Black Friday Blog Hop-A chance to WIN 3 BOOKS!!!

I came to a decision this week. And it's pretty momentous. I'm not going to be one of the crazy women going out at 4am Friday morning this year. Nope.
Gonna wait till at least 10. *snicker*
I can't help it. I have to go out the day after. While kids and hubby are home sleeping in and playing video games, mom's going to be running from store to store, smart phone in hand, grabbing every deal she can.
But do you know WHY I'm waiting till 10? So I can HOP and try to win books!

Decadent publishing has more phenomenal books out right now than I can keep up with. I, personally, have three titles with them (Second time Around, Wet Dream and Love on the Line), with another on the way after the first of the year. If you haven't read them yet, I suggest you do- I've had a lot of compliments and kick-ass reviews.
Or...
OR...
If you want to try to win them, maybe I can help you out.
For those that sign up for my newsletter, your name will be entered to win ALL THREE books. If you already have all of my Decadent books, I can substitute my indie books. If you are one of the precious few that have ALL of my books, all 7, I thank you sincerely from the bottom of my heart.
You know, let's make this a little richer.
For those of you that sign up for my newsletter, you will be entered in a drawing to win 3 free books PLUS an early copy of THE EMBATTLED ROAD, my newest indie title I have coming out in December centered around returning veterans.

Man, four free books. I don't know about you but that's at least a day's worth of reading for me.
Thank you for stopping by! The sign-up for my newsletter is to the right, and the list of other Decadent authors participating in the Hop are below. Thank you so much for reading!

Free Promo Results and Tips- 30K Books Downloaded

I enrolled A Needful Heart in the Select Program a few weeks ago, because it just wasn't moving anywhere. I had sold less than 10 books at Amazon and a few at Kobo, but no great numbers. I didn't feel I was losing readers by going with select.
I had heard that doing a free listing on the weekend was a waste of time, so I scheduled my first promo to run Thursday October 4th and Friday October 5th, when I knew people would be on the computer.
BUT, the week before the promo I started sending notification to all the freebie sites I could find. Yes, I did Pixel of Ink and all the other biggies, but I also did a lot of smaller sites. I did probably 30 free pages on Facebook the days of the sale. (The list is below). The other day I came across this WG2E page, and I wish I had it before I started, because it had even more options. I did use some of the Facebook pages to announce it that day.
At 7:11 Thursday morning, I had had 21 downloads. By 1:51pm I had 469 and had hit the contemporary list at number 82. By 8:30 Friday morning I hit #66 on the OVERALL FREE list and #15 on the contemporary list with 2740 downloads. Once you hit the list, it really does start feeding itself. At one point I worked out that I was having about 40 downloads a minute.
Throughout these two days I was tweeting and updating my Facebook page. If you're on a budget, use Twuffer to schedule your tweets. With twenty minutes of work I had the entire day scheduled and into the night.  Just be sure your tweets are unique; the system kicks out duplicates. If you use Hootesuite, you can upgrade to the $9.99 a month and get the scheduling upgrade.
Throughout the two days, my downloads and ranking continued to climb, as well as my reviews. In two days I garnered 10 brand new mostly 5 star reviews in the US, and 2 in the UK. The kind of reviews that absolutely melt your heart and keep you writing.
     " I downloaded this book as soon as I saw this free alert earlier...and I made the mistake of opening it at work.
Now I am finished reading it.
ALL OF IT.
And I have to say...this might be one of the VERY best books I can EVER remember reading. I found myself in tears many times as I read Matt's struggle with feeling worthy of being loved and how he opened up under Gina's loving kindness and open heart.
I cannot recommend this story enough. It is just so, SO good that I cannot seem to find the words to really do it justice." Thank you AngelWTattoos, whoever you are!
To me, the entire promo was worth doing just for those awesome reviews. I love this book, and I knew if I could find an audience, they would love it as well. And they have.
At 6:15 pm Friday, I had had 9730 downloads and was #7 on the overall free list, #3 on contemporary. I realized I had a dilemma. At this point downloads were flying and I was still climbing the charts, but I was scheduled to end at midnight. I hadn't hit number 1 yet, and my ego wondered if I could. I spoke with a writer friend and she agreed that it would be a good move to keep the book listed free for another day. So, I scheduled it to be free Saturday as well. And I'm glad I did. When I woke up Saturday morning, I was number 1 on the total FREE list AND the contemporary.
Again, when you get that high it continues to feed itself. I did some tweets Saturday, but I was out of the house most of the day and unable to do much more than that. I had only scheduled with the free sites for Thursday and Friday, so they weren't a help, unless somebody had looked at the old listings and was curious enough to buy the book.
At the end of the originally scheduled promo- Friday night- I had had 16,621 downloads. At the end of the extra day - Saturday night- I had had 25,980 total downloads.
For the first time I did well in other countries too. UK had 4739 total downloads and another 273 split between Germany, Spain, France and Italy. I had sold in UK before, but never in the other countries, so I was glad to at least get my name out a little bit over there.
A lot of people fuss at the free book issue, and I can understand their reasoning, BUT, I reached 30,000 new readers, and a significant number of those went ahead and bought every other book I had. In Author Central, ALL of my books were up in rankings, including those I have with e-pubs.
The select promo is a marketing tool. The IndieRomanceInk loop was talking about this recently as well. For authors with small to no fan bases, the select program can give them a very needed boost. For those with a broad reader-base, not so much, and they run the risk of alienating a significant number of their readers if they do go exclusive with Amazon. Whether to use it or not is definitely a personal choice.
Here's the list of free sites I listed with. And remember, it's up to their discretion whether or not to list you on their site. If you have more, please add them to the comments for everybody to see. I also did an event listing with The Romance Studio and listed the sale on Kindleboards.

