Eight Awesome Ebook Prizes

CONTEST WINNERS ANNOUNCED!!!


Amy McKechney Lang won Shear Murder from Nancy Cohen ;
Janice Houghland won Death of a Schoolgirl from Joanna Campbell Slan;
Charlene Fraley won Photo Finish from Terry Ambrose;
Cheryl Green won The Rebellious Heiress from Karla Darcy;
Anita Shaw won Trail of Thread from Linda Hubalek;
Sandyg265 won What's In a Name from Terry Odell;
Lynn Reynolds won Hidden Choices from Carol White; 
and Marissa Culp won Death, Island Style from Maggie Toussaint.

Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you everyone who entered!

In honor of the release of the release of my new romantic suspense, Hot Water, I'm hosting a giveaway of one of my cozy mysteries, Death, Island Style.

And seven writers are chiming in with additional prizes. That's right, my Booklovers Bench pals, all amazing, award-winning authors, are tossing a book out for you to catch.

Here are the titles up for grabs. Don't they look great?

Enter the contest via the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks for visiting me at Mudpies, and be sure to check out Hot Water, now available in all digital formats and in print.

Buy Hot Water as an ebook or print at Amazon

Buy Hot Water at Barnes and Noble


Maggie Toussaint
www.maggietoussaint.com

http://BookloversBench.com

Is your marketing effective?

How effective are marketing campaigns? This is a question I grapple with daily as I try to decide what groups, sites, social media platforms, etc. to use to get the word out about my romantic suspense and cozy mystery books I write.

When I mentioned to a friend that I was evaluating my chapbook marketing campaign I use for my hardcover mysteries, she asked if I'd share the results. I decided to also post the information here at Mudpies as well. I hope it helps you in some small way to get a handle on your marketing strategies.

This summer I have 2 books releasing, Hot Water, a romantic suspense coming out on all platforms this Friday, July 12, and Dime If I Know, book 3 of my Cleopatra Jones mystery series, which releases Sept 12, 2013. This brings my totals to 5 romantic suspense titles and 5 mystery titles.

Until recently, my books contracted to Five Star were only available in hardcover and large print and the primary target market has always been libraries, though I thank every reader who buys hardcover books. God Bless You All. Anyway, to market these books to libraries, I decided to create chapbooks and send them to libraries in hopes they'd buy a copy or two or three.

My current campaign for Dime If I Know is the 4th chapbook mailing I've done for a hardcover mystery release. The chapbook consists of about the first ten pages of the book, great/name reviews of this or other books I've written, and a bio page.

I built this mailing list over time, beginning with my first mystery, In For a Penny. I started with libraries in cities that hosted PGA or LPGA golf events, since the scene of the crime was a golf course. As time went on, I added to the list, expanding to one or two big city libraries in each state. Then I won a National Readers Choice award with House of Lies, so I thought “Aha, Oklahoma must be my target demographic” so I added a bunch of OK libraries, along with my home state, Ga, and my neighboring state, FL, which has a boatload of libraries and readers. I also checked in World Cat to see what libraries were buying other Five Star books, and added them to my list. Then I expanded again, including libraries in cities with a certain population size. I ended up with 348 libraries in my mailing list.

One would think that would be a straightforward comparison, but the list of the 353 libraries that report owning at least one copy of Death, Island Style (the last mystery I promoted with a chapbook) doesn’t quite match my send list. Here’s why. Many libraries band together to form library systems. I may have sent material to library A in library system 12, but the title is listed as being held in library B or as in the system. See what I mean? To top this off, not all libraries report their holdings to World Cat, and my publisher actively markets to libraries as well.  Also, some libraries that I don’t market to and that didn’t show up as title holders after the On The Nickel campaign picked up Death, Island Style – was that because I got good ratings from 3 of the 4 top book review sites?

Or was it because I stepped up my social media presence in the last year or two? I blogged weekly during that time, posted on Facebook and Twitter, and joined countless reader/writer sites. I also became more active in another national writer's group Sisters In Crime, a group of like-minded mystery/suspense writers.

I have these confounding issues in rating the effectiveness of my advertising: my cross-promotion efforts, my publisher’s marketing efforts, the power of big reviews, libraries who don’t report their holdings to World Cat, and library collectives.Oh, and one more thing, the list I'm using of the 353 books contains libraries that hold either the hardcover version or the large print version. Some libraries have both formats, others, only one format.

