If Love is a Lie by Jennifer Geoghan

13 July 2015: The best part about being an author

I think the most rewarding part about being an author, I mean the part that makes all the hard work and time sacrificed worth it, is when I get positive feedback from my readers. Sometimes that’s just a friend I haven’t seen in years telling me they stayed up till 3am just to finish one of my books, that it was so good they couldn’t put it down till they knew how it ended.

Really, as a writer, is there anything better than that?

Last week I had a friend say something a little different to me. She was about half way through If Love is a Lie and said that having read what she’d read so far, she got it. Got what you ask? Well, she finally understood how a man like Antonio wormed his way into my affections so quickly. As I’ve mentioned before, the first half of my novel is almost the gospel truth of what happened to me with my Match.com dating scammer. At the time, I knew my friends thought we were rushing into a relationship, but when you’re swept up in the romance of it all, you don’t see that. So when a person who had watched my relationship with Antonio from the outside said not only that she got it, but she probably would have reacted the same way too, it was a real treasure to hear. For two reasons really.

First because I apparently wrote it out well enough that she was seeing the events through my eyes. I have to imagine for someone who is actually a character in the book (yes, she was so close to the events in the novel, I had to make her a character) that it would be harder to step back and see things from my protagonist’s point of view.

Secondly because I now have a sense of peace knowing that I wasn’t just me. Antonio was good, real good. In the end, his real problem was that he came up against a suspicious ex-New Yorker. But still, it’s nice to hear that she likes the book and understands where me/my protagonist Emily could have fallen for old Antonio’s lines.

Anyway, if you’d like to find out more, check out If Love is a Lie on Amazon. Click on the book covers below to be taken to their pages on Amazon.

It comes in two different versions. A PG version (The green cover) and a NC-17 version (The purple cover)

-Jennifer

If Love is a Lie: Finding and Losing Love Online (The Spicy Version), by Jennifer Geoghan

If Love is a Lie: Finding and Losing Love Online, by Jennifer Geoghan

11 July 2015: Two things I learned this week

Since I like to pass on what I’m learning on my long road to becoming America’s best-selling novelist … I thought I’d share two things I’ve learned from my book launch last week.

#1: Don’t launch both versions of the book at the same time.

Seems folks have been buying the wrong version of the book, or should I say not the one they intended to buy. Folks have been buying the PG version, when they meant to buy the Spicy version. In retrospect, I think I should have realized this would happen. It did to a lesser extent with the launch of my last novel as well, but not to the extent this one did.

Lesson I learned: Next time, do two book launches at least a week apart. Would also help draw out the launch celebration.

#2: I didn’t get my act together in enough time to do preorders …

With all the time I poured into creating the excitement for the launch, I never looked into getting preorders set up on Amazon until it was too late. Seems you have to have your manuscript uploaded at least 10 prior to the book launch date. I went on 5 days ahead.

Lesson I learned: You need to have the book finished and ready to go well ahead of your launch date. At least 14 days, 21 would be better. Will give you enough time to upload on KDP and still start the marking blitz leading up to launch and manage to capture preorders while you’re spending all the time marketing.

Alas, I learn more with every book I put out there. I get frustrated when I make mistakes, but I also feel encouraged that I now have a new piece of the puzzle that I didn’t before. Hopefully, if you’re reading this, you won’t make the mistakes I did. Would be nice to think I’m helping others.

-Jennifer

PS: Saw this item in the back of my Entertainment Weekly this week. Thought my fellow writers and readers would enjoy.

9 July 2015: …. So Now What?

So I launched my latest project last week, If Love is a Lie. Sigh … always a big weight off your shoulders when you reach that point where you can’t tinker with the book anymore. And if I’m anything, it’s a tinkerer.

So what’s next?

A good question. Right now I’ve got a couple of things going on. First off, I decided to put a hold on starting to pound out my next novel. Instead I wanted to concentrate on the first book in my series, The Purity of Blood. As stated above, I’m a tinkerer, and of all my books, the first one seems to need a little tune up the most. Besides retooling the cover, I wanted to make sure the book was a tight as possible, because …. I want to try to get it reviewed. I have to say I’ve never tried to get any of my books reviewed before, and since I’ve changed my mind-set to a business oriented one when it comes to my writing career, it’s time to kick up my game to the next level.

