Making mockup publicity images of my published books

Mockup ads seem to get more popularity and when you think about it, you can easily see why. Add a dabble of color in the background, put a mini blurb with something that entices the reader and PAM! A small piece of publicity that is easy on the eyes.

I finally chose to do this for fun and enjoyed the result. Each image was purposely chosen as something related to the plot of each book in one way or another.

I wish to thank the awesome website www.unsplash.com for the free use images. Thank you!

An Ominous Book is also available on Smashwords!

Text by Nancy Foster. AI training or unauthorized reproduction forbidden.

Book review scammers... again?

Okay, enough with the nonsense!

A few days ago, I wrote a blog post that somehow attracted a minimal amount of viewers. I got 1 like from a real person on Goodreads that might have enjoyed the heads up.

For better or worse, I also got 3 wanna be generic book review mails this week. And yes, they felt cringeworthy to read.

I opted to remove the emails to avoid the unwanted extra publicity for the most part. I wouldn't have cared if they had appeared in the spam folder like usual, but I felt like Ned and Homer when they wake up in Vegas with two new stripper wives when I realized the first email had somehow reached my regular folder. Ugh.

Look guys, I'm not going to purchase your service. Just... stop wasting people's time!

Thank you, Ned Flanders!

Text by Nancy Foster. AI training or unauthorized reproduction forbidden.

An old book review scam shows up at Goodreads

I'm mexican, deal with it.

I grew up in a country where cops are the real life epitome of all of the jokes from The Simpsons.

Oh, so you were the victim of some serious crime? Let me write it down on my invisible typewriter. Hahahaha

Come on, you haven't grown up in Mexico if you don't get the Sor Juanita joke, courtesy of a cop that pulls your car tries to pull for some reason (sometimes bogus, sometimes they stopped you because you did a minor driving infraction like go out with an odd number on even number license plates driving day in Mexico City and lack a special permit). If you don't get the joke, the image below should be enough to illuminate you.

I don't own a car and have never been the culprit of that kind of minor traffic offense, but I have been a passenger when cops have stopped for various reasons. Usually they will be legit and give you a fine, but I have heard the "Give me a Sor Juana and we'll just forget about this" sort of shady deal.

Ergo, I guess as an author, I am highly suspicious when I get random unsolicited emails that will offer me a gazillion reviews for my books if I pay them 400 USD. I usually just ignore them, the emails are sent to the spam folder anyways and get deleted automatically eventually.

However! Just a while ago, a persistent Goodreads scammer of some sort that goes by varying usernames pulled a doozie on me. He/she/it/zer/whatever posted a "book question" asking for a free ARC copy. Innocent enough.

But I am a mexican and knew from the start it was bunk.

And since I have little patience for this kind of nonsense, I'm pasting a screencap for posterity to laugh and hopefully deter other turds from pulling this lame scam on me:

The "question" doesn't even bother to mention the name of my book or the reasons why the scammer would feel entitled to read a Young Adult fantasy starring a mortal elf with a human name and lots of issues with authority figures.

A quick google search of the dubious email will direct you to plenty of discussions on Goodreads and even Facebook about people flagging this email. If you're going to pull a blatant book scam, at least try to be creative and rotate the emails a little bit, will ya?

Some users have pointed out this stranger has connections to a mysterious website with no street cred of any kind.

What happens to gullible well-meaning and/or desperate authors that do send a book to this email? Their book will probably appear as a bootleg making some Nigerian Prince slightly rich at your expense.

If the person had paid any real attention, my book is sold for only 1 usd on the legit channels and I have been known to offer ARC review copies for the first novel of my series every now and then. I no longer offer the sequels for free these days, mainly because I'm planning on changing the book covers and I have been busy writing the final sequels of the series to pretty much wrap things up (much to the annoyance of my scant die-hard fans that never seem to get enough of my works).

As to any potential scammer, as you can see, I take spammy fake review requests sort of seriously and tend to immortalize fruitless attempts for posterity. I hope it will serve as a deterrent and if I start to see a surge in spammy emails on my account, I will probably write another blog post.

Maybe you could take a nap, just like our model cop Wiggum, what do ya say?

Text by Nancy Foster. AI training or unauthorized reproduction forbidden.

A small book editorial in Mexico called "Palabras Palibros"

One of my book fans sent the link to this small scale book editorial for me to look at. The editorial is called Palabras Palibros which doesn't seem to have a specific book specialty (aka, as in only focusing on poetry, Sci-Fi & fantasy, romance, non-fiction, etc...) and it has only a few titles.

They not only offer the service to publish your book in ebook and physical format, they also offer translation services to English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and German.

The requirements to send manuscripts seems pretty straightforward. You must show proof that you hold the copyright via the mexican copyright office INDAUTOR (all of my officially published novels have one), and you can either send them via e-mail or print a physical manuscript. They will then decide to decline or accept to publish.

