I can't speak for other ladies of Magic and Mayhem Writers, but I'm basically not going to do any critiques this year except for Brenda Novak's annual charity and the Romance Divas giveaway. It's not that I don't want to pay it forward or help others, but I just don't have the time or energy to commit to anything that's going to require a lot of focus. I'm having a baby this summer, and I have a book contracted to come out later this year (for which I owe edits back to my editor) plus another project that I owe my agent.

So if you ever wanted me or the talented other ladies from Magic and Mayhem, this is your chance. Besides, you get to help a great cause: juvenile diabetes research!

Next week, the Magic and Mayhem Writers will blog about how we crit, so you can decide before you bid. We all have different styles when it comes to critting, so I think you'll find the posts useful, especially if you plan to bid on our item: 4 critiques in 1. :)

When I saw the announcement that Amazon is opening Kindle store in Germany, I never thought my books would be available on Amazon DE as well. But then a few people said, “Hey, our books are showing up!” so I hopped on over to look myself up.

All four of my books are on Amazon DE! W00t! I signed up for their author central program, so my information, etc. is there (though in English…I have no idea how to speak or write German).

So cool. I love it that people can buy ebooks easily in countries served by Amazon DE.

This week, Magic and Mayhem Writers is showcasing four queries that helped us land our agents.

• The Query that Landed Me an Agent and 3 Tips for Writing Yours by Sandy Williams
• Queries and Query Letters by Amanda Bonilla
• The Great Query Hunt by Shawntelle Madison
• Evolution of a Query Letter by Yours Truly

BTW — If you need help with your query letter, leave a comment on Sandy's post saying so. She's going to pick one person per ten commenters and take a look at their query.

I've been getting several questions that basically involve the same type of topics, so I've decided to update How to Format Your Manuscript for Kindle and Nook. If you've bought it already, you can just re-download the latest version from Smashwords. The new edition contains information about what to do if you have a free WordPress.com account and a sample HTML mockup so you can see what everything should look like.

Also, several members on a writing forum I belong to were discussing how to track sales, and I thought I would share my sales tracking sheet. I've created it in Excel, and it calculates almost everything automatically, though you have to put in some information (such as the book's cover price) into the parts marked yellow, plus your individual sales data, of course. Click here to download a copy. It's a free tool for everyone. :)

You can modify it to track epub sales as well. I have a huge master Excel spreadsheet that I use to track everything, including my epub and self-pubbed titles, but I didn't include the epub sales tracking sheet in this one because it really depends on your situation, contract, etc. so it's harder to create a standard template.

All Romance eBooks
Amazon US :: Amazon UK
B&N Nook :: Smashwords
Sony eBook Store

Those of you who have been following my mini-blog tour know that I paid for a professional cover for, and editing of, Carnal Secrets. One of the commenters on March 10th asked me the following question: …do you feel the money you put out will be made up in sales?

At that time, I responded: I think I'm going to recoup the cost and make some profit this year. Even if I don't make any profit this year, I still think it was money well-spent because I have a professional product…

I thought I'd post a quick update on the situation:

As of early this week (ie, a little over a month since I put the story out), I have recouped the entire production cost of Carnal Secrets. (I'm not including the number of hours I spent writing, revising and promoting the story. I'm talking purely about the actual cash layout for the book.)

Am I happy? Of course! I'm thrilled!

More importantly, I'm grateful to fantastic reviewers, book bloggers and my readers. I really wasn't sure what kind of reception I'd get with the story, especially with it being self-published and my not having a decent platform, etc.

So thank you. :)

As you know, I'm not a big fan of agency pricing, library e-lending program restrictions, geo restrictions, DRM and so on. Late last month, I wrote a guest opinion for Dear Author on what the (seemingly) ideal reader is to the Big Six, and it's finally up on Dear Author.

And I'm blogging about three qualities authors need to self-publish effectively on Babbling about Books and More.

Check them out and feel free to share your thoughts!