Just a few of the articles I’ve been reading recently.

This one is about cover art and gives more detail and is better all round than my article which you can re-read, or not, as you choose. They’ve used the latest Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as an example.  Their thinking is a little strange as the book is aimed at children and the cover art is aimed at adults but their logic isn’t too bad, sometimes you need to shock and I am certainly shocked. I don’t approve of dressing children as adults and you can see from the photo the child is very heavily dressed.

I’ve spoken about crowdfunding before and how much I love it. I’ve backed a few more things since then and have a lovely tea cup for Chinese tea and a mug for keeping my hot drink hot as well as music and ebooks. It’s always an exciting time receiving my reward as it generally happens some weeks or months after I put in my pledge and I’ve often forgotten. Julian Gough decided to look at crowdfunding to help fund his trip to Las Vegas for more research so he could finalise his book. It went beyond his thoughts (authors dream big) and instead of hoping for $1,500 he got $8,676. In return he needs to approach his doctor about removing some blood from his veins so he can write a postcard using this precious fluid, thank goodness he only had one backer for this but at $450 I’m not sure how many people would have the money. If Gough becomes famous then this written-in-blood postcard could potentially be worth a mint as there’s only one! He also has a large number of postcards he needs to put a bullet through and he intends to do each individually…that’s a lot of bullets.

I’ve put this next page in the Scriveners page as it’s really important. One day I’ll find the time to re-order and check the links on that page. Some of my thinking has changed dramatically since I wrote stuff and it needs to be fixed. Anyway, here’s what I wrote there:

Getting sales is sometimes a challenge and as you need to start marketing your book a couple of months before the release date having a pre-order function is an awesome idea. Kindle pre-order.

Sales are the life blood of every author, if you don’t get sales you don’t make money and you don’t feel good and therefore are less likely to write another book. If you can get sales happening before the book is even published then your marketing job is half done, once the book is sent to those keen readers, they’ll read it and hopefully recommend it. Lots of woot!