3 S.R. Johannes: March 2014

Monday, March 31, 2014

Rashelle Workman's Season 2 is coming :)

It's coming. April 19th. Whoot! I'm so excited to share this series with you.

Rashelle is a great friend and her first season has done amazing! You have to get it!

It's so popular - she's doing a whole other season! yay!

The first book in the second season of Blood and Snow is entitled VAMPIRE LIES. I'm releasing the volumes a little differently this time. Instead of 12 smaller volumes and a bunch of short stories, there will be at least three full length novels.

You can pre-order book 1 by clicking HERE.



In Season 2 there will still be plenty of Snow White and her true love, but the story will be told from Jasmine's point of view.

Here's this summary: 

Genre: YA Fractured Fairytale
Blood and Snow Season 2
Book 1 ~ Vampire Lies

*** Eyes like violet sapphires. Wings of smoldering fire. Consume your true love's blood. Become the Eternal Vampire. ***

Once upon a time there lived a vampire with wings and the genie who loved her...

Born of the seven magics, Jasmine is different in every way, including the obnoxious wings on her back courtesy of the original Vampires. She wants to be normal, to be a regular teenaged girl.

When a gorgeous dark-haired boy named Laeddin shows up and promises to sneak her away from all her problems and hide her in the human world, she agrees. 

But an evil lurks in her nightmares, a man with red eyes. It doesn’t take long for Jasmine to realize that no matter how far she tries to run from who she is, he’s only a dream away. He wants her. He needs her. He acts as though he loves her. 

It’s becoming harder and harder to tell the difference between the path that’ll lead to her happily ever after, and the path that’ll lead to her destruction as well as all magic.

Be sure to sign up for my newsletter to be entered into my monthly drawing. Click HERE

Have you read the first season of Blood and Snow? If not, Amazon is running a special right now where you can get all 12 volumes for only $1.99. Get it HERE

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Indie Publishing in YA (Special FREE Event offered by ALLi - the Alliance of Independent Authors))

YA and Children's Authors - Live Self-publishing Q&A Session (Hosted by ALLi - a IndieReCon sponsor)

Next Tues 18 March 3pm EST / 7pm GMT   - All Welcome! 

Are you a children's or YA author thinking about self-publishing, or already self-publishing? 

The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) is hosting a FREE live Q&A session on YouTube on Tuesday 18 March where ALLi Director, Orna Ross, will be fielding your questions to Shelli Johannes (AKA S.R Johannes) who writes for the YA/New Adult markets, and Karen Inglis who writes for pre-schoolers and up to age 10/11.

Send us your questions

If you'd like to ask Shelli or Karen about any aspect of self-publishing for their markets,please add your question on this form in advance and we'll try to include your question in the schedule.  

You'll also be able to comment during the session using the YouTube chat functionality.

We hope to see you there - just turn up to http://www.youtube.com/user/IndieAuthorALLi at 3pm EST / 1pm PST / 7pm GMT    

Note: You do not have to be a member to attend. But if you are interested in joining ALLI, you can do so through the button on Shelli's web site for a 10$ discount (89$)
   
Guests:

Shelli, based in Atlanta, is a YA writer, the award-winning author of Amazon bestselling thrillers, Untraceable and Uncontrollable After earning an MBA and working in corporate America for over 15 years, S.R. Johannes traded in her expensive suits, high heels, and corporate lingo for family, flip-flops, and her love of writing. She organizes the highly successful indie author online conference, IndieRecon, and is a founder member of author co-operative, The IndeliblesUnstoppable (book 3 in her YA thriller series) is scheduled for May 2014. Shelli is YA advisor to The Alliance of Independent Authors.

Karen, who lives in London, was an early adopter of children's self-publishing in the UK and has successfully placed her three children's books The Secret Lake, Eeek! The Runaway Alien and Ferdinand Fox's Big Sleep in bricks and mortar stores in London and sold over 7,000 books across Kindle and print. She has also recently self-published a children's book app.       


Please tell your friends :)




Tuesday, March 04, 2014

Author Branding 101 by Louisa Clarkson

Today on the blog we have Louisa Clarkson of Indicated to give the 101 on author branding, an important step in marketing your words. Without any further ado here is Louisa!
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No doubt you’re familiar with brands, their advertising slogans and logos (unless you’re a troll living under a rock bridge). Like McDonalds for example, is highly recognizable with the golden arches, the red and yellow and their branding statement “I’m Lovin’ it”.

