Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Release Day

What I'm reading: Once a Cowboy, by Linda Warren; Night Magic, by Jennifer Lyon

Thanks to Kathryn Scannell for her fascinating and informative post yesterday. And don’t forget the big Smashwords sale from Backlist eBook authors. Details in the Deals and Steals tab. I'm also over at The Blood Red Pencil today, talking about "R.U.E."

Onto the fireworks – well, more or less. Today is the official release day for WHERE DANGER HIDES, the second book in my Blackthorne, Inc. series. This means that the publisher will begin filling orders. If you ordered the book from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, the books have to arrive there from the publisher, and then they’ll go out to you. The projected “real” release date is closer to June 8th.

The publisher targets the library market, and I’m a firm believer in libraries. I know that the hard cover price of the book might be a bit steep for some in today’s economy, so another way to help out is to request the book from your own library system. The information they’re likely to ask for:

Title: Where Danger Hides
Author: Terry Odell
Publisher: Five Star / Gale Cengage
ISBN 10: 1432825127
ISBN 13: 978-1432825126

What else can you do? If you have an Amazon account, log in and go to the book’s page:

Click the “like” button near the top, and/or scroll down to the product tags and click the boxes. Doesn’t cost you anything, and helps the ranking, which can help sales.

Of course, if you want to buy the book, that’s fine with me, too.



And, as a ‘gift’ for you, I’ve shared the original starting point for the book on my website. It’s an addition to my “From the Cutting Room Floor” section. I hope you’ll look at it. And then you can go to the final first chapter and compare. I think this will help show how it’s more important to get something on the page, and worry about whether it works later. In this scene, Miri was beginning to be fleshed out, and some of her goals and motivations are there, but she underwent some major transformations, as did her first appearance in the final book. As so often happens, these first “running starts” are there for the author, as a way for us to get to know the characters. And, they’re also heavy into back story for the same reason.

The business of writing doesn’t happen in nice, neat blocks of time. While copies of WHERE DANGER HIDES are starting to roll out, I’ve been busy with the next book, ROOTED IN DANGER. I finished my first round of edits, and am very pleased with my new editor. She was happy with my changes based on her suggestions, and accepted my reasoning in places where she had questions. Because (as I’ve warned you to do) I went through the entire manuscript rather than simply dealing with her markups, I found a few more places where I thought tweaks might help, and we arrived at a “ready for the next step” product.

Next up. The “Ancillary Materials Form” the publisher requires. This is all the marketing stuff—with this publisher, authors are expected to provide all the copy that goes on the cover. And since these are hard cover books with full dust jackets, which means there’s a front cover, and a back cover, of course. But there are also those cover flaps that wrap around the cover. In addition, the publisher puts out a catalog which it sends to libraries, and there’s copy we have to write for that as well.

From my viewpoint, I could probably write five chapters with less effort and hair-pulling than writing marketing prose.

Also on my plate: updating my website to reflect all the new pages for Where Danger Hides, and to add Rooted in Danger to the Coming Soon page, as well as getting a new ebook ready to upload, and working on another book for my Pine Hills Police series.

10 comments:

Jan Morrison said...

this is so interesting! I really appreciate your support of libraries - that is where I get most of my books - not just because I'm a broke and struggling writer, but because I don't want so many things including books, in my home. I'm trying to live a different way...wish there was a flower library!
I'll go by and ding the bell on the Amazon thingy for your ratings - for sure!

Terry Odell said...

Jan - thanks. I love libraries. My parents said we moved out of our first home because I'd finished the library.

Dorothy St James said...

Congratulations, Terry. And to anyone stopping by, this is a fabulous book. You don't have to have read the first one to enjoy the ride! (But I do recommend that you read When Danger Calls, as well.)

I'm with you this month trying to get the word out about a new release. It's wonderful and frustrating at the same time. Here's to our releases going viral!!!

Jenny Milchman said...

Liked & tagged, Terry! Even added a library-friendly tag, because I think what Five Star does is so important, and maybe some Amazon readers will agree. I'll request it from the libraries around me.

Congrats on your release day! I agree, writing pitches, log lines, flap copy, and woe, the dreaded synopsis, is all much harder than writing a million new novels. Congrats again!

Elizabeth Spann Craig said...

Congratulations! I'm liking and tagging it.

And...updating the website. Ugh! Not my favorite social media housekeeping (and I've got to do it, myself).

Terry Odell said...

Jenny - thanks! Every little bit helps.

Elizabeth - for whatever reason, yesterday's website updates went through. Usually, Front Page insists on using a different folder for images, even though I clearly tell it where to find them, and then everything goes downhill.

Terry Odell said...

Dorothy - thanks so much, and glad you enjoyed the books.

Maryannwrites said...

Congrats, Terry. Can't wait to read this one. I really enjoyed the first in this series, so I know I will like the next one. Celebrate today.

Greys Anatomy Episode Guide said...

wishing you more success for this, I highly respect people who also loves libraries, I grow there and spent half of my childhood reading books on libraries near our place, this has been my place of comfort when things are not ok..

Terry Odell said...

Thanks -- there's something about a library that makes me feel "at home."