Writers' Wednesday: A New, Fast, Free Way to Make Book Trailers!

Hey writers! You know those book trailers that some people say are cool, others say don't sell books, and still others spend a lot of time and money to make? Well, if you haven't heard of the website Animoto, stop right now and go check it out. I just became familiar with it about a month ago, though it's been around for longer than that. It's basically this oh-so-cool way of creating videos that takes literally minutes.

All you do is upload your pictures, text, and video clips if you want, and Animoto arranges them into a short video for you. That's it! You can play with the organization of your items and change the music too. Best of all, the basic version is FREE and allows you to create 30-second videos that you can download or share on the web or through email.

Awesome, right? Now, the downsides are that you don't have a lot of control over the background/slides/transitions (although you do have some; play around with how you order your items, and the background and transitions will change), and if you want a video that's longer than 30 seconds, it will cost you $. But the next version up is only $5/month. Still a great deal! And in my opinion, 30 seconds is enough time to give readers a taste of your book and leave them wanting more.

Want to see the one I made for my upcoming Cocktail Cruise novella series? This one took me probably an hour total to make, because I didn't know anything about the website and because I wanted to change the music, so I took some time to go through their library of music options, which is pretty extensive. Other than that, it was painless.


Copy of Cocktail Cruise Trailer

Have you used Animoto? Give it a try if you haven't - and share your video if you end up making one! I'd love to see it :)

Monday Mentionables: A Trip to Iceland!

Every once in a while, a girl has to take a break from the usual and the familiar and just get away from it all. So last week, during our spring break, Hubby and I took a trip to Iceland.

Yes, that's right, Iceland, the land of fire and ice, wayyyy up there near the Arctic Circle, where about 320,000 people live on a landscape that is constantly shifting and erupting and cracking. And you know what? It was beautiful. We took probably 100 photos, at least, but I'll only post a few here, to give you the highlights :) My advice: GO, if you ever have the chance. It's about a 5-hour flight from the Northeast United States, the flights and tours are very reasonable (check out TravelZoo for ongoing deals) and it's a beautiful place, peaceful and quiet with super-nice people and hot springs/baths to die for. If it wasn't so darn expensive to live there, I might actually consider moving to Iceland one day...

It's called "the land of fire and ice" for a reason - there are geysers, hot springs, and glaciers everywhere! 

Downtown Reykjavik

One of the many massive waterfalls  

Iceland sits on 2 opposing tectonic plates, which means it's actually separating at a rate of 2 cm/year. Crazy!

We got to spend an afternoon hiking on a glacier - one of the high points of the trip

Guilfoss Waterfall, one of the most beautiful sites there!

Friday Fun Facts: New Reviews for Inferno of Love!

TGIF! This is also the beginning of spring break here, so hallelujah! Finally!

Two new reviews for Inferno of Love this week:

Roxy's Reviews said "This was an interesting read with plenty of twists and turns. Lost love was rekindled, old secrets resurfaced, and guilt over a haunting past was shed. This story was different while adopting all the makings of a great romance."

Lindsey Grey said "The combination of suspense and romance kept me turning the pages as fast as possible. This is one book you want to read in one sitting because you can't bear to wait a moment to know what happens next. In all honesty, I wish I could give it more than five stars. I just love how the story enraptured me and I hope to read more of Allie Boniface and the people of Lindsey Point."

And if you haven't been following me on Facebook or Twitter, The Promise of Paradise has also enjoyed a nice surge in free downloads this week! By mid-day yesterday, its highest ranking in the Top Free Kindle store was #32 overall, and for a few hours it was #1 in Romance, Women's Fiction, and New Adult. Super cool! It's since slowed a bit but still in the Top 100 overall and still #1 in New Adult as of this morning.

What the heck is New Adult? I think I'm going to devote a future blog post to this (and how it helped boost me on the Free Lists) but basically it's a newish genre that's growing in popularity and features a main character somewhere in the college-age range to early after. Figure 18-24 or so. New adult meaning older than Young Adult but not yet completely "grown up" and living on their own with careers and homes. More like muddling through the college years and trying to find oneself.

