you're doing your client/employer a favour by decreasing the cost of your service, in the end that is what they will think it is worth and will resent paying normal price'. I came across this article that made me worry that free, 99c, $1.99 ebooks are devaluing the book as a concept.

So what if my book is downloaded thousands of times, if it's free is that helping sales? Turns out it does. 

• Each time someone downloads my book it lifts in the rankings, bringing it to more people's attention. MY ZOMBIE DOG reached number 2 in children's free 'Spine-chilling Horror'.
• People download multiple books, so in future when someone is browsing a book, underneath it says Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought... and you increase the chance of your book showing up there.
• My book received a lot of tweets and sales at regular price spiked the next day. This was my second best day of sales since release.

As a customer, for me the novelty of free books is wearing off, I don't mind paying for books, in fact I prefer to. But obviously free is still popular with a lot of readers. Perhaps it will also result in more reviews which may help sales as well. 

I'm still investigating the affect of free on the Indie book industry, but here are two articles with varying opinions:

Are eBooks Too Cheap?

Using free ebooks as a marketing tool

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Why You Need Your Head Shot

MY ZOMBIE DOG has officially launched for the Kindle version and the paperback version will be along soon! To celebrate, you still have about 10 days to win a KINDLE! This is open international, so get your entry in! It's very easy, you can buy the book (love you!) or blog about the book or blog about this competition. You also get an extra entry for tweeting.

Go HERE to find the entry form. HURRY, ends 31st March (Aussie time).

Now about author head shots. Do you have one? Is it professional looking or some family pic that gets blurry if you try and make it any bigger than 5cent coin? It doesn't matter if you're published or not, you need to create an image that you want people to associate with you. 

If you can go and get a professional head shot, then good for you, but if you can get a professional look nowadays even with your iPhone.

Don't want a double chin? check out this professional photographer's advice on how to look your best in that head shot:

It's all about the Jaw from Peter Hurley on Vimeo.

Lighting is also important, outside is good, or use a floodlight shone up and towards you to light up your face. Most indoor lights hang from the ceiling so it tends to leave shadows under your nose and chin.

The smile? There's lots of different opinions, some people swear you need to show teeth and others prefer a more demure smile - you know which looks best on you. If you do go for the closed mouth smile, just part your lips ever-so-slightly so you can blow out a breath while smiling, this stops your lips from looking tense and your smile from looking fake.

My biggest weakness is getting bored with my pic. It's best to keep something familiar because it becomes branding. Here's a pic I had taken last year, now to get those books in the background I had to casually lean my arm on the fireplace shelf, which required squatting to be the right height!

But this is what I usually look like in photos (Zoe is a lap dog wannabe):

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WIN A KINDLE FIRE

March 1st is the big release date for MY ZOMBIE DOG and I'm promoting the book by giving away a free Kindle! (If the winner is a lucky US resident, they will win the Kindle Fire, for everywhere else the prize changes to a Kindle Keyboard 3G - due to Amazon shipping rules).

There's two ways to enter:

Buy MY ZOMBIE BOOK by clicking here and then fill in the entry form below. You will be asked for your receipt number from Amazon (it will be on the receipt Amazon email you - keep a copy of your receipt as proof of purchase if you win). Also, Tweet this competition with a link to this page and you get a second entry! You'll be asked for your tweet link, but if you're not sure how to do that, just use the hashtag #zombiedog in your tweet so it's easy to find.

or

Blog about this competition or about MY ZOMBIE DOG (you can review, talk about or interview) and then fill in the entry form below. You will be asked for your blog post link in the entry form. If you'd like an interview for your post, you can email me at charmaineclancy@gmail.com. Also, Tweet this competition with a link to this page and you get a second entry! You'll be asked for your tweet link, but if you're not sure how to do that, just use the hashtag #zombiedog in your tweet so it's easy to find.

Too easy! This competition runs from now until 31st March 2012.

You can only have one entry for blogging but if you blog and buy the book, you'll get two entries (plus another if you tweet about it!). Each entrant has the possibility of earning up to 3 entries.

Already own the Kindle Fire (I'm jealous!), it'd make a fantastic present to someone you love!

Why I'm doing this:

I love you guys and it's the blogasphere that has helped me to get serious about writing and learning the importance of a professional approach.

Also because of this book:

MY ZOMBIE DOG

On Zane’s 14th birthday he had to bury a dog. The next morning it’s in his room, tail wagging.

This is not the dog he wanted. No, Zane longed for a cool Collie or Shepard. Now he’s stuck with this scraggy, smelly undersized mutt. As if the dog wasn’t embarrassing enough, his mum wants to name it ‘Fluffy’. No way. Zane figures it dug itself out of the ground, so its name is Fossil. 

Fossil's a mean dog and will snap and bite at people... but why are those people bitten turning sluggish and craving strange food items like brains? Can Zane rid himself of this mutt and save his town from a zombie outbreak?

Now... Enter, and GOOD LUCK!

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