1. Update on the writing.
I should finish Nobody’s Fool tomorrow. I’m currently on the last chapter. I’m very pleased with how this turned out. It’s a cute romantic comedy. The heroine finally caved and fell in love with the hero. When I started the book, I wasn’t sure how this was ever going to happen since she was so opposed to the marriage. Fortunately, the issues worked themselves out while I was writing.
I know election time is pretty much a terrible time to get a book out, but this one is due out in mid-October. I wasn’t able to finish it before now, and I need time to get it through edits before it’s ready. I also want another book out before the end of the year. So, this is coming out around a horrible time for authors who are looking to hit an ideal publishing time.
I’m not sure how much more I need to go in this one, but I’m determined not to rush it. This has been another comedy, but things have taken a sudden turn where it’s more serious at the moment. Essentially, our hero has finally come to grips with what a jerk’s he’s been. I don’t like getting too heavy in a romance where 80% of the book is light and funny. So I’m trying to find a balance between making him grovel enough (because he needs it) without making it drag on needlessly. I’m in the middle of figuring this out.
I want this out in January, so thankfully, I have time.
Those are the two books I’m trying to wrap up.
And I almost forgot, this one is due out August 29.
I need to get the blog post and email list ready when it’s time to announce that this book is out. I’m worried I’ll forget to do this. Thankfully, I can schedule blog posts and MailChimp emails out in advance.
If you want to get this on pre-order, I do have them up at most retailers.
A note about Payhip: My last two releases ended up with no one buying the book from Payhip, even though I offered 50% off the price. I’m thinking about not putting it on Payhip this time around. No one seems interested in that storefront. So if I don’t get a comment on this blog about wanting the book on Payhip, I’ll skip Payhip this time around.
A note about Google Books/Play: I am going to get it up over there on release day or close to it. Google will lower prices from time to time, and this could hurt me on the pre-orders at Amazon. The money I make on pre-orders is what I need to afford cover artists, editors, and other things to keep the business side of things going.
2. Getting Publishing Rights Back from my Publisher
I’m in the process of acquiring rights back to these books:
What that means is that there might be a short period of time where these books won’t be available. The publisher and I are working to make the transition as possible, but there’s bound to be a hiccup or two along the way. It can’t be helped. Different retailers have different ways of operating.
Please Note this about Bride by Arrangement and A Groom’s Promise:
Bride by Arrangement and A Groom’s Promise are anthologies. I’ll be taking my stories from each anthology and republishing them as brand new books. I’ll address this more in the future when they’re up.
3. A Note About Audiobooks
I have already started a couple of them. I am working with two narrators.
One is Stevie Zimmerman, and since she has an English accent, I felt she’d be ideal for the Regency Series. So far, she has done The Marriage Contract, One Enchanted Evening, and The Wedding Pact (all books in the Marriage by Fairytale Series which is my personal favorite series).
I uploaded this to ACX (which distributes to Amazon, Audible, and iTunes) and Findaway Voices (scroll down the page to find where they distribute to). I’ll announce it on this blog when this is ready.
Stevie Zimmerman and I agreed on an upfront cost, so I paid for this outright for this audiobook. This is called “pay per hour”. (I didn’t know that before.) That means I own all rights to it, and I get to say where the book goes. I am paying this way for all of the books I do with her.
There is another narrator I’m working. She is Shonda Bourn, and she prefers the royalty-share option. Long story short, when I claimed all of my books on ACX, I didn’t realize that I locked myself into the non-exclusive contract with ACX. I was in a hurry to stop the scammer from stealing more of them since this person had gotten away with stealing two of my books already. So I may or may not be able to do more books this other narrator.
A word of warning to authors who might be reading this: if you choose non-exclusive, then you can NOT do royalty-share on ACX. You have to pay per hour. Also, if you claim a book on ACX, Findaway Voices will NOT put the book on Amazon.
So in my hurry to stop the scammer, I boxed myself into a corner. I’m trying to get that resolved by contacting ACX to be able to switch the books the narrator wants to work on out of non-exclusive to exclusive, but I don’t know if that will be possible. It all depends on what ACX will let me do.
I was able to get one book in the exclusive agreement, and that was one I had not been able to claim yet because it was one of the stolen books. This is the same book Shonda had done, and it had made it to Amazon. I got the stolen version removed (thankfully), and then Shonda and I started communicating, and we saw no reason to let her work go to waste. So we’re in the process of getting this book back up:
Since we did a strict royalty-share agreement on this book, it can only be on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. I can NOT put it on Findaway Voices.
I’ll let you know when that goes live.