Anyway, I'll be away next week, so no blog from me until April 21st. See you then!

Monday Mentionables: It Was a Cover Reveal Weekend!

Hey gang, in case you didn't see my shiny new covers on my Facebook page this weekend, here they are! These are the official 3 covers for my upcoming Cocktail Cruise novella series, due out this June. Do you love them??

Three stories...one ship...lose yourself on the waves...

Writers' Wednesday: Inferno of Love Blog Tour Starts Today!

Hey gang, my blog tour through Black Lion Tours starts today! And along with reading reviews and interviews with Yours Truly and a few fun blog posts, you can win prizes: a $20 Amazon gift card OR a copy of Beacon of Love! Here's the main tour page, and I'll try to post the links from each day so you can tour along with me.

Enjoy!

Monday Mentionables: How Much Do You Make, Anyway?

Ah, it's a bit of a taboo question, isn't it? Asking anyone how much money they make equates to treading into murky waters. When it comes to authors, some are forthcoming with their earnings, while others prefer to keep mum about it. Someone asked me the other day, "If your book is 99 cents on Kindle, how much of that do you get?" And I thought other non-authors might wonder the same thing, so here are some numbers for you. **I am NOT going to get into specifics here. What follows is general info only:

For books self-published on Amazon that are under $2.99, the author will get 35% of that price for a royalty.

For books self-published on Amazon that are $2.99 and up, the author will get 70% of that price for a royalty.

Example: When Beacon of Love was on sale for 99 cents, I earned 35 cents for every book sold. When that price went up to $2.99, I now earn $2.09 for every book sold.

Note: most small presses offer somewhere from 35-40% royalties on the price of their books. When Beacon of Love was published previously, on a list price of $4.99, I received approximately $2.00 for every book sold. You can start to see why authors who feel comfortable going through the publishing process themselves prefer to put the $$ out up front for a possible 70% royalty for the rest of that book's life.

Now, although I currently have 7 books in print, 4 with Samhain  and 3 as self-published titles, I don't sell particularly well. I will chalk this up to many things, including the fact that I don't spend enough time marketing, there was a period of almost 3 years when I didn't release a title at all, and my books fall somewhere in the PG-13 to R rated range, which is less popular among romance readers than the really hot stuff. I do, however, have all but 2 of these books also available as audio books as well.

I will say this: before I self-published any title, AND before most of my books were available in audio, my monthly royalty income fell anywhere from $10 to $50. Since releasing my 3 additional books as self-published titles, adding in the audio book royalties, my monthly royalty income falls somewhere between $75 and $200.

(I will also add that last month I made one of my titles free, The Promise of Paradise. I've had about 11,000 downloads of that title in the first month, and while its downloads have slowed to around 20-40 a day, that still means people are putting it on their Kindles. Also, I sold 50 copies of Beacon of Love in that same month (up from 20 copies the month before), which I will partly attribute to readers being introduced to the characters AND my putting the buy link for Beacon of Love into the back of The Promise of Paradise)

My sales are not stellar, by any stretch of the imagination. However, I put those numbers out there today for a few reasons: to show that the more titles you have, the more you will likely make; having multiple streams of income helps (go for audio books if you can); making a title free can drive readers to purchase your other titles; and if you're willing to put forth the effort and the money on your own, before the return, self-publishing CAN bring in more money than publishing with a traditional press.

And now...I'm off to write and add to that monthly check!

Friday Fun Facts: An Awesome Review of Inferno of Love

Happy Friday, everyone! I'm so thrilled that the folks over at For the Passion of Romance review site loved Inferno of Love and gave it a heart-warming review. Here's just a snippet - follow the link to read the entire review. Big thanks to the reviewers! Readers, remember that reviews sell books - so many buyers read those reviews over at Amazon and other sites when they are deciding whether or not to spend $$ on a book. So if you're read a book you really enjoyed, take those few minutes to leave a review. The author will be sooooo grateful!


Boniface will make readers fall in love with novels all over again with her latest release Inferno of Love!

This novel was such a huge surprise for me because it contains everything that made me fall in love with reading in the first place! Mystery, suspense and wow is it hot!

