Author Spotlight Interview: Luke Smitherd
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on November 20, 2018
Continuing our series of author interviews, we were delighted to sit down live with Luke Smitherd, the best-selling author of The Stone Man and many other critically-acclaimed and popular novels. One of the defining characteristics of the novels of Luke Smitherd is that they defy easy classification – which is somewhat true of himself, too. A former singer and guitarist – well-liked for his traveling homage to the likes of Michael Buble – Luke also played his hand as a professional darts play, commercial copywriter and much, much more. Today he’s a full-time writer with a loyal following who enjoy his unique and thought-provoking books; which I once described as “Stephen Kings meets Ben Elton.” Luke very kindly sat and chatted with us live, and here’s what he had to say: HG: Luke – your books aren’t easy to pin down as a specific genre, although you’ll often find them… Read More >
Ginger’s Guide to Marketing & Advertising Your Books: Part Two – MARKETING
By: Ginger | Posted on November 16, 2018
As we discussed in part one, actually writing your book is only the first step of your journey as a self-published author. The path to success has many hurdles, but our four-part series aims to clear them all away. In this week’s installment, veteran self-published author Ginger dives in deep, giving you everything you need to know about how to market your book effectively. Last week, I spoke about the importance of marketing and advertising when it comes to your self-publishing career, and recently that’s become more important than ever. In the past, every book page you visited on Amazon was stuffed with thumbnails of ‘also boughts’ – books that were purchased by the same customers who bought the book you’re looking at. Being included in that list was a fantastic – and totally free – way to drive potential customers to your own book. In the last few weeks, Amazon… Read More >
Ginger’s Guide to Marketing & Advertising Your Books: Part One
By: Ginger | Posted on November 9, 2018
Actually writing your book is only the first part of your journey as a self-published author. You’ll have to think about a lot more on your road to success, but resident author Ginger is here to lay it all out for you. This is part one of a four part series, and below Ginger shares some of the basic techniques you need to understand in order to get your book in front of the eyes of potential customers. Links to the next installments are posted at the bottom of this article. Okay, so you’ve written and published a book – that’s the hard part, right? Well – yes and no. Once your book is in print, it’s important to get as many pairs of eyes on it as possible. For a lot of new authors, though, they have no idea where to start – and not much money to waste… Read More >
Finding Kids Books Online
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on May 14, 2018
If you have a young child in your house, then you’re probably used to reading them stories. Whether at bedtime or during the day, reading together is not only a great bonding experience but opens your child’s mind to new thoughts and ideas. But while repetition is comforting to the little ones, you need to add some variety as well. Even if it’s just for your own sanity. Trips to the library can be fun when your own collection starts to run thin, but they aren’t always practical. Especially when you have a cranky child waiting to begin his or her nightly adventure – a problem that the internet was almost designed to solve. What are the options for kids books online, then? Turns out, there are plenty – including us here at Hidden Gems! However, while the internet is filled with rich content for young minds, it’s important to… Read More >
Reader Expectations: To Meet Them You Must First Understand Them
By: Morgan Jones | Posted on May 11, 2018
One of the keys to selling your book is knowing your audience and what they are expecting. Not only will a failure to meet these expectations properly lead to less sales, they can also lead to poor reviews. That’s why we’ve asked USA Today Bestselling author Morgan Jones to walk us through how to make sure authors understand what the expectations of their readers are, and how to meet them. Have you ever sat down at your favorite coffee shop and opened up your laptop ready to dig into your next great novel, when you take a sip of the elixir of life only to discover that they got your order wrong? Are you the type of person to return to the counter and demand it be corrected, or are you the one that just sits in silence because you don’t want to deal with people? Personally, I don’t want… Read More >
Yes, Your Amazon Book Reviews Are Still Safe
By: Craig | Posted on May 7, 2018
Hidden Gems is best known for helping authors get book reviews by sending their work to interested readers, so it’s no surprise that when some perceived threat to Amazon reviews appears, we hear about it quickly. That’s why it makes sense that the first article in our new Rumor Busting series takes on this pair of related statements that come to us persistently. Amazon is coming after ARC book reviews, they’re no longer allowing them! Amazon is removing reviews that say they were given a free book or from an ARC! Given the importance of book reviews to us, we have to admit that even we aren’t immune to having our hearts beat just a little bit faster each time someone sends us a panicked email repeating one of these claims. But only for as long as it takes for us to verify that Amazon’s community guidelines page still states:… Read More >
Hidden Gems Website Redesign
By: Craig | Posted on August 25, 2016
Welcome to the newly designed Hidden Gems website, the best and fastest growing site on the web for free romance ebooks! The site is just being rolled out, and we still have a few things to fix and change, but for the most part things are working enough that we felt it was finally ready to go live. Hopefully you like the fresh new look and snazzy new logo. I just want to tell you about some of the new and updated features of the site, and what we have planned for the future. Fresh new look! Of course, the main thing is our updated look and feel. Our old site was pretty sparse and dated right from the start, because we were more focused on getting our newsletter our and growing our subscriber base. But now, as we approach 5000 subscribers (wow!), we thought it was time to spend… Read More >
