Book trailer and Kindle for The Crown in the Heather, a novel of Robert the Bruce

I'm just a teensy bit excited about two new things! First, I finished creating a book trailer for The Crown in the Heather and posted it on YouTube!!! Yes, I feel like a cyber-giant now.



Very soon I'm going to post a list of 'Things I Learned This Year That I Never Thought I'd Need to Know to Get a Book Published'. For short, we'll just call it 'Things I Learned . . .' Anywho, you can add learning how to use Windows MovieMaker to that and setting up an account on YouTube. My daughter got a smidge perturbed that I hogged her laptop for three days while I figured out all the bells and whistles and then made her watch my rough cuts half a dozen times, but she was a good sport. The only really aggravating part was that YouTube wanted to text a verification code to me to set up an account. Call me a Caveman, but I don't have texting. Eventually, they took pity on me and let me through the sacred portal.

This trailer has been in the works for months. Not that it took me that long to actually make - it was more a matter of finding a block of time to do it - but I picked out the soundtrack (Long Road Ahead) a long time ago from Kevin MacLeod's awesome Royalty Free Music site. The pictures are all from iStockphoto. Now all I need is someone with a charming Scottish accent to do a voice-over for the narrative bits. Do you think Gerard Butler is available?

Second, I published The Crown in the Heather to Kindle, thanks to Lisa Yarde's incredibly easy-to-follow D-I-Y with Kindle. Although to fess up, if I had followed her suggestion about adding a '#' or other symbol between scene breaks, I wouldn't have had to already publish a revision, ahem. So Lisa's instructions are spot on. I am just impatient sometimes.

While I hadn't originally planned to make it available on Kindle so soon after releasing the paperback, I believe this is the best way to reach new readers. Kindle people tend to be voraciou readers. BTW, don't forget to check customer tags while you're browsing (i.e. 'Robert the Bruce', 'historical fiction', 'Scottish history', etc.). That makes it even easier for customers to find a particular book. In fact, next time you look at any book there, tag it.

Already I'm selling 1-2 Kindle versions a day. A big Woot! Woot! because I'm pretty sure those are folk I don't even know and I've barely mentioned it anywhere. The Kindle price is just $2.99 for now and if, like me, you don't own a Kindle device, you can download it FOR FREE onto your PC - how cool is that? You can also download Kindle apps for your iPhone, Blackberry, you name it. Imagine that - someone could be on the New York City subway with nothing more than their phone, reading my book. Just click on the link to my book below or go to the Kindle store on Amazon.com and you will see links there.

Lastly, I'd like to thank two super-cool people:

1) Greta van der Rol, who wrote two very informative guest posts for me this week on researching the historical novel and creating characters from historical figures, and

2) Lisa Yarde, who has been hosting a series of posts this past week over at The Brooklyn Scribbler on how Five Self-Starters did it (Peter Johnson, Lisa Yarde, Michelle Gregory, Kristina Eammons, and me). If you're interested in learning about the decisions and experiences of some indie authors, check it out.

Until later,
Gemi