Jemi Fraser - Dancing with Dementia - blog tour appearance - EMOTIONAL NONFICTION.

Today is the first day of Jemi Fraser's blog tour. I'm sorry my post is a little late due to circumstances beyond my control. Her TOUR CALENDAR  is at the end of the post.

I asked Jemi to talk to us about emotional nonfiction. Take it away, Jemi. 

EMOTIONAL NONFICTION

Writing is always an emotional experience. I know this is true for me, but I believe it is true for most authors as well.

I write romance, an emotional genre. My characters become important to me and I’ve often found myself laughing and smiling along with them as I write. I worry along with my characters and cry for them as well. (Yes, even as I create the things that they worry and cry about!)

I figured writing romance was a pretty emotional experience.

And then I started writing Dancing With Dementia. Nonfiction, but more emotional than any fiction I’ve written.

Because of the nature of the project, I found myself emotionally drained as I wrote. Watching our Loved Ones experience dementia is tough. Even those funny moments (and there are lots of them) in the book were emotionally difficult to write.

Writing about that dementia meant that I experienced each and every incident over and over again as I wrote and revised and edited and proofed.

I tried working on other writing projects to lighten my heart but the Dementia project refused to let me go. Those other projects were firmly booted to the back burner for a long time. They’re battling for my attention now that Dancing With Dementia is heading out to the real world.

With the emotional impact DWD has on me, I had to make some adjustments.

•           shorter time frames for writing

•           don’t write immediately before or after visiting my mom (our Loved One dealing with dementia)

•           don’t write late at night (guaranteed sleepless night)

•           alternate between the serious moments and the ones filled with laughter and joy

•           focus on how to help other people navigating those first steps in the Dance of Dementia

It will be interesting to see how my writing process morphs as I once again focus on fiction writing.

How about you? If you’re a writer, do emotional bits of your project affect you in the Real World? Have you had to change up your routine because of your subject matter? As a reader, do those emotional works affect you as well?

It’s a pleasure to be participating in author Jemi Fraser’s DANCING WITH DEMENTIA, Recognizing and Coping with the Early Stages of Dementia Blog Tour through MC Book Tours today.

The author is offering a tour-wide international giveaway of an Amazon Gift Card. More information on the giveaway is listed below.

Recognizing and Coping with the Early Stages of Dementia
by Jemi Fraser

◊ Genre: Nonfiction, Memoir
◊ Publisher: Just Jemi Books
◊ eBooks
◊ ISBN-13: 978-1-9991258-1-3

Dementia and Alzheimer’s touch the lives of millions around the world, but so much is still unknown.

As first-generation Canadians, we didn’t recognize the early warning signs. We didn’t know the differences between regular aging and the early stages of dementia. We’ve made mistakes but we’ve learned a lot.

DANCING WITH DEMENTIA will help you:
•Identify those early warning signs
•Use visuals to improve communication
•Choose your words wisely
•Redirect and reassure
•Stay calm and cope with your own emotions
•Consider nursing home options
•Improve caregiver self-care

We’ve learned to dance the early steps of the disease with our love and laughter intact. If you are looking for help recognizing early signposts along with practical ways to cope with early Dementia and Alzheimer’s, this book is for you.

DANCING WITH DEMENTIA buy links:
Amazon.com              Amazon.ca          Apple Books       Barnes & Noble          Kobo

Add DANCING WITH DEMENTIA to your Goodreads shelf

For those who aren’t familiar with the author, here’s a bit of background on her.

Jemi Fraser writes both fiction and nonfiction. Her nonfiction work focuses on the ways that dementia has impacted her family. Her fiction work varies from contemporary romance to suspense and flash fiction. Years as a teacher have taught Jemi that life is short and that happy endings are a must.

Jemi lives in Northern Ontario, Canada where snow is always a topic of conversation and the autumn leaves make everything better.

For more on Jemi and her writing, visit her following sites:

Website          Just Jemi Blog       Dancing With Dementia blog 

Amazon Page        BookBub      Goodreads       Facebook       Twitter       Quick Tips Videos

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:

This tour-wide giveaway is for a $20 Amazon Gift Card. The giveaway is open internationally.

To enter the giveaway, just click on the Rafflecopter widget below and follow the instructions. The widget may take a few seconds to load so please be patient. If the widget doesn’t show up, just click HERE and you’ll be directed to the widget.

Thanks for stopping by and be sure to follow Jemi on her week-long tour HERE. You never know what you might find out. I hope dementia hasn’t touch your family or friends, but in case it has do you have any tips to share on dealing with this terrible disease?

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TOUR CALENDAR:
Monday, March 30: Denise Covey – Guest Post
Mystery Writing is Murder – Guest Post
Defending the Pen – Q & A & Review
Constantine – Guest Post
Tuesday, March 31: Joylene Nowell Butler – Guest Post & Feature
Mainewords – Guest Post
Tara Tyler Talks – Interview
Wednesday, April 1: Alex J. Cavanaugh – Guest Post
Spunk on A Stick – Feature
Circle of Friends – Feature
Rockin’ Book Reviews – Feature & Top Ten List
The Girdle of Melian – Guest Post
The Warrior Muse – Top Ten List
Thursday, April 2: Lisa Haselton’s Reviews & Interviews – Q & A
Thoughts in Progress – Review
Friday, April 3: Pat Garcia Book Reviews – Review
Writer’s Gambit – Top Ten List
Ellen Jacobson Author – Top Ten List & Review

#IWSG post - It takes a tribe to publish and market a book. Here's 5 Tips to Marketing to try!

