To Kindle Select or not to Kindle Select

That is the question many of us authors ask, myself included.  Do you put all your eggs in one basket?  Or do you spread yourself around a bit?  There are pros and cons for both.
Decisions, decisions.  Don't you just hate them?
This morning I woke up feeling good and decided I was going to do it.  Unpublish all my books from Smashwords, effectively withdrawing them from Apple iStore and Barnes and Noble.  I am going to sell my soul to Amazon.  What had put me off taking the plunge all these months, was the idea of giving a company the monopoly.  It just didn't seem right, morally wrong in way.  What right did they have to demand exclusivity of my creativity?
For over a year I have had my books on Amazon and all the Smashwords partners.  With Amazon I have sold close on 30 000 on Kindle.  Through Smashwords, a couple of thousand.  Where should my loyalty lie?
When my Kindle packed up this week, I contacted Amazon Customer Service on chat.  Within 2 minutes they offered to replace my Kindle at no cost to me.  They shipped the Kindle that same afternoon and it arrived the next morning.  That is five star service.  I thought I deserve to give them some loyalty in exchange, but pulling my books from Smashwords?  That's a large step.
Amazon uses categories to attract new readers to your books.  Readers who might not have found your books  by looking at only one category you might not initially have thought of.  Amazon also has a search inside feature and best of all, your book is advertised on the book pages of many other books with the 'Customers who bought also bought...'
Will this work for me?  Only time will tell.  Am holding thumbs that it will work for me.  So from now on Stop the world I need to pee; The Case of Billy B; Not Telling; Defective; Survival Tips for the Suddenly Single and C U @ 8 are exclusive to Amazon.

Home sweet home

After being an expat teacher for over 25 years, I really cherish the time to return home to Cape Town, South Africa during school holidays.  Nothing beats seeing family and old friends.  Not the exotic beaches in Thailand, delicious seafood in Goa or seeing Ankor Wat at sunset.  Once I set eyes on Table Mountain dominating the Cape Town skyline I know that I am home.
This time I returned home 2 weeks before the end of the school year.  I'd been experiencing worrisome health issues, the result of a local doctor trying to give me alternate meds to the ones prescribed by my Cape Town specialist with disasterous consequences.  It's taken 3 weeks but my specialist has been able to stabilise my blood pressure and pulse rate.  It's just my blood sugar levels that is still not right.  I know that it will come right in time.

Of course all this medical stuff puts one off track and makes you lose focus.  My writing was moved to the back-burner and marketing of my books became non-existent.  I think that's one of the hardest things about self-publishing.  You have to do your own marketing.  The downside of that is when you are sick nothing happens.  Everything grinds to a halt.  Loses momentum, and you have to pick up the pieces and start again.  Frustrating.  But being home, seeing my mountain, surrounded by love makes it all bearable.
Hush Baby is the novel I'm currently working on.  I think it is going to be a goodie and I'm planning a great twist at the end.
C U @ 8 has already received some good reviews and was my venture into the light-hearted fun side of life.  With Hush Baby I'll be venturing back into the dark side to uncover more of humankind's cruelty to each other and how people react and deal with those kinds of situations.  Defective, Not Telling and The Case of Billy B are all dark realistic fiction.  The kinds of books I love to read.

Book marketing tips

As an author there are different ways to market your books for free. Living in the wop-wops as I do, book signings are difficult, word of mouth works to a certain extent but won't have truckloads of your book rolling out the door. A virtual book tour is another great marketing tool and is more about generating a web presence rather than selling books.
There are so many books out there, you have to do what it takes to get yours noticed. Giveaways on Goodreads are an option and usually gets you a few reviews as well. Reviews are also a great way to get your book known. Have a friend with a blog interview you on their blog. Tweeting on Twitter and posting on Facebook helps make people aware of your book, but doesn't necessary make them leap up to buy it. Posting on blogs, writing articles online, and answering questions on sites like Quora.com all help put you and your book out there.
However, it's still not enough.
Joining groups on Linkedin, Kindleboards all help to build your author platform but by themselves do not generate major sales.
Bookmarks, business cards, posters in bookstores and setting up a table in your local shopping mall are all well and good if you live in a place geared for that kind of marketing. Some of us don't.
You can also make book trailers and post them on Youtube.
Freado.com is an awesome book marketing site that incorporated Bookbuzzr where people can play games where they have to memorise your book cover. They also have lots of other useful tools and widgets. I'm particularly fond of the book excerpt widget where the pages turn like a real book. They give you the code to embed on your webpage or blog.
Amazon have a nifty tool called an astore. You can join Amazon.com as an affiliate and set up an astore which contains your books. The instructions on how to do it are very simple to follow on the Amazon Affiliate's site. You then get code that you can embed on your blog or webpage and sales of your books on the astore will net you an affiliate fee and your normal royalty.
From all these marketing tips you can gather that it's best not to put all your eggs in one basket and use only one strategy like tweeting on Twitter. You have to spread yourself thin and do as many as possible to reach heaps of people.
Writing your book was the easy part. Marketing is where the real work comes in, and boy is it time-consuming! You'll find that with all the marketing you have to do you won't have much time left to work on your next masterpiece. If you are running a household and holding down a full-time job it gets even trickier. Time management is the key here. At the start of your week set yourself a small marketing task for each day. Don't try and do all the marketing strategies every day, you'll reach burn-out before you get a chance to sing God save the Queen. Small manageable chunks that are realistic. Don't bite off more than you can chew otherwise you'll get stressed, frustrated and be inclined to give up. You don't want to dry up those creative juices of yours, so factor in some quality writing time each week.
If you have any good marketing tips to share, please add them in the comments.
Have a good one!
Cindy