Discover the paranormal romance series of the first vampire as it continues with Season 2!  Not just the usual vampire story …  but one filled with twists, turns and suspense and told through the eyes of a kindred dog!

As dark forces close in on Brogio and his beloved children, the end of all vampires could come from a single blow at any moment.

When Kane sacrifices himself to save Snow Blood, the pack believes he is truly lost forever. After the devastating loss, a new ever-present threat of destruction surrounding Brogio, the original vampire, threatens his kindred.

While the pack stands guard watching for predators on the outskirts of Brogio’s winery estate, Snow Blood discovers Selene is keeping secrets from Brogio. This deception and Selene’s rapidly growing strength and independence could create a rift between the father of all vampires and his mate.

Snow Blood again helps hold their love together as he tries to protect them from the approaching evil. At the same time, Snow Blood suspects that Nova, the beautiful female wolf that attracts him in the forest, is part of a sinister plot to destroy his master … but he can’t resist her power over him.

˃˃˃ Continue the Adventurous Paranormal Romance Series

This is the last week of our experiment in serial produced ebooks. Snow Blood has been an awesome experience! But, before you start in your own serial adventure plan on:

1. Taking more time than a regular novel.
You have how ever many episodes and they all require ISBN, covers, and the time it takes to upload them into retailers different platforms.
2. Dedication to organization.
If you don't have organization in place, you are going to **** it up. Your cover is going to not match the internal material. There is way more likelyhood that Episode 6 will have the cover of episode 5.
3. More marketing.
You now have more property to work with, and while I don't see that as a bad thing, it's more you have to keep track of.

All in all, I can't wait for Season 2! It has been a blast to market Snow Blood!!

In the beginning, there is an idea of a cover. If you are lucky, you find it. If you are not, it's probably because you have the idea of the cover stuck in your head and you can't bear to part with it or see another cover for its magnificence.
I agree that most covers "call" to an author. Some respect my eye for covers. I'm not the guru designer end-all-end-all of cover design, but I do the best I can with the budget that I have.

Take for instance, Snow Blood. This series needed 8 covers.

6 for the separate ebook episodes
1 for the ebook full Season One
1 for the print

Why so many? Why so different?

First, sometimes you only have a certain amount of copies you can use for an image. Second, sometimes you want a difference between the print, ebook and audible version. Third, sometimes you want to explore the different possibilities of different styles.

When we did Snow Blood I made a deal with my author. She would get the print cover she wanted, I would get the ebook covers I wanted. It was a compromise.

In the story, Snow Blood is a husky turned vampire dog, but the only creature with enough intelligence and intensity that  could pull-off being "Snow Blood" -- was a wolf.

Also, we needed something for the serialized ebooks that looked similar but could be different enough  from each other so people could understand these are different books.

For the print and the full ebook of Season 1, I wanted everyone to pay attention to the fact that this was a completely different book--that it was an entire season not just another episode.

In addition to all that, we will be doing another season of Snow Blood -- I'm not sure about the episodes being released separately, but I know there will be another season, and I wanted to make sure both the serial covers and the season covers could be continued in the fashion from Season 1.

For Snow Blood, it was easy. For another serialized story--I'm not so sure. But if I did it again I would make sure to be able to stamp a brand on the covers as well as I did for the Snow Blood serials. I'm very proud of them! Sometimes you just see the image that you know is going to work! I love it when the pieces fall into place!

Week 3 of our 6 Simple Facebook Contests you can set up in 5 minutes and it time for Solve to Win!

This was the photo and the question was--"How many wolves are in the picture?"

The answer: 3

By now my author has determined that the effort is not worth the yields and wants to direct her efforts in a different direction. But I love the idea of Facebook engagement. Sometimes, though, your fans just want you--and that's okay.

Will I stop using Facebook as a platform? No. I don't subscribe to the method that authors need to be in all places at once. I believe they need to concentrate on the platform, or platforms, that they feel most comfortable in and work it! My favorite is twitter but I also love Facebook. I don't cross promote on the platforms very much so it keeps both places fresh and different, but sometimes cross promoting is best for you. I don't know--it's only a suggestion. 

But the important thing to remember is, know what you want to do on your platforms. Do you want interaction or promotion? Either one takes a unique approach on any platform. This experiment we did was under the promotion category and we found out our fans want interaction as their engagement. So fans get what fans want!

ACTION ITEM: Take from this what type of interaction your fans want from you on each platform. 

Snow Blood is an episodic story where each episode is released every Tuesday. Think of it as a TV show, where every week, you get a new episode unveiling more of the story.
This episodic writing was an experiment I suggested to author Carol McKibben and she agreed! Now that we've gotten to 4 out of 6 episodes this is what it looks like:

#97 in the Kindle Store >Science Fiction, Fantasy & Scary Stories > Fantasy & Magic > Coming of Age

The time and effort it took to make these episodes was a new and different challenge. I could not have published them and kept every episode straight without the organizational skills I've learned over the years.

Would I recommend doing a series? If you have the stamina to weekly installments for at least 6 episodes, I would tell you it's a fun process. But it's much more work than putting one book up and then promoting just that book.

It's great for getting your name out there and being on the just released lists. It's great for pushing a higher word count. It's also a lot more pressure.

ACTION ITEM: Attempt for 4 weeks of releasing your own episodes each week to see how you like it!

