Book Bundles, Promo Cookbooks and Free Books: Author Marketing that Works

Now through October 14th, Book Bundles, 20 reads for under 5 bucks! Get Prodigies of Mystery II here at iBooks, 99 cents for three full length novels!

How are midlist and new authors going to stand out in today's overburdened publishing biz? Here's a few recent methods I've found successful.

First up: Book Bundles. My publisher is running a special on five bundles, one of which, Prodigies of Mysteries II, includes my cozy mystery Starke Naked Dead. As a reader, I've noticed that I often buy these bundles because there's a lot of reading for cheap and it's a great way to find new authors. As an author, I discovered that Starke Naked Dead is coming up in the rankings considerably while offered in Prodigies of Mystery II. A  great way to get noticed and to brand your author name and series.

Here's another great way to get your name out there, thank you, Lois Winston, for this great idea. Bake, Love, Write is a compilation of dessert recipes with authors' advice on love and writing, 105 authors in all. Lois Winston is donating the proceeds to a worthy cause. The eBook is for sale for 99 cents, that's less than a penny a recipe! My recipe is easy, cheap and delicious soda cracker pie. Again, I often find myself buying just this type of book because I love to cook, love inexpensive dessert cookbooks and love finding other authors to read. Plus, with 105 authors, there's oodles of cross-marketing going on!

There's a lot of controversy about whether to ever have anything free, even promo cookbooks. The detractors say that being free only means that you are giving away content to people who may never read it, much less review it. However, I think there is a place for free, especially if it's a certain sort of free book. I've downloaded free short stories about a series and then gone on to buy books from the series. With my promotional cookbooks, I have found that after they're free that I do get reviews, perhaps because a cookbook is something that people do read after downloading. Plus, if you have a lot of downloads of your free book, Amazon will heavily promote it once it's no longer free. So, here's one of my cookbooks that introduces my Starke Dead cozy mystery series, Starke Deadly Delicious, and it's FREE today, October 8th!

So dear readers, what do you think? Do you do the same with these promotions? Or not? Do you think they work? Or not? Let us know in the comments!

Cheap easy delicious Sunday dinner recipe!

Sunday Dinner Slumgullion, YUM!

My of-Scots-descent mom always made slumgullion for Sunday Dinner because it was always different and always delicious. What is slumgullion, you ask? Simple: mixed up leftovers. Not so simple, because if you mix up the wrong leftovers you get ... cooked garbage. Aunt Maddie does this when she makes this dish in my Starke Dead mystery series. But if you follow a few simple rules, slumgullion will become a Sunday dinner staple in your home too!

Rules:

Think of like with like and ingredients you'd use together in dishes. In the example pictured above, I took leftover chili (steak, chili sauce, tomatoes), leftover Mexican casserole (hamburger, corn, chilis and carrots) and leftover pasta and combined. Yum!

If you have a lot of one leftover and a little of another, and not quite enough to make a meal consider another item that would combine well with your ingredients. I might add beans or some spaghetti squash to the recipe above. Or add a side dish too, a salad perhaps.

Avoid mixing too strong of flavors, sweets and sours, for example. If Aunt Maddie was making the recipe above, she'd add apple pie! Okay, an extreme example, but Aunt Maddie is pretty extreme herself. Also avoid too many different added spices. Both these mistakes will make the food taste strange and murky.

If you have "simple" leftovers, such as cooked vegetables and chicken, consider which spices to use and try different ones for a "refreshed" dish. (I might use coriander, thyme and pepper for the vegetables and chicken, for example.)

Avoid mixing tomatoes,vinegar or lemon juice with peas, green beans and/or broccoli as the green vegetables will turn brown and bitter.

That's it! Otherwise, let your creativity reign!

Do any of my readers have suggestions or stories, good or bad, of slumgullion recipes?