Name your favourite book of 2014

At the last RNA meeting in Holborn last Saturday we were asked to bring our fave book of last year. Here are mine:

1. How to write and sell short stories by Della Galton. I got this as a Xmas present in 2013. I started reading it but then got other non-fiction stuff to read. Then I went to a Women's Weekly Fiction Workshop last October where Della was the main speaker and I was inspired. I read the rest of the book, and it made me decide, that yes, I do want to become a womag fiction writer.

2. Having read the above, I wanted more knowledge about writing for womag's. So I bought and read How to write short stories and How to write ghost stories by Kath McGurl. I now want to write ghost stories too for womag's.

3. As an indie author who wanted to be more business-like this year, I read 'Write Livelihood - How to create a business plan for authors ' by Ryan Petty. This is the book that I have been working the last few posts on about creating your plan.

4. I also read the first ebook in the 3-for-1 set 'Indie Author Power Pack' which is called 'Write. Publish. Repeat' by Johnny B Truant, Dave... and I can't remember the name of the third author. Buy it, cos it includes the second version of 'Let's Get Digital' by David Gaughran, and the second version of 'How to market your book' by Joanna Penn. All a v good.

5. Business books for authors by Joanna Penn. Straight forward talking for authors.

So, what have you read last year and what was your favourite book/ebook? Let me know.

My pricing experiment

I have hinted about doing this on social media, and I have actually begun it - a pricing experiment. Up until this year, all my ebooks were either free or 0.99c. Then I started to read Dean Wesley Smith's blog 'Think like a publisher' again and the new EU VAT law came in and I decided to increase the prices of most of them. I am going to do this for maybe three months to see what the results are. Here is what I have done:

The Guardian Angels
The Railway Angel, the first in my YA series 'The Guardian Angels' is still perma-free. I am keeping it that way to entice readers to buy the rest of the series and a thank you. I am still getting lots of downloads for that. Whether those are being read or not I don't know.
The rest of the series is now $2.99 each.

Geraldine's Gems
One Good Turn is remaining as 99c it being the first in the series. More Fish and Don't Get Mad are both now $2.99. The others in the series 'Life' and A trouble shared are both $3.99.

Mermaids
These are both $2.99 each. The last one, yet to be written, will also be that price.

Singleton
All these ebooks are now at $2.99.

I have priced all ebooks between 5K and 10K at $2.99. All ebooks over that word count and under 20K are $3.99.

So, I will let you know how the pricing goes. What results in sales I get.

Step 4 - Your goals for the year

So, here is the final step to your plan and the most important one I feel - writing down your goals for this year. To motivate you, here are mine:

1. To complete my YA fantasy series 'The Guardian Angels'
2. To complete my mermaid trilogy
3. To complete my adult romance series 'Geraldine's Gems'
4. To write 1 or 2 more of my Singleton village series (working on that now)
5. To maybe write another of my Asperkids series
6. To publish my first Asperkids books about Boring Billy
7. To get at least 5 short stories accepted and published by women's magazines
8. To earn at least £500 from no 7
9. To break even with my writing expenses this year. I've been working at a loss the last few years.#
10. The main one I feel is... to graduate from the RNA's New Writer's Scheme, hopefully with a Pocket Novel script. Working on this now. Am rewriting a script that I submitted a few years ago and did nothing with.

So there you have my ten goals for this year. I've been working on numbers 4, 7, 8 and 10 so far. Will give you an update on how I'm going with these in a few months time. So, what goals have you made for this year? Let me know how you are going with them.