Squids In

When the world’s best online gamer turns out to be an octopus, it’s not long before he goes missing...

J. Graham-Jones liked an update for Overture

I am atwitter with excitement to be sharing the new cover of Overture! In keeping with the crowdsourcing/crowdfunding tradition, I headed on out to designcrowd.com and ran a challenge for a new cover design. The winner is this beautiful piece from freelance artist Diana Buidoso. It captures the feel of the book so well, and I’m over the moon. Thank you Diana and Designcrowd!

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J. Graham-Jones liked the forum thread, Just saying hi and asking advice for my Launch Pad entry

Hi Susan. It’s good to hear from a fellow Launchpader - I was really hoping others from the competition would pop in and say hi.

I know we’re all technically competing with one another, but I was in a similar contest last year and one of the best things the shortlisters did was exchange emails so we could all share our experiences and learn from one another. Made the process a whole lot less stressful :)

As for what I’ve learnt from the folks on Inkshares: the main thing seems to be that a generalised call to action never works. I tested this by sending out a few broad Facebook and Twitter messages asking for help promoting or just for feedback, but I didn’t get a single new follower/sale.

You’d think being in the top 75 of a competition involving thousands was enough reason for people to try your manuscript, but there’s just so much other stuff out there to read. If you want follows/feedback/reviews etc. you need to go direct to people who you think will like your particular story; make it personal, and tell them exactly what you would ideally like them to do.

Hope this helps, although I wouldn’t think you need my help much when you’ve already got like ten times as many preorders as me, hehe. Good luck with the campaign; your story sounds very interesting!

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J. Graham-Jones followed Michelle Heinz

Michelle Heinz

Please pre-order my husband’s book, The Seventh Age:Dawn. Also, any fantasy/sci-fi writers, please s...

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J. Graham-Jones liked an update for The Living God

Happy Friday!!!

Congratulations to the winners of the Geek & Sundry Fantasy Contest: Helena Echlin and Malena Watrous with Sparked, Allison Griner with Storm Song, and Jeyna Grace with The Slave Prince.

Also, congratulations to all those who participated in the contest! You took one giant leap towards achieving a dream. Even if you didn’t win or didn’t make Quill, you tried. I hope you keep trying and that you never give up. If you are passionate about something, if you love your story - tell it. There are a variety of ways you can do that if Inkshares doesn’t work out for you, and I’d be happy to share that knowledge with you. I know how hard it is to get people to invest in your book, and that the number of people you have in your network willing to invest in you can’t be the sole determining factor in the fate of a dream. If that were the case, there would be a lot of failed dreams in this world. Chin up. Keep moving forward. Never stop striving for what makes you happy.

The Living God finished 9th and currently stands at 255 orders. We’ve made Quill. It’s getting published with limited release on Amazon. (YAY!) Slowly but surely I’m going to try to make it to the 750. However, I’m going to take a bit of time off from trying to get supporters and focus on finishing the covers for those who supported the book during the contest.

AND! It is NaNoWriMo! I’ll be participating in NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month)... I don’t think it actually exists and is a thing, or perhaps it does and is just a different month, but this month is NaNoEdMo for me. I wish those who are participating all the luck and sanity during this insane and wonderous month.

Have a great weekend everyone!

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