It is always so refreshing to myself as a reader to discover an author who can impress me by taking traits that are considered classic to novels especially that of romance and grasp my attention from start to finish and Boniface does this for me as a reader!

Writers' Wednesday: The Best "Mistake" I Ever Made

Hi readers! In case you didn't see me post on Facebook or Twitter about this yesterday, I was a guest blogger over at Jar O' Marbles "Tell Me a Story" feature. My story is all about how living in Cleveland, Ohio, as a 20-something shaped my writing. Yes, it's still sometimes called the "mistake on the lake," but Cleveland is an awesome city, and I loved living there. Stop by and take a peek! 

Monday Mentionables: Inferno of Love Excerpts!

Happy Monday, everyone! If you didn't have a chance to visit me on Saturday at The Romance Studio's Release Party, click here for the link. I posted a whole bunch of excerpts from Inferno of Love, so if you haven't read it yet, now's your chance to get a little taste of the story. And if you don't want to search through ALL the posts for mine, just search by my author name, and that should narrow down the results for you. Enjoy!

Friday Fun Facts: An A+ Note from a Reviewer

It's always awesome to read reviews of our books, right? But it's also cool to hear the words *behind* a review, and I was lucky enough to have my assistant forward me an email the other day that had just that. This review won't post until next week, but the reviewer wrote to say this, about Inferno of Love:

   This novel is by far one of the best reads that we have had the pleasure of reading! Sometimes as reviewers and as readers we forget why we began reading books in the first place as often modern day novels are often repeats of prior plots or common characters and that alone can sometimes go tiring. This was not the case with Boniface's novel. She remind us of what we truly love about a great book, the plot and the romance!

  On behalf of our team we want to personally say thank you for giving us the opportunity to review Inferno of Love and we hope that you will continue to pass along to us new reviews to share with our readers.

  The rating that we have given Inferno of Love is 4/5 hearts which means it was close to being named a perfected read. 

Heart-warming, to be sure :) Have you picked up your discounted copy of this book? 

Writer's Wednesday: Inferno of Love is Now Available!!

What happens when your soul mate returns after twelve long years...and has no idea who you are?

Now available in both Kindle and print! Limited-time sale price of $0.99

Twelve years ago, Finn and Aubrey fell in love in Lindsey Point. But that was before a local fire turned him into a hero and a horrific accident stole her memory. When they finally reunite, sparks fly and memories return -- but so do long-lost secrets and locals who want them to stay buried. Now they must come to terms with the past if they have any chance of building a future together... 

And it already has its first review, 4 stars!

Red Cheeks Reads says, I started “Inferno of Love” right after reading the first book in the series “Beacon of Love” so I was excited to hear Finn’s story... I had high hopes after reading the first book and I was not disappointed at all! This was definitely a page turner! The dual POV lets you see both Finn and Aubrey’s perspective and the author does a great job once again at writing an excellent mystery that kept me guessing!

Buy your copy today!

Monday's Mentionables: It's a Hometown Heroes Week!

Happy Monday, everyone! I'm thrilled that it's release week for Inferno of Love - TOMORROW is the big day! And just in time, you can see a sneak peek in the trailer:



If you didn't have a chance to read Beacon of Love, the first book in the Hometown Heroes series, it's not too late to pick it up. Just yesterday the book received a beautiful 5-star review on Amazon that took my breath away:

"Such an addictive read. I was drawn into the story immediately and couldn't put it down. Those that love mysteries, set in small towns, are going to love this book. Beacon of Love is filled with loveable characters, romance, mystery and all the right elements to make it a great read. This was the perfect read for the miserable weather we're currently experiencing in my area. Nothing like curling up with a great book on a rainy day."

Thank you so much! I love my readers!

Writers' Wednesday: My Experiment with Perma-Free

"A beautifully original story. Loved the characters. I picked it up as a free book. But it would be worth the money. I would love to find a place like Paradise. So well written you can feel yourself standing among the story unfolding. Wonderfully heartwarming love story. Highly recommended."