Hi friends!

If we feel insecure about our writing and marketing, we need help and that's what this group is all about. Today I've invited someone to guest post who may be able to help you with your marketing. We all know marketing is easy, right? Wrong! And it's complicated. My guest Tania Joyce tells us just how complicated it is!

Before Tania gets underway, I want to thank Alex's awesome co-hosts for the March 4 posting of the IWSG:  Jacqui Murray, Lisa Buie-Collard, Sarah Foster, Natalie Aguirre, and Shannon Lawrence! Visit if you can.

Click HERE for the list of participants to read more...

You do it, don't you? Scan the Acknowledgements in traditionally-published books. Read all about those who've helped the author - agents, early readers, publishers, researchers, fact checkers, more readers, editors, book cover artists - I usually count at least 40 people involved in one book.

So why do many self-published authors think they can do it without a tribe of their own?

I've been gathering a tribe around me for years. But the most important members of my tribe are my critique partners - Tania Joyce and Sheila Korner Grice. We formed an alliance after meeting each other at a Margie Lawson Immersion Class 3 years ago and have critiqued each other's work ever since.

My fabulous critters, Tania (left), Sheila (right)

I forgot to give Tania a word limit when I asked her to guest blog, but with the number of times I read bloggers feeling insecure about marketing, rather than try to edit this article down, I'm going to leave it to you to take what you wish from it. Some parts are so technical I shudder and roll my eyes and pray for understanding, LOL. If you, like me, have any questions, ask away in the comments.

Here we go...

Five Things I’ve Learned About Marketing Other Than Putting Half-Naked Men on my Covers

1.     You have to treat being an author like a business. It takes time, effort, a lot of trial, error, research and investment to know where you fit into the author landscape and the marketing strategies you want to undertake. The best thing though is, in this business, you can start with a small budget and work your way up. But you do have to spend money to make money.

When I first started creative writing at the tender age of 36, the first thing I learnt about author marketing is there is so much to learn. With fifteen years’ experience in corporate marketing, I thought I knew how to market, but author marketing was a whole different world. I had to start from scratch. Online marketing, social media and promotions unveiled an entirely different approach to product marketing. It’s exciting and forever changing. I knew nothing about Facebook Advertising and Amazon Advertising. I dabbled at first and have slowly built my brand awareness and product sales by reading, going to conferences and doing online courses. Enrolling in Mark Dawson’s Self Publish Formula course and studying Brian Meek’s Mastering Amazon Ads provided the foundation and turning point in my author career. I have done courses, read books and I’m involved with many online groups like 20Booksto50k. It takes time to sift through the clutter of ads, offerings and advice to find what works for you. I do well with AMS ads, but I’m still trying to master FB ads. Grrr! What works for one person, may not work for another. Being flexible, patient and persistent is key.

FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/20Booksto50k/

Mark Dawson’s SPF Course: https://selfpublishingformula.com/

2.   Finding your tribe and people who can help you is essential. There are numerous best-selling authors and industry experts out there who can help you learn and achieve success, but for me it has been fundamental in finding a group of local authors who are on the same journey. I’m fortunate enough to have joined a romance writing group when we were all newbie authors, unpublished and had no clue on how to do this authoring thing. We met at the Romance Writers of Australia annual conference. Over the years (since 2012), we’ve all been published (some traditional, some self-published, some hybrid). We’ve all done various courses, workshops, attended conferences and continued with online training. We share our findings, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and we constantly help each other. It’s incredible to have this trust and be always willing to help and share our knowledge. 

I was traditionally published. I quickly learnt that traditional publishers do not have outlandish budgets for new authors — there were no book tours, no advertisements, no book launch party, didn’t even get my books into stores. I got a couple of online blogs. That’s it. I learnt that most, if not all, marketing fell onto my shoulders. At launch, I had no idea how the book was doing, because I had no access to sales data. The royalty check at six months was my only indicator. It was dismal.

When the division of my publisher folded, I opted to get my rights back. … I’m now 100% indie. It has been the best thing. I got control. I got access to data. I could now change covers, blurbs, run ads, manage keywords, fix that one annoying typo in my manuscript, see instant sales data and ad performance all within a quick click. While the learning curve has been steep and challenging, it has been totally awesome!

3.       Love your data. You may hate it, but you have to do some maths. The platforms you sell on eg Amazon, provide you with a bucket load of information, but it’s a matter of sifting through it, and analysing your results so you can work out what is and isn’t working, only then can you work on improving and scaling marketing strategies.

