E-book

I’m sending my baby out into the wide world again, but this time with a new marketing strategy. The free promotion is over the next five days, which I plan to follow up with a placement as a Hot Title at the World Literary Cafe. On April 10, I go big with an ad at the Frugal EReader. I’m interested to see how this layered marketing approach works.

In the meantime, I’m pleased to see that A Deconstructed Heart has garnered some fantastic reviews from The Kindle Book Review and eBook Review Gal.

Here’s a choice excerpt from the latter’s website, which Susan Barton also kindly placed on my Amazon site:

“Let me start by saying that I loved A Deconstructed Heart! It was a sweetly poetic, easy read. Shaheen Ashraf-Ahmed’s writing style has a soothing, melodic quality that invites readers to be drawn into her stories easily. I was hooked from the beginning and immediately found myself looking forward to what would happen next. I would highly recommend A Deconstructed Heart be put on anyone’s must read list.”

If you get a chance to read A Deconstructed Heart, please add your own reviews. I look forward to hearing from you.

The Kindle Book Review: a review of A Deconstructed Heart that brought tears to my eyes… (coinsinthewell.wordpress.com)
A Deconstructed Heart reviewed at Books Are Cool (coinsinthewell.wordpress.com)

English: Ancient Volpaia map (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I took a webinar the other day about marketing new books and the one takeaway for me was the idea that the tablet will eventually be the most popular medium for reading ebooks. Not the e-reader. I thought that made perfect sense, since so much of what we do these days is on our smart phones/tablets. As much as I love my Kindle, I realized it was time to branch out. I took two of my works out of Kindle Select (after the three-month exclusion period was up) and published them on Smashwords. It’s another new learning experience for me, figuring out how to format for a different publishing platform, but this self-publishing business has definitely sharpened my ability to take the initiative. That is certainly a valuable gift. I hope I am always open to learning something new.

I’m not sure what the move to Smashwords will do for my sales; right now, it feels as if I’ve dropped my books like stones into a lake. However, another great piece of advice I got from a marketing expert was to try something new every day. Publishing on another platform is just another way of realizing my goal to reach more readers: today, I sent a stack of print books of A Deconstructed Heart to a book review party in Connecticut and I reached out to five literary review blogs in the hopes of spreading the word; one reviewer has already replied to say I’m in his queue.

I think in about three years I’ll be a whole lot smarter and have this process down. Stick around with me, and you’ll be able to say that you saw it happen.

For now, you can see The Well-Tended Garden and The Dust Beneath Her Feet at Smashwords:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/295826

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/296919