Author of Sister of the Circuit, Shadow of the Owl, and a recipe for a pretty decent mushroom fritta...
Hello all,
"I HAVE NEVER WRITTEN A REVIEW ON AMAZON."
Is that you? Once that was me. Then one day seven years ago I put on my Grown-Up Pants, signed-in, and I wrote my first Amazon review. It was for capsules to prevent colds. Woohoo! The excitement never stopped.
How many times do we ourselves use Amazon reviews? I only buy items on Amazon with great reviews. Ask my wife. I’m strictly a 4-star and up kinda Amazon shopper.
Why I am sharing all this with supporters and readers is because it’s time.
It is time to write an Amazon review of The Astronaut Instruction Manual.
Just sign-in and click here. (Or vice versa.)
The AIM already has some great reviews, many of which came from Inkshare readers. To everyone who has written a review, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Everyone else, let’s do this. Click, sign-in, write. Remember, everyone has a first time.
Mike
I’m a habitual lurker over on Reddit. Sometimes I’ll post, but unless I know for a fact I can add to the growing conversations on the site I keep to myself. The only time I step outside of these practices are to promote the works of others.
Reddit is heralded as the frontpage of the internet, and with the many different subreddits on the site you can tailor your experience to suit your needs. Due to the huge influx of individuals they have on a daily basis many people created subreddits devoted entirely to promotions, where people can post about their work or that of their loved ones, favorite authors, musicians, etc. Suffice it to say, it is a wonderful place to freely advertise yourself.
When I decided to post my novel, The Weaver Chronicles: Graft, here on Inkshares I knew I’d have to promote myself to get the book funded. It was up to me to bring in those potential buyers if I wanted to be successful. It’s really a required element to the process.
The first place I went to was reddit.com/r/kickstarter, which has over 33,000 people subscribed to it. Original intended to allow people to promote either their kickstarter campaigns, or those that they felt were interesting and deserved a wider audience, it steadily grew to include Indiegogo and other crowdfunding sites. Personally, I’ve posted a number of campaigns there, and have seen a decent influx of sales for the many projects I have supported after having done so. More importantly they have received a huge increase in traffic, which I desperately want for Graft. I want people to see, to tell their friends about it, because I have faith in it.
After doing a quick search I discovered that no one has ever posted an Inkshares project to that subreddit. This put me into a very interesting situation, as there was no precedent set I couldn’t be impetuous and just post my own, at least not without the possibility of getting banned and losing that resource for future projects. I did the only logical thing, I messaged the moderators, and I’m still waiting for a response (I’ll probably message the Mod again this week to see if I can get an update). I’m sure you all can understand how this would us all, and I hope we get a favorable response.
The next subreddit I proceeded to check was reddit.com/r/inkshares. Honestly, this should have been the first place I looked, but I wasn’t really certain Inkshares would have it’s own subreddit based on the lack of mentions of Reddit these forums. I was surprised to find one, and that are 2 posts there, and a whopping 8 subscribers.
Reddit is a fantastic resource, especially for authors, and developing an Inkshares subreddit could drastically increase the amount of traffic to our respective projects. This would help not only in regards to follows, but also by word of mouth. If people love your work, they’ll promote it for you, and it’s remarkably easy to do on Reddit where in many cases all they need to do is copy and paste a url. There is an additional benefit, we will be able to create the type of community we want for ourselves, rather than being forced to endure what already exists.
Some places on Reddit lack a certain bedside manner, people can be confrontational and downright rude, but we have the ability to ensure that does not happen. Honestly, it’s going to take effort, and I know that Reddit is daunting for many people, but it’ll be worth it in the long run.
Now, when posting in the r/inkshares subreddit you can also crosspost to other ones. This means that after posting to r/inkshares your post could simultaneously show up in r/crowdfunding (2,900 subscribers), r/wroteabook (3,000 subscribers if your project is funded or nearly there) and r/fantasy (over 97,000 subscribers here, but I wouldn’t necessarily self-promote there unless you use the specific thread for it or your book is on sale, it’s just an example) without much effort. Now, it becomes incredibly easy to do the same thing for our friends and fellow Inkshare authors, without the stigma that many subreddits have towards self-promotion.
