by Holly Lisle on October 2, 2008 · 19 comments
in Big Courses, CRITICAL SKILLS SERIES, Cadence Drake Novels, Create A Character Clinic, Create A Plot Clinic, How To Find Your Writing Discipline, How To Think Sideways, Hunting the Corrigan's Blood, NONFICTION, Page-Turning Scenes, Personal, Slightly Loony, Thinking Sideways, WB1--Language Clinic, WB2--Culture Clinic, Worldbuilding Clinic, Writing Life
Yeah, my birthday is almost here, and I decided this year to celebrate by giving presents to other people. And not just on my actual birthday, either. I’m giving away presents every day next week, plus a couple of presents starting today.
So what are your presents?
- Day One (that’s today): Any two of my e-courses from the HollyShop, up to and including Page-Turning Scenes (but not the the writer’s block course.) I can’t give away other folks’ stuff, of course, so this is limited to just what I’ve written.
–Minimum value $15.95, max value $31.95–
Day Two (Friday 3): Any three of my e-courses from the HollyShop, up to and including Page-Turning Scenes (but not the the writer’s block course.)
–Minimum value $25.90, max value $41.90–
- Day Three (Saturday 4): Any four of my e-courses from the HollyShop, up to and including Page-Turning Scenes, OR the the writer’s block course.
–Minimum value $35.85, max value $59.95–
- Day Four (Sunday 5): Any five of my e-courses from the HollyShop, up to and including Page-Turning Scenes, OR the the writer’s block course.
–Minimum value $45.80, max value $61.80–
- Day Five (Monday 6): Any five of my e-courses from the HollyShop, up to and including Page-Turning Scenes, AND the the writer’s block course.
–Minimum value $105.70, max value $121.75–
- Day Six (Tuesday 7): All of my e-courses from the HollyShop.
–Value $151.64–
- Day Seven (Wednesday 8): Full scholarship to How To Think Sideways.
–Min value $282 (6-month course), max value $300 ($12-month course)—
- Day Eight (Thursday 9): Full scholarship to How To Think Sideways, and ANY two e-courses from the HollyShop.
–Min value $297.95, max value $376.95–
Day Nine (Friday 10): Full scholarship to How To Think Sideways, and any four courses from the HollyShop.
–Min value 307.90$, max value $386.85–
- Day Ten (Saturday 11): Full scholarship to How To Think Sideways, and ALL of my HollyShop courses.
–Value 451.64–
Total value of my birthday presents?
Absolute lowest value—$1720.33
Absolute highest value—$1987.43
But it’s more than that, really.
- Because today five people will win. ($79.95 minimum, $159.75 max in presents)
-
Friday four people will win. ($103.60 minimum, $167.80 max in presents)
- Saturday three people will win. ($107.55 minimum, $179.85 max in presents)
- Sunday, two people will win. ($91.60 minimum, $123.60 max in presents)
- Monday, two people will win. ($211.40 minimum, $243.50 max in presents)
- Tuesday, two people will win. ($303.28 in presents)
AND…
- Wednesday two people will win. ($564 minimum, $600 max in presents)
So the minimum total in presents I’m giving away for my birthday is…
$2518.87
And the maximum total in presents I’m giving away for my birthday is…
$2993.22
But that’s not all. EVERYONE who enters will receive one gift on Monday, October 13th.
The total value of my birthday bash giveaway including those gifts should be well over $5000. Could be a lot more. I’ll let you know once the confetti settles. :D
Who can enter?
Anyone but my immediate family.
And…
You could win twice, if you enter early. Here’s how:
Anyone who wins an e-book gift cannot win any further e-book presents, but will be re-entered for one of the full scholarships.
What if you win and you’re already a student in the Think Sideways course? Then I’ll refund the tuition you’ve paid to this point, and you are in free for the rest of the course.
Will I refund you for e-books you win but already own? No. Therein lies a madness of paperwork I will not even consider. HOWEVER… I’ll be very happy to send any prizes you win (INCLUDING a full scholarship if you want to be that generous) to someone you choose. If you win and this is an issue for you, contact me.
So…
Follow me on Twitter. Here’s my page: http://twitter.com/hollylisle
It’s free, it’s easy, and I’m already discovering that Twitter is a lot of fun.
If you’re already following me, you’re already entered. If you’re already a Twitter member, go to my page and click Follow and you’re entered. If you’re not already a member, it’s free and it only takes a minute to join. Then return to my page click Follow. The Follow button is right under my picture on the top left corner.
I’ll print off the complete list of my Twitter followers every day, and do a random drawing from those pages, PLUS the pages from every day’s pages before. Yes, this means that if you start following me today, you’ll get one new entry in the drawing every single day. Yes, this will improve your chances of winning, at least a little. I have no way of figuring odds. I have no idea how many people will enter. Today, right this minute, you’re odds would be about 5:32. I expect they’ll get a bit steeper over the next few days.
I’ll announce the winners at around noon my time every day. On Twitter. :D (Except today, when I’ll announce at around two, because I am SO behind schedule.)
And I’ll do a final listing of everyone who won here after it’s all over. Probably on Tuesday the 14th. Finally, EVERYONE who’s following me on Twitter will get a link to one gift on that day.
