Tossing It Out

Monday, September 17, 2012

Meet Guest Hijacker Bethany Lopez

Those who are regular readers of this blog know that I'm a big advocate for promotion and marketing. When I opened my blog up for my summer Hijack! campaign I encouraged guests to come on and promote themselves and their work. That's what my guest on this post is here to do.

Meet Bethany Lopez

First I would like to say Thank You to Mr. Arlee Bird for allowing me to shamelessly promote myself on his blog today. My name is Bethany Lopez, and I write Young Adult and New Adult books.

I first joined the scene in June of 2011 with the release of my first YA book, Ta Ta for Now!, which is book one in the Stories About Melissa Series. I currently have the first three books in the series available and have begun writing the fourth. The series begins with Melissa beginning high school, and will follow her growth through those pivotal four years. There will be eight books in all by the time she graduates.

Since then I have tried expanding my craft and have completed an Upper YA Contemporary Fantasy,Nissa: a contemporary fairy tale, and book one in a Contemporary New Adult Trilogy, Make it Last.

I am really enjoying trying different genres and pushing myself out of my comfort zone. I look forward to meeting even more members of the reading and writing communities!

Thank you!

Bio:

Bethany Lopez was born in Detroit, Michigan, and grew up in Michigan and San Antonio, Texas. She went to High School at Dearborn High, in Dearborn, Michigan, which is where she has set her Young Adult novel. She is married and has a blended family with five children. She is currently serving in the United States Air Force as a Recruiter in Los Angeles, California. She has always loved to read and write and has seen her dream realized by independently publishing her contemporary Young Adult series, Stories About Melissa. Ta Ta for Now!, xoxoxo, and Ciao are available now. Bethany is currently working on a Contemporary Fantasy YA and a Contemporary New Adult Trilogy.

IAN - http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/bethany-lopez.html

Webpage - http://www.bethanylopez.blogspot.com/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/#!/BethanyLopez2

Facebook - http://on.fb.me/LypEaO

Pinterest - http://pinterest.com/bethanylopez2/

Thank you!

Bethany Lopez

Hijack This Blog! will soon be coming to an end and things will be coming back to normal if there is any sort of normal on this blog. I will be here with a post of my own this Friday. I've got something I've really gotten fired up to say and I'm gonna say it.

Next week I'll have visits from my A to Z co-hosts Stephen Tremp (September 24) and Alex Cavanaugh (September 26). You won't want to miss those. Then next Friday I'll be back with a look at some changes that will be in store for Tossing It Out. I'll definitely be hoping for some feedback on that one.

And just because the Hijack! campaign has ended doesn't mean guest posts will be ending on my blog. In fact I've already got more in store for October and November. You can add yours as well if you have something you'd like to present to the readers of this blog. Let me know your ideas and if you've got something good, I'll set you up. I need someone else to help me juggle the words sometimes because my arms get tired.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Hijacked By a Pickleope? Who Would Have Ever Thunk?

In this post we're visited by a--how should I say it--a truly eccentric blogger. If you haven't visited Pickleope then you are in for a very different experience. Call her posts strange, but often they make a great deal of sense in their own offbeat manner. Read on:

Dedication to a Delusion

A tremendous thank you to the incredibly generous Mr. Bird for sharing his space with me and all the other great guest hijackers.

As an introduction, I’m Pickleope, the bizarre combination of an anthropomorphic pickle and an alcoholic antelope. The avatar symbolizes my embrace of the absurdity present all around us.

For example, one man in South Carolina has taken his dedication to the idea of a woman he once dated a DECADE ago to preternatural lengths. Even though she broke up with him a decade ago, this man could not let the emotional connection he had with this woman die.

The Story:

Once upon a time, well, a decade ago, a woman dated a guy for a year, then broke up with him because he became involved in “petty crime.” Last year she asked him to help hang doors on her home. Which is fine, because after a decade, you’d think that in fact he too had moved on and would be willing to help out a friend. He hung the doors without incident. Somewhere between last year and now, ex-boyfriend was arrested and subsequently released from jail. A couple days ago, this single mother of five noticed nails falling out of her ceiling only to discover this ex-boyfriend living in the heating unit of her attic. He had been living there for two weeks, spying on her through her vents. Once discovered, he hopped down, smiled, and walked out the door without saying a word. He has yet to be caught. (Full story here.)

I don’t remember the names of people who broke up with me a year ago, let alone a decade ago. They cast me off and thus, I freed up the brain cells devoted to remembering their names, filling them with more important information, like the names of ancillary “Dr. Who” characters.

He needs to think about ex’s like they thought of him, as things that don’t exist until you need them to do something for you. Ex’s are heinous social pariahs you can occasionally manipulate into doing stuff for you. While you are dating someone, he/she is a beautiful mythical faerie sent by Hera as a thank you for being awesome, but once your bond is severed, he/she mutates into a grotesque agent of Hades (that’s for my Greek mythology nerds).

This is what I assume all my ex's look like now.

When the relationship ends, you have to let it go. Just like any idea, when it dies, you mourn its loss and move on. I let the idea of my ever floating to work in a jetpack die. Yes, I’m sad that I won’t ever get the chance to fly over traffic and probably moon my boss on the way, yes, I’m sad I won’t get to do that. But I moved on. I didn’t live in the Rocketeer’s attic for weeks.

