Archive for eBooks
ebook tips: Webinar by Emily Craven
Posted by: | CommentsI was re-familiarizing myself with Twitter today and found a great Blog if you’re considering writing an eBook.
Emily Craven’s, The E-book Revolution offers a lot of info to read through and if it’s as good as her webinar you won’t want to miss it! I have listened to the whole 70 min webinar and think it is amazing. It is entitled: 5 Fast Simple Secrets to eBook Success. Sign up for it right at the top of her website.
Emily is both intelligent and educated and obviously loves her subject. She gives a ton of good info, tips and links too so have a notepad ready. She is enthusiastic and very quick in her presentation … you have to pay attention. I think her audience will also be hyped by listening to her, I certainly was and she gave me many ideas. She also gives writing and editing tips and interesting suggestions that work for any type of writing/book and not just for ebooks.
I can’t say enough about Emily’s fantastic job here and I am so glad I happened on her website by accident. I only wish I had discovered her info when Robert and I first started out! (In actuality most of this info was not in existence, so there you have it … merely a pipe dream!)
There is one downside of all this that may bother a few people, although in all fairness it should not with all the FREE info she gives out. Emily does try to sell you a program at the end but it was very reasonably priced and I may have gone for it if it was still available. However, she gives the names of the presenters which you could lookup and get info direct from their websites if you are interested enough.
Anyway, good luck and enjoy Emily’s webinar. You will be glad you did.
Books, eBooks and Links
Posted by: | CommentsHere are some interesting book links I found recently. I haven’t checked them out thoroughly so make up your own mind on their value!
New York Times – Jacketcopy Blog
It has an interesting survey of ebook readers and Kobo was ahead of Kindle. Way to go Canada!
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BookGlutton – share your opinions with other book readers
Writer’s Digest – always a popular favourite
Auxilary Memory – a blog entry about online bookclubs and cataloguing your own library.
… and, of course …
Goodreads – an Amazon affiliate where you can vote on our books!
Ebooks are here to stay!
Posted by: | CommentsNow halfway through our 2011 Christmas Craft Show season, I can safely say that ebooks are here to stay … I actually love them myself and who would have thought!!
We are getting so many requests as to whether our books are available on ebooks (they haven’t had time to read our info sheet yet) or they have noticed it and comment that they will definitely be buying them on Kindle, Kobo, Sony, iPad or their Smartphone. So many options now. I’ve also been able to adjust Robert’s thinking that this is a good thing … except for one thing – we have lots of books in the basement to sell so we’re a long way from switching totally to technology!
With so many books and so many readers that live at a distance from us in the Pacific Northwest in British Columbia, this is definitely the way to go. From our sales reports and the cheques coming in, I know how popular eReaders are first hand. If we can get readers to purchase many books instead of just one (due to their meeting us at a local market then not purchasing again due to high shipping costs), we can only be winners.
A fantastic bonus of ebooks is the ability to make the print larger … far easier on the eyes than using a magnifying glass for those with vision issues. I demonstrate my Kobo’s varying font sizes at the shows and people are amazed. I think we should be selling ereaders too!!
The other bonus for us is that our books will be available to an international audience even when we can no longer sell our paper books at markets. Of course, we’ re hoping this day is a long time in the futu
re, but what do we know!
So please pass the word to all your ebook reading friends who love good historical novels, and we thank you 
Introducing our eBooks …
Posted by: | CommentsMoved from our “Books, Marketing and Self-Promotion” Blog … originally posted June 2011, now updated:
Great news! All our books are now available in ALL formats at Smashwords.com … in June we added Kindle to that site although they have been available at Amazon.com/kindle for a year now. So now we eagerly wait to see how they will be accepted … or if they are even found! We have put this off for many years waiting to see how ebooks would be received and also how secure they were from being copied … so this summer we took the plunge into the new revolution in book distribution.
Here’s an interesting tidbit of Amazon fair trade … if you’re Canadian and buy your Kindle ebooks direct from Kindle, you are not helping the author or publisher get their fair share. Amazon keeps half of the commission (35%) whereas if you are a US purchaser, the author/publisher gets 70% . We have Kindle books available at Smashwords if you wish to help us out!!