On that train of thought, my other project is putting a media kit together. A media kit is meant to provide the media, bloggers, or anyone else interested with the basic at a glance facts of your life, career, novels, etc.. Sounds easy enough to put together, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I started working on it last night and I’m sure will be doing a few blog posts on my progress.

So … do you have a media kit? Do you find it helpful? I’d love to hear anyone’s opinions on the subject.

-Jennifer

Don’t forget to check out my latest novel, If Love is a lie, now available on Amazon. Click on the image below for a link to the novel on Amazon.

If Love is a Lie: Finding and Losing Love Online, by Jennifer Geoghan

5 July 2015: Ancestry.com to promote a book? Huh?

Really this post is about thinking about thinking outside the box when it comes to book promotion. With that in mind, read on …

So I was combing through some old emails I hadn’t gotten to yet when I found one from Ancestry.com saying I had some “Hints,” or possible record matches for some folks in the family tree I built on their site. It was when I clicked on the link and started looking the hints (or leaves as the refer to them on their TV commercials) that it suddenly dawned on me … there was room here to promote my book.

I bet you’re scratching your head over that one …

Yeah, I’d never thought of “advertising” on Ancestry.com … until I remembered that I based two of the main characters of my book series, The Purity of Blood, on my real life ancestors (my 4^th great grandparents in this case). Same names, same facts of their birth, death, marriage, etc. I just fashioned those facts into real people that I brought of the 19th century into today.

How’d I do that? Vampires, or course, Silly!

So on Ancestry, you can write a story about your ancestors, things like items you can’t list with a simple date and place. In the case of my grandparents, I attached a story to their profiles telling that I’d written them into my novels and that if you were reading this, you were my cousin and might enjoy reading more about how I envisioned those grandparents would be as living, breathing characters in my novels. And, oh yeah, they’re available for sale on Amazon. I don’t feel bad about doing this seeing as I really do think they are my target demographic for my books. Anyone who shares Randall and Lois as ancestors I’m sure would really enjoy how I took the time to as accurately as possible pull them from the pages of history books into a story with heart.

By the way, when I posted that item on their profiles in my family tree, a little “Leaf” popped up on everyone on Ancestry.com with my grandparents in their tree as well. It’s a link to that story I wrote …. Talk about direct marketing!

I’m telling you this story because it was an unusual promotion platform.

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!

We all have Facebook. We all have Goodreads, blogs or websites …

But what makes your story, your book special and unique? For my novel series, it was the real life ancestors I wrote into my fictional story. I’d love to hear from you about unusual ways you’ve found to promote your books.

-Jennifer

PS: Don’t forget my latest novel, If Love is a Lie, Finding and Losing Love Online, hit Amazon just this weekend! Check it out:

If Love is a Lie: Finding and Losing Love Online, by Jennifer Geoghan

4 July 2015: The Florida Writers Association – What I learned

This past week, I attended a meeting for the Florida Writers Association over in Winter Park, FL. I’d never been to any sort of association meeting like that before and really enjoyed being in an atmosphere that wreaked of writing!

Basically, we started out by going around the room introducing ourselves. Most folks were aspiring writers, maybe a little less experienced than me. Let’s say they were Freshman in the School of Hard Literary Knocks, where as I’m more of a Sophomore. Some had published their works, others were looking to learn how to get started. Others were already publishing and doing quite well at it.

The speaker, Ben Hale, an author and publisher was very interesting. Here’s a few things I took away from his talk:

I’m doing a lot better than I thought … and a lot worse …

How’s that? The Good: Well, I’m actually plugging away at my writing without letting anything stand in my way. I write – write – write like a little fiendish little writing demon. The Bad: I waited to really get down and dirty in the trenches of marketing and promotion of my books until just now … yes BOOK SIX!!! I should have started with Book 1. But, you live and learn, and I learned it’s never to late to start.