This is akin to people who camped out for the third Star Wars prequel, Revenge of the Sith. The first two prequels were like George Lucas breaking up with the fans (arguably Return of the Jedi was too) but some fans couldn’t accept the rejection of a series of movies that moved on from them to a new group of fans more than a decade ago. So, in the vainglorious hope that the third prequel would embrace them with Vader magnificence and not Ewok them right in the Jar Jar yet again, these people camped out. The idea wasn’t allowed to die, and thus, these people cost themselves the chance to pursue real happiness. Mourn and move on.

That’s the lesson here: Don’t camp out in the attic of an idea or you’ll end up having to explain to police why you thought it was a good idea to use a small cup as your bathroom. Metaphorically, of course.

Thanks again to Arlee Bird for allowing me to camp out in his attic and to you, good reader, for enduring this pile of nonsense.

Your pal Pickleope (pickleope.com )
http://www.pickleope.com/

Totally wacky?-- or do you see the sense in this? Have you ever hung on vainly to a lost cause? Has an ex ever weirdly reentered your life? Do you know who's living in your attic?

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Marketing Trends Then, Now, and the Future: Guest Hijacker Renée Pawlish

I don't know about you, but I never get too much info about marketing. My guest hijacker Renée Pawlish knows a thing or two about the topic and is here to share.

The Ever-Changing Face of Marketing

I’ve been an independent author for a little over a year now and I find that this new age of publishing is exciting, hectic and ever-changing. When I first came on the scene, John Locke and Amanda Hocking were the indie authors everyone was talking about, wondering how those two had such phenomenal success. I had just published Nephilim Genesis of Evil and was hoping to be discovered as well. So what’s happened since the summer of 2011 and what might happen in the future?

First, don’t expect to have the same kind of success as Locke or Hocking. Locke was a marketing person before he started writing and he had a lot of money to throw at his marketing efforts (he’s also admitted to buying over 300 mostly positive reviews for his first few books, and that helped him suddenly sell well). Hocking created a zombie-based blog tour that helped her sales. Both of these approaches won’t work well now. There is too much negative press about independent authors, Amazon and reviews right now, so don’t think about buying reviews. And in my personal opinion, most blog tours don’t work either because lots of indie authors are doing it.

Twitter is next. Does it work for marketing? Yes, at least it has for me, but not like it did for some of the first adopters. There are tons of indie authors using Twitter so it’s lost some of its effectiveness. Authors need to be active on social media, but it’s important that you know your audience so that you can target your audience with your marketing efforts. And social media is, well, social, so you don’t want to just market your books.

What worked a month ago (or a week, or day) may not work now. How many have tried KDP Select, using free days to try and bump book sales? Those that were in the program in the first couple of months saw great success, but in March Amazon changed its algorithms and how it weighs free versus paid books, and it’s much harder to get any real sales jump. Sure, it happens for some, but not like it was in the golden first few months.

So what does the future hold? Who knows? I hear rumblings that Amazon expects another year of great ebook sales, especially around the holidays, but then ebooks sales are expected to level off. I don’t see print sales going away anytime soon, so I continue to offer all my books in paperback and ebook format.

KDP Select is dead, at least as a great marketing machine for indie authors. I think the next big thing may be with Apple or other e-reading formats. Barnes and Noble might at some point get its act together and be a force for indie authors.

One thing I do know, and this is echoed by many successful authors: keep writing and keep publishing. The more books you have available, the more sales you generate. I now have nine books available and I do find that people will like one of my books and they come back for more. That’s flattering for me, but it also keeps me motivated to keep writing more (that, and that I love writing).

So keep writing, stay on top of marketing trends and keep pursuing your dreams.

Author Bio:

Renée Pawlish is the award-winning author of the bestselling Nephilim Genesis of Evil, the first in the Nephilim trilogy, the Reed Ferguson mystery series (This Doesn't Happen In The Movies, Reel Estate Rip-off, The Maltese Felon, and the short story Elvis And The Sports Card Cheat), The Noah Winters YA Adventure series (The Emerald Quest), Take Five, a short story collection, and The Sallie House: Exposing the Beast Within, a nonfiction account of a haunted house investigation.

Renée has been called “a promising new voice to the comic murder/mystery genre” and “a powerful storyteller”. Nephilim Genesis of Evil has been compared to Stephen King and Frank Peretti.

Renée was born in California, but has lived most of her life in Colorado. When she's not hiking, cycling, or chasing ballplayers for autographs, she is writing mysteries, thrillers and horror. She loves to travel and has visited numerous countries around the world. She has also spent many summer days at her parents' cabin in the hills outside of Boulder, which was the inspiration for the setting of Taylor Crossing in her novel Nephilim: Genesis of Evil.

Visit Renée's website http://www.reneepawlish.com or her blog http://tobecomeawriter.com.

Amazon link for books:

http://www.amazon.com/Renee-Pawlish/e/B0058PXUPO/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1347331399&sr=8-1

What has worked for you? Where do you think the future of marketing will go? Do you agree with Renée's assessments?