Posts Tagged Lancashire Authors’ Association

Lancashire Authors’ Association Open Competition 2016

Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Short Story on April 7, 2016

Peter Jones has been in touch from the Lancashire Authors’ Association to tell me about their 2016 Open Competition.

The competition is for a short story in exactly 100 words (excluding the title) on any theme or subject. There is a prize of £100 up for grabs which is sponsored by Langtec Composite Tube Manufacturers and in my opinion £100 for 100 words is a pretty good rate per word!

Entry is by email or post and the entry fee is £3 (or £2 if you are a member of the association).

Closing date is 31st October 2016. Check the full rules before entering.

A short story in exactly 100 words is known as a drabble. There are some useful tips on drablr.com about writing to such a tight word count and lots of examples. You can also publish your own drabbles on this website for others to read (but don’t publish the one you want to enter in the competition!).

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KindleFever, the Lancashire Authors’ Association and a Freebie

Posted by Sally Jenkins in Promotion, Resources, Self-publishing on May 21, 2013

KindleFever

If you’ve ever toyed with the idea of publishing a Kindle book but never quite got around to it, Nick Daws’ KindleFever might be just the push you need. KindleFever is a challenge to publish a Kindle e-book in the month of June.

Nick says, “You can either write and publish a Kindle e-book from scratch, or else format and publish an existing work. All types of Kindle book are welcome, including novels, short stories, anthologies, nonfiction books, poetry, and so forth.”

The challenge is being run via the writers’ forum My Writers’ Circle and there will be lots of chat and advice on there for e-publishing newbies. There’s already a useful resources thread on there.

There might also be post-publication benefits from taking part in this challenge. “We hope and intend that everyone taking part in KindleFever will help other participants promote their newly-published books, by reviewing them, “liking” them, tagging them, and so on,” Nick explains. “This should help to ensure that they all have the best possible chance of making it into the Kindle best-seller lists!”

I had the pleasure of meeting Nick Daws on Saturday when he came to talk to Lichfield Writers about e-books. He was very generous with his advice and I think this will be a challenge well worth taking!

It’s free to sign-up – simply register on the forum and scroll down the list of topics to KindleFever.

Lancashire Authors’ Association

Peter Jones has been in touch to tell me that the Lancashire Authors’ Association are keen to welcome new members. Their next meeting is in Lytham on June 1st. Details are here.

But Peter points out that you don’t have to live in Lancashire to join them.

“We have members in various parts of the country and as far afield as Canada and New Zealand,” he says. “We have annual competitions only open to members with prizes plus a trophy.”

They sound a friendly lot and membership is only £15 per year.

Freebie – Last ever chance to get Old Friends for free!

I’ve unchecked the box in Amazon KDP and Old Friends will drop out of KDP Select in a couple of days. For me the benefits of offering books for free don’t seem to be materialising (after my last promo I noticed no rise in sales and only received one review – thank you so much, Carl) and so I’m going to experiment by making the book available on other platforms too (KDP Select requires that the book be exclusive to Amazon).

However, I have got two free days left so I thought I’d give you all a final chance to get it for free on May 21st and May 22nd. In exchange, I’d be most grateful if you could leave a review (doesn’t have to be 5 star – as Nick Daws said at his workshop, books with only 5 star reviews can look a bit dodgy, so even 3 star reviews are OK too).

Old Friends is available on all Amazon sites by searching for ASIN: B00BJIKIBI

Or grab it from Amazon.uk by clicking here or from Amazon.com by clicking here.

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Lancashire Authors’ Association Flash Fiction Competition, Guest Posts & Royalties

Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Self-publishing on April 9, 2013

Firstly, the Lancashire Authors’ Association has been in touch to tell me that they are holding another Flash Fiction Competition.

The winning entry will receive £250. Stories must be exactly 100 words, excluding the title.

Entry fee is £2 (or £1 if you happen to be a member of the Lancashire Authors’ Association) and entries can be submitted by post or email up to the closing date of June 30th 2013.

Rules are available here along with last year’s winning 100 word story.

Secondly, I’ve been getting around a bit recently in conjunction with my current obsession with e-publishing. You may have noticed me:

  • On Womag’s blog describing how e-publishing is easier than you might think
  • On the Writers’ Bureau blog talking about e-book covers
  • On Nick Daws blog where I looked at the options when an e-book isn’t selling. I won this appearance on Nick’s blog via his blogging competition which I told you about a few weeks ago and the other part of my prize was a copy of his e-course Blogging for Writers.

Thirdly, I’ve received my very first Amazon royalty payment – 31p! It covers the US site for the last few days of January after the launch of One Day for Me.  I was a bit surprised because I thought nothing was paid out until the royalties amounted to $10. Consequently, I haven’t yet got my US tax exemption sorted out – so they’ve taken 13p in tax, otherwise I would’ve had 44p! Take note, e-publishing is not a get rich quick scheme!

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