Tag: Twitter

Writing every day in January

~ Elaine Jeremiah ~ 11 Comments

I’m not sure I’ll be able to stick to this, but my aim is to write every single day this month, even if it’s only for 20 minutes or less. I’ve been inspired by this article that suggests making a realistic New Year’s resolution regarding writing – to write for 20 minutes a day every day in January or less if you can’t manage it.

I think it’s such a fantastic idea and I’ll explain why. In recent years I’ve been writing more and more, particularly in the past year or so since I’ve joined Twitter, started a WordPress blog and have been in contact with, and even met some, other writers.

But I still struggle to write every day. I’m not an especially busy person, so in many ways I have it really good and there’s not much excuse not to write. I find that life takes over, working, walking the dog and looking after him, housework etc. And as I was saying to my husband today, as much as I enjoy writing it’s work – it is hard work and it’s not always easy as I’ve been finding lately as I work on my current WIP. I don’t know if you guys ever feel like that about it, but that’s how it is for me.

Having said that, I love it and I have more and more incentives to keep writing, not least all my online writer friends. You keep me going and I really appreciate it! And as I said that’s inspired me to write more.

So far in these first few days of January I’ve managed to write every day, although not for that long each time. But I should add that in recent months on a number of occasions I’ve managed over 1000 words in one day, which is good for me, so it’s not like I’m constantly slacking!

What are your thoughts on writing every day? Do you struggle to do it or is it something that comes naturally? I’d love to hear from you. 🙂

The Inheritance does well in free promo!!

~ Elaine Jeremiah ~ 11 Comments

Well that was certainly an exciting 5 days. From Thursday last week until yesterday, my debut novel The Inheritance was free to download on Amazon.

I’d worked hard in the weeks leading up to it and applied to lots of free promo sites to register my details with them in the hope that some of them would mention me.

I paid for 3 of them to feature my book, the rest I left to chance. I was amazed when over the course of the 5 days a total of 9 sites I’d applied to for free featured my book on their site. I was happy to say the least.

What surprised me the most about the free promo was how well it did Stateside. Having only had meager sales of The Inheritance over there, I was amazed at the huge number of downloads there were. I had just over 9000.

The image I’ve uploaded from Amazon isn’t very clear, but I got to #53 in free ebooks on Amazon.com as well as #1 in romance and #3 in teen/young adult fiction. This result is more than I could have hoped for. I’m grateful to my blogger friends and Twitter followers as well as friends and family for spreading the word.

Although I didn’t do as well back here in the UK, I did get a few hundred downloads so I’m glad about that. In total, when I notched up the number of downloads across the world it came to 9461 which is just incredible for me.

Having had great success in the US but less in my own country, it got me to wondering why exactly that was. Thinking about it, I guess it may have been the cover that appealed to the American market and less so in the UK. It might also have been the subject matter, that a story about an inheritance and family issues may have been more appealing in the US than the UK.

Whatever the case, I’m just glad that thousands of people are now reading my book. That’s a good feeling. I’m also hoping that I’ll get a few more sales out of it. I was rather disappointed that my ranking in the sales category on Amazon had plummeted, both in the US and UK. Then I thought a bit more logically and remembered that technically I hadn’t sold any books anywhere since my free promo began, so it’s not all doom and gloom.

I’ll definitely be keeping a close eye on how The Inheritance does in the coming days. It’s exciting times.

The Inheritance is FREE from today for 5 days!!

~ Elaine Jeremiah ~ 6 Comments

TheInheritance

Well it’s here. As of today my debut novel The Inheritance is free on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk for 5 days until Monday.

If you haven’t yet read it, why not download it now while it’s free? And let me know what you think of it. Feedback whether positive or negative is always good!

Check out my Goodreads page too where you can read a short bio of me and connect with other readers/writers. I can also be contacted on Twitter via @ElaineJeremiah.

I hope you all have a good day and for those of you who are preparing to take part in NaNoWriMo – good luck!

The Inheritance will be free soon!

~ Elaine Jeremiah ~ Leave a comment

TheInheritance

Hi everyone. This is just a brief blog post to let you know that my debut novel The Inheritance will be FREE on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk for 5 days from this Thursday.  (I will post the web address details on the day.)

The dates are: Thursday 31st October to Monday 4th November. If you haven’t yet purchased it, why not get it for free during this period?

And if you have bought The Inheritance and enjoyed it, please spread the word. I’d be really grateful!

Happy writing everyone. 🙂

Harnessing the power of Twitter

~ Elaine Jeremiah ~ 10 Comments

Twitter

I joined Twitter just over 18 months ago. I’ve found it to be incredibly helpful to my writing and I’ve made contact with other writers through it, some of whom I’ve even met and become good friends with.