The nearest I can tell, there is about a 35-60% purchase rate from my chapbook mailings. The lower number comes from the straight match ups of libraries I mailed that own the book. The upper number comes from a best guess estimate. I don’t have time to look up all those library systems to find out if any of the 5 to 50 libraries in their collectives holds this title - and I believe that due to my targeted marketing strategy, there are a lot more match ups than are immediately apparent.

Now with results in hand what do I do with them? How do I measure if I got my money's worth?

I looked online and boy, there are a lot of rules of thumbs about ads. Many sites say that people have to see your marketing 3 times before it is effective. Others tout the magic number as 7 times.

Interestingly, Thomas Smith, a nineteenth century London businessman (1885) says it is the 20th time for someone to purchase your item. One blogger listed Smith's predictions of what happens at each of those 20 times, which I found fascinating. Here's the link if you'd like to see for yourself: http://www.abiederman.com/marketing/advertising-frequency-how-many-times-is-it-effective.html

If you'd like to share your thoughts on my results or your marketing analyses, I'd love to hear them.

And get ready for my blog tour of Hot Water which starts Friday, July 12, at Just One More Chapter blog and at USA Today's HEA blog. Lots of excitement headed your way!!!

Thanks for visiting! Maggie Toussaint

and if you haven't checked out my yoga blogpost of July 1 at Whole Life Yoga, here's the link for that guest post:  http://www.wholelifeyoga.com/blog/yoga-and-the-maggie/  

and I also did a spot of light cooking which showed up at Romance Cooks and Terry's Place: http://terryodell.com/terrysplace/?p=3114

Hot Water is FREE at Amazon right now!

She chases bad guys. He chases fires.

Today through Saturday, May 18, Hot Water is FREE on Kindle. Here's the link: http://tinyurl.com/d9ly236


In my new romantic suspense, police officer Laurie Ann is hoping to move up the ranks in her chosen field. She can hardly believe her good luck when an accidental death that she's assigned to cover becomes a homicide case. She's assigned to work with an arson investigator to find answers.

Arson investigator Wyatt thinks he may finally have a lead on the arsonist who killed his firefighter partner. This guy's been a ghost, not following a standard profile, but the Mossy Bog homicide and fire is just the jump start he needs to get justice for his buddy.

Lots of cops and robbers stuff in this book, and all the heat isn't from the fires. Laurie Ann and Wyatt strike sparks off each other from the get-go. But they are also career-minded individuals who put their jobs ahead of their personal lives. But its a brave new world. Who's to say they can't have both?

Here's an excerpt from the book:

Her pocket chirped.

The phone.

Wyatt’s name flashed on the display. Her smile went bone-deep at the sound of his deep, rumbling voice.

“I’m headed your way,” Wyatt said.

She pressed the phone closer, hungry for his news. “Was it your arsonist?”

“Not hardly. An amateur started this fire. The burn was less complete. No structures were involved, and no one died.”

He sounded disappointed. “Those are good things,” she reminded him.

“I need to catch this guy.”

“You will. When one of my cases stalls, I go back to square one. There’s usually another line of inquiry buried somewhere in the information.”

“I’ve been over the files so many times I can practically recite them. If anything was there, I’d have found it by now.”

“I’ve been thinking about our case,” she began. “About tangential information.”

“Yeah?”

“James Brown wasn’t always the town drunk. He did odd jobs for a long time, and he was a good worker. Daddy occasionally brought him out to the house and gave him work, food, clothes, and some money.”

“Your father’s a good man.”

His observation was on point. She cleared her throat. “Just thinking out loud here. Somehow, he went from productive to shiftless. I want to know why. I’ve got a lead on his last known associates, Ray Spivey and Frankie Miles.”

“Go ahead and pick Spivey and Miles up. I’ve got questions for them, too.”

“They’re in the wind. I put out a BOLO on them. They’ll turn up soon. Not many hiding places floating in free booze in Tidewater County.”

“Good.”

He sounded weary, and that depressed the hell out of her. “How about dinner tonight?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound desperate or needy.

In the time it took him to answer, she mentally kicked herself to the curb and back three times. Men didn’t like take-charge females. Men liked to think they were in charge. Men liked to do the asking.

“Dinner sounds great,” he said. “I’ll be in Mossy Bog by six. Where shall I pick you up?”

Might as well jump off the high dive, she thought to herself. “Come out to my place. I’ll cook dinner. Any food allergies or preferences?”

His voice deepened. “I eat anything that isn’t moving.”

