Category Archives: indie authors

Rocking Your “About” Page

Posted on by Lori Crane

vintage-hand-about-meSo, you’ve started a blog. Good for you!

What did you write on your “About” page? A lot of people write a simple bio, then walk away and never touch it again.

Yikes! Don’t do that!

Your “About” page is the most important post on your blog.

It tells a reader who you are and what you’re about, and most of all, WHY THEY SHOULD READ YOUR BLOG. Most people will check out your “About” page before they get two or three blogs into your site, because your “About” page lets them know instantly if they’d like to find out more about you and if they’d like to spend more time on your blog. Think of it as an introduction to a new friend at a party. Do you simply say “Hi” and walk away? No, of course not. You chit chat. You let your new friend know a bit about yourself. In your introductory conversation, they will find out if you have anything in common, if you’re an expert on a topic they find interesting, and if you will grow to be friends. This is the goal of your “About” page.

3 ways to make a better “About” page!

  • Add a photo! Nothing connects people more than being able to put a face to a name.
  • Write your “About” page as if you’re writing a blog post. Make it interesting, funny, or serious, however you normally write on your blog. If there’s one thing that bores everyone to death, it’s “I was born in Little Rock and I have two dogs.” Snoozer! That does not tell us why we should read your blog and does not entice us to come back again later.
  • Update your “About” page periodically. If you have a new picture taken, put it on there. If you have recently moved to Uganda, tell us all the wonderful things you’re going to post about Uganda. Got a new giraffe? We want to know!

 

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Lori Crane is a bestselling and award-winning author of historical fiction and the occasional thriller. Her books have climbed to the Kindle Top 100 lists many times, including “Elly Hays” which debuted at #1 in Native American stories. She has also enjoyed a place among her peers in the Top 100 historical fiction authors on Amazon, climbing to #23. She resides in greater Nashville and is a professional musician by night – an indie author by day.

Amazon Paperback Giveaways and Growing Twitter

Posted on by Lori Crane

Hi authors! I’m not dressing up this post with pictures and frills. This is business! If you’ve been trying to grow your Twitter following, this post is for you.

Amazon has a new program for authors of paperbacks. Scroll to the bottom of your Amazon paperback page, underneath your reviews. You’ll see “Set up an Amazon Giveaway.”

Here’s how it works:

You can offer as many books as you’d like, keeping in mind you have to pay retail price + shipping + applicable tax. You can set up the giveaway in two ways. 1) first come, first serve. Don’t pick that one. Or 2) offering your book to a lucky number (entrant). You can require your entrants follow you on Twitter. If you choose option 2, click “lucky number” and the button to connect to your Twitter account, select the winning entrant from 2-50,000, enter the number of books you’re giving away. The giveaway will run for one week. You cannot change the dates.

MATH: I know what you’re thinking – if I give away 5 books, 1 to every 20th entrant, I’ll get at least 100 new Twitter followers. No, no, no, think bigger. That’s what I did the first time and the 5 books were gone in less than a half hour. Yes, I got just shy of 200 Twitter followers, but the giveaway was over before I even told my Facebook people to enter. Set it up for a BIGGER number. If you give a book away to every 1000th follower, you would get 5000 Twitter followers! FIVE THOUSAND. It’s taken me two years to get to eight thousand. Maybe even go bigger if you’ve got the guts! You need to fill out three short blurbs, one to announce the giveaway, one for the people who didn’t win, and one to congratulate the winners. The contest is instantaneous. The entrant learns if they’ve won or not at that moment, so they’re not going to put off buying your book because they want to wait and see if they’ve won. I filled out the forms like so: Enter to win one of five paperbacks of XYZ. – Sorry, you didn’t win this time, but stay tuned for future giveaways. – Congratulations, you’re the winner! Enjoy XYZ and please check out all my books.