So. Does that count as a cool way to celebrate a birthday?
It occurred to me today that, in the almost-year I’ve had an affiliate program, I never did an ad for Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood.
So today I created an HTCB campaign. Still working on the other ads, haven’t uploaded any of them to the affiliate program just yet, but I think this does the story justice.
by Holly Lisle on September 27, 2007 · 1 comment
in Administrivia, Books, Cadence Drake Novels, Create A Character Clinic, Create A Plot Clinic, Hunting the Corrigan's Blood, NONFICTION, WB1--Language Clinic, WB2--Culture Clinic, Worldbuilding Clinic
Yesterday through the 30th, everything in the e-book shop is 10% off, to celebrate the fact that we’re up and running again.
I’ve put all three Clinic books on sale from today through Friday, each one $2.00 off.
Why? For karma. I’m struggling on the Ruby Key revisions, and the last time I put books on sale, the bad karma cleared. The line-for-scene is crawling, and most of the cards so far are red or orange. Not good. My stress level is rising, my confidence is falling.
I’d had some serious, bad stuff going on for a while the last time I put books on sale (also for karma), and everything got better. It may be New-Agey, it may seem crackpot. No matter. It worked last time, so I’m trying it again.
ADDED LATER:
Also put Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood on sale for a flat $3.00 (57% off). It’s not a clinic, but….
Anyway, I hope the discounts are a good thing for some of you, and provide good content and a useful service.
I know that the previous price on the print version of Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood was too high for a lot of readers to afford. It was considerably higher than I wanted to price it, too.
Through judicious use of reformatting and a one-point drop in body type size, I’ve manage to cut nearly 100 pages from the print edition of Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood without cutting a word of the story. Doing this, and taking a royalty cut, has allowed me to drop the print price to $11.95.
I can’t cut the font size anymore without affecting readability. I’ve already reformatted everything that required space. So I priced out doing it as a mass-market paperback edition, but that would have been significantly more expensive than a trade edition. Because the type size I’m now using is the size in most mass-market paperbacks, decreasing the page size increases the number of pages needed—in this case by a lot. With so many more pages necessary to print the book, the price on a mass-market paperback would have ended up around $14. So I can either have a trade paperback that costs less than most trade paperbacks, or a mass market that costs a whole lot more.
I hope this reformat moves the book into the reach of those of you who wanted it in print but couldn’t afford it before.
Both Create A Character Clinic and Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood are now available in print versions at the OneMoreWord Bookstore on Lulu.com.
The second version of CCC landed on my doorstep Saturday afternoon, and it came out just right. I was overjoyed that it turned out so well…and incredibly relieved that it turned out at all. Getting this book into print has been a real challenge.
On a personal note, I haven’t felt like myself since late last year (something you may have noticed from the tenor of this weblog). While I wrote most of this off to a whole lot of years of overwork and (since about December) the depression that sometimes affects me, I discovered not too long ago that the horrible headaches and the constant exhaustion are primarily being caused by high blood pressure. I’ve reverted to a vegan diet, and the blood pressure has already started to come down. I still don’t feel like myself. But I am starting to feel better.
Oh. And the e-book store is down for maintenance. If you’re hoping to buy any of the cool books we have up on the site, please keep checking.
Got Lulu to work with Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood. Click the cover thumnail to see how the final wrap-around cover turned out. Have my copy on order now, and I’m excited about the way the book looks like it’s going to turn out. I have to thank JM Edwards, who did the copyedit for the print version and the e-book version that I’ll be uploading to the shop as soon as I can shrink the file sufficiently. (Adobe Acrobat and I are still not seeing eye to eye.)
But with the capability of producing print books, Cady II is back on the table. Though I’ve decided that I really want to go back and pick up where I left off with her, so I’ll be starting from scratch on the story. The ten-years-later one will have to wait.
This has been, for me, a pretty good couple of writing days so far. I’m also working on one manuscript edit for one of the folks who bought crits, and doing work on the Language Clinic (really need to update the WIP graph on that).
And Robin sent THE RUBY KEY out to editors at five separate publishers, each publisher so cool that I’m afraid to even mention any names here, lest I jinx myself. So I won’t. But… oh, wow. Typing with your fingers crossed is a bitch, but I’m managing.
Got the series worldbuilding and proposal out the door yesterday; I’m really happy with it. Won’t know anything until the middle of next week at the earliest, because my editor is going to be out of town, but she acknowledged receipt and told me she’d take a look as soon as she could. That’s good enough.
I’m pulling the next Cady novel from production. Its future, based on interest in HTCB, is nonexistent. Instead, I’ll start in on the next worldbuilding novel.
Will be putting up a HAWKSPAR Edit bar, too. Have to have that finished by August.
I’m sending the cleaned-up, shrunken-down, revised version of HTCB to the three folks who ordered the first version before I could yank it down. For everyone else, Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood now ships at a lean and lovely 1.4 MB file size, is optimized for print for folks who want to save paper, and is also bookmarked for the daring souls who want to read onscreen.
Slightly revised the cover — the improved tagline is “Not every secret should see the light of day ….”
Still have to figure out what to say about the book itself. But it’s there. It works. And I’m so happy.