From a marketing perspective, the colors and branding statements helps customers recognize it and influence them to buy the products. Red means passion and love, it stands out, and is used to stimulate people to make quick decisions. Yellow is bright and sunny, grabs attention and evokes feelings of happiness and joy. “I’m Lovin’ it” implies you will enjoy the food.

Branding is a brilliant and important tool for authors too. Our writing style, book themes/genre, covers, our author website(s), branding statements, and even our personalities, all shape our brand. Let’s look at these things in more detail, and start building a brand that knocks Stephanie Meyer from her perch!

Writing Style

Your writing voice, writing style, tone and even choice of words, is what a reader bonds and fall in love. No one else writes the way you do. These component make your author style unique, and helps your readers recognizes your writing.

Two examples of very distinct writing styles are Doreen Virtue, author of Healing With the Angels, who has a very motivating and inspiring style and tone, which compliments her self-help and spiritual brand. While Eion Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl children’s series, has a very tongue in cheek voice that tickles a child’s funny bone.

Books Themes and Genre

The genre(s) and themes that you write about is what readers will associate with you, and what they’ll expect from you in future. For example, Stephen King is synonymous for horror, supernatural themes, and a few drama novels. Readers would never associate Stephen with comedy. That would be like McDonalds selling pizza!

For those of you published in multiple genres, or if you’re planning to write in more than one genre, it’s recommended to use pen names to separate the brands, unless your books have a common element such as magic or fantasy that filter through them. Start small with one genre and build a fanbase, like Stephen did, then expand into other genres.

Book Covers

A book cover, its artwork, font and colors should reflect the tone, style and genre of the book(s). For example, on Suzanne Collins Hunger Games series, every book features a Mockingjay, which is a distinct symbol for these books, and is even used for the film posters. Each book also uses the same square font for the book title and author name, and a different color to reflect the tone. Book 1 has a black cover representing a bleak society, hopelessness and oppression, typical of the dystopian genre. Book 2 is red which is symbolic of war and fighting back. Blue features on blue to show hope and freedom.

These elements need to be kept consistent when publishing a series to help the reader identify your books and brand. If you self publish, try to use the same cover designer to maintain the style. 

Author Website

The function of the author website is the same as the book covers. It should convey to any visitors the style and tone of your books, reflect aspects of your personality, hobbies or interests, and it can feature a logo to represent your brand. Here’s a cool website by paranormal romance author TF Walsh, which reflects the romantic and supernatural elements of her books, and her love of everything fantasy. The black gives a creepy and dark tone, while red highlights the romance and passion.

Branding Statements

A branding statement defines who you are as an author, the types of books you publish, aspects of your personality, who your target audience is, and helps readers to find you. For example, mine is “crafting whimsical, inspiring fantasy adventures that keeps tweens reading for days.” I could have used John Grisham’s Number 1 Bestselling Author, but it’s boring (zzzzz) and doesn’t tell me anything about his books.

Personality and Perception

Part of an author’s job is to build a public image that reflects their personality and brand. Aussie author Morris Gleitzman has a cheeky, fun brand, which supports his humorous children’s books. This is what draws readers to him and keeps them loyal. But if he were to go and post rude or adult’s only jokes on his social media accounts, there’d be public outrage. Always remember who your target market is and who might be reading.

Branding is such a huge topic, and this is but a small, but important part of it.

I’d love to know what your branding efforts you’ve made. Do you have separate brands for your books? Have you created any distinct features on your covers or logos? C’mon. Share you branding statements, so I don’t feel like such a dork! If you don’t have fun, then make one up. Promise I won’t laugh.


About Louisa Clarkson:

Louisa Clarkson is the author of The Silver Strand, the first in the Mastermind Academy tween fantasy series for 9-12 year olds. Creative endeavors called, and she left her Environmental Engineering career to study a Masters in Creative Writing and pursue her writing dreams. In the months she spent researching how to promote her novel, she found bits of information here and there, but no complete author resource. As such Indicated was born. Indicated features book promotion guides and a comprehensive database of where to find book promotional opportunities like book review bloggers, free and paid advertising opportunities, guest posts, authors interviews and so much more.