We recently had a free giveaway of one of our ebooks via our J Robert Whittle Fan Club page on Facebook . If you’d like to receive these special offers, go on over to our FanClub Page and join us. Don’t forget to set your FB notifications to receive emails.
In these tough times, we want our books to be available to the countless thousands of supporters who have been there for us in the past 12 years and to the other countless thousands who have heard about our books via media publicity and word of mouth … so if you like our books, now you don’t have to pay shipping or visit Victoria, BC to purchase them. Naturally, we’d love it even more if you decided to buy our paperback books through our website but hey, we understand!
Where can you find our ebooks?
Smashwords.com is a unique ebook provider for self-published authors and they work FOR the author (because the owner, Mike Coker, is an author and knows how tough it is for us). Also, Smashwords is presently in negotiations with Amazon and it’s now looking like ebooks in the Smashwords’ Kindle format will be available on Kindle at the end of 2011. This could be a benefit to both readers and authors but time will tell what happens as it could also be confusing.
I have now had my Kobo eReader since my birthday in March and absolutely love it. I was having some issues with it crashing and the WiFi not downloading my books, so they replaced it and allowed me to upgrade to the new model … the one with the touch screen. That happened in early June and I’ve read almost 5 complete novels since then. Not bad considering I haven’t read for my own pleasure since I started editing Robert’s books! I find I’m a much faster reader now which really shocked me!! A week ago, I bought my first Smartphone, a very new Samsung Android, Galaxy S2. So, now I have both Kobo and Kindle handy at all times.
I think I would rather read than work
If you read ebooks solely on your computer … I liked Adobe Digital Editions (ADE). I’m able to categorize my books into genres, purchased, etc.
If you’re a writer who is considering epublishing, I highly recommend Smashwords.com and the Facebook Group: Indie Author Group … a highly motivated group of authors and wannabees who share info and promote with and through like-minded souls. Come check it out.
So, thanks for visiting … and happy reading to all!!
Part 3: Can a self-published author (of fiction) succeed?
Posted by: | Comments
Yes, we made mistakes …
I have only just begun this new blog format on my own website which has been around for many years. I seem to feel a need to share with you my 13+ years worth of experiences, yes, including our mistakes! If this introduces more people to our books in the process then I am doing a good job. The bonus for readers (and us) it that with our books in ebook format, they are now more readily and cheaply available.
I have never joined author’s groups, although I have attended a few. Time has always seemed unavailable and they weren’t really my bag. People wanted to know what we had done to be so successful and although we did talk to groups in the early days, we found it took too much of our time. Besides, my husband was the only author in those early days, even though I had been a ‘writer’ since a teenager. I preferred to work alone and became the home-office workhorse. I end up sitting here day and night filling my time with ‘work’ of one sort or another and love it! A publisher’s life is filled with many things especially when they wear ALL the hats in the company!! So now, through this blog, I am trying to give back more than I have been able to in past years. Now, I trust you will pick up something useful …
Our 1st mistake was the title of our first book. Lizzie: Lethal Innocence … we didn’t think of all the connotations … who would have known so many people would think it was about Lizzie Borden. People make snap judgements without even thinking. It says on the cover the book is set in England and most people know Lizzie Borden lived in the USA. This made us realize we had to ‘talk up’ our books like crazy if we were to get the correct info out there. We even considered changing the title before the next printing but the cover and title were already well known and we still felt it was a good title! Lizzie was ‘lethal’ because she was so smart, as they would find out soon enough, and she was ‘innocence’ because she was so young.
Yes, the word ‘lethal’ compounded this misconception and made people think the book was about violence. How wrong they were and we knew we had to try to explain it quickly to people or we wouldn’t sell many more books beyond the first 500. It worked … but it was very time consuming being at markets, taking Robert away from his writing and me away from editing and office work. So after a few seasons we got into a rhythm and simply made it work for us.