4. You Tube Channel and Audiobooks
I was thinking of dusting off my You Tube channel, which I haven’t uploaded anything to for years, and making old books available to listen to over there for anyone who can’t afford audiobooks. The catch on this is that my voice is nothing like Stevie Zimmerman or Shonda Bourn. My voice is amateurish, so the quality is not going to be professional. I just wanted to warn everyone. I don’t want people to go to my channel expecting an award-winning performance. 🙂
Right now, I’m working on a shorter book called The Purchased Bride (which is in the Bride by Arrangement anthology that I did with Janet, up above in the post). I’m still learning how to edit audio and need to figure out how to get this stuff posted on You Tube.
I was originally going to do Meant To Be myself since it’s one of my favorite stories, but my husband said he’ll do the male voices for me. So our goal is one chapter a week. We’ll see how long he wants to keep this up. I’m not sure he realizes how much work will go into this project, but it would be fun to work on it with him.
Ruth Ann Nordin's Author Blog 
I think this is the perfect time for a new book to get our minds off the news in general. I ‘ve been doing more reading than watching tv lately. Shows are in rerun and the only reruns I enjoy fully is Jeopardy with the young Alex Trebek. Well, that was last week that was on.Take the time you need to finish them to your satisfaction.It will be all the better for it. You have a great library of books to reread while we’re waiting.
My mom loved Jeopardy. She would play along with a pen and notebook to see if she could beat the winner. 😀 It was her favorite show.
I learned the hard way not to rush a book. I will push back a release date before I ever rush a book again. I want to deliver the best book possible. I hope this one will help people escape the craziness for a while. I’m glad I’m too busy to pay much attention to what’s going on. I just want to get lost in the stuff I enjoy.
I agree. October will be a good time for a new book. Just the right escape from the news. I’m not sure if it was Payhip but I did buy a couple of your books on one of the sites you recommended, for ½ price, and they are on my computer but I cannot figure out how to read them. (I have them on Apple also because I like having the series’s all together) Apple, just downloads them to Books on all my devices so, it’s easier. Maybe i’m just not techie enough.
I’m excited for all the new books and The Montana Collection is a favorite of mine so I hope you get your rights back soon.
I am super excited about the audiobooks. I have some other books that Stevie Zimmerman reads and I like her very much. I can hardly wait!
I don’t recognize the title Meant to Be. Did I actually miss one of your books? Oh no:) Keep us informed about You Tube. Sounds like fun.
I’ve always wondered something. Sometimes I see books I’ve bought with an “update” tab. I always hesitate to update because they don’t tell you what will be updated. What usually happens on an “update”? Thanks for all the new news and for writing.
Oh no! I had no idea those files that I put on Payhip weren’t easy for people to read. If that’s the case, then there’s no point in getting anything from there. Maybe others found it difficult, too. 😦 I’m glad you said something. I might just shut that storefront. I don’t want people to pay for a book (even if it’s half off) if they can’t read the book. The only perk to using that site was the discount. Otherwise, I see no reason to direct people to it.
I already got the rights. Now it’s the process of the publisher removing the books so I can republish them. I’m not sure how long that will take for everything to shake out. I spent the past two days reformatting all of the books to get them ready. It’s nice to know you enjoy the Montana Collection! Thanks for telling me about it. 😀
Stevie does has an amazing voice. it’s easy to get lost in the story. She’s really good. I put The Marriage Contract on Findaway Voices and ACX. I assume they would give me an email when it’s live like the retailers do when I publish ebooks, but I haven’t received anything yet. If I don’t get anything in a couple more weeks, I’ll manually hunt for the audiobook and see if it’s up and where. This is my first one, so I’m learning as I go. The other ones should be smoother.
Meant To Be is an old book. I think I published it in 2009. It’s a time travel romance. I wrote it because I was having trouble getting into the feel of the historical old west time period, so I figured if I took two modern characters and threw them into the past, I could “see” the time period through their eyes. It helped a lot. I was reading books on that time period, but it wasn’t “clicking”. The method worked. I stopped being so overtly modern in the historicals after that, though, I keep on steadily improving with each new book. I was thrilled that I actually felt like I was in a small cabin out in the middle of nowhere with no modern conveniences when I wrote The Fugitive’s Bride. It took about ten years, but I finally feel comfortable in the “old west”. 😀
Regarding the updates, if I make a change to a book (say I caught a typo and corrected it or changed a cover), if you click the update, the changes will take effect in your version of the story. From time to time, I do go through and correct errors when I find them. Sometimes, I just update the back matter (like the books I’ve written or links on where people can find me), but most of the time it’s a cover update or a typo correction.
I always thought it was me that could not figure out how to view the books. Maybe my software was not updated on my laptop or maybe It doesn’t work as well on an Apple- it could just be I’ve been too lazy to figure it out and I should. I will work on it tomorrow. I did find the Meant to Be book on Apple. I remember now reading the description. It does sound fun but I just seem to stick to the historicals. And speaking of them, I have read the Montana series over many times, and now every morning when I get up I say to myself “Shane says I need to drink water first in the morning”, and I do it! That has really stuck in my head. So you have helped me stay healthy😀
What you said about updates is pretty much what I thought. Believe it or not one time I bought a book and loved it and on an update the author changed the whole ending! I loved the old ending. So now I’m afraid to update books in case the story changes. Your covers will change without my hitting update, so what I have started to do is take screen shots of the covers I love, to have, in case they get changed. Makes me a bit eccentric but oh well. Don’t get me wrong the updated covers are all very pretty, I just have some favorites with the old ones. I am so looking forward to the audiobooks. Happy writing.
