join me tonight!

I'm going to be on Stacey Cochran's "Book Chatter" LIVE tonight at 9:00 pm, EST-- I'm going to talk about my recent sales successes and failures. Hope you'll join us!

I can now assess my mistakes. For one, I raised the price too high. Fifty cents doesn't seem like much, but think about what it would be like if a zero was added to that. Imagine raising a price from 99 dollars to 149 dollars. Would you be willing to pay that much more? I still want to try $1.19 and see how I do. If I don't fare much better, then I'll go back to 99 cents.

Second, the problem may have been that I raised the price on an existing product. I think I'd do better releasing a new book at $1.49 (or higher, once the new Amazon royalty rates change). Clearly the appeal of Faking It wasn't only the book itself, but a "great book at a great price". I thought perhaps it was time to let the value of the writing speak for itself, but I underestimated that readers loved that just as much (even though some said they'd have been willing to pay more).

Good lessons all around. It'll kill me to have to take the book offline even for 24 hours while the new price reduction goes into effect, but hopefully sales and rankings will rebound as a result.

Finally, I got two happy surprises today. Came across this glowing review of Faking It and Ordinary World, and the WickedWriters website re-posted the guest blogpost I did for Anthony Policastro and The Writer's Edge. So, if you missed it the first time, check out WickedWriters!

Have a fab weekend, everyone!

not part of the tour, but one more guest post

I get to plug one more appearance. My friend Anthony S. Policastro (you may remember his guest post back in September of last year) invited me to write a post about being a Kindle bestseller. His blog, The Writer's Edge, attracts many self-published and aspiring authors. So, here's my post in which I try to re-trace my steps using the 4 "P"s of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion.

In the meantime, I have a question (or two) for you: Is there anything you'd like me to cover on my own blog? Any questions, any subject matter? If there is, let me know. I recently read something about blog overload, not to mention blog burnout. In other words, so many blogs to read and follow, so little time. I can vouch for this both on the reader and writer side of blogging. This piece (and I'm sorry I didn't bookmark it, otherwise I'd give you the link) suggested that it's more important to blog about things of substance than blogging every day. Most of what I post here seems to be pretty mindless, and I want to keep my followers, so I'd like to know what keeps you coming to "I'll Have What She's Having", or what would keep you coming.

And I haven't forgotten about the titles-&-characters challenge. As you read yesterday, I'm pretty swamped right now. Might not happen until the summer.

Anyhoo, enjoy the guest post, and have a good weekend. See you on the B side.

guest blogger: Anthony S. Policastro

Please welcome guest blogger Anthony S. Policastro. I first met Anthony through the Raleigh Write2Publish group, and he's been one of the leading supporters of Faking It. Anthony is an author of two novels, Dark End of the Spectrum and Absence of Faith, both published with the Outer Banks Publishing Group. Welcome Anthony!

By Anthony S. Policastro

Elisa, thank you so much for helping me with this blog tour and your support.

Both of my novels,DARK END OF THE SPECTRUM and ABSENCE OF FAITH, both mystery/thrillers, were written out of fear, universal fears that I believe all of us consider at one time or another.

DARK END OF THE SPECTRUM is about Dan Riker, a computer security expert whose family is kidnapped by digital terrorists who take over the power grid and cell phone network and hold the United States hostage. Dan is the only one with the know-how to stop them, but the hackers have his family and he must decide to save his family or save millions of people.

While I wrote this book the fear of losing my own family pervaded my thoughts and I wrapped a plot around this fear using the latest wireless technologies and a lot of imagination. I still have my family and the thought of losing them is unimaginable.

This was the fuel for DARK END OF THE SPECTRUM.

Dan's life is well planned, predicted and uneventful like most of our lives and I wanted to see how Dan would react when all of that is shattered in an instant when his family disappears.

Does Dan have the courage to save his family or will he just give up because he never had to face such insurmountable odds? Will he save millions of people whose lives are threatened by the terrorists or will he save his family? The book is not just about technology.

These are some of the questions I addressed in the book and when or if you read the book you may ask yourself these same questions and maybe better understand your own capabilities.

ABSENCE OF FAITH also addresses universal fears when residents in a highly-religious small town have horrible near-death experiences and wake up with burnt skin.  They believe they went to hell and that God has abandoned them. Matters get worse when a local Satanic cult emerges and wins over many residents.

My fears of losing all hope and all faith in the face of a downturn in life is what spawned ABSENCE OF FAITH. Again, I was interested in how people would react if you stripped them of all hope and faith. Would they pick themselves up and continue their lives? What would they do when this great fear overtakes them.

These are the questions I address in ABSENCE OF FAITH.

Bestselling author and psychic Sylvia Browne writes in her book, Prophecy, that, "...our beliefs are the driving force behind our behavior, our opinions, our actions. Without faith, without our beliefs, we're lost."

I have always been interested in religion and why and how it has such a powerful hold on all of us and what would happen if it were taken away.
 

I not only wanted my books to entertain, but I also wanted them to inspire, educate and leave readers with something to think about after they put the book down for the last time. I wanted the books to be relevant to people's lives today and some of the problems we all face in the journey of life. I hope my books are that and more.

Both DARK END OF THE SPECTRUM and ABSENCE OF FAITH are available as paperbacks from Outer Banks Publishing Group, Amazon.com and as ebooks from Smashwords.com and the Amazon Kindle.
Both books will soon appear on Barnes and Noble's new ebook site.
Visit my blogs for tips on writing, publishing, and books, WRITING IS ABOUT PUTTING YOURSELF TO WORDS and THE WRITER'S EDGE.

Interviews can be found at
The Lulu Blog
Ask Wendy - The Query Queen
Gather.com