Our 2nd mistake was getting too confident and ordering too many copies!!! Sales were going along so great in those first years that we ordered another print run in 2004. The second and third books, Lizzie’s Secret Angels and Streets of Hope, were doing well and I was editing the fourth and final book.
The problem began when we started writing about local history and readers now had a choice. Now the majority of readers were opting for the Victoria Chronicles’ book, Bound by Loyalty, instead of Lizzie. We still have many boxes of the first three books in our basement. I didn’t order as many for book four, thankfully. Lizzie sales have actually been picking up again in 2011/11 as readers discover how much they like Robert’s style.
Check out our Book SPECIALS Page and get the whole set of 4 Lizzie books for the price of 3!! You could also do what many people are now doing … order the ebooks. At least we do get a commission although it is somewhat smaller than with the paper copy. However, they are more desirous to order all 4 books once they have started the series!
So be very careful how many copies you order if you are doing POD (Print on Demand) or ordering large runs from a traditional printer (Friesens) like we did.
As self or indie publishing becomes even more popular due to ebooks, everyone seems to want to or is told they should ‘write a book’ so the competition has grown fierce. We continue as in the past with no plan to now stop in the near future. We now tell people of our exciting new option of ebooks at Amazon.kindle, Kobo.com, Sony.com, Smashwords.com (all formats) etc. If you want to help us out … especially if you are NOT a USA citizen, we actually get double the commission if Kindle books are purchased through Smashwords! Thanks.
We’re hoping Kindle will make some changes to their format (so other ereaders (kobos, ipods, ipads etc.) can ‘read’ kindle ebooks) and also to their payment standards for international authors, in the near future.
Family Novels by J. Robert Whittle
Posted by: | CommentsI seem to have been forgetting that my focus here is to sell books, so this post is for you if you haven’t discovered our fabulous books, which are amazingly read by all ages. Now, you might say that is a rather unique idea … novels that can be read by old and young alike, when did that last happen
? Well, there once were the classics which are making a comeback due to ebooks. I think our series will be classics one day, especially Lizzie.
A few years ago the idea caught on again and someone came up with the unique slogan “family-friendly” books and movies. We were ahead of our time we found, but we made a success of it beginning in 1998. We have 3 Canadian Bestsellers and 2 Gold-Medal IPPY winners and many thousands of copies/per book (paper) sales to show for it.
Our novels keep almost everyone entranced save for a few people who require blood to be running in the street and children being molested to keep their interest. The oldies (parents/teachers and older) are extremely happy with our stories as they have NO sex, NO gratuitous violence and NO swearing (in Victoria Chronicles); only 1800′s-style sailors’ cursing in Lizzie Series, and certainly no horrid ‘modern’ cursing in any of them.
My husband has a remarkable imagination but he doesn’t swear so why should he add it to his books? (My first husband only cursed when he watched hockey on TV but this husband doesn’t watch much hockey, thank goodness! I warned him I would divorce him if he did!!) He comes from a family of 10 kids and he was the oldest guy. So, for the record, Robert also hates hearing news of terrible things happening to kids, hence he doesn’t write in that style either.
You just have to experience one of his books to see how great they are (that’s what our fans say in their reviews) … and they are now available as ebooks, so no excuse not to be able to find them or afford them anymore!!
Play fair with your book reviews
Posted by: | CommentsI’m steaming with frustration … why? … because of a person who wrote a ’1 Star,’ obviously negative review, about one of our books … but then, was it really a negative review?! If not, why is it only 1 Star? You decide. Now that I have my own blog, on my own website, I think I am entitled to post my own opinion!!
This person starts her review with … “Started off really well, but the main problem I had was with the Lead Character” … she goes on to say that nothing bad/negative happens to this character clarifying later that it is after a certain point in the story. Perhaps she isn’t aware that some people don’t buck the system and are positive thinkers especially when they’ve already had some rough experiences. I would have hoped that she would have given the rest of the series (only 2 more books) an opportunity to change her mind before possibly damaging our reputation.