I could probably go on forever about this, but I implore you to sign up for Reddit. Start checking out the other subreddits, make sure to become a part of the community before promoting yourself (stick to the rules of the subreddit, but the same thing applies for Goodreads if you haven’t already used that site), but subscribe to ours. We want people to go there, and in order for that to happen we need to cultivate a presence. People are lazy, and they can receive an astounding amount of information on Reddit very easily, we should be using it to our advantage.
If people want I can list off some subreddits where you can get started, most of which will be genre specific. If you have any questions I’ll do my best to try and answer them. It’s possible, also, for me to start helping you promote your work there, but I need you to start participating there as well.
Dear friends
I come to you as the bearer of good news. Very good news!
Blurbs and reviews for The Catcher’s Trap are trickling in, and I can’t be more thankful and proud. I share with you three blurbs that put a smile on my face:
"Ricardo Henriquez’s impressive use of description and storytelling weaves a most captivating introduction of macabre and beauty in his new series. Readers should clear their schedules the day they open The Catcher’s Trap. As soon as they finish chapter one... there is no stopping until the final page has been reached." Alicia Smock, Chicago Books Examiner
“With his debut novel, “The Catchers Trap,” Ricardo Henriquez sucks the reader into a vortex of suspense, sarcasm and stunning detail that is both captivating and thrilling. The novel is engaging to both horror and non-horror fans, with a read that is more than meets the eye.” Christine Bucci-Caprilozzi, Senior Editor for Horror News Network
“The Catcher’s Trap is a riveting story that kept me up reading far too late more than once. Equal parts terrifying and heroic, Andres’ descent into a nightmare existence and back is going stay with me for a long time. I hope Mr. Henriquez has a sequel in the works, because I need to know what happens next, and there’s so much more about the Catcher’s world to explore.” Dave Barret, Author of It’s All Fun and Games, and Nerdist contest winner.
As an author I want nothing more than people to enjoy my work. The fact that those who have read The Catcher’s Trap like it, encourages me to continue writing and sharing the stories I carry inside of me.
In other great news, Nerdist and Inkshares announced yesterday at Comic-Con that our anthology Too Many Controllers was picked to be part of the Nerdist collection. What does this mean? It means that Nerdist will put their marketing power behind our project to make sure it is a successful one. This is a great honor that I share with other 14 talented writers.
Finally, just a reminder that in about a month, on August 27th, I’ll be at the Connecticut Horror Fest, at The Matrix Conference Center in Danbury. If you are in the area, come and say hello. I’ll have free advance readers copies of The Catcher’s Trap and other chachkies to share.
Have a Fantastic Week.
Ricardo
Today, Seeking the Elephant ends its pre-sale campaign.
We didn’t make the 250 pre-sale goal, but I’m not worried about it. As a writer and a person who’s not particularly skilled at self-promotion, I learned real promotion skills, and how to get comfortable with public interaction. More importantly, we built up a real following.
Going forward, as Seeking the Elephant finds its footing in real-world publication, I will be reaching out to those who were good enough to support this campaign.
I want to thank some people & groups!
In the meantime, please follow Seeking the Elephant on Facebook as well as Twitter for future updates.
Have a great weekend!
Hey everyone, just a quick note to let you know that if you have preordered BLUE WATER already, and we hit our goal of breaking preorder #100 by midnight tonight, I’ll be sending along a link for you to download the first three chapters. If you haven’t preordered yet, and you are one of the ones that put us over 100, you get the first three chapters as well! So if you want to help out, let all your friends and family and neighbors and co-workers and pets know that we need only 12 more preorders to get there. But we need them TODAY!
Send everyone to http://www.inkshares.com/books/blue-water and help us break a milestone.
Thank you all,
Joseph
Today I’m excited to reveal our new cover for BLUE WATER. Our old one was designed in roughly five minutes to replace the generic cover Inkshares gives you when you start your book page. And since everything with the first campaign was done in haste, designing a cover never really occurred to me. The first campaign fizzled out, and the old cover just sat there.
Then we started the new campaign, and there it was still. Boring, not eye catching, not even sized properly. Nothing but the title giving a hint about the tone of the book, some blurry design behind it, just letting the potential reader glance past it without noticing. And being that Inkshares is a game of getting noticed, it was doing me no favors. And by doing me no favors, it was doing you no favors, because if it doesn’t get seen it doesn’t published, and you don’t get to read it.
So, with that in mind, I set out to design something that would jump off the screen and grab attention. Hopefully, I’ve done that.
Whaddaya think?
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