Veda, Reviews, and Stats

 Hi Ink Drinkers,

Might I draw your attention to the beautiful creation to your right?

One of my beloved readers on Quotev, MemeQueenoftheworld, was so delightful as to put this together to represent Veda in Hidden Library.  The collage is called 'Witches of the Hidden Library'.  There are so many excellent elements of the book that have been added to this beautiful arrangement.  

In particular, I like the shot of the high heels at the bottom, so like the high heels of my imagination as I wrote the book.  Of course, I love the open book with the black rose flower crown.  The crystal ball is better than the one I pictured as I wrote the chapter with the crystal ball in the tea cozy by the front window (remember to keep those covered girls, cause if you don't, it could totally burn your house down).  I also like the headless girl, like a disembodied dress with only hands to spin with, hands to write with.  It's very lovely... like even the pictures are still in the first person.  We can't see her face, we can only see everything around her.  Very choice.

Let's give a huge round of applause for MemeQueen and her awesome vision of Veda!

Now, let's talk about If Diamonds Could Talk.  Though my launch for it was a stinky failure.  I can almost summon tears when I think about Booksprout.  Anyhoo... it hasn't been a total waste as I received two splendid reviews for it on Amazon.  Here they are:

"Well, once I finished the first book (His 16th Face) I thought I had a clue as to what the next book would be like but I was so wrong! Stephanie is an amazing writer! She has such an incredible imagination that she leaves me in awe at her writing! I was floored by what I read because it was not what I was expecting. The author had a way she weaved you into the story line and the chapters kept drawing me further into the story more. The book was not a typical love story but well worth your time in reading it. I enjoyed it and was shocked at several of the events that happened in the story. It's a great book!"
--DeAnn

"The follow-up story for 'His Sixteenth Face", this novel has deeper fantasy elements than its predecessor.  Doing so allows it to explore bigger themes of immortality, love, friendship, and oddly... damnation.  I was captured by its simple but powerful ideas of how immortality and power can be achieved.  Yet the heart of the story is about passionate love and the sacrifices required to achieve and sustain it.  Beth's journey is a worthy read and If Diamonds Could Talk is a romance novel strengthened by the elements that set it apart.  I appreciate that the author felt free to conclude the story on her own terms."
--Rob. S.

Those reviews really helped validate all the work I did on that book.  Thanks to DeAnn and Rob S. for writing such powerful and kind reviews.  Hearts for a week.

Moving on to Sleeping Prince.  I've been posting my stats for it because it's been a long time since I posted a book on the free sites before the full book sites.  I finished posting the book, so let's see how things worked out.  Lowest to highest.  Go!  

#4. Quotev

I let my feathers get quite ruffled before I got angry enough to huff down to the bottom of the webpage to file a complaint.  My complaint was that it was marked as an M-rated piece.  Well, it wasn't!  Grrr!  They didn't even write me back.  They just removed the M rating and we all lived happily ever after.  Except I don't think the piece ever recovered from the M rating.  There are a healthy number of views but it still clocks in at the lowest.

#3. Booknet

I have had quite a lot more reader feedback on Booknet than previously.  Except this really hilarious/not hilarious thing keeps happening.  I keep getting blocked from the site.  I can just hear you in my head asking, "Why would that happen, Stephanie?  You're always so nice when you talk to readers even if you're a complete cow elsewhere."  Yes, I know.  Here's the thing: if you post too much on one thread with too many tabs open, the system blocks you.  So, even though all I'm doing is writing my fans and followers on my own book's thread, I'm still getting my butt kicked.  I have been blocked four times on that site this week alone.  I'm blocked right now because I can't NOT answer the readers.  Dang!  Comments are what we authors live for!  When I'm blocked, no one can access my profile and my view stats stay the same until the admins extend the palm branch to me.  Then I immediately fall for my readers all over again, write them back, and get blocked again.  It's a vicious cycle.

#2. RoyalRoad

This site had the largest hit count for a really long time, but the story didn't seem to build momentum.  I finished the story and no one seemed to notice... not even the people who were reading it.  However, things can gain huge hit counts over years, so we'll do this again with maybe different results later on.

#1. Inkitt

Before I finished posting the book, I was a little cheesed at the lack of success on Inkitt.  When I was choosing the cover for the book, I was flopping between one that would appeal to the readers on Inkitt and one that would appeal to the readers on RoyalRoad.  I decided to go for Inkitt because there is no real reward for kicking butt on RoyalRoad, but there are publishing deals to be won on Inkitt.  So, I was a little sad when the stats were better for RoyalRoad for the whole release period.  When I marked Sleeping Prince as complete on Inkitt, the WORLD EXPLODED!  The hit count there has eaten the hit count on RoyalRoad and now it has my second-highest hit count on Inkitt.  Whenever You Want has the highest hit count, and yes, I got a publishing contract for it.  Yes, that contract didn't last but it did represent some very sweet paycheques.  The popularity has also had some very sweet overflow to my other books, getting some fresh notice for other things.  Yay!  