Considering how technology works, it’s hard to know what is going on. I try to leave the software updates up to my husband. He loves tinkering with that stuff, but I notice every time I update, something seems “off” on my computer. I try not to mess with updates any more than I have to. But I do remember a time when I was unable to update my website because I had to update my software. I swear, sometimes you can’t win. 😀
Meant to Be is mostly historical. I had fun writing some contemporaries, but my heart is in historicals. I had ideas for a couple of contemporary series way back in 2011, but I’m not even interested anymore. I wrapped up the series I had started, and that was good enough for me.
LOL I love that you think of Shane in reference to drinking water in the morning. That’s great! 😀 It completely makes my day. Thank you for letting me know that one! I got in the habit of drinking water first thing in the morning due to my husband’s influence.
Oh ick on the change in ending! That’s a major change. I’m used to covers (and you’re right, they do automatically update) or typo corrections. Come to think of it, I did trim Sally Larson’s story (Her Heart’s Desire) because I felt the story dragged after she married Rick. I thought it would make the story stronger if I left the drama with his parents out. I originally put it in just to lengthen the story. Deep down, I felt I should have ended it after the wedding night. I assumed that the book would remain the way it was on people’s devices if they had already grabbed a copy. Hmm…
I’ll keep updates going on the audiobooks. I think Findaway put The Marriage Contract up on some places already, but I’m waiting for ACX to get it on Amazon. I’d rather get all of the links up at one time so it can easily be found on this blog. I’d hate to send someone on a scavenger hunt through here. I heard authors are waiting for months to get their audiobooks on Amazon. So I guess if they don’t have it up in three months or so, I’ll just go ahead and post where the thing is currently at. Most authors are saying three months for ACX to get the book on Amazon. *fingers crossed it won’t take longer than that for me*
I’m so glad you mentioned about the Marriage Contract being up. I went to the Apple Store and it was there. I’m assuming this is the one you put up, read by Stevie Zimmerman so it looks right. I say that because there was also a copy of A Most Unsuitable Earl. I’m just checking you put it up because it was read by someone you did not mention in your blog and the cover art is a contemporary picture. I don’t want to purchase anything that is not yours. I won’t purchase until I am sure. Thanks for writing.
Yes, the one narrated by Stevie Zimmerman is the right one. I didn’t realize when I contacted ACX and Amazon about the stolen audiobook version of A Most Unsuitable Earl that they would keep it up on iTunes. I’ll see if I can get Apple to remove it. The person who stole it no longer even has an account on ACX, and ACX distributed to Amazon and iTunes. I assumed that when ACX deleted their account and the two books they stole that it would go off of iTunes. I guess it’s to my benefit the thief made that tacky cover. The person did the same thing for An Unlikely Place for Love. The cover was just terrible, too.
I’m hoping Stevie will do the Marriage by Scandal Series, and that would cover A Most Unsuitable Earl. I made the offer but haven’t heard back yet. She really keeps busy. I can see why so many authors want to work with her. She has a gift for narrating.
I’m so excited that you’ve chosen the Fairytale series to do on Audio. I listen to a LOT of audiobooks, and I love them. Even though I’ve read the Fairytale Series, I’ll have to get it on audio, too!
It never occurred to me to use YouTube as audio narration. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it since one of the crochet channels I follow also does that. Now you’ve gotten me thinking about doing an audio of The Beast in the Mirror. What a great idea!
I chose this series because it’s my favorite. The narrator does a perfect job of getting the atmosphere of the gothic setting into place. I like the books more after she read them.
I tried my hand at narrating a chapter of an old book to see if I could make audiobooks myself. I sent the test chapter to my sister who said it’s not professional enough to buy. LOL She’s a nice person, but she also tells me the truth, and that’s what I needed. I needed someone who wasn’t afraid to tell me exactly what the average person would think if they heard my voice. So I figured if everything is free for people to listen to on You Tube anyway, why not use that channel? That way people who can’t afford to buy the audiobooks can still listen to them, and, if I get enough subscribers, You Tube will give me some ad revenue. I figured I have nothing to lose by giving it a try. I would have stayed on Wattpad if Wattpad had offered a chance to get paid, but they insist that authors heavily participate on that site for the chance to get paid, and I really don’t that kind of time on my hands to be successful over there. There is way too much going on over there.
Let me know if you do the book on You Tube. I’d love to listen to The Beast in the Mirror! 😀 That was a good story.