All posts by Jordan Smith

What I Learned From My Amazon Kindle Countdown Promotion

Marketing, , ,

This past weekend, I experimented with putting Finding the Core of Your Story on an Amazon Kindle Countdown promotion. If you’re not familiar with the program, it’s a feature that Amazon recently added to KDP Select. The idea is that your book goes on sale, counting back up to the normal price over a period of time. So, for example, when I did my sale, I set up five countdown milestones that each lasted 12 hours. My book began the sale at $1.99, then went up $1 every 12 hours until it returned to the usual price of $6.99.

It was a great experience to try out the new promotion option. Some of my author friends asked how it went, so I thought I’d write up some of my takeaways. Continue reading What I Learned From My Amazon Kindle Countdown Promotion →

Holiday Indie Book Sale

Announcements

Here’s a great collection of Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals that you don’t have to leave your house to get! Eleven indie authors have joined forces to offer their paperback books for discounted prices from November 29 until December 3. See below for links and discount codes for all the titles in the sale, including my book Finding the Core of Your Story. There’s also a geeky giveaway at the bottom of this post, so be sure to scroll all the way down!

Indie Holiday Book Sale

Continue reading Holiday Indie Book Sale →

Technical Excellence: Why You Should Use Styles While Writing

Technicalities, ,

You know what styles are, right? Headers, lists, italics, bold… Those kinds of things. Do you use them? Do you use them correctly?

At this point, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with story. Well, I’ve decided to talk about technical excellence every now and then, and I think you’d be wise to read this post. No, styles are not as exciting as actually writing your story, but they have a big role to play in your professionalism and time spent preparing your story for publishing.

‘Cause you want to publish, right? Good.

Let’s clear up one thing to start with: Styles are not simply italicizing or bolding text. That’s a text style, not a real style. I know, it’s not all that nice of the word processing people to make it simple to hit a keystroke and apply styles the wrong way, but that’s how it is. We’ll have to deal with it.

Okay, so what’s the right way? And why is it the right way? Let’s answer the second question first. You want to use paragraph styles for a few reasons. Continue reading Technical Excellence: Why You Should Use Styles While Writing →

Thesaurus to the Rescue

Story Tips, ,

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Although I often tell people to come up with a great adjective for each character mentioned in the logline, I don’t often have a ready supply of good adjectives. And that’s okay, because this is the 21st century and anybody reading this blog post can easily go to Thesaurus.com and find words.

But perhaps you’re skeptical, or you’d just like a few more details about my process. Very well. Step this way. Continue reading Thesaurus to the Rescue →

What a Fictional Cat Taught Me About Punctuation

Technicalities

I don’t know if any of you have read the book Pinky Pye. It’s a cute little story by Eleanor Estes, which concerns the Pye family’s adopted kitten Pinky, who happens to have a unique talent: she can typewrite.

Throughout the book, Estes treats us to hilarious passages from Pinky’s typewriting. These are all essays on how to do cat things, such as playing games with humans. But what’s most delightful to me is what Pinky taught me about punctuation.

You see, being a cat, Pinky doesn’t have the most conventional ideas of grammar. She prefers the dollar sign ($) to the exclamation point (!) because she thinks it’s prettier. She lets Mr. Pye put in the commas. And she’s fond of writing sentences that consist of a single word. This inspired me to take a closer look at my own use of punctuation. Continue reading What a Fictional Cat Taught Me About Punctuation →

A Sea of Covers

Marketing

Something big happened when the Kindle became popular. Suddenly, it wasn’t just important that your cover image look amazing in real life. You also needed to have a great cover that worked as a teeny tiny thumbnail image. Don’t believe me? Find a book on Amazon and look at the cover images under “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought.”

What you should see is a sea of good and bad covers. What makes them stand out? Do any of them catch your eye? Why? You’ll probably notice a few things about the standouts:

  • Big, readable text
  • Clear imagery—big pictures that are obvious what they are
  • Eye-catching colors

You don’t have to have all of those to stand out, but even just one helps. But how do you tell that your cover is working amidst a sea of others? Continue reading A Sea of Covers →

Reader Question: Fictional Character <3 Historical Figure

Story Tips,

It’s time for a reader question! Rebecca W. wrote to me with this:

Would a book sell with the main fictional character becoming romantically involved with a real historical figure, but this romance used only to represent a theme, and would in the end not go anywhere? Would it be too unrealistic, or could the writer shape this romance so that it fits with the story, is not historically inaccurate, and is believable. I’m not saying that the character would end up marrying the historical figure, but there would be a romance. Would this work?

What a doozy! Let’s see if I can shed some light on the subject. Continue reading Reader Question: Fictional Character <3 Historical Figure →

I was talking with my friend Aubrey Hansen tonight, and she had a great story tidbit that I told her I would be quoting.

Generally, doing things just for realism is a bad idea… It has to be for story reasons, not realism. Realism is relative.

Authors, when you have a new book out, do a Goodreads giveaway. Seriously, hundreds of entries without much promotional effort. It’s phenomenal.