July 9, 2015

I really need to drop prices on my paperbacks

Kill me, but I don't remember why I have priced my paperbacks a particular way a while ago. I think I thought of offering paperbacks like an expensive souvenir since I give ebooks away for free, following Seth Godin's idea and the blue ocean strategy. Or maybe I read some article somewhere at some point, or copied the prices of other books. I can't remember exactly. I even wrote this post about pricing books recently, but today something shifted in my brain. Not sure why.

I'm sitting here reading Fablehaven by Brandon Mull—which I recommend to all of you—and the similarity to Rosehead struck me like a hammer. Not so much the story as the elements like an arrival at a mysterious house surrounded by a mysterious property, a mysterious grandfather, a sister and a brother (like Lilith and Panther) discovering hidden magical things about the place and those living in it. It was eerie. Then I glanced at the back of the book. $7.99. And the writing is superb, so much cleaner and better than mine.

July 16, 2014

MAD TUTU Writing Competition Winner!

by Ksenia Anske

I know you've been waiting breathlessly for this. I've been waiting too, because the entries were so good, so unbelievably good, it was very hard to choose the winner. Nonetheless, one stood out from the crowd. Namely, it made me laugh so hard, that I tinkled in my pants a little. But you all already know I do this anyway, daily. No surprise there. To refresh your memory what this madness was about, last week one of my readers had this wild idea that I should do a writing competition, when I whined how hard it is to find great indie authors and indie books, and how I want to help people discover amazing new voices. I thought, okay, why not? And so Mad Tutu Writing Competition was born. I got 20 submissions, and I think I will do it again, because reading them was a delight. The terms were:

Write a 1,000 words max short story with magic in it. And make sure it's funny.
Mention an elephant, a tutu, a breathalyzer, beer-flavored lollipops, a brick and a purse.
Send a picture of yourself in character (I scratched that, the quality of pics was bad).
The winner gets to be featured on my blog and gets 1 of my signed paperbacks.

Below you will find the winning entry (get ready, you will pee your pants, I guarantee it) and there rest of the entries underneath, in the order they were submitted (so don't think the one on the top is because it's somehow better than the one on the bottom), with author names and links to their entries as PDF files (you can click on them to upload them). And underneath ALL THAT you will find a PDF file with ALL the entires combined, if you wanted to just read them all.

July 4, 2014

MAD TUTU writing competition

by Ksenia Anske

Okay. YOU asked for it, so I don't want to hear any whining or complaining or trying to wiggle out of it. We will have, yes, WE WILL HAVE, a writing competition. Right here. Right on this blog. And if it goes well, I might repeat it, or maybe even make it into a recurring thing. Because I really want to find great indie authors out there. I KNOW YOU ARE OUT THERE. And share your writing. And give you a little plug and push and visibility, as much as I can. Well, and of course, just to have a little fun, right? Maybe it will become a thing. You know. MAD TUTU will become a thing. Who knows. Whatever, not important. Here is what's important.

MAD TUTU WRITING COMPETITION RULES.

THEME: Fantasy or magical realism or a mixture of both. Okay, you can throw in a touch of horror or a touch of sci-fi, if you're dying to do so. Just forget genres, think of it this way. Your story has to have magic.