I'm gonna be straight with you.  There haven't been that many wins this year, so to have things work out on Inkitt really meant a lot to me.  Like... I was starting to wonder if doing any of this was really worth it.  Today it feels less stupid than usual.  For that, I am extremely grateful.  

New Covers for Fanfiction.net

Hi Ink Drinkers,

I started posting fanfiction on fanfiction.net when I was in my early twenties.  That was a really long time ago.   In those days, fanfiction.net did not have a function to give your book a cover, so when I was posting my Vision of Escaflowne and Slayers fanfic, I did not need a cover.  It's also fanfic, so if you want images to support your book, you either need to make fanart or get a little bit thiefy.  They didn't introduce the function to add a cover until I was very tired of trying to keep up with any fandom at all.  I'm not really much of a fan anyway.  The truth about my fanfiction is that most of it is not really fanfiction.  It is original fiction and I gave the characters the same names from the shows and called it 'alternative universe fanfiction' so that I could bum off the show's audience.  It worked well until the shows got too old and I couldn't really piggyback off them anymore.  

I'd forget all about my fanfiction roots, except occasionally, I go to fanfiction.net and look at my stunning stats.  At my peak, I was getting 50 people to write in when I released a chapter each week.  The hit counts are so gorgeous, it nearly blinds me to see them.  And the stats actually just keep going up over time.

Returning to the subject of the covers... I was really lazy.  Shamefully lazy.  I was using the cover of His 16th Face as the cover for every single book and for my profile picture to try to generate some interest in that book.  I don't think it worked.  Not only that but each one of those projects deserves a cover of its own.  So, yesterday, I got all chipper and created new covers for my fanfic, without getting theify, which means that they are somewhat generic, but I didn't steal anything, so good.  

I used Adobe Express, which is a free service where you can pay extra to unlock the awesome features.  When I say the 'awesome features', I mostly mean fonts.  The free fonts pretty much suck, but since everything else Adobe offers in the free version is top-notch, I just ignore the lack of diversity of fonts.  

Let's begin.

When you're designing a cover for a platform like this, you do not have a quarter of the design freedom that you do when you design an actual book cover.  The pixel count is 600x800 instead of 1600x2500.  Yes, those are not the same shape, but with the smaller image, it will always be displayed as a thumbnail--just a tiny little thing.  This means that there isn't room to have a detailed conversation with the audience about what they're going to get.  You are unwise to use more than two people in the picture and actually, just one central image of only one person is better.  You also can't have taglines, reviews, or any other words besides the name of the book and the pen name.  Basically, the size of the images you are seeing here is massive compared to the way they will be displayed on the actual webpage.

Adobe Express lets you use a variety of design elements for free with thousands of shapes that you can stack on top of each other and if you're clever and appreciate the intense beauty of a chess board, you can have quite a lot of fun.

You're noticing the lack of font diversity, aren't you?  The thing that is the most painful about the free fonts is that they don't have any fonts that really sprawl all over the page.  You wouldn't use those for the whole title, but for the first letters of the title words.  Gah... there are ways to get around it.  Not by hacking it, but by moving the image to another site that has a stronger free font catalog.  However, when the image requirements are this small, a sprawling font is not going to help you.  You need something readable.    

I guess I'll tell you a bit about the books.  The most important book here is this one: Mystic Wings.  This was the twelfth novel I wrote and actually, it is the first novel I wrote that was not a steaming pile of crap.  I'm really happy that the simple cover for it turned out so well.  The book that follows it, Mark of a Goddess is perfectly fine.  I had really got the hang of writing by the time I wrote it.  And actually, nothing I have written since has been a steaming pile of crap.  Some projects work out better than others and sometimes I'm surprised at how many mistakes I make, but everything I have written since Mystic Wings has something about it that makes it good.  I'm so glad I didn't waste my time.

Now about the Shadow Magic books above, I'll tell you more about them.  They are not a series.  They have similar subject matter, but they are not connected to each other in any way and I have Zelgadis fall in love with Amelia in one and fall in love with Lina in another.  The one where he falls in love with Lina is my favorite of the Slayers fanfiction that I wrote that is still posted.  I wrote a scene in that book where Zelgadis allows himself to be impaled the long way (which means that he has a sword pierce straight down his vertebrae, breaking one after another).  Naturally, he doesn't die, but is reborn as a monster, and he becomes the perfect person to love Lina.

Ah... if I read it now, I would probably die of cringe.  But that was the first time I wrote something that really spoke to me.

Because I have 16 projects on Fanfiction.net, I can't post the new covers for all of them here.  I'll give you the link, so you can go discover them for yourself.  Yes, I was young when I wrote all those things.  Yes, you have to be stupid before you can be less stupid.  Enjoy!

https://www.fanfiction.net/u/586657/Sapphirefly