I appreciate the other reviewers who have added their more kinder comments by way of trying to negate the other with a higher number of ‘stars.’ If a reader wishes to read a book where horrid things happen to the characters … THEN FIND ANOTHER AUTHOR, Robert is not for you!
You have to appreciate our books for the stories of the characters, not the bad things that happen to them (and yes, there are bad/challenging events which do take place in our books). Robert writes adventure novels though, not horror stories.
I suppose this reviewer will judge all our books by her misguided opinion of one book and never try another of our 10 novels! Oh well, you can’t win them all and thank goodness we have thousands of fans that love our books. I can’t help but wonder if she even paid for this book (we recently had a promo giveaway).
Does this person realize, or even care, how much damage she can do by writing such a review? I wonder how many readers have/will pass up our books because of this review? I felt she could have at least given us ’3 stars’ seeing as she admitted she liked it at first … and after all she was only complaining about one character. Dare I surmise that she might possibly have enjoyed the other characters and their stories (many of which are true) but didn’t bother to mention that in her critique!
I happen to know that fortunately there are still a large number of readers out there who like to read about a variety of characters, some of them ‘nice,’ or this series and, our books in general, couldn’t have been so popular. Just because a large portion of the characters and, all of the history, locations, events and businesses are real, this series is still fiction.
Yes, we’re on eBooks!
Posted by: | CommentsThis post has been copied from the Newsletter Page on our main website at www.bestsellingbooks.ca
HOT NEWS!! EBOOKS … EBOOKS … yes, ALL OUR books are available as ebooks at Amazon/Kindle (USA, UK and Germany) and Smashwords.com (includes Kindle but here they are DRM free). Also available at your favourite ebook store (Kobo, Sony, iPad etc.).
Yes, the big news in books these days are eBooks and we are continually being asked if our books are available as eBooks. The answer is YES and we are seeing ebook sales increasing every month, especially via Kindle! The wonderful part is that readers are now able to afford to purchase more than one book … our ebooks are all under $8 and sometimes we offer specials through Smashwords and our 
Facebook FanClub page.
Formatting all our books for eReaders was Joyce and Tara’s project for 2010/11 and we’re happy to announce Kindle and Smashwords have them all. Smashwords has more up-to-date files as Joyce reads them again herself and tweaks those minor errors that are now easier/less costly to correct than on a printed book.
A TIP: unless you want to miss some of our news and future ebook specials, you must join the J Robert Whittle Fan Club
* A note on Kindle purchases … GREAT NEWS … Kindle is now giving us full commission for all purchases from Canada and UK … as Amazon bows to pressure from International authors, we are thrilled to be able to make it easier for our Kindle customers!
I have owned my own KOBO ebook Reader (Chapters Brand) since March ’11 so I can speak from experience on this subject. I simply love my Kobo, but it did have some issues early on and I was thankfully able to replace it with the new Kobo Touch which arrived in June. It’s a lot easier to read in bed now (no heavy books) and so easy to turn the page (you touch it very lightly). I even have several books on the go at the same time for the first time in my life. I have now read 3 novels which I would never have done by carrying a book around with me!
I never waste time in a doctor’s office etc. anymore … it’s great!
Everything about the New Kobo Touch is superior to the earlier model. They have done a great job. I rarely get time during the day to read, but I have everything from novels (our own included which I have never had time to re-read!), business books, motivational books etc., and with the Touch, it always leaves you the last 5 book covers to easily open next time you turn it on. It bookmarks your page so it opens to that page when you open each book.
This is also the solution for LARGE PRINT … people are discovering eReaders due to their ability to enlarge the text size and change the font, making it just right for people who previously needed large print books (I make mine larger too). So much easier to hold instead of a heavy book for my arthritic fingers.
Did You Know … you don’t have to own an eBook Reader … there are many FREE programs and Apps. available for computer, Smart Phones and iPods. One I recently discovered is Bookworm for all ePUB formats (not for Kindle). Kindle has their own FREE eReader. Adobe Digital Additions is great and free for ePub versions as well. I also recently found out about the iPod App for Kindle which a friend uses.