The website doesn't specify much of the details after that except that it seems like you have to provide some cash to print the first edition and then they will take care of the publicity and getting your book in local bookstores. By getting published with them, you get something the average Mexican Indie Author can't easily get: invitation to a highly coveted book convention which could help you gain readers.

I don't know what my book situation would be. They don't specifically state if they are forced to reject books that you previously self published. I guess that as long as you continue to hold the rights and pull off the other edition of the book, they can accept your manuscript. I guess I'd have to email them, just for the sake of curiosity.

What about royalties?

They offer 30% royalties which for a publishing house is quite good. I don't make much of any cash selling the Spanish version of my book on Amazon, so I don't lose anything by at least sending them an e-mail. Createspace is a great service, but they don't ship books to Mexico very easily for some oddball reason. Palabras Palibros doesn't state how many copies they'd print, but if the book sells well, they offer to print the second edition on their own dime.

I am not familiar with any of the novels they have published, but these two seem pretty interesting:

Caballos en Tropel by Juan Carlos Martinez (seems to be a drama novel about a politician that retires to the countryside)

Gesta de luciernagas by Marco Antonio Alfaro del Ángel (seems to be a romance novel taking place in France, a protagonist named Deian is a well respected warrior peasant that wants to marry a noblewoman...)

The books aren't available on Amazon, only by mexican bookstores such as El Sótano. This could have a good and bad result. The book could sell pretty well locally, but you'd still be trad published and get your name out. I notice none of the books from the editorial are listed on goodreads. That isn't very good either because the editorial isn't pushing for the minimal external forces even though they claim to offer marketing services.

All in all, I am grateful for the kind suggestion and decided to give it some well-warranted publicity on my blog. I might think about emailing them sometime. I lose nothing by asking if they are interested in the Spanish version of my novel. I self translated it, but it needs to be professionally revised by a native Spanish speaker. I would be willing to let them improve any grammatical problems with the prose if they are genuinely interested in trad publishing it.

Visit the website HERE.

Text by Nancy Foster. AI training or unauthorized reproduction forbidden.

Save the Cocky!

I just can't friggin' believe the absurdity of it all.

If you haven't tuned into Twitter or you have been living under a rock (or a hill, or a Siberian gulag... whatever), there is a huge dramafest going on because a romance author named Faleena Hopkins has somehow got a trademark approved of a common use word of the English Language used in a stolen copyrighted font (yes, somebody in the US government approved her to take over the word cocky, I am serious) and has now started a witch hunt.

First she sent cease & desist letters to authors that wrote romance books with the word Cocky somewhere in the title (and not only to books published after the trademark petition, she has gone so far as books that were published as much as 5 years before!), and now Amazon has pulled out books without requesting authors to change the book title.

Her lawyers? It seems like her powerful legal team consists of a mysterious website that doesn't work and the law firm was founded by an author of a book I haven't even heard of before. It's so weird.

Obviously, when you piss off a bunch of well-meaning authors with such a ridiculous threat, hell burns loose and now she's pretty much alienated herself from the writing community and even people that previously read & enjoyed her books a long time before any of this mess happened.

The graphics artist whose typography was used has confirmed the trademark has infringed on his own creation (thus pretty much voiding it right there and setting her for a lawsuit she will likely lose), has just gotten a huge following of fans. He seems like a really cool guy who was thrown into this mess while he was on vacations.

Credit for photo: Pajiba.com

And while people are slamming and public shaming her online, last night she uploads this incoherent tirade on facebook live where she claims to be a minority (hey, I'm hispanic myself and look paler than a ghost so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt on that weird claim), she claims to be descended of slaves (I don't know what distant family history has anything to do with her ruining her own writing career but whatever), and then she has the audacity to pretty much make fun of autism.

Don't believe me? Watch the video!

It's just... too... much... drama!

You think I've gone cuckoo?

Maybe I have....

If all of this wasn't enough, she has somehow called Amazon and Goodreads to start massively deleting all sorts of reviews that aren't even of her books just because they include the word "Cocky" in them.

Yes, I am serious.

This calls for action!!!

Support authors whose books have been affected by the mess, read the competition such as this jem:

I read one of her books just for fairness sake and didn't like it that much. The writing simply wasn't good at all. I simply don't understand why her books have so many 5 star reviews.

All in all, even though I don't write romance novels, I am following this closely because maybe someday, some narcicisstic looney might somehow trademark a common use word of the English language of the fantasy genre and me or a huge other array of authors I am friends with could be affected.

For now, I'm going to be on a tantrum stating the forbidden word:

Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky, Cocky...

Better!

Text by Nancy Foster. AI training or unauthorized reproduction forbidden.

