Indie Author: Kate M Colby

Indie Author: Kate M Colby

It’s Week 2 of the 2016 2K Blog Tour! Today’s guest is Kate Colby!

Scarborough Mysteries

Kate C photo Oct15Today, it is my great pleasure to welcome Kate M Colby who is co-hosting this indie blog tour with me. Since I first ‘met’ Kate on Facebook (was it? Or Twitter) last year, I have enjoyed her company, her good sense, her encouragement, and good advice on my own indie publishing journey. She is an author of science-fiction/fantasy novels and informative nonfiction. Her first series, Desertera, consists of steampunk dystopian novels with themes of socio-economic disparity, self-empowerment, romance, and revenge. She lives in the United States with her husband and furry children.

The Cogsmith’s Daughter (Desertera #1) In a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland, one king rules with absolute power and unquenchable lust, until the cogsmith’s daughter risks everything for vengeance.
Two-hundred years ago, the steam-powered world experienced an apocalyptic flood. When the waters dried up, the survivors settled around their steamship in a wasteland they named Desertera. Believing the flood…

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Indie Author: Ashley Capes

Indie Author: Ashley Capes

It’s Week 2 of the 2016 2K Blog Tour! Today’s guest is Ashley Capes!

Scarborough Mysteries

ashleypicBack for another week of our tour which I am co-hosting with the talented Kate M Colby, http://katemcolby.com, and today I am welcoming Ashley Capes, fantasy/magic realism writer, with his book, The Fairy Wren. Ashley is a poet, novelist and teacher living in Australia. He’s the author of six poetry collections and five novels and was poetry editor for Page Seventeen from issues 8-10. He also moderates online renku group Issa’s Snail. Ashley teaches English, Media and Music Production, has played in a metal band, worked in an art gallery and slaved away at music retail. Aside from reading and writing, Ashley loves volleyball and Studio Ghibli – and Magnum PI, easily one of the greatest television shows ever made.

The Fairy Wren:From the moment a fairy wren drops his lost wedding ring at his feet, Paul realises there’s more magic to the world than he thought…
When Paul…

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Celebrate the Small Things!

Celebrate the Small Things is a weekly celebration created by VikLit and now hosted by Lexa Cain to celebrate the happenings of the week, however small or large. You can learn all about it and sign up for it here. CelebrateSmallThings_Badge

It was -4 degrees (F.) this morning, and it’s supposed to be even colder over the weekend. Brrrrrrr! It sure feels like winter now. Celebrations this time around:

  1. We had a great time visiting my parents and watching the Super Bowl last weekend. And the team my Dad and I were rooting for won!
  2. I’ve “met” some interesting writers on the 2016 2K Indie Book Tour. The tour continues for the next two weeks with 8 more writers to meet!
  3. My daughter participated in a Poetry Out Loud competition at school. She had to stand up in front of a lot of people and recite a poem from memory. She didn’t win, but she did a great job! I was impressed and proud of her for doing it and going so far out of her comfort zone since she’s generally very quiet and shy.

What other celebrations are going on out there?

 

 

 

 

© Lori L. MacLaughlin and Writing, Reading, and the Pursuit of Dreams, 2016. All rights reserved.

Indie author of the day: Jackie Phillips

Indie author of the day: Jackie Phillips

For the next three weeks, I’ll be participating in the 2016 2K Blog Tour! Today, we meet Jackie Phillips!

Scarborough Mysteries

Jackie 2009We’ve gone through the first week of our indie book blog tour, which I am co-hosting with the talented Kate M Colby, http://katemcolby.com, and haven’t we had fun! Today is a writer who likes a mystery as much as I do, Jackie Phillips. JL Phillips is a dreamer. Now she is a writer of stories. Being a dreamer is nice but it’s not perfect until you put those dreams in writing and let other people see them. Here she introduces her book, A Case of Deceit:

Private investigator DeeDee Watson receives a desperate phone call from an old college roommate. Dee can’t turn down a plea for help from a friend, so, along with Tee, her trusty sidekick, she agrees to help. It doesn’t take long for Dee to find herself in the middle of something sinister. The more clues she finds the more she realizes all is not what…

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Author interview: Helen Jones

Author interview: Helen Jones

For the next three weeks, I’ll be participating in the 2016 2K Blog Tour! Today, we meet Helen Jones!

Scarborough Mysteries

Helen JonesHalf way through my leg of the indie blog tour, before I hand over to my colleague, Kate M Colby, http://katemcolby.com. Today I welcome fantasy writer, Helen Jones. She grew up in Coventry, England, then moved to Canada and Australia before coming back to the UK. She now lives in Hertfordshire and loves to write, dance, study and paint, seeking pathways beyond the everyday. She’s worked many jobs, from martial arts instructor to photography producer, but writing has turned out to be her absolute favourite one of all. She’s written for several publications and blogs in Australia and the UK. Oak and Mist is her debut novel:

‘The end of everything? Great, no pressure then.’
A young girl witnesses a strange event in the woods at her local park. Five years later, in the same place, she is attacked and pushed between two trees… then disappears. She reappears in…

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Author interview: Christina Ochs

Author interview: Christina Ochs

For the next three weeks, I’ll be participating in the 2016 2K Blog Tour! Today, we meet Christina Ochs!

