Category: Blue Orchard Books

Picture Imperfect Cover Reveal and Pre-Order!

All who were losing hope, please join me in celebration, because I finally FINALLY FINALLY have a new book coming out! PICTURE IMPERFECT: A SASSY SUSPENSE is my longest book to date. At 130,000 words (around 420 printed book pages), it is easily double the length of WHERE SHE BELONGS. Now, some of you might say the extra length is why it took me so long to write PICTURE IMPERFECT, and some of you might be right. But there was also a lot of Life Stuff tossed in there. Meanwhile, I was doing some writing as my pen name. But now I am back and working on more and more stuff as Cindy. I will continue to write as my pen name now and then, but, mainly, my focus will be on my Cindy stuff going forward. And I’m very excited about that.

There’ll be lots of news in the coming months, but today I want to focus on PICTURE IMPERFECT, because I’m super excited to announce Special Pre-Order Pricing with a savings of up to 60% off the Retail Price, which will go into effect shortly after the release date of October 18th. Yep, that’s right around the corner. Less than two weeks remaining until release!

Here’s the cover, which, IMNSHO, rocks.

pictureimperfectcover400

Yes, it’s big! And it’s beautiful! If you want to catch a look at the paperback layout, please visit this special page on my website and scroll down.

And you can read an excerpt here.

Okay, how about I let you know what it’s about?

Photographer Ursula Scott discovers her sexy apprentice is an ex-cop investigating threats at his uncle’s studio–but is she a suspect or a target?

Just when she thought she had her life on autofocus…

Photographer Ursula Scott is six short months from buying her boss’s studio and helping her family knock down a massive debt. She can put up with his hairball antics for that long, right?

Right?

But, oh, he makes life difficult. She can barely restrain herself when he hogs credit for her assignments, and now half-naked weirdos are responding to his ad for her first magazine photo spread. On top of that, someone is sabotaging the studio. Worse, she discovers her sexy apprentice is a former cop practicing his newbie PI skills on the case—and she’s a suspect!

Suddenly, Ursula’s dreams and hard work seem about to go up in smoke. In more ways than one.

Well, not on her watch.

When Gabe McKenzie moves home following the shooting that kyboshed his career, he doesn’t expect to get sucked into finding the culprit wreaking havoc at his uncle’s photography studio. He certainly doesn’t expect to fall for Ursula Scott, a long-legged brunette with a definite motive and a desire to play Nancy Drew. Even as he clears her, the sabotage escalates into a bizarre stalking, placing Ursula…and Gabe’s hopes for their future…in danger.

If only he can convince her to stop snooping around and let him do his job as a PI, before an unknown menace threatens not only her dreams—but her life.

~~Did I mention you can Read an Excerpt?

And following are links to the Special Pre-Order Pricing, with savings up to 60% (depending on where you live). Short form, for the eBook the USD Retail Price of PICTURE IMPERFECT is $4.99. During pre-order, the book is available for $2.99 USD and $2.99 Canadian. I’m especially excited about the Canadian price, because that ol’ exchange rate can do a number on the wallet. If you pre-order PICTURE IMPERFECT from an eRetailer using Canadian dollars (ie. for Amazon that would be the Amazon Canada site and not the Amazon U.S. site), you can get the pre-order pricing of $2.99 Canuck.

I buy my Kindle books from the U.S. Amazon store myself, and there’s no way to make the book available for $2.99 CDN if you buy from Amazon US. Instead, it will have one of those wonky prices reserved for Canadians buying from the US. Sorry about that.

PICTURE IMPERFECT is also available on Kobo, iBooks, and for NOOK. So check it out!

iBooks

Kobo

NOOK

Amazon

Amazon Canada

Amazon UK

Amazon Australia

International Amazons, please visit this link and then click the Kindle icon, and you should be taken to the store for your country. Or, visit your Amazon of choice and search for “Picture Imperfect by Cindy Procter-King.” (Spell Procter with an E). (Yes, I’m on a mission; why do you ask?)

Picture Imperfect Progress Report

I have website updates to do!

