C. M. Skiera's Blog

With the launch of my fourth fantasy novel, I tried a variety of promotional tactics, and am documenting my experiences with them. You may have already noticed my posts regarding Voracious Readers Only and Booksprout . As you can probably guess, I've yet to find the perfect sales technique to launch Plea to a Frozen God to the top of the charts, and I seriously doubt such a unicorn exists, but I'm still trying to make the best of what's available. Today, I review another book promotion service I tried; BookSirens . BookSirens' pitch is "Get more Amazon, Goodreads, & BookBub reviews from your ARC readers and our community of 50,000+ book reviewers & influencers."  BookSirens delivers your ARCs securely, sends review reminders, and tracks whether your readers leave a review.  BookSirens bills you a one-time fee of $10 per book and $2 for each potential reader who downloads your book. BookSirens claims that typically, approximately 3/4 of readers who do...

LibraryThing is a website for maintaining your own professional-quality online book catalog. Similar to Goodreads, LibraryThing has its own independent personality, without mega-corporate influence. LibraryThing also connects people with similar reading tastes, recommends books based on your catalog and ratings, showcases local events, hosts groups and discussion boards, features book giveaways, and more.   I'm going to focus on LibraryThing Member Giveaways. These giveaways allow members (authors, publishers, and agents) to list books (paper, ebook, or audio book) for free giveaways. The giver pays shipping or provides ebooks via downloads or e-mail. The giveaway winners are randomly chosen by LibraryThing, and the book giver is provided information on how to contact the winners with their free books. A feature of the giveaway allows you to ask for reviews in exchange for the free book, and although there are no guarantees reviews will be posted, it's still a h...

I'm obviously not a prolific writer, so I've always doubted the importance of a mailing list. I rarely blog, and have no idea what I would fill a newsletter with, other than book releases and sales. But, who knows, maybe there's value in that? So I've revived my mailing list (some of you may have found yourselves on it), and will be sending the occasional e-mail when I run an eBook sale, or publish another novel--nothing more than this. And I promise never to use AI-generated auto-mailings! I'm using the free version of Mailchimp, and there is an unsubscribe button on the bottom of every e-mail. I hate spam, and certainly don't want to annoy people with unwanted notifications, so if by some reason, the unsubscribe button doesn't work, let me know, and I'll personally remove you from the list.  Anyhow, I appreciate all the support I receive from readers and fellow authors, and if you are interested in staying in touch via an occasional newsletter, the sig...