Category Uncategorized

Migration from blogger

December 17, 2012 Uncategorized

Migration away from the blogspot blog will be occurring shortly, since my new blog will be integrated with the book websites, making things easier to keep track of. There's a preview of the new blog at: http://vhfolland.com/wp/ ...and the first post has a small announcement.

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A Smashwords Announcement

May 8, 2012 Uncategorized

I have just transferred all my Smashwords titles to Ragged Angel Ltd, who will now be handling most of my account on there. This isn't because I'm upset with Smashwords (on the contrary, I think they are great) but because it simplifies a lot of things at this end. RA already handle my Amazon titles, so it puts all the royalties in one place. This obviously simplifies tax and accounting. Also, because of the obvious difficulty of trying to get an ITIN with a penname, managing tax through a company that is a legal entity and can get its own is a lot simpler.On the admin side, they already do the formatting for me, so instead of me writing, sending the manuscript off, getting the formatted copy back and uploading, now I just send it off and they do the rest. They also own their own ISBNs,

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Sad news

April 22, 2012 Uncategorized

There is no easy way to say this: the person to whom Fire Season was dedicated has died.The words are inadequate, but he will be sorely missed by all that knew him.Never forgotten.

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Smashwords and Tools

February 21, 2012 Uncategorized

Less about writing, more about testing: the Smashwords Tools have moved to http://www.smashingreads.com.The move had been planned for a while, but after Smashwords downtime due to the Slicehost failure it became obvious we needed it. The new setup has server caching that should keep the widgets visible throughout any downtime. And there's a new widget to go with it: author minisites with convenient links to third parties. Rather than detail them, I'll just show you mine as an example:http://www.smashingreads.com/author/vhfolland

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Conflict of Interest

January 12, 2012 Uncategorized

Here's a surprising announcement for the New Year:Conflict of Interest, the Docks sequel, which I withdrew for re-editing after several critiques? It's back up on Amazon, it hasn't been re-edited and it's up in its original form. It sounds like an odd move, but while the editors suggested a lot of changes, the betas didn't like the edited versions. Since the beta readers are more representative of my audience, and I was going round in circles getting nothing else written because of the back and forth over COI, I've decided to take the decision to push it out the door and move on with something else.The other reason for that decision was the christmas sales figures - while I may have pulled it most of the third parties didn't and it's building a steady fanbase.I wrote it to deadline, I

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The Twelth Night

January 6, 2012 Uncategorized

In some traditions, the start of 2012 proper. In mine, time to take down the decorations since it is unlucky to leave them up longer. In both cases, it's the time to shift from holiday mood and face the year ahead. And there are a few changes coming up for 2012.You might notice the blog is back to Project Wonderful ads, this time installed properly. After a few ads for well-known publishing scams showed up through Adsense, I decided to shift across fully since I didn't want to be thought of as endorsing them. I actually prefer Project Wonderful as a service, but last time my blog went down for a few days and my average traffic level dropped too low. This time, using a networked ad that runs across multiple sites, it should avoid that.There are more unofficial Smashwords widgets in

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2011 round up

December 30, 2011 Uncategorized

It's been a busy year. I've gone into ebook for the first time, released a book on Kindle and launched two paperbacks. Not bad for my first year of devoted writing/publishing. Other items include the blog, the website, finding a few boards to get advice on, finding a new ad provider and even going back to writing a few more articles. Overall, I'd have to say it has been a busy year.The last few days are not going to be any different. I think I've found a way to resolve my problems with the Project Wonderful ads. Part of the issue was that each of my sites had to have seperate ads, and on their own these subsites don't get enough traffic. After swapping a few emails, they actually have a way to link traffic from all the sites together under one, so this morning I've added it.If it works,

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Merry Christmas!

December 25, 2011 Uncategorized

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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A Christmas Problem

December 7, 2011 Uncategorized

I am signing in because it has been a few days since I wrote. I am still here, I am still writing, but right now, I am trying to resolve a fairly major problem. My books were ordered by Waterstones in early November for Christmas. The bookshops haven't received them. I suspect I am about to miss the entire Christmas market, which is not a good thought. In fact, it could be called a fairly major problem. Once people get back to me, I will give an update here.

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Back to work and random thoughts…

November 14, 2011 Uncategorized

I've easily written 50K words this month already, just not fiction or NaNo, and I've probably got that to go again.Press releases, articles, non-fiction, and general PR has taken up most of my time.I have a final author's copy of The Docks, text justified, back cover copy finalised, and generally looking good. The Book Launch is on the 24th November, although there is a small problem with book supplies. The bookshop is not registered with our distributor, causing problems getting books tracked or ordered through Nielsen, so that's being looked into at the publisher's end.What is really worrying me is this signing in the afternoon. I'm actually doing the signing because of the shop's request, and I can't see it going well. I'm not exactly the life and sole of the party, and spending the

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