For indie authors, making a book "perma-free" is one of many marketing options. Basically this means offering a book for free, indefinitely. Ideally it's one in a series, so if readers like the story, they will go out and spend money on the others in the series.

For a while, I wasn't sure what I thought about this concept – I mean, we work hard on our books! I didn't know if I wanted to just give a title away. But The Promise of Paradise has been out for a year now, and done relatively well sales-wise, so I thought I'd give it a try. First off, though, you can't just set a book's price to $0.00 on Amazon (if you participate in the Amazon KDP program, you can offer your book for free for 5 days every 3 months, but I wanted to see what would happen for a longer period of time). So you have to "price match," which basically means making it free in other sales channels (like Smashwords, the popular website for indie authors) and then hope once sites like Barnes and Noble or Sony make it free, Amazon will follow suit.

It took about a week, but Amazon did finally make The Promise of Paradise free. This happened one week ago Tuesday. Within a day, it was climbing some of Amazon's "Top Free" lists, and by Thursday it was #1 in Women's Fiction and Romance. I think it got as high as #45 on the Top Free overall list. Not bad, especially since I didn't do a whole lot of marketing besides tweeting and posting on Facebook about it.

BookBub, a popular email subscription service authors can pay to have their titles listed with, gives a range of 21,000 for Contemporary Romance downloads and 14,000 for Women's Fiction downloads if you advertise with them. In the week it's been free, I've had just over 8000 downloads of The Promise of Paradise, so I'm pretty happy with that (since I've spent $0 on advertising it). Beyond that, I've sold an additional 30 books of Beacon of Love, my other new title, and I attribute those sales to the free downloads, since I do have an excerpt in the back of The Promise of Paradise and tell readers that they'll see a familiar character in Beacon of Love.

Another plus: I've gotten 4 new 5-star reviews on Amazon, which is terrific. That means that The Promise of Paradise is getting to people who have never read anything by me before and will hopefully want to read more.

It turns out the perma-free thing has more benefits than I would have thought. Certainly sales of my other books aren't through the roof, but they've definitely picked up. I'm reaching new readers. And I'm still in the Top 10 of both Free lists in Women's Fiction and Romance, which means many Amazon customers are seeing the title when they're browsing those categories. The fun thing is that I have control over all of this – another plus when it comes to indie publishing! 

Monday Mentionables: New Reviews and a Book Club!

Happy Monday, everyone! What's worth mentioning today? Well, let's see...

There's a lovely new 5-star review of Beacon of Love posted over at Sinfully Tasty Reads :) Big thanks to Debbie who said, "This was the perfect mix of romance meets classic who done it...I loved the chemistry between Sophie and Lucas. They just had a connection right from the start and loved it as the relationship developed. "

I attended a book club yesterday where The Promise of Paradise was the featured read and had a great time chatting about books and reading with the women there. Among the things discussed were that they LOVE series (good thing I have 2 coming out this year!), they love detail when it comes to character and setting, and they will definitely ask questions about a character's back-story and which character is getting his or her own story next. I always love hearing what other people enjoy reading and why they enjoy it.

One more week until the release of Inferno of Love! Don't forget that you can get a peek at Smashwords, where's it up for pre-order AND you can read the opening chapters for free!

Friday Fun Facts: Free & Upcoming Books!

Happy Friday! It's been a pretty exciting week in my writing world. Why? Here's the skinny in case you don't follow me on Facebook or Twitter:

The Promise of Paradise is FREE on Kindle (and Nook) right now, and between Tuesday and Thursday it went to the top of Amazon's free lists in both Women's Fiction and Romance! It's slipped a little since then, but I made sure to take a screen shot of when it was at #1:

It's always tough to tell if free downloads translate into sales of other titles, but hey, I figure that there are a few thousand people with my book on their Kindle who didn't have it before, so we'll be optimistic and hope that once they read the book, they'll love it and want to read more!

Also, Inferno of Love is now available for pre-order at Smashwords! It will officially release on March 18, but you can reserve yours on sale anytime between now and then. You can read the blurb and find out more by clicking here.

Have a great weekend!

