Monday Book Review: Winter Kisses

Winter Kisses (3AM Kisses, Book 2)
By Addison Moore
Published November 2013

About the Book:

Laney Sawyer used to believe in love and all of the trappings that happily ever after could provide until Ryder Capwell crushed her heart.

When Laney is auctioned off as a prize at the drama department fundraiser the last person she expects to trade cold hard cash for her company is Ryder. Ryder Capwell is in love with Laney Sawyer. One year ago she walked out of his life and took the light of his world right along with her.

Ryder would do anything to have another chance with Laney, including purchasing her for the evening courtesy of Whitney Briggs University, and he does just that. One thing leads to whiskey, which leads to a one-night stand. She thinks it’s revenge sex—he thinks its make up sex.

Things can only go wrong from here...

 
My Take:

I will admit right upfront that I never read the first novella in this series, and purchased this one when it was a free offering from Book Bub, not realizing it was the second in a series. I don't usually like to jump in midstream, but with this NA college series it didn't seem to matter too much.

Laney and Ryder have a complicated history, more complicated by the fact that her best friend is his sister. And then Ryder "purchases" Laney at a charity auction. She's his for the night, after breaking up and not speaking for an entire year. One thing leads to another, and in vino veritas, as they say, although in this case it involved backstage whiskey. The couple sizzle through several  scenes and hot makeup sex before confronting the root of the problem, his family. Can they survive as a couple if his mom hates her?

I've read a lot of NA at this point, but this was more raw and sexy than I've read. (Maybe the cover should have been a clue, but in my defense the thumbnail was pretty small on my iPad.) The chapters alternate POVs between the two main characters, and both of them hold nothing back in their narration. Graphic descriptions sizzle off the page, just short of erotica. It's not my usual cup of tea, but as a quick hot read it held my interest. If you don't like your romance too graphic, skip this book. (Otherwise grab a copy as a guilty, well-written pleasure.)

Grab your copy on AMAZON

Writing Wednesday: Have you heard of Book Gorilla?

In a meeting with my new YA publisher last week, she gave me a to-do list of items to complete and social media sites to investigate. Now, I consider myself fairly competent on the social media front, but I'd never even heard of Book Gorilla.

I spent a chunk of my morning investigating, and it seems to be similar to Book Bub: another free newsletter you can sign up for, indicate your preferences, and they will send you a daily email with all the bargain ebooks that fit your reading needs. It's also different than Book Bub in that it's slightly more interactive for the authors, who can set up author pages and presence on the site.

I signed up. We'll see how it goes. I'm still not sure how I monetize a presence there, but I'm there.

The thing is, there are new social media sites and spots you need to be cropping up all over the place. In March when I participated in a YA round table at a few local schools, I ended up having to create an Instagram account, because I was the only one out of the six of us who didn't have an account. And not because I was the oldest, either.

And then there's my lame Triberr account - I haven't signed on in so long that my feed went inactive. Again. So my Twitter friends/Triberr buddies haven't been tweeting my posts out like they used to, and my blog traffic has definitely fallen off as a result.

How does anyone keep up with it all?

I just want to write. Edit. Sell books. Ebooks and social media make keeping an online presence a necessity. But they take up such a chunk of time that it cuts into actual writing time.

Anyone have ideas as to how to handle this social media pressure to be present? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Have you heard of Book Bub?

Have you heard of this company? It's a free service that you sign up for and they send you a daily email with book bargains... ebooks that are on sale for a limited time, $2.99 or less, all the way down to free.

As a reader, you sign up for free and they send the deals to your inbox. You list what genres you like to read, and they only send those deals your way. If you see something that interests you, you click either the Amazon or B&N or smashwords link and go straight to the source to get your book bargain.

Book Bub is not a middle man or reseller in the traditional sense. I've clicked through and gone straight to Amazon, where I sign into my 1-click account and instantly download the book I'm interested in. They list previously released best sellers or Amazon favorites that are being offered at steep discounts, perhaps to draw interest to an author's latest book. They also have new authors that publishers are trying to promote with flash sales, or special discounts to boost release day.

Founded in 2012, they claim over one million email subscribers, so it's a good way for publishers to get attention for a book they want to push.

If you're an author, you can sign up to have your sale book listed with them - well, you can submit a form and they decide if they will promote your sale. There is a fee, but I can't find it listed on the site. Here's what the site does say by way of explanation:
 
1. You submit a title for consideration. You start by filling out an online submission form outlining the details of your price promotion.
2. We review your submission. Our editorial team reviews your book and decides whether they’d like to select it for a feature. If your title is chosen, you’ll receive confirmation and an invoice. (If it’s not selected, we’ll let you know within a few days.)
3. You coordinate your promotion with all retailers. We recommend partners contact distributors and/or retailers directly for detailed instructions on how to implement a price promotion.
4. We prepare the listing. You don’t need to provide us with any additional materials for your feature. Our editors write a blurb for your book and our production team assembles all other creative.
5. We send your book to our readers! On the morning of your promotion, we verify that your deal is available at all the retailers you selected. As long as everything is in order, the deal goes out in that day’s email and appears on our website.

Has anyone tried this for themselves to promote their book? I've heard from one author who was over the moon with her Book Bub promotion...

I've been a reader subscriber now for about a month, and scroll thru my daily email from them with interest. So far, I've downloaded 14 of the *Free* books offered. One was a Harlequin KISS story that was cute and well-written. I will look for that author again. One was a fantasy set in medieval Ireland  that had some issues but was a good story and kept my interest.

Four of them were romantic suspense novels that I started and Just. Can't. Finish. Not well written, jumping the shark, poorly edited, no likeable characters... yeah, some might say you get what you pay for, but really? Someone thought these should be books?

But it's fun to get the daily email and see what bargains there are to be had.

Have you tried it yet? What do you think?