Scarborough Mysteries

Christina2As we continue with our indie book blog tour (co-hosted with Kate M Colby, http://katemcolby.com) today I am very pleased to welcome historical-fantasy writer, Christina Ochs. She writes epic historical fantasy from the passenger seat of a semi truck. At any given time, she, her driver husband and their two cats – Phoenix and Nashville – can be found anywhere in the lower 48. With a bachelor’s degree in History and an MBA, Christina uses her writing to indulge her passion for reading and research. Publishing as an indie author provides an outlet for her entrepreneurial side and she is an avid supporter of fellow authors, both independent and traditionally published.

Rise of the Storm is the first book in the Desolate Empire series, a historical fantasy retelling of the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years War. It follows four main characters through the religious and political upheavals triggering…

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Author interview: Zach Chopchinski

Author interview: Zach Chopchinski

For the next three weeks, I’ll be participating in the 2016 2K Blog Tour! Today, we meet Zachary Paul Chopchinski!

Scarborough Mysteries

On the second day of our 2K international indie book blog tour 2016 (hosted by Kate M Colby http://katemcolby.com http://katemcolby.com & me, Kate Evans). I am delighted to welcome our first indie author for interview, Zach Chopchinski.

LLP_5958Zachary is 27 and lives in Florida with his lovely wife, Layla. The two of them share a home with their four fur-children. Zachary has degrees in Criminal Justice and Criminology. He had two short stories and a poem published by Ohio State University. Zachary has always had two passions in his life, criminal justice and writing. After spending nearly 5 years working in security, Zachary decided it was time to give his other passion a chance. Zachary is very much a family man and when he is not deep in writing, he can be found spending time with his family, playing video games or contemplating his next story idea.

He introduces his…

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Author interview: Kara Jorgensen

Author interview: Kara Jorgensen

For the next three weeks, I’ll be participating in the 2016 2K Blog Tour! Today, we meet Kara Jorgensen!

Scarborough Mysteries

It is time to kick off our 2K international indie book blog tour 2016 (hosted by Kate M Colby http://katemcolby.com http://katemcolby.com & me, Kate Evans). I am delighted to welcome our first indie author for interview, Kara Jorgensen.

KaraK picKara Jorgensen is an author of fiction and professional student from New Jersey who will probably die slumped over a Victorian novel. An anachronistic oddball from birth, she has always had an obsession with the Victorian era, especially the 1890s. Midway through a dissection in a college anatomy class, Kara realized her true passion was writing and decided to marry her love of literature and science through science fiction or, more specifically, steampunk. When she is not writing, she is watching period dramas, going to museums, or babying her beloved dogs.

Here she introduces her book,  The Earl and the Artificer (Ingenious Mechanical Devices #3), a historical fantasy novel.

What mysteries…

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Celebrate the Small Things!

Celebrate the Small Things is a weekly celebration created by VikLit and now hosted by Lexa Cain to celebrate the happenings of the week, however small or large. You can learn all about it and sign up for it here. CelebrateSmallThings_Badge

I can’t believe it’s February already! And I thought December went by fast. This week I’d like to celebrate:

  1. One of my favorite family traditions: I’ll be watching the Super Bowl with my Dad on Sunday.
  2. I joined the 2016 2K Indie Book Tour, which starts on Monday!
  3. Watching movies at home with my kids. My kids are teens, but we still have fun spending time together.

What other celebrations are going on out there?

 

 

 

 

© Lori L. MacLaughlin and Writing, Reading, and the Pursuit of Dreams, 2016. All rights reserved.

IWSG — To Raise Or Not To Raise…

Today’s the day for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) where, on the first Wednesday of every month, writers get together to share their insecurities and offer encouragement. The IWSG was created by Alex J. Cavanaugh, and you can learn all about it and sign up for it here. IWSG_Badge

The print version of my book, Lady, Thy Name Is Trouble, is printed on demand by the distributors Lightning Source/IngramSpark (LSI), so I don’t have to keep cases of books as backstock in my basement. Recently, I received notice from LSI that their printing costs would be increasing to cover their rising costs. I was given a window of time in which I could raise the retail price of my book and submit a new cover file reflecting this increased price without having to pay for the file update. The deadline is the end of February.

So I have to decide — do I raise the price of my print book, or leave it as is?

I had originally set the price at $16.99, which was about as low as I could go without selling at a loss. I figured if I priced my first book too high, no one would buy it. But with the 55% wholesale discount the big retailers get, the margin of profit is miniscule.

If I leave the price as is, I’ll still be in the black, but just barely. I tell myself, it’s okay, I’m not in it for the money. And yet I have to say it would be nice to make at least a little profit. But I’m concerned that if I raise the price a dollar or two, I’ll lose sales, and that would defeat the purpose of getting my book out there into readers’ hands. What to do?

Has anyone else ever run into this problem? What did you decide?

 

 

 

 

© Lori L. MacLaughlin and Writing, Reading, and the Pursuit of Dreams, 2016. All rights reserved.