Snow Blood: Episode 4: Rebellion
To protect Selene, Brogio leaves Kane and Snow Blood to guard the love-of-his-life. While his master endeavors to lead the Gods astray, Snow Blood searches for a way for the two lovers to remain together. In his search, Snow Blood displays true sacrifice and unconditional love for both Brogio and Selene.

Find episode 4 on:
Amazon
TRP
Smashwords
Barnes & Nobel

Two weeks ago we started our 6 Simple Facebook Contests you can set up in 5 minutes. This past week we tried Simple Facebook Contest #2 - Comment to Win.

For us, this wasn't as popular as the Like to Win Contest. Which means the question was too difficult or the prize wasn't appealing.

I believe it has to do with the question. It probably wasn't something that many people could think of from the top of their heads and had to go looking for the answer. Now that I think of it, I wasn't sure how to answer and I'm a huge Snow Blood fan! Hence, I'm thinking we made the question too difficult for our fans.

Lived and learned! Continuing forth with Contest #3 for Snow Blood: Episode 4!!

ACTION ITEM: Try the Contest -- Comment to Win -- just give a very obvious question that anyone can answer. Something like what color is blue? The point is engagement, not necessarily sales. These are your fans who, have probably already bought your book (maybe, maybe not) but the goal is for them NOT to forget you. These are your peeps. Treat them well and they become your advocates. Advocates talk you up to others, share your content and pay attention to what you're saying because your entertaining, give them a thing of value and inspire them to DO (something).

Last week we started implementing Digital Marketers 6 Simple Facebook Contests. We started with "Like to Win".

It went for a few days, with a $5 boost and we got about 20 likes.

One of the things that I don't like is that you can't tag people to let them know they won. So while we offered 5 prizes, only 1 person responded and got their prize.

Now, I could do this through Woobox, and that might be the better way to conduct these, but I won't be able to tell you about it until I do.

For the first contest, I consider it a 40¢ per like cost. However, the goal is engagement--not likes. I can see doing these contests once a week will get people coming to your page out of habit.

The cool thing is, you can do these contests on any platform. Twitter, Facebook, Google+ it doesn't matter, you can still adapt it to either. Maybe you'll get better performance than my author, maybe less, but the fact is you'll be doing something. Try it for 3 months and if it's more work than the yield, you'll know it's not something for you. Better knowing than guessing.

ACTION ITEM: Try you hand at Like to Win! Reference this POST for how it works. 

Week 2 of the Snow Blood episodic story of Brogio, the first vampire and his canine demon has been going along very well!
When I suggested a serial to my author I had not known how much work there might be involved. I'd forgotton--Who was going to put up all those books on a weekly basis?

Yeah--that's right--me.

But! I have now gained enough experience to get Smashwords formatting down pat! After stripping and rebuilding 6 episodes, I think I've got it to a science.

Most common things I see authors doing is:
a) using the tab for indents.
b) Putting a space in front of the indented sentence.
c) Using really weird and inconsistent paragraph spacing.

EVERY author does it. It's not that they deliberately change all these things, it's that they are using different methods to get ink on paper. Copy/paste, editing, merging files--all that will cause some kinds of formatting differences which Smashwords doesn't like. But, being able to go through and systematically doing it over and over has given me a new respect for Smashwords. They catch all the glicthy mistakes. Smashwords will tell you when your file isn't perfect and then you have to learn why.

After doing it so many times, I've got a standard that will help me in the future. I can't say my ACTION ITEM would be fun--but if you get the chance to upload more than one book at a time on Smashwords--do it. You'll find out all those tricky mistakes that will make your word document clean.   

This Marketing Monday tip is completely, utterly stolen from DigitalMarketer because Ryan Deiss is a genius and his ideas were meant to be run away with...and I'm ever to eager to listen and apply!

So, when he shared 6 Simple Facebook Contests You Can Set Up in 5 Minutes we jumped on board and adapted them for the release of Snow Blood.

We started with #1 - Like to Win.
Post to Facebook for new page likes and pick the winners! Ours got a full copy of Season 1 of Snow Blood.

Continuing on each week for each Episode of Snow Blood we'll be going to the next contest. Here's the plan:

#2 Comment to win.
Post to Facebook. Comments get entered. Pick winners.
We thought of asking people to answer, "Name Brogio's love of his life." Or "What breed of dog is Snow Blood?"
Correct answers get an Amazon card.

#3 Solve to win.
Post a puzzle, comments get entered. Pick winners!
This one we may or may not do. I'd thought of posting a picture of those "How many animals in the picture" type thing like Where's Waldo and have people guess the number of wolves in the picture. Correct answers win!

#4 Upload pictures to win.
Have fans post pictures. Pick winners!
For this, I'd have people post pictures of their dogs. Right up on the author page. Winner receives an Amazon card.

#5 Caption to win.
Post a picture. Have fans comment a caption for posted picture. Pick winners!
This we decided not to do. We don't have anything really, except this:

Anyway...I might try it another author's site, but I've got pictures like these that deserve captions. You might want to have your fans comment their captions. Do a mem to let everyone know who won and give a prize.

#6 Join the email list to win.
Post a status giving people an easy way to join the email list and offer a digital copy of Snow Blood. 

ACTION ITEM: Go to 6 Simple Facebook Contests You Can Set Up in 5 Minutes and see the examples they did and the full article for yourself!!