PaperbackSwap.com

Here’s an icon you can use to sign up.

Paperback Swap

As an author, I don’t get royalties for used book sales.  For that reason, many authors think I’m crazy or disloyal to promote used book stores.  But I feel like it’s part of the game of exposure, getting your name out to as many readers as possible.  I’ve been known to try unfamiliar authors through my used book store or library myself.  But if I like them or if I’m attending a book signing, I do purchase the book new.  This is how a fan can truly show their support.  The sale of new novels is the only way that publishing houses have to gauge how popular an author is.  They pay that author royalties based on sales and use those figures to determine how many copies of the next book to print, where to focus their sales efforts and even whether or not to publish another book by that author!

So please, please support your favorite authors by buying their books new from your book store whenever you can.

If you’d like to add to your reading pile or share your own pile, here’s a site I’ve found that is super!  www.paperbackswap.com.  It’s a database of thousands of readers just like you with overflowing shelves.  You get points for books you send others then use those points to get books from others.  Not just paperbacks, but hardbacks and texts, fiction and non-fiction.  I’ve had lots of fun with this site. 

Now if you DO sign up… I’d love for you to put me down as your reference because I get credits for that too!

The Explosion in E-publishing

Have you read an ebook lately? I recently bought Chella’s Quest by Laura Bacchi, Kissing Casanova by Crystal B. Bright, Love and Magic, by Shara Lanel & Trista Ann Michaels.  Fine books by fine writers.   To feed your writing craving there are plenty of sources out there.  Try it sometime!

Here’s an article with more about e-publishing. E-publishing  The author argues that the E-pub phenomen may be getting out of hand.  Judge for yourself.

An Author’s Viewpoint of a Booksigning

http://www.aromancereview.com/columns/booksignings.phtml

 This article started me thinking. I hate booksignings. Or I should say, I hate sitting at a table behind my books looking lonely. Talking to fans, or even just interested people, is a lot of fun.  Once I did a joint signing with a couple of writing buddies Denise Johnson and Donna Schmidt . That was fun since we could chat with each other when the signing was slow. I also benefited because I’m shy but Denise is outgoing and drew visitors for Donna and me both. But since I don’t really sell that many books during a signing, I get the feeling that I’d do better to spend my time writing.  I learned of the drive-by signing from fellow author Judi McCoy.  You simply give the store manager a call, then you stop in the store and sign all the books they have in inventory. Now that’s my kind of signing! No nervousness, no dressing up, no waiting for the next sale.  I’m sure I’ll have to do many more book-signings in my writing career, but I’m sure I’ll continue to see them as a mixed blessing.

The book and author that influenced my writing the most

I’m going to call my biggest influence Jayne Anne Krentz in all her aliases, Stephanie James, Amanda Quick, Jayne Castle. I love the bubbly romantic enthusiasm. The heroes start to seem the same after awhile but that’s a small price to pay.  Her research doesn’t weigh the story down but teaches as well as entertains and sets the mood.  For a quick satisfying read, she’s the one I turn too.  I learned from her how to pump up the man-woman sparks to intrigue the reader.  She taught me it’s not necessarily about the sex as it is about the attraction. The longer you can keep them hot and apart, the more your story is going to sizzle.

 

I have some other authors that I’ve learned from and I’ll talk about them in a later post.