WORK: The cool thing is that Amazon does all the work. They contact the winners. They ship the books. You do nothing! It costs more than hosting a giveaway yourself, but when’s the last time you got 5000 Twitter followers from your giveaway?

MONEY: My paperback sells for $9.99, so my total cost for 5 books with shipping and my Tennessee tax was about $82. I got $13 back in royalties from CreateSpace AND I got credit for the sales in my Amazon rankings.

THE PIS DE RESISTANCE: If you don’t give away all your books in the allotted week, Amazon will return your unused money.

If you try it, let me know your outcome. We’re all in this together. 🙂

 

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Lori Crane is a bestselling and award-winning author of historical fiction and the occasional thriller. Her books have climbed to the Kindle Top 100 lists many times, including “Elly Hays” which debuted at #1 in Native American stories. She has also enjoyed a place among her peers in the Top 100 historical fiction authors on Amazon, climbing to #23. She resides in greater Nashville and is a professional musician by night – an indie author by day.

#2 Behind William Freakin’ Shakespeare!

Posted on by Lori Crane

My book I, JOHN CULPEPPER is sitting at #2 behind William Shakespeare…YES, THE William Shakespeare. If for some crazy reason I pass him, I will consider it my best. day. ever. 🙂  Pick it up HERE for $0.99 and make it happen!

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Readers’ Favorite gives “I, John Culpepper” 5 stars!

Posted on by Lori Crane

Culpepper_1Readers’ Favorite has rocked my world! They gave I, John Culpepper a five-star review. In celebration of the release of the third book in the Culpepper saga, John Culpepper, Esquire, you can pick up I, John Culpepper through July 28 on Kindle for only $0.99!

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5-star-largeReviewed by Rabia Tanveer for Readers’ Favorite

In I, John Culpepper by Lori Crane, John Culpepper had a lot of responsibilities and obligations to uphold. He was born into an enormously wealthy family. Growing up in an English manor was fun, he never wanted for anything in his life. But there are a lot of expectations and pressure from his stately family. They want him to become a lawyer, join parliament, serve the country, and retire as an esteemed country man when the time comes. However, this is not what he desires to do with his life.

He has a dream of one day captaining a ship and sailing it across the wide seas and oceans. He longed for the feel of the ocean breeze on his face, the taste of the salty water on his lips, and the excitement of what the undiscovered world had to offer. He loves his parents very much, and there is nothing he would not do for them, but he loves the ocean as well. When push comes to shove, he would have to choose between the money and the comforts of wealth, or his desire and following his dreams.

In I, John Culpepper, you will be transported back to the time John lived and you will feel like you are a part of John’s life. The experience of reading this book was out of this world. Granted, there are few too many characters in the novel and the reader has to concentrate to remember who is who, but once you get into the story, it is a magical experience and you will not want to miss it for anything! Amazing! I’m awed by what I read. Kudos!

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I, John Culpepper is the first book in the Culpepper Saga. The second book is John Culpepper the Merchant and the third is John Culpepper, Esquire. The fourth will be released in late October. It is Culpepper’s Rebellion.

They are available in paperback and Kindle at Amazon.

culpepper saga-001

Release Day for John Culpepper, Esquire!!

Posted on by Lori Crane

JC Esquire (1)Today is the release day for my new book, John Culpepper, Esquire!  It is the third in the Culpepper Saga, but is also a stand-alone story. The saga is the life story of the progenitor of the modern-day American Culpeppers and my 10th great-grandfather.

The first book, I, John Culpepper, (on sale for $0.99 through 7/28) tells the story of John’s childhood in England, growing up with a wretched father whom he didn’t see eye to eye with. John always wanted to sail a ship but his father demanded he go to law school or face being disowned.

The second book, John Culpepper the Merchant, continues the tale as John tries to run his merchant business and raise his family while his homeland descends into a bloody and deadly civil war. By the end of the war, John’s ship is the only rescue for his family, now considered traitors.