• Author Marketing Club is fantastic, because they list all the biggies right in one spot. Including:
• Pixel of Ink- I listed, but did not get picked up. I did notice that all the people I was competing with on the free list were listed, but not me.
• Books on the Knob- did not get picked up.
• Freebooksy- they picked me up on Friday.
• Bargain Book Hunter- picked me up on Friday.
• That Book Place- no.
• Orangeberry- no.
• Free Kindle Fiction- no on the actual site but they did pick me up on their FB page.
• Indie Book of the Day- no.
• Free Book Dude- yes.
• Awesome Gang- no.
• Frugal Freebie- no.
• Kindle Daily Deal- no.
• Free Kindle Books and Tips- yes, on Friday.
• Free E-books Daily- no.
• Ebookshabit- yes, on Thursday.

The Day of I posted at these Facebook pages, some of which are from the WG2E site:

• Galleycat FB page
• snickslist
• cheap bookies
• free books r us
• eReader1 US
• iAuthor
• Kindle finds
• IndieKindle
• Ebook Deal of the Day
• Share Free eBooks
• Free Ebooks and Tips
• Kindle Promo
• ebooks habit
• Galleycat
• Indie book of the Day
• Free Kindle Fiction
• Bargain Ebook Hunter
• Freebooksy
• Reading Kindle
• Kindle Korner
• ereaderlove.com
• ebooks FreeFreeFree
• Free Ebook Deal
• What to read After 50 Shades of Grey

I'm positive there are more sites we just don't know about. I think, looking back, I would have given the bigger sites more lead time for scheduling. Some request a month. I only gave them a week. Also, most of the bigger sites have guaranteed listings for like $5.00. I may do that next time.
Overall, though, I believe my promo was a success. I ended high enough that now that I'm under the paid listings, enough people are finding me that I'm climbing the charts again. I'm #2101 on the overall paid list and #49 in Domestic Living, which before yesterday I had never heard of.
Do your planning ahead of time and be prepared to spend a lot of time at the computer during your free days.
If you have questions, I'm more that willing to answer them. I have more than 4 pages on notes! Good luck with your promo!

For 2 Days Only A Needful Heart is FREE!!!

 I enrolled in Select last week and I'm running a 2 day promo for A Needful Heart! It's getting great reviews and wonderful reader response. The sale starts Thursday and ends Friday at midnight. Here's the blurb-
Matt Calvin has watched Gina sway up and down the doctor's office hallway once a month for four long years. It’s time to do something about this fascination he has with her. He knows he's not relationship material, but he doesn’t expect it to get that far. He just wants to talk to her, and put himself out of his misery once and for all. Things never go as planned, though, and when fantasy crashes and burns into reality, Gina pays the price.
Gina doesn’t blame Matt for her injury, but she is appreciative when he steps into her crazy life to help out. Proximity fires the sudden attraction between them and Gina can’t believe she’s overlooked the sexy carpenter for this long. Tattooed and intimidating, he’s not the type she's normally drawn to, but something about him tugs at her heartstrings.
When a dire situation develops and they have to save a little boy, Matt loses control of his tightly held emotions. Though his heart aches, Matt walks away, both for Gina’s safety and his own sanity. It’s up to Gina to convince him love can heal any heartache.

I sincerely hope you enjoy.

Amazon-

Love on the Line is LIVE!!!

Today is the official release of my newest Decadent Publishing novella. The Edge series is more erotic than I normally write, but I think people will enjoy it. I can never totally do without romance, so though the sex is hotter, it still has my touch to it.
Here's the blurb-
Bail Bondsman Brady Frost tracked a bail jumper all the way to New York. It was a rough apprehension, and now he just wants a quiet train ride home to Florida. He’d hoped to avoid sharing his space, but when a tight little co-ed is assigned to his cabin, then propositions him, how can he say no?

Lorna McNight is ready to shake off her self-imposed sexual drought. For four years she devoted herself to attaining her degree, but she’s ready to bust loose in a graduation bash for the record books. Rugged, mature Brady appeals to her more than any of the boys she went to school with, and she wants him to give her the ride of her life on the way to Florida. Will he cooperate and leave them both with a rail tale to remember?

