Monday, June 30, 2008

So I've been advertising with The Romance Studio.

http://www.theromancestudio.com/

For anyone who is thinking of advertising their ebook I highly recommend it. It is highly reasonable and they are just the nicest people running it.

I started advertising with my first book, Duke's Project, when I found their site simply because they had posted a review of my book. I then noticed the cool ebook ads and saw the link that said advertise with us. I initially chose to do the random cover ads for four weeks.

Anyway, I had such a positive experience with the first ad that I decided also to advertise both The Squire and Duke Pretender in random cover ads. This time for twelve weeks. The Squire is on their adults only part of their site and I have to say I think I have seen it appear more often on that site than Duke's Project appeared on the main site, likely cause they have less covers on the adults only site.

But I noticed right away when Duke Pretender was supposed to appear it did not. They were still showing Duke's Project as a random ad. So I emailed them and they responded very quickly with an apology. One of their assistants had gotten confused with the similar titles and thought I had wanted to extend Duke's Project for 12 more weeks. Now I would have been happy and satisfied if they simply switched it to Duke Pretender at that point and been given what I paid for, but instead, they decided to run Duke Pretender as a static ad for 12 weeks instead of a random ad. Very cool. So now when you get onto their site, there is Duke Pretender on the front page at the bottom left nice and big and beautiful. I could have not asked for a better response.

It's funny how you really can get good things with kindness over rudeness. I had a similar experience recently on my vacation where I left the California wine country missing a bottle from a purchase I made. The clerk simply forgot to put it in the box. I contacted them right away via email and they made arrangements to ship me the bottle at no charge. However a week went by and they hadn't replied to my email to let me know this is what they were doing, so I followed up. They were very apologetic and professional and sent me two free bottles in addition to the one they had already shipped. Classy.

So, anyway, I didn't get any writing work done over the weekend. I meant to. I needed to. I should have. I thought of some things. Ideas, vague sorts of things. But I was lazy and none of it made it to paper. I have so much work I need to do too. Three stories for AQ, a story for EC and another for CP. So what did I choose to do? Nothing. I didn't even read the books I have waiting to be read. I watched televison. Played a handheld video game and wasted another weekend.

No word from Samhain. Sigh. I know it's only been two weeks and it could be up to 16 weeks but for some reason I was hoping I would get a fastish response. Pipe dreams. Of course, it could just as easily be a rejection anyway. I'm not stupid enough to believe that just because I have a few books published I can't still be rejected. I'm constantly improving my skills. Or at least I hope am. But it is just as likely that the response will be a rejection as an acceptance. I say I have a 50/50 chance on that.

Haven't received my edits yet on The Prisoner. I'm kind of glad. Not looking forward to working on those at all. I came up with a blurb but it is most unsatisfactory so I really need to work on that. And getting an excerpt that only fits on one page that says "Read Me".

The excerpt I picked for Perfect Man is pretty short. I liked the tone of it though. I couldn't get too far into though because it gets pretty steamy after that. Here it is:

Craig had gone on about how great the dinner was which made Alex smile. He hadn’t stopped smiling, really, since his fantasy man had arrived. It worried him a little. He could easily see himself falling head over heels in love with Craig—again. Just like high school. Only if it ended just like his crush had ended in high school it would be much more painful.
Alex rose from the dining table and started clearing up the dishes.
“Oh hey, wait, let me do that,” Craig said. He swiped up a stack of dishes and headed into the kitchen. Alex’s gaze followed him. His ass was perfect, just like the rest of him. He’d looked great in the suit last night but in the tight jeans…well…he made Alex’s mouth water.
“You’re a guest in my home, I should be cleaning up,” Alex protested. He went to take the dishes out of Craig’s hands but he neatly sidestepped and put them in the sink.
“Where’s your dishwasher?” Craig asked, glancing around, a puzzled look on his face.
“I’m right here,” Alex said with a laugh. “This place has been here for years. The previous owners never put one in and I thought about it when I first bought the place, but since there’s usually only me it seemed ridiculous.”
Craig threw him a glance like he couldn’t believe anyone would do the dishes by hand. Shrugging, he reached for the bottle of dish soap on the sink.
“Oh, no, you are not washing dishes.” Alex snatched the bottle out of his hand.
“Give me that. You cooked.” Craig pursued him across the kitchen and pinned him against a counter.
Alex held the bottle away out of his reach and opened his mouth to say something when Craig pressed against him. Thoughts of washing dishes flew out of his head. His gaze drifted to Craig’s lips.
Craig took the bottle of soap out of Alex’s hands and put it down. His sapphire-colored eyes grew darker, flared with awareness. He held Alex’s hands above his head, leaning into him.

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