In this third book, John finally gets his family to safety in Virginia, but their new start isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Here’s the synopsis:

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John Culpepper was a prominent figure in colonial Virginia, a merchant in Jamestown for two decades and a resident since the disastrous civil war that shook England to its core. The Culpepper family, decimated by the war, had known great defeat, but none as heartbreaking as the tragic event that abruptly left John in the position of family patriarch.

He struggled with this newly acquired role, marrying off his nieces to eligible colonialists, sending some of the boys back to England, purchasing a ship for his sons against their mother’s wishes.

Upon the collapse of the English Commonwealth, members of John’s family escorted the exiled prince back to London to be crowned as King Charles II. Would the Culpepper family finally reclaim the power and prestige it had once possessed? And how would John hold his family together on two continents?

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The fourth book in the series, Culpepper’s Rebellion, will take John down a horrible and desperate road, where the law training he despised so much in his youth becomes the only thing standing between his youngest son’s life and death. It will be released in late October 2015.

There will also be a subsequent Culpepper book that is not part of the saga, but will refer back to the characters. The Culpepper-Fairfax Scandal will be released in early 2016.

The Merchant ebookLadyCatherineJC Esquire (1)

culpepper saga-001Thomas_Fairfax 5th baron of cameron, catherine culpeppers husbandCulpepper4Culpepper_1

Starting an Author Blog

Posted on by Lori Crane

i-blog-therefore-i-am (cartoon by brajeshwar.com)

So, you’ve spent months or even years writing and perfecting your book and you’ve put it out there for all the world to see. Now the real work begins! You need to find your audience.

One part of finding an audience, what we love to call “building a platform,” is becoming an expert in your field and attracting readers. One way you do that is to create a blog to support your work.

Do you need a blog? Yes. When should you begin? Yesterday.

REASONS TO HAVE A BLOG

  • You’ll network with 1) other writers, 2) other people interested in your topic, 3) potential book buyers, 4) and believe it or not, you may actually cultivate some great friendships. I’ve never met a blogger who didn’t have a few very dear friends they met while blogging.
  • You can link your blog to your Twitter and Facebook to instantly notify people when you’ve posted a blog. That makes one less Tweet and one less Facebook post you have to make!
  • If you’re a non-fiction writer, you can’t afford to NOT have a blog. You have to establish your credibility for anyone to take you seriously and buy your book. For fiction authors, you need to find readers interested in your topic.

WHERE SHOULD YOU BLOG?

You can set up a free blog account here at WordPress.com or at Blogger.com. Typically, WordPress is used by bloggers in America and Blogger is used by the Brits, but there are no rules, so choose the one you like best. There is also WordPress.org which has more options available for your page, but requires you to own your own domain name (more on that below). If you plan on growing ridiculously big, WordPress.org may be a better choice for you. Here’s a free step-by-step tutorial at About.com on how to set up a WordPress.com blog.

imagesNOW, STRUT YOUR STUFF!

1. Decide on your content. You can always go left and post about the neighbor’s dog, but you need to mainly focus on one subject. Many writers blog about writing, and those sites are a dime-a-dozen, so pick something you’re passionate about. History? Spaceships? Hot Romances? Whatever it is, you’ll attract many people who are also passionate about it too. And, I HAVE seen blogs written by dogs – quite entertaining posts over at Wiley’s Wisdom.

2. Choose a name. Hmmm. You’ll have to give this one some thought. “John Doe Author”? Sure, that’ll work, but you may be able to come up with something better if you give it some thought. You can use the free name provided by the blog site, such as JohnDoe.wordpress.com or you can purchase a domain name such as JohnDoe.com. Domain names will cost you a yearly fee and often look like websites, but if you have both a website AND a blog, you can double your audience, then again, you must maintain both. Websites tend to be more static, whereas blogs change almost daily.

3. Now, the most important thing about blogging is to post blogs on a regular schedule, so plan your blogging schedule right now. Once per week is okay to start, but you’ll eventually want to increase your postings. One blog per day is great! You can try different topics on different days like Manic Monday, Terrific Tuesday, Sunday Snippets. Personally, I change my schedule as I feel the need. I currently do books I’m reading on Mondays, ancestors on Thursdays, and snippets and characters from my books on Saturdays, but in August, I’m not doing books anymore, I’m concentrating on these “Wednesday Writer’s Corner” blogs. You can always write blogs ahead of time and save them as drafts, then you can post them at a later date. You’ll see that option (on wordpress) on the writing page. You can either “publish now” or “schedule for later.”

4. To make your blog look more inviting, limit your posts to less than 1000 words. 500-700 is perfect. Add a few photos, make your headings in bold, and leave lots of white space. Most people scan, not read, while on the Internet, so give them what they want. Let them scan the photos, the bold headings, and decide if they want to stay and read the post.

5. Now go make friends. Search the site for topics you’re interested in and also ones you’re blogging about. Like posts, follow other bloggers. Bloggers are a friendly bunch and will most often follow you back. Search for a monthly blog challenge and try it. Other people doing the same challenge will drop by and often like your page – another good way to make friends.

If you create a blog here on WordPress, let me know and I’ll be happy to follow you! 🙂

 

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Lori Crane is a bestselling and award-winning author of historical fiction and the occasional thriller. Her books have climbed to the Kindle Top 100 lists many times, including “Elly Hays” which debuted at #1 in Native American stories. She has also enjoyed a place among her peers in the Top 100 historical fiction authors on Amazon, climbing to #23. She resides in greater Nashville and is a professional musician by night – an indie author by day.

It’s Monday! What are you reading?

Posted on by Lori Crane

2a2It’s Monday! What are you reading?

This week I read “Cades Cove: The Curse of Allie Mae” by Aiden James.

One of my favorite places on Earth is the Smoky Mountains, and sitting in a hollow in the mountains is Cades Cove. I’ve been there many times and was excited by the sheer name of this book.

51P1FVNRxPLCades Cove: The Curse of Allie Mae is a ghost story written in current times with bits of history, tradition, and ancestry thrown in.

David and Miriam Hobbs venture to a secret place in Cades Cove that is reportedly the 1800’s version of Lover’s Lane. They see hearts and names carved on the old trees, and one of the names is Allie. Later they find an old treasure bag with Allie’s name embroidered on it. David takes the bag home to Denver and the ghost story begins. Allie turns out to be a hateful poltergeist that terrorizes David’s family. Of course you’ll keep reading to find out how they get rid of her and who she is. The family connection at the end between Allie and David is intriguing.

When the family can’t take any more of Allie’s deadly mischief, David takes Allie’s bag back to Cades Cove and enlists the help of a Cherokee Indian guide and his shaman daughter to get rid of Allie. After intense spells and a flashback to Allie’s gruesome death, the story ends, and all is well.

At that point, I would have given the book lots of stars for the good plot, but it doesn’t end there. Once David returns to Denver, he receives a letter from the Indian stating they have exhumed Allie’s remains and given her a proper burial. I wish the book would have ended there, but at that point Allie reappears in the family home, making the dog bark and making me feel like I just wasted two days of my life reading a book about how they got rid of her. The story apparently segues into a sequel.

If you like ghost stories, this one is for you!

Check it out on Amazon HERE and take a peak at Aiden James’s website HERE.

It’s Monday! What are you reading?

Posted on by Lori Crane

2a2It’s Monday! What are you reading?

This week I read the thriller “Seven Unholy Days” by Jerry Hatchett.

81qe5Xi64JLSeven Unholy Days is about the collapse of the modern-day world at the hands of a mad man. It follows Matthew Becker, the contractor for America’s electrical grid, and an unknown adversary who is taunting him, shutting down the power across the country, crashing the financial markets around the world, kidnapping a young woman, and murdering thousands of people. Slowly, we find out that the perpetrator believes he is the anti-christ, setting into motion the apocalypse, and the catastrophes happening around the world are following the seven seals in the book of Revelations.

