Book Giveaways and Other Stuff
SF Signal’s Libriomancer giveaway ends tomorrow, July 3, at 9 p.m. CST.
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Twelfth Planet Press is giving away 10 copies of Kaleidoscope over at Goodreads. This is a collection of “fun, edgy, meditative, and hopeful YA science fiction and fantasy with diverse leads,” and includes my story “Chupacabra’s Song,” about Nicola Pallas (from the Libriomancer books) as a teenager.
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What are your thoughts on author newsletters? For authors, do you think they’re worth it? For readers, do you subscribe to any? What do you want from an author’s newsletter, and what don’t you want?
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I’ll be heading up north tomorrow, so blogging will probably be light until I get back. Or nonexistent. There shall be family time and relaxing and fireworks and working on the Secret Project of Doom and trying to catch up on some reading, including:
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Thus endeth the random blog post of stuff.
Teresa
July 2, 2014 @ 10:22 am
Personally, I like author newsletters, as long as I’m not getting them too often. Most of the ones I currently receive are monthly or quarterly. 🙂 I like to know what’s going on with my “favrit” authors!
ganymeder
July 2, 2014 @ 10:25 am
Honesty, I don’t really follow author newsletters, but a heads up on new book releases would be nice. If they tweet about their new book release, then I know when to buy it. That’s about it. I follow blogs for writing advice and/or listen to podcasts.
Have a happy Fourth of July weekend!
Pam Adams
July 2, 2014 @ 12:02 pm
I think author newsletters are generally going away- being replaced in the ecosystem by blogs/Facebook/Twitter.
Muccamukk
July 2, 2014 @ 1:46 pm
I don’t follow any author newsletters, as authors I like I follow their blogs. However there are a couple authors who have e-mail alerts you can get when they have a new book out, and I follow a couple of those.
Lindsay
July 2, 2014 @ 11:14 pm
For author newsletters, I have signed up to a bunch and my favourites are the ones that just go “Hey, new book is coming out tomorrow, hooray!” and that’s it. I skim the monthly stuff, I mostly just want to know how many books I’m buying this week. I get kinda sad when I look at an author’s page and realize several of their books have come out (for those speedy writers) and I didn’t know, but it’s hard for me to keep up with everyone’s websites/blogs/etc.
DawnD
July 3, 2014 @ 12:50 am
Nalini Singh has a very good one. It haz excerpts! Also news and other goodies. I look forward to receiving it and it does a great job at building anticipation pre-release. I’ve also un-subscribed from a few that didn’t really provide anything of value.
I think it would depend on what you were trying to accomplish. You already do a lot online to drive traffic and awareness. Would it a newsletter help you reach a wider audience? Build loyalty? Drive anticipation pre-release? (Yes, marketing is the day job.) With clear objectives in mind, it could be worthwhile.
D. D. Webb
July 3, 2014 @ 2:03 pm
Generally I prefer the blog system, where I can follow authors I like rather than them sending me stuff. I’ve got one who emails me and it’s honestly a wee bit annoying; it never seems to be news I care about hearing. Of the authors’ blogs/websites I check up on, though, new posts are always a highlight of my day.
silence
July 3, 2014 @ 9:04 pm
I follow a few author newsletters which are basically a notification of releases which I can miss if I skip twitter / facebook in busy week. I agree that Nalini Singh does a good one with excerpts and shorts that don’t make the book.
Birdy Diamond
July 15, 2014 @ 9:46 pm
For me, since I’m supposed to be off paying attention to my own marketing, it’s nice to have a head’s up about appearances and new works that passively comes into my Inbox.
Helps that we live in the same state, so that appearance-news has more relevance over more events.
Agree with DawnD – goals-in-mind are Good + Happy Things.