Learn what your clickthrough ratio is (Impressions/clicks), your conversion rate (clicks/sales), and if writing a series, your readthrough rates (sales_Book2/Sales_Book1 etc). They are vital statistics for advertising purposes and to see if your books are actually selling.

The unfortunate thing here is places like Amazon do not give you all the information in one nice report. Current AMS ads reports do not include Kindle Unlimited information. You have to download data from different places to work out your ratios and rates, but it’s worth it.  I have this down to a fine art. It takes me 15-20minutes a day to download my data, enter it into my spreadsheet, add in my expenses and sales figures. I can see what ads are performing, the ones that are not, and make any tweaks if necessary.

Out of my six books and 1 x duo bundle, I have 213 AMS ads running. My average ad clickthrough ratio is 1:930 (1 x click per 930 impressions…which is good), my clicks to sales is 1:6 (one sale every 6 clicks…freaking awesome!), my readthrough on KU is 75%. My ROI is 43% (and slowly getting better.) Learn to love your data.

While the information in this book is dated in regards to cost-per-click data and some ad types have changed, this resource has all the formulas in it and is a great place to start for ads. Brian Meeks: Mastering AMS Ads: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072SNXYMY

4.       Be prepared to change. The market is a continual moving set of goal posts and you must be prepared to move with it. Facebook and Amazon continually change and update their algorithms. What works for you one month, may not work the next. 

Know your genre, sub-genre, analyse the top-selling authors in your genre, study their image, their book covers, their blurbs. Use this research to market your books. (Sorry…half-naked men on covers works for my genre!) When I first got published, I didn’t want bare-chested men on my books. I wanted to be professional and classy. My books didn’t sell. I changed the covers and instantly saw a change in sales. Follow market trends in what is working in artwork and graphic design. Your cover needs to sell your book, genre, capture the eye, and be in line with your branding and image.

5.       Be relevant. This is critical for advertising. Learn to target correctly. Use refined keywords, target like-authors, similar book titles and niche genres. Platforms like Facebook and Amazon “learn” through its algorithms where to place your ads and to which customers it should show your ads. Just because you like reading Stephen King novels, don’t use “Stephen King” as a keyword if you write sweet romance. It’s not relevant.

I write rock star romance, which falls into the category of New Adult Romance. But this category includes everything from vampires, shapeshifters and witches, through to bad boys, bikers and billionaires. It is important to zone in on your niche. I make sure I only target ‘rock star romance’ books, authors and keywords. It takes more time but conversation rates will be better and making sales is what it’s all about.

As an indie author, marketing is a constant and essential part of my business. New ads, new graphics, new content for social media posts, promotions, learning and data analysis all have to fit around writing the next book and my family. Time management is critical. A great support network is imperative. I’m fortunate to have the best critique partners in the world. Our tight timeframes keep me from spending too much time on Facebook, obsessing over ads and drowning in information overload. Love your data, embrace marketing, make it fun! And hopefully make money along the way!

About Tania Joyce

I'm an author of New Adult and Contemporary Romance novels. My stories thread romance, drama and passion into beautiful locations ranging from the dazzling lights and glitter of New York, to the rural countryside of the Hunter Valley in Australia.

I like to write about strong-minded, career-oriented heroes and heroines that go through drama-filled hell, have steamy encounters and risk everything as they endeavour to find their happily-ever-after.

I call Brisbane, Australia, home.

LATEST RELEASE

RAPT – The Price of Love. Everhide Rockstar Romance Series Book #3

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Today I was supposed to marry the girl of my dreams. She didn’t turn up.

Life in world-famous rock band, Everhide, has pushed Kyle's and Gemma's hearts, careers and friendship to the limits. But they are soulmates. Their love is profound. Intense. Getting married is their dream come true.

But not everyone feels the same way.
Someone obsessed with Kyle wants Gemma dead.

DEAD!

Surely the danger isn't real? It's just some crazed fan pulling a prank.

When the threats escalate, Kyle's over-protectiveness kicks in and Gemma's grip on sanity wears thin. With concerts and festivals to play before their big day, she won't let anyone derail their wedding plans.

But one false move puts her in danger.

When life teeters on its edge and she risks everything she loves, can Gemma find the strength to let Kyle into her guarded heart before it's too late?

If you like sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat romantic suspense, full of intrigue and heart wrenching romance, RAPT – The Price of Love will captivate you. With strong heroines, and intense heroes, this rock star romance will make your heart race right up to the epic emotional ending. Be prepared. Grab your copy today.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0825526VR

• Did you enjoy Tania's article? Any questions? Ask in comments...
• Do you have a marketing tip or two? Do tell...

LOVE IT - TWEET IT! LOVE IT - TWEET IT!

@TaniaJoyceBooks @DeniseCCovey, #author shares #marketindtips  https://dencovey.blogspot.com/2020/03/iwsg-post-it-takes-tribe-to-publish-and.html #amwriting #ammarketing #amazonads

Learn some #marketingtips https://dencovey.blogspot.com/2020/03/iwsg-post-it-takes-tribe-to-publish-and.html @TaniaJoyceBooks @DeniseCCovey,#amwriting #ammarketing #amazonads