She laughed as her mind veered off on a big bad wolf tangent. The better to eat you with, my dear. Would Wyatt North eat her up? “I promise not to serve you roof shingles or road kill. Come on out whenever you’re ready. Dinner’s at seven.”

“It’s a date.”

The phone clicked in her ear before she could tell him where she lived. This would be interesting. She gathered up her pile of weeds and carried them to her new compost pile behind the pump house. The entire edge of the adjacent woods was fronted by a bamboo thicket, courtesy of her great grandmother.

How resourceful was Wyatt? Would he wander the back roads of Tidewater County for hours? Would he call and admit he was lost?

++

Want more? Download your copy right now. http://tinyurl.com/d9ly236

Maggie Toussaint

www.maggietoussaint.com 

ps Hot Water will release across all digital platforms July 12, and will also come out in trade paperback on July 12. Sign up for my newsletter to be sure you stay in the loop!

Contest feedback dilemma?

Have you had conflicting feedback from contest judges (or critique partners)? If so, read on as I share my thoughts on the matter.

First, I came to writing contests initially from the ranks of the unpublished, hoping that my contest entry would catch an editor's eye. Along the way, I received comments as different as night and day, some that were contradictory on the same entry from different judges.

Fast forward to the time when I began judging writing contests and even serving as a category coordinator. Each contest had its own scoresheet and level of detail required from judges. Each had a different trigger for using discrepancy judges.

Seeing contests from both side of the scoresheet gives me a strong insight into the judging process, one that I hope will benefit struggling writers. The easiest place to start is from the perspective of category coordinator faced with needing a discrepancy judge. More times than not, the distance in scoring came from the judge not being able to get at the meat of what's wrong.

For instance, you can have great characters and plot, but the dialogue to narrative blend can cause pacing errors which lead to poor scores in every category. Shallow characterization may reflect poorly on the plot making the story seem unbelievable. Conversely, a story that's all character and going nowhere will earn poor scores for more than lack of plot.

Knowing that judges have all levels of experience in story craft, and knowing that some judges have inherent biases, what can an author take from conflicting comments?

1. Some element of story craft needs improvement. Instead of having the knee-jerk reaction of "she didn't get my story," take a closer look at the passage that invited negative comment. Is there anything you meant to say or that you know intuitively that didn't make it to the page?

If you can't come up with anything, look first to characterization and then to plot, strengthening motivation, adding conflict, etc.

2. Few writers are born. Most of us are "made;" i.e., we continually learn how to improve our writing. Keeping up with other writers, published and unpublished, pushes us to keep striving to write tighter, more compelling stories. If you can't make heads or tails of your comments, you can set that project aside and come back to it, you can keep tweaking the scene, you can work on a new idea, one with stronger plot and deeper characterization.

A lesson I learned the hard way is that some early/first attempts at writing  have so many flaws that it is more trouble than it's worth to fix them. Take a good luck at your project with conflicting feedback. Search your heart to know if needs CPR.

3. Words matter. A too-strong word or a too-weak word can inflame a reader. They are investing themselves in the story as they read along. If you've written something out of character, the reader/contest judge is alienated. When this happens, some judges may over-react, causing you the writer to want to burn your story.
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Comments about motivation or acting out of character require attention. The good news is that oftentimes a tweak here or there will set things right. Other times, you may need to do reconstructive surgery, depending on the manuscript deficiency.

4. Despite best intentions, some judges feel distanced from the story and don't know why. It might be a case of too much passive writing, of insufficient deep POV, or even a book centered around an activity the judge dislikes. Always look to craft first when you have disparate comments. Anytime you wish you had a few minutes to speak to the person to explain what you did, realize that you won't have that chance with readers. Everything you impart has to go through the written word.

5. Stories touch people emotionally, and they may react emotionally. This is true for contest entries, critique groups, and book reviews. There are times when we have to accept that we can't please all of the people all of the time. To this day, when I receive feedback on a work in progress, I let the comments "rest" for 24 hours to be certain I'm not reacting defensively. I weigh each comment against my intent of writing that scene, and then decide what my reaction will be. When all is said and done, writers have to please themselves.

The more you write, the more you will trust your inner ear. Your writer's voice will strengthen and become more distinct. If writing for publication is your intention, continue to improve craft as a writer, find feedback avenues which strengthen your work, and develop a thick skin. You'll need it!

Maggie Toussaint
ps my Goodrerads Giveaway of 5 ARCS of Dime if I Know ends May 1. Sign up for your chance to win today! http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/49112-dime-if-i-know