Substack & Patreon

Both Substack and Patreon are where creators can post essays or serialize their fiction – and readers can follow or subscribe to a creator’s feed. Many offer both a free feed and a paid one. It’s another way for creators to find readers – or for readers to find authors – so I’m experimenting with both.

I’ve started to post a monthly update on both Patreon and Substack, including what’s in the works for the month ahead for both of my author brands. It’s kind of a newsletter update and will likely evolve over time. I just posted the first one at both Patreon and Substack (and yes, the posts are the same.) There’s also a bit more of a peek behind the scenes here than in my newsletters. It also provides everything in a single post, like an executive summary for the month ahead. While both portals allow for paid content, my feed is currently free.

If a single monthly update on me and my books sounds good to you, you can follow me on Substack right here or you can read my August update on Patreon and follow me there.

Updating eBooks

This is a behind-the-scenes post, since things have been pretty quiet on this blog lately. It’s busy in my office!

As you know, I write contemporary romances and paranormal romances as Deborah Cooke, and historical romances as Claire Delacroix. This year, I amalgamated my PNR websites into this one, leaving me with two websites instead of four, which means the urls for all the book landing pages changed. I also moved my three English newsletters to a new service, which meant the sign-up links changed. Both of these changes meant updating my ebook interiors with the new links.

My historical romances have been in KDP Select since last fall, so I did the updates only at Amazon. My PNR went into KDP Select in the spring, so again, I did the updates only at Amazon. Now (haha) the books are coming out of KU and going into wide distribution again, which means updating the ebook files at the other portals. I load directly to Apple, KOBO, GooglePlay, Nook, Draft2Digital, Smashwords and PublishDrive. I also sell some books directly with delivery via BookFunnel. That’s 7 or 8 uploads per title. Some portals process uploads quickly. Some take forever to chew through each one.

In August, 22 of my medieval romances came out of KDP Select and were republished wide. There’s a blog post about that on the Delacroix site, right here.

In September, 22 more of my Delacroix romances (medievals, time travels and boxed sets) come out of KDP Select to be republished wide. The one hold-out will be The Beauty Bride, which leaves KDP Select in October. (It was enrolled later.) I’ve already updated the files at most portals and just need to republish them when the time comes—with the exception of the time travels, which will get new covers first.

In October, 45 of my paranormal romances and boxed sets come out of KDP Select and will be republished wide.

Also in October, the Spanish editions of 15 contemporary romances come out of KDP Select and will be republished wide. These are delivered to the non-Amazon portals from an aggregator, Draft2Digital, so that will save me some uploading time.

The Countess, book #4 of the Bride Quest series of medieval romances by Claire Delacroix

Taking the books wide again also means setting first-in-series free and booking promotions for it. The Countess is free this month, and by November, The Beauty Bride will be a free series starter for my historical romances again. Also by November, Kiss of Fire will be a free series starter for my PNR. Of course, Just One Fake Date remains a free series starter for my contemporary romances. I’ll probably book a sale on the two bundles of series starters, First Knights and Dragons First, as well. As I write this, I realize that Claire didn’t have a new trope boxed set this year. Oops. I’ll add that to my To Do list.

But by November (when I stop to catch my breath!) over 100 of my backlist books will have beautifully updated interiors at all of the portals and some will even have new covers. At the end of the year, I’ll be able to unpublish the two paranormal romance websites, and discontinue my former newsletter service. It’s been a big transition and is a job I’ll be glad to see done.

Next year, I’ll be able to focus on writing, which is the most exciting part of all!

Dragons & Angels Newsletter

Phase 2 of my transition to a new newsletter service is done – the dragons have moved. There’s a new sign-up page, a new sign-up bonus read and a new welcome sequence for my monthly Dragons & Angels newsletter.

The first Dragons & Angels newsletter from the new service will be sent on April 13.

Now, on to those knights…

Here’s the sign-up link for Dragons & Angels, in case you don’t already subscribe.

And here’s the sign-up link for Heroes & Happy Endings, my monthly contemporary romance newsletter. If you sign up now, you’ll get your first email on March 23.

A Mistake

On Friday, I made a mistake and have the email replies to show for it. I set up my first contemporary romance newsletter for Spanish editions of my books and, instead of sending it to the Spanish newsletter subscribers, I sent it to the English newsletter subscribers.

Oops.

This is actually a bit too easy to do with a suite of newsletters like mine. In a newsletter service account, the subscribers are all in one pool, so to speak. They’re divided into groups: any subscriber can belong to multiple groups or just one group. Subscribers are added to groups in different ways: for my lists, the subscribers choose to subscribe to a list. That’s the only way they get added – I never ever add people to my list without their consent, or add subscribers to different lists than the one(s) they’ve chosen. So, the newsletter service puts subscribers in the right group, based on the sign-up form they used or the link they followed. That all makes sense, doesn’t it?

For example, Heroes & Happy Endings is the newsletter for my Deborah Cooke contemporary romances in English. If you follow that link and sign up, you’ll be added to that group for my contemporary romances in English.

You could also subscribe to the newsletter for my historical romances, or the one for my paranormal romances, or for any of those in specific languages for which I have translations. You could have signed up for a guided toour of the Ravensmuir books, which is a newsletter sequence for my historical romance readers. There are a lot of groups on my newsletter dashboard and many subscribers belong to more than one.

Last week, I ticked the box for the Spanish contemporary romance readers group, but I didn’t un-tick the box for the English contemporary romance readers group. It was ticked because I copied the English newsletter to make sure the Spanish one was consistent, then changed out all the copy and links and images – but not the recipient list. It was that easy. I couldn’t call back the emails but I fixed the setting for future Spanish newsletters.

But here’s the wrinkle: if you thought you had been added to another newsletter list without your consent, you might have clicked on the Unsubscribe button at the bottom of the Spanish email. That would be a reasonable thing to do – except it won’t quite work out the way you might have expected. Because the newsletter went to the wrong list, if you unsubscribed from that Spanish newsletter Friday or Saturday, you actually unsubscribed from the English newsletter list. I know. It was a simple error with quite spectacular ramifications.

So this post is just to let you know – if you unsubscribed this past weekend in response to that newsletter, you won’t get any more English newsletters unless you sign up again.

Look up, way up, for that sign-up link.

A New Exclusive Bonus for Subscribers

Subscribe to Deborah Cooke's Dragons & Angels monthly newsletter and receive a free 3-book bundle exclusive to subscribersI’ve added a new subscriber bonus for my monthly paranormal romance newsletter, Dragons & Angels.

Subscribe to my paranormal romance newsletter, Dragons & Angels, for my monthly news and get a free 3-book bundle exclusive to subscribers!

If you’re already a subscriber, there will be a download link in this month’s newsletter, which goes out next week.