Today’s the day for the Romance Book Blast, a multi-author promotion featuring lots of free reads. This is a great chance to find a new author or a new series to love.
There are over 950 titles included this time, so you should find lots of new reads. You’ll find Just One Fake Date on the first page for Steamy Contemporary Romance and The Crusader’s Bride in Historical Romance.
The Crusader’s Bride may not be free at Amazon in your geo, but you can get your copy free from my online store.
The Crusader’s Bride, book one of the Champions of St. Euphemia series of medieval romances is a free read through the end of November. Book two in the series, The Crusader’s Heart, is discounted to $2.99US for the same period.
If Gaston and Ysmaine’s story is not free at Amazon in your geo, you can get your free copy from my online store.
Gaston battled for duty and honor—until Ysmaine tempted him to fight for her love…
When the Templar knight Gaston unexpectedly inherits his family estate, he knows he needs a wife and heir. A marriage of convenience to a widow in need of assistance is a practical solution and the newly-wed pair leave Jerusalem, entrusted with the delivery of a package for the Templars. Away from the life he has known for years, Gaston quickly realizes that little is following his plan—especially his mysterious wife, whose presence awakens an unexpected fire…
Twice widowed, Ysmaine doubts she will ever wed again, let alone have a marriage of merit—until she is charmed by the gruff knight intent upon defending her. Ysmaine weds again, not only by her own choice but to a warrior whose honor she admires. She is determined to show Gaston that marriage has more to offer them both than an heir, but first she must win the trust of the wary man she has impulsively wed…
Neither realize that Gaston has been entrusted with the treasure of the Templars—much less that someone in their small party is intent upon claiming the prize at any cost. In a company of strangers with secrets, can Gaston dare to trust his new bride? Can Ysmaine convince Gaston to confide what he knows? Can they solve the riddle together before the villain’s plan comes to fruition and all is lost?
Buy The Crusader’s Bride ebook:
It’s time to reconsider my marketing and promotion strategies. The book market is shrinking hard so I need to make some changes.
The first change is the one I told you about yesterday – October will be my last month sending my monthly Knights & Rogues newsletter. To stay up to date with me and my books, please subscribe or follow my blog here on the site.
Secondly, I’m finding free first-in-series to work less well all the time, to the point that it barely works at all this year. Once upon a time, a free series starter was like a sample, and if people liked it, they bought the subsequent books in the series. It was a reliable way to aid discoverability. Now, however, many people are just reading free books and seldom (if ever) paying for content. That doesn’t help with my expenses, so The Beauty Bride has returned to a paid product.
I also will not be discounting a title every month to 99cents, unless there are special promotional circumstances. The promotional vehicles like BookBub have become very expensive even as their results diminish, and it takes a lot of time to coordinate price changes at all of the portals.
Next, Facebook has decided to charge for posts with links – to the tune of $499 USD per month for a maximum of 12 posts to a page in a month. This is completely out of the question for me, so I will not be posting to my Author Claire Delacroix page there any longer. There’s already an issue with my blog posts appearing there automatically as they used to, so this is an easy one to abandon. I’ve removed the link from the footer here on the site and will ultimately close down the page there.
So, how will I promote my books? I’ll focus on the blog here on my site for announcements and peeks behind the scenes. I’m also going to lean into the abilities of my online store in future and its newsletter. There will be discounted and free reads there, beginning in November. If you buy anything from me at Hazel & Honeysuckle Press, you can opt into the store newsletter. Future sales there will often be by coupon codes, which will be included in the store newsletter.
And what will I do with all this time I’ve freed up? I’ll write books, of course. 🙂 I have so many stories waiting to be told and ditching all this busy-work will give me more space to dream and write. I’m so looking forward to it.
Thank you all for reading my books!
This month, I’ve decided to stop sending my email newsletters. That includes Dragons & Angels for my PNR, Heroes & Happy Endings for my contemporary romances and Knights & Rogues for my historical romances. October will be my last month to send newsletters, so if you subscribe to Knights & Rogues, you’ll get one more newsletter from me.
This wasn’t an easy decision, but open rates have been plummeting and clicks are dropping, too. The newsletter has ceased to be an effective way to reach readers, probably because we all get so many emails. I know I delete batches of them unread every morning.
This means a couple of things. First, if you want to remain informed about my books and news, you’ll have to do that another way. 🙂 You can follow my blog here on the site, or you can follow me at other social media.
The blog no longer posts automatically to my Facebook page, so that page is pretty quiet these days. I’m cutting back on Facebook as well, though am quite liking Instagram these days. (Find me on Instagram right here.) More about that tomorrow. I’ve also signed up for Gander, though I’m still finding my way around there. You can, of course, also follow me at Amazon or BookBub for new release alerts.
For sales and other news, you’ll have to follow the blog. It will be the one source for updates and news.
This also means that I won’t be participating in multi-author promotions like Stuff your e-Reader events anymore, as authors have to have a newsletter in order to do so. I figure I’ve sent enough free books out into the world that way to do me, at least for now.
I’ve unpublished the A.I.-narrated Bride Quest audiobooks, so they’re not available any longer. They were created at Amazon last year with their narration tool and were exclusive to Amazon/Audible.
I’m not a huge audiobook fan myself, but I didn’t love the result of the A.I. narration – it’s more of a mechanical text-to-speech than a performance. Also, with the AMZ tool, there was no ability to edit the pronunciation. The result also had to be exclusive to AMZ and Audible – in contrast, the tool at GooglePlay lets you edit the text to improve the pronunciation, and you can download the result to publish it elsewhere. It turns out that you didn’t love the A.I. narration either. These audiobooks aren’t selling, so I’ve unpublished them.
Maybe one day I’ll find a way to have the Bride Quest series recorded as human-narrated audiobooks. For the moment, it’s available in ebook, trade paperback and hardcover.
The Ravensmuir books are available in human-narrated audiobooks, as are the first two books in the Champions of St. Euphemia series. You can see all of my available audiobooks right here.