I'm also at the Edge blog promoting the release and giving away a copy of the book. If you want to tell me about your own train experience (no, I don't mean sexual experience!) check out this link.

Thanks so much for checking out my book!

website- www.jmmadden.com
Amazon-
Barnes and Noble-
Smashwords-

Free everywhere BUT Amazon... Can you help?

So, I just released the second book of The Awakening Society, titled Tempt Me. I've studied the market and a lot of authors do really well when they make the first book free of a series. That's what I wanted to do with my books, because the first book ends with a happy for now, but not a permanent happy ending. I asked readers to participate in a poll on how they would like the second book to progress, and Tempt Me is the answer to that poll.

The first book is free at all outlets now, so I contacted Amazon to let them know. Well, they price-matched to free for a few days, then they bumped the price back up to $.99. When I emailed them to try to get them to drop it back down, I got the standard 'we have total discretion over prices' crap. Well, that's fine, I understand that, but I tried to explain to them that the sales of my other books dropped off when they bumped it back up. They didn't care. Suggested I go Select. Well, no, not with this book.

ANYWAY, I thought I would list the places where it IS free and maybe their bots would pick this up. Or maybe, maybe, a few people could report it free for me, which also might get them to drop it. If you don't want to do that, it's fine, you can have the book free anyway. Here are the links:

The Awakening Society at Amazon-
At Apple-
Barnes and Noble-
Kobo-
Smashwords-

If you do want to help me report it free, when you go to the product page scroll down below the product details. There's a link you can click on that says 'tell us about a lower price?' Click on that and it will take you to a little screen where you can input one of these freebie links above.

It's not a guaranteed thing, but it definitely does get them to take a look at it, and maybe they'll see we're both losing sales since they took it off free.

Thanks for helping out! And enjoy the book!

Special Women...and FREE Books!

I know, I know. You can smack my hand if you feel the need. I've been very remiss in blogging. All I can say is, I've been busier that a three pecker puppy. Sorry, is that wrong to say? More about my bizzy-ness later.

I received a note from an author friend who I greatly admire, and it hit me that one of the great things about publishing in these times is the amount of support we get from other authors. Indie authors, in particular, are some of the most open, welcoming people you'll ever meet. I think it may have something to do with a shared solidarity. Not necessarily US(indies) against THEM (traditional) but more of an Us for THEM- THEM being the READERS.
There's a lot of angst in the traditional publishing business these days. I think they're floundering, trying to figure out who suddenly staged a coup when they weren't looking. I think they view indies as invaders. I kinda don't think the indies care, though. We're more concerned about what our readers think than anybody else.
Small presses also encourage a congenial atmosphere. They've had to do things differently to step out of the Traditional shadow and make a name for themselves. That means depending upon all aspects of your business (authors, editors, readers, reviewers) to build each other up. I really believe I've landed in an ideal situation for my publishing career. My owner at Decadent goes out of her way to promo my indie books, and I promo Decadent any chance I get, because of the great guidance I've received from her and the editors there. I genuinely believe I would not be where I am today if it wasn't for my experience with Decadent.
SO, on to the bizzy-ness, then I'll tell you about some fantastic FREE books.
In July I released A Needful Heart . August 28th I released Tempt Me, Book 2 of The Awakening Society, and the culmination of the question I asked readers in Book 1 (which is now FREE!!)**** side note- Amazon decided to raise the price on TAS. Grrr. So, here are some links to other outlets where it IS free. Smashwords- Barnes and Noble- and at the time of this posting Kobo was down. Sorry about the inconvenience folks.**** September 21 I release Love On The Line through Decadent, and I also may release the first in my as-yet-unnamed wounded veteran series. I'm working on the second book of Love on the Line, and may have a Christmas story percolating as well. So you can understand why I haven't been paying a lot of attention to my blog recently, right?
So, to make it up to you, I'm going to tell you about some awesome free books from indie authors I admire. They were the first taste of indie publishing I got, and made an incredible impact on me. Feel free to pass this information on.
Donna McDonald sent me the note that inspired this blog, and lucky for you she has a couple of free books you need to check out. Very different series', but each wonderful in their own right.

Dating A Cougar in the Never Too Late series.

The Demon of Synar in the Forced to Serve series.

Masters at Arms in the Rescue Me series.





All three books are super fantastic and deserve to be read.
So, you've got 4 free books now if you follow the links! Happy reading and stayed tuned for more to come!

Release Party and Blog Talk Radio...Oh, MY!!!

Today's a busy day for A Needful Heart. If you follow this link, I'm taking part in a release party at The Romance Studio. And I'm giving away a copy of ANH to one person who comments.

Then...
THEN... At 6:30 TODAY, I will be on Edin Road Blog Talk Radio. If you follow the link, you can listen to little old me talk about whatever comes to Jesse Coffey's brain. I'll also be reading an excerpt from A Needful Heart. You can call in and listen and if you have questions you can do that too.Or if you want to make fun of my bumbling you can do that too.

I'm super excited today! Can you tell?