So, my first book, As Luck Would Have It, will officially be released tomorrow. I'm thrilled, of course. Except for this little bit--
Due to a printing error, the last two pages of the epilogue are missing. . .In every single copy of the book.
Feel free to laugh your heads off. Jennontheisland was kind enough to ply me earlier with enough booze and chocolate to take the sting out. Mostly. Plus, I've had a week or so to get use to the idea. Mostly.
Plus, laughing just makes me feel better about the whole thing.
Anyway, I have to ask (read beg/plead/whine/grovel) Would you ladies and gents pass on the word to anyone who might be interetsed that the missing pages are available on my website, alissa-johnson.com, and will also be available on dorchester's site? I would
really appreciate it.
Okay,I'm going back to the booze now. Will return later.
Congratulations on being published!
When you get through with your smilies and hangover, it seems to me there's a lot you, as the author, can do to get the word out. Well, maybe it's not really a lot, but this should help a lot for the time it takes to do it.
Sign up as the author on Amazon.com, Librarything.com, and any other bookselling or book-reading sites such as
these, so then when anyone goes to the book page for your book, the site will show whatever message you write, such as "Due to a printing error, there are two pages missing from my book, and these pages are available on my website at http://alissa-johnson.com"
And always put the http:// at the start of your website so that programs which look for those things, such as the software the Absolute Write forums run on, will make it a link, and Easily Cllickable.
You can also use this fact as a marketing ploy for collectors: "The First Printing, First State of my book is missing two pages! Buy it while it's still available! It's my very first book, I plan to write many more and be more famous than Stephen King, so it's sure to be collectible and valuable in years to come!
I don't know that there are many collectors of First Edition Romances, but even if not, this is still a very good "opportunity" to drive readers to your website that most other writers don't have a chance to do! From first glance your site looks good, but I think you should also have a blog (label the link to it "blog", add it along with the "home," "About," etc. buttons along the top) that you update often to keep readers coming back (perhaps announce you'll have a new excerpt weekly or monthly, and do it), and in general just take the best advantage of this situation as you can. Poking around, the top buttons move around a bit due to inconsistencies between pages, and on the "about" page none of the buttons work.
Here's a point about your website, your main page has the title "Home" which is what is put into people's bookmarks when they bookmark the page, and it doesn't mean much and is hard to figure out what it is. Probably the best title is "Alissa Johnson - Romance Author" or even include your book title (it makes a great pun!) as in "Alissa Johnson - Romance Author, As Luck Would Have It."
I notice the current and next book covers - in "As Luck Would Have It" the woman has her neck and shoulders exposed. In "Tempting Fate" the cover shows her whole back. There's no cover shown for "McAlistair's Fortune" but I wonder what THAT cover's gonna show!
ETA: Do you have a MySpace page and a Facebook page? Ahem... the more (legitimate) webpages you make with your name on them, the more likely someone doing a search on your name or book title will come upon a page whose content you control, and from which you can direct them to your main website with the two missing pages.