My sassy suspense, PICTURE IMPERFECT, is currently getting uploaded to various eBook retailers for pre-order, and the release date has been set for October 18th. That’s a 2 week pre-order period. I have some fun stuff planned, but need to wait until the pre-orders are all live.

Meanwhile, the print files are getting prepped and review copies are going out. I can’t wait to get my hands on a proof copy of the print book! But right now I’m waiting for the printer to approve the files before I can order a proof.

Here's the title page to give you a little taste of the upcoming Cover Reveal!
Here’s the title page to give you a little taste of the upcoming Cover Reveal!

My First Time

Formatting a book for print, that is.

Actually, I’ve never formatted an eBook, either. I usually farm out my work. But this time I’ve decided I should learn to format myself. It makes updating files so much easier. For some unfathomable reason, I decided to start with print formatting.

CreateSpace has templates for use with Microsoft Word, and it would probably be a lot easier if I just downloaded one of those templates. Only problem is, my copy of Word is so old (the 2003 edition) that I can’t save as PDF, which I need for uploading to CreateSpace. And…years and years ago, when I built this site and my pen name’s site, I decided to upgrade my Dreamweaver and PhotoShop. They came combined in a program called Adobe Creative Suite 2. Creative Suite has since updated to a cloud-based service, but for someone like me the $20 U.S. a month when I only put out maybe two books a year (that’s being generous, LOL) isn’t worth it. And I don’t design my own covers. So, being the obstinate sort, I decided to try learning how to format my print interior pages with the very old InDesign CS2. The problem? Back when I was buying how-to books for Illustrator and PhotoShop, I didn’t buy one for InDesign, thinking I would never need it. Now, there are a lot of great free templates available for InDesign book interiors, but try finding one for the CS2 version of the program. So, instead of downloading a premade template and creating my book from there, I’m building the template from the ground up. Thanks to YouTube and Google, there are a lot of places I can go for help, but the set-up is never quite the same because, you know, Cindy has old software. This might take me awhile…

Just to prove I’m really at work, here’s a shot of Page 1 of PICTURE IMPERFECT in my Word doc, followed by how far I’ve gotten in InDesign (I finally created page numbers on my Master pages, but they aren’t starting in the right spot. My next challenge is creating running, alternating page headers.)

PI_page1PI_Print

The idea is that once I have the template down pat, I can use it for future releases as well. And, if you can read Page 1 of the Word doc, that’s the world’s first peek into PICTURE IMPERFECT! (Which will go up for pre-order just as soon as I’ve got the cover commissioned).

Yup, I need to create a new website page for the book, too.

Kobo Massive Summer Sale – 50% Off My Books!

Received an announcement from Kobo today that they are holding a “Massive Summer Sale” from now until August 31st, 50% off eBooks using the Promo Code SALE50 upon checkout. All of my books are included in the sale, with the exception of WHERE SHE BELONGS, which is currently exclusive to Amazon and enrolled in Kindle Unlimited (but only $0.99 until September 2nd, so still a great deal, just only at Amazon).

Here are the links for my books at Kobo, 50% off! But you must use the Promo Code SALE50 on checkout:

BORROWING ALEX – Regularly Priced $3.99, 50% off at Kobo

HEAD OVER HEELS – Regularly Priced $3.99, 50% off at Kobo

DOUBLE THE KISSES – A great deal, as this is a bundle which features both BORROWING ALEX and HEAD OVER HEELS, Regularly Price at $4.99 but 50% off at Kobo until the 31st!

My short stories, DECEIVING DEREK and CATCHING CLAIRE, both regularly priced at $0.99 are also 50% at Kobo using the Promo Code SALE50.

Happy Koboing!

And my thanks to Kobo for including my books!

WHERE SHE BELONGS and Kindle Unlimited

I haven’t had one of my books in Amazon’s KDP Select program for two and a half years. Then, it was WHERE SHE BELONGS, the same book I enrolled in Select near the beginning of July to experiment with changes to the Kindle Unlimited program. The book comes out of the program in early October.