I might want to think about redesigning the cover of my first novel.

Ben said something to the effect that when you’re writing your novel, you can get all emotional about it, but the day you have a completed manuscript, you no longer have a baby, you have a product that you now have to sell. Yes, I like the cover of my first novel, but it’s not eye-catching enough for the person scrolling though all those other books on Amazon. It needs work. I’m also thinking about renaming the series. Here’s the good part, since I didn’t really do much by way of marketing on them, there’s not much to be undone by rebranding the whole series, covers, titles, etc. Talk about a downside having an upside!

Writing for a smaller niche market means you have less competition.

There are hundreds of thousands of romance novels on Amazon. Why would someone pick mine? Well … besides the fact that they’re awesome, I mean 🙂 If you search just “Romance Novels,” you’ll have to sift through more books than you can shake your Kindle at, but if you search for “Cat Mystery Novels,” as Ben explained, and that’s what you’re writing, your only other competition on Amazon is going to be the one other lady up in Peekaboo, WA penning them on her back porch. A LOT LESS COMPETITION for you. No, as intriguing as it sounds, I’m not about to start writing cat mystery novels, but I am about to start thinking about how I can gear my novels towards a smaller pool of readers that I’m more likely to capture the attention of.

Audio book? Of my little ole’ book?

Yep, Amazon has a side company that will do all the recording for you. Whoda Thunk! They actually came up with another way to make money off of us lowly authors! You can either pay for the studio time to get it recorded and get more royalties, or let them take on the expense of recording it and take less royalties. Either way, they produce it for you. You can send them a sample of your book and they will send you samples of different narrators you can choose from. Ben’s good advice if considering this option was to pick a narrator not so much based on how wonderfully they read your book, but also to consider the following that particular narrator already has. Seems some audio book narrators have fans and people will seek out books to hear that narrator read them. If you get a narrator with a following, that following will see your book as an option to buy when the search him out. Here’s the website for this: http://www.acx. com

Sprechen sie Deutsch?

If you want to get your book into foreign markets, one of the best ways is to get it translated into another language. when I asked Ben what languages were the best for say a romance novel, he said to see where your international sales were coming from. If I have sales in Germany, German might be the way to go. Don’t speak German? Cause I know I don’t, well here’s a company that will do it for you: http://www.babelcube. com

Well that was the highlights of what I learned, which as you can see was quite a bit. They have this meeting once a month and I think I’ll be becoming a regular attendee.

-Jennifer

Author of the novel If Love is a Lie: Finding and Losing Love Online. Now available on Amazon along with her other fine and underappreciated novels. 🙂

If Love is a Lie: Finding and Losing Love Online, by Jennifer Geoghan

3 July 2015: A Writer’s Favorite Day – Book Launch Day!

Yep, I think any writer will tell you that their favorite day is the day they have a new book hit the market, and for this old girl, that’s TODAY!!! Yep, If Love is a Lie, Finding and Losing Love Online, hit Amazon this morning. There are two different versions of the book for sale. The regular version, and “The Spicy Version.”

It’s a romantic thriller at heart, but a romance none the less, and I did two versions to satisfy two different Romance Reader types. Those who like a little more spice in their romance, and those who prefer a little more fade to black when things start to heat up. Hence the regular, PG version, and the Spicy Version, a bit more NC-17 plus. 😉

Still, why do two versions of the same book?

Funny you should ask, but it only takes a few hours to make the modifications if while you’re editing the original version, you highlight the racy bits and bobs.

But enough to this, now it’s time to celebrate! To check out my book, you can click on the book cover images below to be taken to the book’s page on Amazon. PURPLE = The Spicy Version. GREEN = The Regular Version.