Writers' Wednesday: Promo Sites!

Hey gang, it's a busy week here (Inferno of Love will be available for pre-order soon!) but I wanted to share a couple of promo sites with authors:

Ebook Soda - brand new email subscription service, similar to BookBub, and they're brand new so right now there's no charge to place a book ad with them!

A Girl and Her Kindle - she'll be reviewing Beacon of Love later this week, and she's gotten favorable feedback from other authors I respect, so check out her site for relatively inexpensive social media exposure.

Digital Book Today - has been around a while and although I haven't seen HUGE bumps when I run ads with them, they're reputable and have a lot of viewers, which is always a good thing.

There are many, many others of course, but I always like to share the newer ones I've come across. Happy writing!

Friday Fun Facts: Brrrrrrr!!!

Are you ready for Old Man Winter to give it a rest yet? Just when we thought we might be in the clear, the temperatures here in the Hudson Valley, NY, have dipped below zero yet again AND there's a storm coming our way Sunday. Enough! We still have over a foot of snow on the ground, and that's not even talking about the banks that have been snowplowed along the side of the road or in parking lots. Ten feet tall easily! It's a challenge to even go to the store today, because you don't know whether you'll find a parking spot.

With all that in mind, don't forget that an escape to a summer climate, to a seaside coast, is the perfect way to chase the winter blues away. The Promise of Paradise is all about summer heat in a small town, as is Beacon of Love. Guess I have a common theme of wanting to be warm! (in more ways than one)

And for those of you who are writers (or who are interested), Beacon of Love is just one little Amazon review away from 10, which is the magic number for some of the bigger marketing and promotion sites. I'd love to see that 10th review :) If you read the book and liked it, would you share your thoughts!

Thanks, happy Friday, and STAY WARM!!

Writers' Wednesday: Enter to Win a Signed Copy of a Hometown Heroes Book!

Hey readers! Today you can enter to win a signed print copy of either Beacon of Love OR Inferno of Love (this is a pre-release copy; you'll see it before the general reading public)! I'm giving away 2 copies of each book to lucky winners over at Goodreads. It's super-easy to enter, as long as you're a member.

This is the last week that Beacon of Love will be on sale for only $0.99, so grab your copy if you haven't had a chance yet. And remember, one of the loveliest things you can do for writers you enjoy is to leave them a review ;)

Have a great day!

Friday Fun Facts: The Hometown Heroes Series is Here!

TGIF! Of course, it's kind of a weird Friday here in New York, since we had Presidents' Weekend last week, combined with 2 extra snow days on either end, so for those of us who are teachers, we just got back to school and now we have a weekend again! Sure, sure, snow days SOUND good, but after awhile it just becomes clearing snow and sitting inside and thinking about how you're going to catch up and teach everything in the days that remain.

But anyway...

Have you gotten your copy of Beacon of Love over at Amazon? If you've already read the story of Sophie and Lucas, I hope you'll consider leaving a review on its new Amazon page. Readers love reviews for discovering potential new authors :)

It's also probably not to soon to mention that the sequel to this story, Inferno of Love, will release in just about a month, and I'm soooo excited for that one! It will be available on Kindle, Nook, and in print as well, so you can get whichever version works best for you. To whet your appetite, here's a link to the Tour Page over at Black Lion, which features the blurb and a short excerpt. Enjoy!

Writers' Wednesday: Beacon of Love is Now Available!

Woo hoo! I'm super excited to share the news that Beacon of Love, the first book in the Hometown Heroes series, is now available on Amazon's Kindle for the sale price of only $0.99! Now through the end of the month, you can pick up this story and re-familiarize yourself with Sophie, Lucas, and the town of Lindsey Point and its haunted lighthouse. Don't worry - it will also be available at Barnes & Noble, Sony, and iTunes shortly too. I'll make sure to share those links :)

If you already read (and enjoyed) Beacon of Love when it originally released last year, I would love for you to leave a review on Amazon. Reviews drive sales, and I'd love the re-release of this story to have a nice bump before the brand new, never-before-released sequel, Inferno of Love, comes out next month!

Thank You!