Indie Life: friends for life

My journey as an indie author has led me to meet so many fabulous people (mostly online) including authors, book bloggers, editors, cover designers, artists, even musicians and more. Living in the Algarve, there are few opportunities to mingle with other authors (in real life) as there are so few bookish events here, which is a shame. So when a friend of a friend had written a book recently, my name was put forward to help her get onto the indie 'ladder'.
Eleanor Smythe (a pen name) turned out to be such a hoot to be around. We've met up several times over the past couple of months and each time we get together, we talk for hours and hours! She has even started calling me her mentor which is hilarious in itself (!) but also very kind. I feel such an enormous kinship with Eleanor that I am so grateful to have been introduced to her and I am really looking forward to lots more chats about our writing and lives in general.
I'm sure Eleanor would love to hear from other authors and bloggers so please do pop over to her brand new blog and leave her a comment! You can find her at eleanorsmythe.blogspot.com. She's an absolute beginner at all this social networking malarkey so I'm sure she'll be delighted to hear from you.
* Eleanor is planning to release her first book, Perceptions, in September. 

Indie Life: The benefits of making my books free

When I published my first book (Raven) back in the Spring of 2011, I had absolutely no idea what I was letting myself in for. I hadn't a clue about how to get myself known in a world full of authors. And over the past couple of years this world has grown dramatically. I think I was lucky I started when I did, because I managed to get my foot in the door just before millions of other authors started to realise how easy (and awesome) it is to publish independently.
Raven's sales were slow at first, a few per month for a couple of months. Then around the time that I was about to release my second book, December Moon, I decided to make Raven free. Boy was that a great idea! I believe that single moment was what launched my writing career.
Raven continues to be free and still sees downloads in the thousands every month.
With the launch of the first book (The Ghost of Josiah Grimshaw) in my new series (The Morgan Sisters) late last year, I had yet another struggle to let everyone know about it. Sure, I had thousands of readers of The Raven Saga, but no way of letting them all know about the new series. So here I am, essentially starting from scratch. Earlier this year, I penned a novella (Daisy Madigan's Paradise) and made it available for free. Downloads have been slow - nowhere near as good as Raven (even though I've had some awesome reviews). I wondered whether it's because it's a novella? Maybe people aren't so keen? I really don't know. Since then, I've released the next book in the series, The Temporal Stone. And to try and increase sales, I've just made the first book free as well. Fingers crossed that it will work this time! Wish me luck!
Be sure to visit all the other Indie Lifers this month: