C. M. Skiera's Blog

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 helpful reminder

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

Booksprout is a website that offers to get you book reviews by exposing your work to their community of over 80,000 active reviewers. The gist of Booksprout is that you pay them for access to their reviewers, to whom you provide a free copy of your work in exchange for an honest review. They have several pricing plans, and I chose $9.00 USD per month, which was the cheapest option. This was my first mistake. I found their directions and user interface unintuitive, and set up what I thought was a two-month campaign for July and August 2024, to garner advance reading copy (ARC) reviews for my fantasy novel Plea to a Frozen God . I didn't pay enough attention to Booksprout's billing details, and I paid for my carelessness. My bad, but I'm here to help you not make the same mistake. I didn't actually sign up for a two-month campaign, rather a monthly fee that would be charged until I cancelled my account. Needless to say, after my campaign ended and I was still invoiced by