But for quite a while I wasn’t engaging fully with other authors on Twitter. Although I had over 1000 followers and I was following over 1000 people, following people and gaining new followers was slowing to a trickle. I just wasn’t very active on it. Most of the time I would do a post on my blog, tweet about it once and expect people to respond.

If I’m honest with myself, I did realise that wasn’t enough. But I was busy doing lots of other things, writing and blogging to name two, and so I neglected Twitter.

A couple of weeks ago I was given some good advice by another writer, Terry Tyler. She was commenting on my guest post for Joanne Phillip‘s blog which I’d written as part of my blog tour to promote my debut novel The Inheritance. She suggested that to publicise myself more online, it would be a good idea to make sure I’m active on Twitter by retweeting about 20 people a day. That way I would likely get more people retweeting my tweets and therefore be seen by more people.

I decided to take Terry’s advice. I’ve been trying to retweet around 20 people a day as she suggested and I’m seeing the results. When you retweet other authors, they really appreciate it – as I do when people retweet my messages about my novel. It leads to more people following you, you have a greater presence online and it helps towards that vital marketing of your book. Your tweets end up being seen not just by your followers, but by their followers too and so on.

I’m going to continue to take a more proactive attitude to using Twitter and harnessing its power to promote my writing. So far it’s paying dividends.

What a week that was!

~ Elaine Jeremiah ~ 12 Comments

Week

Well my blog tour to promote my debut novel The Inheritance is over. I’ve learned a lot from it, the main thing being to keep persevering in promoting my novel.

I’ve had some great advice recently on how to do just that. I feel that my blog isn’t being seen by that many people, and therefore my book is not as well known as it could be. Yes it’s true that blogging is not the only way to promote a novel – far from it.

But I realise that if I’m to gain support from other writers, which I believe is one of the key ways of promoting my book, I need to have a greater presence on Twitter for one thing. I have to confess to being a little lazy when it comes to Twitter. I’m often following new people, following them after they follow me or finding their details then choosing to follow them.

However I don’t engage that much with other Twitter users. Recently I’ve taken to retweeting people, but that only goes so far. I do thank fellow Twitter users for following me which seems to go down well. But I feel I need to devote a bit more time to Twitter, to cultivate my ‘relationships’ with my followers and those I’m following.

Of course if you’re tweeting regularly you have a little less time for blogging and writing. I guess it’s all about prioritising – being able to balance everything so that you spend the right about of time on each thing. Obviously the writing should come first – after all that’s what we’re here for isn’t it?

I do think, though, that our relationships with other writers are so important. They can offer us invaluable support and advice because they’ve gone through, and are going through, exactly the same process as us in their quest to write books and market them.

So having blogged pretty much every day for the last week, I think I’m going to blog a little less this week, tweet a little more and DEFINITELY write much more.

How do you cope with juggling all the different aspects to your writing life?

End of my blog tour – interview with Kate Frost

~ Elaine Jeremiah ~ 5 Comments

TheInheritance

After over a week of interviews and guest posts on my fellow writers’ blogs, I’ve got to the end of my blog tour to promote my debut novel The Inheritance.

And to finish up today I’m back where I started – on my friend Kate Frost’s blog being interviewed by her. Kate is a good friend of mine. We live fairly close together and she’s the first person I’ve followed on Twitter who I’ve met face to face!

Kate has been a real support and help to me over the past year or so on my quest to publish The Inheritance. So take a look at her interview with me. She asks me some great questions which I hope you’ll find interesting. You can even find out which of my characters are like me and which of them I’d like to meet.

I’ve really enjoyed my blog tour, especially answering your questions about how I came to publish The Inheritance.  I’ve also enjoyed the preparation for it, contacting my fellow writers and arranging it all as well as answering the questions for my interviews and writing my guest posts.

If you missed any of my blog tour dates and would like to take a look you can find the details here.  Thanks again to Kate, Joanne, Jade, Briana, Martin and Laurey for helping me with my promotion.  I really appreciate it guys!

If you would like to buy The Inheritance it’s available on Amazon UK and Amazon.com.  I’m also on Goodreads and you can contact me on Twitter via @ElaineJeremiah.

My blog tour links

~ Elaine Jeremiah ~ 2 Comments

Blog tour image

In case you’ve missed any of my blog tour dates this week as part of my promotion of my debut novel The Inheritance, you can catch them as follows:

Saturday 14th September: Kate Frost
Monday 16th September: Joanne Phillips
Tuesday 17th September: Jade Reyner
Wednesday 18th September: Briana Vedsted
Thursday 19th September: Martin Lake
Friday 20th September: Laurey Buckland
Sunday 22nd September: Kate Frost

I hope you’ve enjoyed my blog tour.

If you’d like to buy The Inheritance it can be found on Amazon UK and Amazon.com.  I’m also on Goodreads and you can contact me on Twitter via @ElaineJeremiah