If Love is a Lie: Finding and Losing Love Online (The Spicy Version), by Jennifer Geoghan

If Love is a Lie: Finding and Losing Love Online, by Jennifer Geoghan

IF LOVE IS A LIE …. Love is never as easy to find as we wish it would be. When Emily started her online romance with Antonio, a man who seemed to be the one she’d been waiting for all her life, she had no idea what sinister motives lied behind the photos of Antonio’s amazing brown eyes. Blinded by her own desires for romance and companionship, she embraced the lie and ignored the truth of her persistent suspicions of his motivations. What will she do when she learns her great love is nothing more than a scammer, not after her heart, but her money? With revenge her only motive, she sets out on an adventure to bring Antonio down and see him punished for what he’s done to her. But when she’s forced to confront him face to face, will she ultimately find love in his arms, or in Evan’s, the sexy but stoic FBI Agent who enlists her to bring Antonio to justice?

Loosely based on the author’s own unfortunate online romance with a scam artist she mistook for the man of her dreams, the first half of this novel mirrors the author’s own journey to the startling truth of her paramour’s guilt. In life it’s true that we can’t all have happy endings, but though we can’t live them, sometimes we can write them for ourselves.

The real question is … in this case, is truth stranger than fiction?

IT’S HERE!! If Love is a Lie, by Jennifer Geoghan

2 July 2015: Book Launch Promotion Ideas #7: Listing your Platforms

Continuing my series of book promotion ideas leading up to the launch of my new novel, If Love is a Lie, Finding and Losing Love Online, here’s today’s topic: Listing Your Platforms

There are many ways to get the word out, but I never realized how many different ways I could spread that word until I sat down and started to write them out as a list. In many ways, listing your platforms is like listing your blessings.

Here’s my (still growing) list of online platforms I can use to promote my books:

Facebook personal page
Facebook Author Page
Romance Book Facebook pages
Vampire books Facebook pages
Jennifer Geoghan Novels Blog (What you’re kindly taking the time to read right now)
Wells Genealogy Blog (My blog about my genealogy research)
Goodreads
Pininterst
Me.com
LinkedIn
Amazon Author Page
Ancestry.com (I’ll be posting more on this later on)

When I looked at that list I realized I have a lot of work to do. I needed to create a posting schedule and I need to keep up to date on all these sites when the book comes out. Honestly, had I not sat down and made this list, I’d probably have just updated Facebook and this blog.

Now I’m trying to SEE THE BIGGER PICTURE.

I need to update and link these pages together to work for me in unison.

This ends my series of Book Promotion Blog Entries, but I’m still very much a work in progress. Like I said when I first started the series, this is the first time I’m trying to take an organized approach to launching my book. I’m very curious to see if I see better sales as a result of my efforts.

So what about you?

I’d love to hear more idea on how to promote your books, and by books I mean Ebooks. Had I a paper version of my books, I’d have more avenues for promotion, but I haven’t gone down that road yet.

Don’t forget, my latest novel will be released on Amazon tomorrow. Check it out if you love a good romantic thriller!

-Jennifer

1 July 2015: Book Launch Promotion Ideas #6: Emails … Emails … Emails …

Continuing my series of book promotion ideas leading up to the launch of my new novel, If Love is a Lie, Finding and Losing Love Online, here’s today’s topic: Emails … Emails … Emails …

Coming a little late to the promoting party, I don’t have a Jennifer Geoghan Novels official email list yet. I started the process of collecting emails with mailchimp.com, but don’t really have enough to do get my quarterly newsletter off the ground yet. That said, that doesn’t mean I don’t have an email list.

As part of what I posted yesterday about engaging your team, I went through my personal email contact list and created a group. I put in that group friends and family far and wide that I thought would respond well to receiving an email asking for help.

HELP THE STARVING WRITER!

In my email, I’ll give them the book blurb and cover image. Above that I’ll tell them that I’m releasing my latest novel and was wondering if I could ask them to forward my email to anyone they had in their contact list who might like to read a good book with a great message. Some friends and family will be happy to help you out …. Some will not. I think we all know who those people are. (Yes, I mean you Uncle Joe! … no, I don’t really have an Uncle Joe … but we all have a few ‘Uncle Joe’s” in our lives.)

Heck, there’s no harm in asking for help. Worst that happens is that they delete your email and forget about it. I think most will forward it on to at least one person.

I added 136 names to my email list. If they all forwarded it to just one other person, then I reached 272 people with the links for my book. If they forward to two people, that’s 408.

