Final Reveal: Day 9

I've been waiting to tell you this since October, but finally, here's the day! The little story I wrote in five months four years ago called PLUNDER has been chosen to be published as part of the Hachette Audiobooks: Powered by Wattpad partnership. Out of over 400 million stories currently on the platform, my historical adventure was selected for audiobook publication and it's available NOW! 

PLUNDER is the story of seventeen-year-old housemaid Ana who is kidnapped by pirates in a case of mistaken identity. But playing the wholesome daughter of a Spanish admiral among rag-tag buccaneers soon becomes the least of her concerns. Battles, a shipwreck, mutiny, and most unexpectedly, love are what really turn her world upside down. When the truth threatens to end Ana's adventures, it's the secrets of the dashing Alestair Kincade, Pirate King of the Caribbean, that prove to be the most dangerous. Ana will need to use her wits and charm to not only stay off the gallows, but also to avoid a fate she now considers to be worse than death: being sent home to Panama to a hopeless future.

Audiobook titles to be released under this partnership this year will span all genres and will be sold digitally through major online retailers, including iTunes, Audible.com, Barnes & Noble, Downpour, eStories, Audiobooks.com, Libro.fm, and others. Physical audiobook editions on CD will be made available to libraries and on-demand.

Thank you to everyone who read Plunder on Wattpad. You helped this become possible! The audiobook is narrated by British voice actress Charlotte Wright and it's absolutely amazing to hear Ana come to life. It is now also professionally edited, and I also made several major changes in chapters 10-12 from the version that's available on Wattpad.

The best part is, there may be a way for you to get a FREE copy! Click on this image for more info.

Countdown to Release Day

It's now only nine days until THE LAST RESORT is officially available to the world and I've been busy doing the marketing hustle to give it the best possible chance for success.

Word-of-mouth recommendations are very important and my publicist Hannah at S&S has been doing a great job making advance copies available to bloggers and reviewers. Although a few physical copies have been printed, because the book is digital-first, NetGalley has been vital to getting e-copies out.

The ARCs (advance reader copies) are made in exchange for an honest review and some of that feedback has started rolling in on Goodreads.

Fangirlish has also already done a review and I'm also expecting a Q&A for Abigail Books Addiction and a feature on We So Nerdy.

Many authors often do Facebook launch parties to celebrate and promote their releases. I decided against this for THE LAST RESORT, but I will be taking part in Leah Crichton's party for her debut. Leah is also being published by Pocket Star and her book releases one week before mine. There are also similar themes of "going away to find yourself" in both books. I will be doing a takeover of the party from 4:00 to 4:30 pm EST on Sunday where I'll be asking three fun questions of participants to get some awesome conversations going. Anyone who answers will have a chance to win door prizes consisting of some free e-books!

The Wattpadres also invited me to join their joint Book Birthday Bash to celebrate all new releases from authors on Wattpad during the first half of 2017. That party will be on Facebook on March 18.

Although I won't have my own Facebook party, I already did an awesome Twitter chat with the Romance Sparks team from Wattpad on March 1 where I answered questions about my publishing journey, the book itself, and my upcoming projects.

All of this has been in addition to setting up the Wattpad Class of 2017 profile and taking part in the 17 Scribes group, both of which consist of authors with releases this year supporting each other with advice and cross-promotion. My incredible friend Michelle Jo Quinn also included info about the release in her March author's newsletter, which went out to 15K readers and I immediately saw an uptick on Amazon pre-orders.

Pocket Books has been tweeting promos twice a week for the last few weeks to their 62K+ followers, and I've also been doing some fun stuff on my Twitter profile using the #HotGuysDoingStuffOutside tag to post pics of . . . well, hot guys doing stuff outside!

On publishing day itself, I'm planning on sending out an email to about 150 close connections, asking for shares and retweets of my release announcement. My HeadTalker campaign has already reached the necessary 25 subscribers so on March 20, Tweets and Facebook posts will reach over 1M users with the news.

I feel like this is both a lot and not enough, but having a book come out in e-form only limits a lot of options. Thoughts? Suggestions?

OUN Thunderclap