Harlequin steel

I'm still alive BTW. I haven't updated this blog in... 6 weeks, not that I get a lot of readers anyways.

I'm currently very busy with my regular job so my writing hobby has been left to a standstill.

I would like to write a brief comment about harlequin steel. These amazing swords are hinted in the 5th novel A Calamity by Tioja who explains that a deceased member of his clan named Nurran created weapons that were nearly as strong as true harlequin steel. Tioja brought two spears that were forged by a long lost technique to the final battle for Ayrtain and they proved to enhance the demonic earth magic of Adinjandanir and Murghtada.

While they didn't make a fully lasting dent in the battle, in the very least the two elves easily created an earth dome to separate Kumar's army so that they could fight against Leilandy without interruption. By enhancing her sorcery, Froylan even felt tempted to invite Murpghtada to the guard... an offer that she obviously wasn't very pleased with.

We don't get to see a true harlequin sword until the 6th novel Quandary when Tioja visits his secret bunker and retrieves a strange green sword that once belonged to Lord Jarahad. By returning the cursed sword to Gulraj, Tioja will start to move a plan that affects the unfinished 7th novel...

These swords are both nearly impossible to destroy and harbor strange sorcery that only a swordsman with harlequin blood can fully wield. Good battles featuring these swords await in the 7th novel and while I have not yet revealed how they are made, the forging is done by powerful magic that only a specially trained pureblood harlequin can perform...

Text by Nancy Foster. AI training or unauthorized reproduction forbidden.

Revamping my goodreads reading list

I not only write as a hobby, I also love to read books. And as an indie author, I know fullhand how insanely hard it is to get unbiased reviews which could include very useful honest criticism. Even harder, to get the highly coveted Amazon review because depending on the # of reviews your book gets, the online store will up your rankings and might even help you promote your book without having to move a finger.

Oh, and if that is not enough, Amazon reviews are pivotal to set your foot in the door in order to get a highly desirable Bookbub paid promotion. You need a bare minimum of 100 Amazon reviews minimally of all of your books combined, ideally of the book you want to vy for a promotion. The promotion costs you an arm & a leg (not literally, but almost in money terms), but every author that has done it gains an insane amount of new reads and sales. I've never heard of an author that has done a promo claim the money spent was a waste.

My TBR list is pretty large (but still meager in comparison to a lot of readers out there). One thing that I have been doing is uploading every book from my kindle to my goodreads account along with every ARC ebook I have on my computer. I have found a few interesting things:

1) My full TBR list is around 430 books and has been diminishing over the past few months because I attempt to read whatever I can during my scant free time.
2) I have some books both on my kindle AND as ARC copies which drops that TBR list a few notches.
3) I found today a few books both on my kindle and ARC copies that are current and past participants of the SPFBO contest. I am trying to put a bit more urgency towards reading all of the SPFBO books that I can. Judges and readers alike have comented that the 2017 batch has been unusually good which means that I know that those books will be worth my time. I was pleasantly surprised to know that this year's current finalist Tiger Lily is one of my ARC copies! Yaay! I haven't read any of the 10 finalists yet so it will be fun to read this book soon.
4) I deleted two short story books from my kindle because they no longer exist on amazon and had a pretty much impossible time finding them on goodreads either. The list is big as it is, why waste my time reading a book that I'll be unable to review anyways?
5) I'm glad that I organized things a little because I also did something new: I created two separate lists for really short books that are under 50 pages, under 200 pages and lastly but not least, another ticked box for books with 20 or less reviews. As an author, I know that it's insanely hard to cross the 20 review barrier and some books on my TBR have 0 reviews!
I kind of like doing this organization because now, I have realized I have 30 books that are 50 pages or less. Those books are indeed super quickies and while I've had a lot of 3 star experiences with short stories, I have read a small amount that are 5 stars in my biased opinion. Oh, and now that I know which of these are the super quickies, I can read a bunch of them in a day and get them out of the way. If I can slice the TBR list to around 350 in a short amount of time, that will be great. Even better, some of these quickie books have almost no reviews. Extra bonus!

So now, I will be reading those quickie short books in order to delete them from my harddrive and kindle to free space. I will be continuing on reading whatever spfbo books available with a certain degree of urgency, just 53 unread books waiting to be read.

Will I ever create a book review blog? I don't know. I don't want to do that in this blog because I want to try to focus more on my own fantasy book series. Plus, the real biggie for authors is the amazon and GR reviews. So far I've never had someone cruising on my blog to ask me to read and review their book, but now you at least know where my TBR list sort of stands.

Feel free to check my Goodreads profile HERE and see for yourself. Maybe one of the books I praised might be of your interest or something.

Text by Nancy Foster. AI training or unauthorized reproduction forbidden.