For anyone who’s not familiar with KDP Select, the “Select” program gives Amazon the exclusive right to sell books enrolled in the program for a three-month term. Readers can buy the book outright (if you like to re-read ebooks or collect them, this is the best option) or readers enrolled in Kindle Unlimited for their country can “borrow” the right to read how many books they want for a set price per month. But you can’t keep the books on your ereader for re-reading.

Last time I was in Select, authors were paid per “borrow” of an entire book for the Kindle Lending Library or authors were paid a royalty if readers purchased the book outright. Enrolling in Select can really help an author’s visibility, because Amazon algorithms might favor books enrolled. But it’s not just enough to be enrolled in Select. You need the right advertising when you’re running a promotion to really get Amazon’s algorithms to work for you as an author. Otherwise, Select might do nothing for you and might actually hurt you, because you’re losing out on buyers looking for your book on Kobo, iBooks, NOOK, etc., and not finding it.

Kindle Unlimited came into being last summer, and I and a whole lot of other authors saw a huge drop in Amazon royalties as readers were being tempted into the subscription model. I also write under a pen name, and sales for that pen name with an established e-press literally plummeted after Kindle Unlimited came into play. Back then, authors were still paid per “borrow” if enrolled in Kindle Select, which meant that short stories earned an author the same royalty as a borrowed 400-page novel. So KU became flooded with short pieces, evidently. And the changes to the program this July were a result of that. Now, authors are paid per page read, so if a reader downloads a book through Kindle Unlimited and quits reading it halfway through, the author only gets paid for the pages actually read.

I’m not here to debate the pros and cons of the system, I just wanted to explain it to potential readers. I believe the best course of action is to place one’s books on as many e-platforms as one can, and that is how I’ve operated since I began independently publishing. But I am a slow writer, and this summer I decided, what the heck, I’ll experiment with the new Kindle Unlimited program. I have to say, I have been pleasantly surprised, because as of a day or two ago, over 100,000 pages of WHERE SHE BELONGS have been read in August, which, for ME (not necessarily for any other author) is a huge success, but not a success I could have achieved had my book not been accepted by places like BookBub and EReader News Today for advertising.

The KENPs–Kindle Edition Normalized Page count–for WHERE SHE BELONGS is 384 pages, which means 260 copies of my novel have been read through the borrowing program so far in August (nothing to an NYC bestseller, but a ton for an author who hasn’t had a new book out in a…long time). The book also reached over 100,000 pages read for July, which I was thrilled with, because the borrows didn’t come into play for me in any real fashion until the four free days and following up with a price point of $0.99 (for purchased copies), so beginning around July 23rd.

It’s a very busy summer around here–I have a son getting married soon–so I have decided to leave the price of the book at $0.99 for the rest of the summer, into the first week of September. At that point, the book will return to its regular price of $3.99, and I do intend to take the book out of Kindle Select in early October and return it to wide distribution (iBooks, Kobo, NOOK, and I’ve gotta get on Google Play one of these days). I can tell that my page reads (and also sales) are going down as time passes since the advertising that sent my book on the upswing. If not for the advertising, my book would not have had anywhere near as successful a summer. I need to become much more prolific to really make a foray into indie publishing.

But I am counting my Summer of Kindle Unlimited as a rousing success.

A Few 99 Cent Days for WHERE SHE BELONGS

WHERE SHE BELONGS enjoyed a fun few free days through Kindle Select, hitting #1 in the Kindle Free Store overall as well as hitting #1 in Romance and Women’s Fiction. The free days are now over (sob) unless you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited, in which case you can continue to borrow and read WHERE SHE BELONGS for free until early October. But! The book has not yet reverted back to its regular retail price of $3.99. For a couple of days, it’s $0.99! Not free, but pretty darn close!

You can read an excerpt here.

Buy for $0.99 from Amazon or read for Free with Kindle Unlimited.

El beautiful cover:

WHERE SHE BELONGS Ebook cover.
WHERE SHE BELONGS Ebook cover.