Dear Authors, another week has passed and there’s lots going on at IHS Headquarters.
TB & Miranda are busy behind the scenes prepping for the Mega Sale. The deadline to submit books for it has passed, but it’s almost time to turn our attention to the 99c sale starting on December 26th. Keep an eye out next week for details on submitting your books for the End-of-Year 99c Blowout.
Let’s get to this week’s news.
All About the Books
The New Release Newsletter is one of the most popular features on IHS. Readers love finding new books to fall in love with and we love helping with that mission.
Which is why we’re starting another way for authors to showcase their new books.
All About the Books allows authors to provide some behind the scenes details about their new book baby, including the inspiration, what cocktails their leads would enjoy on launch day, if the author and main character would get along, and more.
If your book was published after October 11, 2022, and you’d like to take part, click here for the All About the Books submission form. Going forward, we’ll be sending you the link via email when we confirm your new release submission.
New Release Newsletter Submissions
Don’t forget, if you have a new release (no older than 60 days), you can submit it to be included in the New Release Newsletter that goes out every Tuesday. We feature new ebooks and audiobooks.
Click here for the submission form.
If the book(s) is already in the IHS BookFinder, click here for the short form.
We’re booking several weeks out right now, so the sooner you send us your forms, the better. Due to space constraints, we will no longer be able to include new releases in the newsletter unless we receive a form from the author or publisher.
The I Heart SapphFic BookFinder
What about books in my backlist? How do I promote them?
We’re so glad you asked, because we don’t just show love for new releases. As TB likes to say, her backlist keeps the lights on.
We’ve come up with several ways to showcase books.
The biggest investment for the new website was the database. The BookFinder is now officially a month old, and it already contains over 1,950 books! We’d hoped to enter 2,000 books by the end of the year, but it looks like we’ll hit that number by November 30th. Woot!
This month, we’ve been hosting the Mission: Book Possible game in the IHS Reader Facebook group.
Once a day, we will share the day’s mission in the IHS Reader Group on Facebook. Readers will check the I Heart SapphFic Bookfinder for a book that fulfills the mission, and then report back to the Facebook group with a link to that book’s page on the IHS website. Our goal is to reinforce with readers how easy it is to find the books they want by using the BookFinder.
We’ll be coming up with other interactive ways to get readers to dig into the BookFinder in 2023. Make sure ALL your books are in there!
I Heart SapphFic 2023 Reading Challenge
Another way to get your backlist books in front of readers is by entering them for the 2023 Reading Challenge.
If you haven’t submitted your book(s) yet, you now have a ticking clock. For all books published before December 1, 2022, in order to be considered, we must receive a submission by 11:59 pm (EST) on December 1, 2022. That’s 2 weeks away, so don’t waste time!
The Reading Challenge was extremely popular this year and with the new website and BookFinder, the views are going through the roof. In response, we’re expanding the challenge next year, doubling the number of categories, so if you were holding off on submitting some of your books because you thought we wouldn’t have space, odds are, we will.
The new website has had over 114,000 views. There have been over 8,500 searches of the BookFinder database. We have plans to keep these numbers growing in 2023, and every book we receive, whether it is ultimately included in a reading challenge or not, gets a permanent entry in the BookFinder and its own dedicated page on our site. For free!
Simply put, you don’t want to miss out on the chance to get so many eyeballs on your book in the coming year.
Here’s the form to submit your books to the I Heart SapphFic BookFinder
Readers Love Sales
Another way to help your books in your backlist is by joining our sales.
Just like this year, the 2023 Reading Challenge will include sales. Each week, when we kick of a new reading challenge category, we’ll include sale books that correspond to the category.
We also organize an annual FREE BOOK event and MEGA SALE, plus three 99c sales per year. These are multi-author events with a huge reach. We’d love for you to join us! Find out about upcoming special events here.
Friday Freebies
Every Friday we publish a feature called Friday Feels to celebrate the start of the weekend. We highlight a free book each week. Readers love it, and it’s a great way to increase your visibility. We recommend offering an older book as a way to call attention to your new release, or offering the first book in a series free to get readers hooked. Here is how to submit your free book.
Sale and Free Books
If you’re planning to offer your book for sale or free and are looking for a way to get more eyes on it, look no further! Simply submit this form to alert us to the price (free, 99c, $1.99 or $2.99 for ebooks, up to $3.99 for box sets). Books that are permanently free on Amazon are also welcome.
It’s already day 16 of Nano!
Are you keeping up with your word count?
Not surprising, TB’s still behind in her word count, but she hasn’t missed one of the Zoom writing sprints. In even more good news, the story she’s working on is taking shape and she’s getting words down on the page every single day, which is a major victory for TB.
Join TB and Adrian J. Smith and we’ll help each other with accountability. The Zoom links are available in the Author Forum on Facebook.
Writing Wisdom
Miranda talks about the All About the Books feature and TB shows off her tits. You really have to see it to believe it (we promise this is totally safe for work, peeps, so no worries).
Last week, Em dug into log lines. This week it’s all about taglines and for authors needing some help on this front, we highly recommend reading her tips. It’ll help when you need to supply a tag line for the BookFinder forms.
Adrian J. Smith is a writer and editor who has a not-so-secret love of grammar.
Today’s grammar tip covers common word mix-ups: It’s v Its. TB’s not embarrassed to admit, she gets these wrong a lot in first drafts.
Check back next Wednesday for more great advice and SapphFic publishing news.
Happy writing!
Miranda & TB
