C. M. Skiera's Blog

It's Cyber Monday! Did you know, the term "Cyber Monday" was created by marketing companies to encourage online shopping? Cyber Monday debuted on November 28, 2005 in a Shop.org press release entitled "'Cyber Monday' Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year." In celebration of this bargain holiday, all three of my ebooks are on sale at Amazon for 99 cents!

Some of the most consistent feedback I've received on Crimson & Cream has been regarding the book's cover. In general, comments have stated it could be more professional (not surprising at all). Since I actually create my own covers (like you couldn't tell!), I decided to take a crack at a new image for Crimson & Cream that still maintains a consistent look with the other two books of the trilogy (i.e., font, size, layout, coloration, etc.). I do have a plan to eventually get all three covers professionally re-done, but for now, I'm rolling out a replacement for the bloody sword and shield. The new image is a scene from the novel that I'd always envisioned would make a good cover. There's a lot of symbolism that refers to the trilogy in the new version (including retaining the iconography of the bloody sword and shield coat of arms). If you're curious as to the process, I used Blender to make a 3D model of the entire scene, and then experimen...

Do you run Kindle Countdown Deals for your fantasy ebooks? Is your book available to read on Kindle Unlimited? Do you give away Smashwords discount coupons? Would you like a place to promote your fantasy novels for free? I do, and after some investigation on Facebook and Google+, I decided to design such a place. It's called the  Fantasy Fiction Deals & Kindle Unlimited Reads Facebook page and associated group. I created this page/group for indie fantasy authors to promote their book sales and Kindle Unlimited books. My goal is to have a place for Facebook readers to find fantasy book deals without spam and unrelated ads. A few similar groups already exist on Facebook, but I'd like to try to improve upon what's already out there, focus strictly on the fantasy genre, and join forces with my fellow indie fantasy writers to network and share readers. I started by creating a Facebook group, but RJ Blain had some great ideas on the advantages of setting up a Facebook...

My three fantasy novels and trilogy compilation are currently enrolled in Kindle Unlimited (KU), but I'm struggling with how to effectively promote them. I've noticed spikes in KU pages read when I'm running a Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Countdown deal for one of my books, but how should I promote these KU books on their own merit? I've found a plethora of Facebook groups dedicated to KU, where authors are allowed to post ads for their KU books. I'm not going to list all the sites here, but if you search on Facebook for "Kindle Unlimited" you'll find well over a dozen groups catering to KU readers. For example, KDP Select Authors - Kindle Unlimited Readers is a public Facebook group with over 14,000 members. I've been posting my eBooks on these sites for about a month, but haven't seen any direct correlation to KU pages read yet. I've found similar groups on Google Plus, but they are less numerous and sparsely populated, so I'...