It’s about getting the WORD ON THE STREET! And emails are a great way if written in such a way as to ASK for help, not demand it.

So what do you think? Do you think most friends will help promote you books to the outside world? DO you utilize your personal email list in lieu of an “Official” opted in list?

-Jennifer

30 June 2015: Book Launch Promotion Ideas #5: Engaging your Team

Continuing my series of book promotion ideas leading up to the launch of my new novel, If Love is a Lie, Finding and Losing Love Online, here’s today’s topic: Engaging your Team.

No matter how much of a lone wolf you are, I’d hope you have at least a handful of fans, either friends, family or loyal readers. In my case, I’m lucky enough to have all three. As the sole employee of Jennifer Geoghan Novels, I’m not only the president, but in charge of all promotion of my book.

YUCK! Where’s the help when you need them!

Let’s face it, there’s no way I can do this all by myself. Without that huge marketing department a big box publishing company has at its disposal, my only shot at success is by getting the word out on the street by good old word of mouth. That’s where my team comes in.

TEAM JENNIFER …

Team Jennifer consists of course of my mother! Let’s face it, no one is as big a champion of my wonderful abilities as the woman who brought me into this world. She has no qualms telling people about my books and how good they are. Now if only everyone else would do that!

Other notable members of Team Jennifer are my friends at work. They’re always intersted in what I’ve got cooking and several of them have read my books. They’re also eagerly awaiting the next one.

I also have my outside of work friends, who enjoy my books and love to feel like the get the inside scoop on what’s coming up next with Jennifer Geoghan Novels.

So, sounds like a good Sales Team, doesn’t it??

I’ll be keeping this team up to date not only in person, but on Facebook as well. As the countdown progresses, I’ll be asking them to post on their Facebook pages about my books and asking them to pass the word on. I just have to make sure I give them an engaging message to spread, which of course is the hard part.

Let your friends and family BE YOUR CHAMPIONS!

Give them something tangible to pass on to the rest of their social circle.

So how do you engage your “Team” to get the word out about your latest projects?

Let’s hear from you, after all, we’re all in this together!

-Jennifer

29 June 2015: Book Launch Promotion Ideas #4: What I Can do For You

Continuing my series of book promotion ideas leading up to the launch of my new novel, If Love is a Lie, Finding and Losing Love Online, here’s today’s topic: What I Can Do For You.

If Love is a Lie, my newest novel is about the woes of internet dating, and as an experienced internet dater, I can tell you one of my turn offs are guys who start out by writing “I don’t know what to say about myself.” Or “I hate talking about myself.” Gee, don’t those sound like charming dinner companions?

There’s a fine line between these guys and that other charming of men, those who’d say “I’m the best guy you’ll ever meet and you’d be lucky to go out with me.” But as a writer who’s forced to also be her own promoter, you have to find a way to tell your readership how great your books are, while at the same time not sounding like you think you’re Hemingway incarnated.

I mean, I know I’m a wonderful storyteller. I know I can write like nobody’s business. But no one wants to hear how great I am or even how great I think my books are, they want to hear what my books will do for them.

As a promoter, I’m a salesman, and every salesman will tell you, you sell an item based on what it can do for the buyer, not what the buyer can do for the seller.

So what can my book do for the reader, you ask???

Good question. Here’s some answers to that question:

Be enthralled in an excellent story.
Be educated on the horrors of scam artists on dating sites.
Learn my true life story as the first half of the book is based on my own personal experiences. (This means I’m giving them permission to be nosey and who doesn’t like that!)
Experience a happy ending. (This is pretty big on my list for book experiences. It’s all about the ending, baby!)

What can my book do for you? This is an important question to ask yourself about your own book. How will my book make the reader happy or give them the experience they desire? When you figure that out and also an effective way to say it, you’re much closer to making sales then just yelling from the top of your lungs on Facebook “I’m Great!!! Buy my Book!!”

So what about your book? How do you sell to your audience given the parameters of what it can do for them? I’d love to hear from you!!

-Jennifer