The writing bounces back and forth between third person and first person, which is a little distracting, but the story is well worth the effort. It is weaved and plotted exquisitely, with well-crafted characters and a storyline straight out of a million-dollar movie.

It has lots and lots of tech jargon, so if you’re geeky at all, you’ll love it!

Check it out HERE on Amazon.

Also check out Jerry Hatchett’s website HERE.

Saturday Snippet of An Orphan’s Heart

Posted on by Lori Crane

Eric-Hoffer-Finalist-BannerI’ve spent so much time on the Culpeppers lately, I’ve grown a little weary of them. I’ve been writing a four-book series since August, which is itching to become a five-book series. Sigh. I need something a little different. I thought I’d bring back an old story this week. An Orphan’s Heart was a finalist in the 2014 Eric Hoffer Awards. I’m so glad someone else thought it was a good story besides me. 🙂

Our heroine, Ellen, is a young woman in post-civil-war Mississippi, the only female traveling on a wagon train, and I’m sure she’s not used to being treated so harshly. It’s a good thing handsome Luke is somewhat of a hero, because piss-drunk Floyd has grabbed Ellen by the wrist.

If you like the snippet, the Kindle is on sale July 4-6 for $0.99. Pick it up at Amazon HERE.

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AOH%20cover_webLuke looks past me, over my shoulder. He nods, then there is a sudden noise behind me, and Luke grabs my wrist and says, “Come on!”

“Hey!” Floyd hollers at us as we pull away.

“That’s enough, Floyd!” Buck yells, appearing from the woods behind us.

Floyd turns toward Buck, and moves faster than his inebriated body should be able to. As Floyd loosens his hold on me, Luke yanks me toward the wagon and shoves me in. Buck grabs Floyd by his outstretched arm, spins him around, and puts the knife up to Floyd’s throat. Floyd curses, demanding Buck let him go. I assume Buck refused, for they’re soon having an all-out brawl. I hear the whiskey jug hit the ground, but I don’t know if Floyd threw it or dropped it. I also hear fists making contact with flesh. I can’t imagine Floyd is in any shape to fight off a man like Buck.

I jump when I hear a gunshot. Everything is abruptly silent. Even the bullfrogs stop croaking, and it seems as if time is standing still. I look wide-eyed at Luke, wondering if Floyd has been shot.

“It’s all right,” he says, shaking his head in answer to my unspoken question.

“Are you sure?” I whisper.

He nods. “Yes. I’m sorry. We were hoping Floyd would stay sober, especially with a lady around.”

I hear Buck order Floyd to lie down right where he is and sleep it off, and I breathe a sigh of relief that Floyd is still alive. I don’t hear another word from either man, so I assume Floyd did as he was told.

Luke leaves the back of the wagon. I don’t move. After a few minutes that seem like an hour, he comes back and says, “Floyd has passed out by the fire. You’re safe now.”

“Thank you. I didn’t know I wasn’t safe before,” I mumble to him.

Indie Pride Day!!

Posted on by Lori Crane

CGBGz9xVEAEERePJuly 1st is the second annual INDIE PRIDE DAY. Show your love for indie books and indie authors and bring awareness to the great indie stories out there.

What is indie, you ask?

An indie is an author who has chosen to go beyond the traditional world of publishing and make it on their own. Not only do we write the stories, but we are also responsible for great covers, perfect editing, ebook and print formatting, marketing, and sales. We wear many hats!

How can you participate?

Join us today and make indie trendy! Tweet a picture of yourself holding your favorite indie book and include the hashtag #IndieBooksBeSeen. Post the photo on Facebook. Blog about a great indie book. Re-tweet and share other pictures you run across today.

IMG_20150630_213047733_HDRIndie authors everywhere thank you!