Think INSIDE the Box!

"My name is Valerie Comer, and I'm a box set addict."

Whew. It feels good to have that out in the open. Anyone who's been keeping an eye on my career in the past six months or more won't be surprised by my admission, though! I credit the first box set I participated in, Love Brings Us Home, with launching my career, even though I had five indie titles for sale before that box set released.

My primary goal was to get the first book in my Farm Fresh Romance series, Raspberries and Vinegar, into as many hands as possible in hopes that many, or at least some, readers would go on to purchase the other two books that were already available.

By cross-promoting with other authors, we'd not only gain access to each others' readerships, but rank high enough on Amazon's bestseller lists that continued organic reach would result. Wow. Did that ever happen! Love Brings Us Home stayed above the #10 spot on the Christian Contemporary Romance bestseller list for nearly six months and dominated at #3 or better for over half that time.

It was a total win/win. Readers got to read seven contemporary romance novels for 99 cents US. The authors split the 35-cents-per-copy-sold royalty and still made money because enough readers took a chance.

This whetted my appetite for a continued reach into the box set market. I contacted author friends and made plans for two sets for the summer season. The first released yesterday after six weeks on pre-order. It's called Summer of Love and contains 6 full-length previously-published romance novels from top-selling Christian authors, several the same as from the earlier set. Wild Mint Tea, the second novel in my Farm Fresh Romance series is included in Summer of Love.

The second summer set, Splash! 9 Refreshing Romance Novellas Filled with Faith contains only new material and will release in June. I'm thrilled my team includes Narelle Atkins and Marion Ueckermann, two other ICFW authors. Autumn Macarthur, from our ACFW Beyond the Borders group, also contributed a novella. This means that almost half the stories in this collection are set outside the USA for a fun international twist.

Splash! contains the following stories and locations:

His Perfect Catch by Narelle Atkins (Australia)
A holiday romance isn’t part of the plan when Mia Radcliffe temporarily moves to Sapphire Bay and lives next door to Pete McCall, her secret crush from years ago. Pete prefers the simple life. Can Mia leave behind her big-city dreams and settle with Pete in the seaside town?

Sweet Serenade by Valerie Comer (Canada)
Carly and Reed thrive on the rush of running rapids in a canoe until they capsize in both river and romance. Will secrets from the past drown their future, or can this idyllic summer romance lead to a lifetime of sweet serenades?

More than Friends by Autumn Macarthur (Scotland)
When nurse Catriona asks for help with her Vacation Bible School for disabled children, she never imagines how much could go wrong on a simple seaside day out — or that the colleague she's secretly loved for years might come to see her as more than his best friend's little sister.

Love Flies In by Heidi McCahan (Alaska)
He’s a seaplane pilot determined to honor his convictions. She’s a kayak guide who mocked his faith for sport. One small lakeside cabin in Alaska can’t house them both.

Testing the Waters by Lesley Ann McDaniel (Oregon)
After breaking up with her ultra-critical boyfriend, Teresa decides to reinvent herself. She meets a nice guy named Curt on the beach in Crescent Cove, Oregon, and tells him she’s Terése from Paris. Pretending to be someone else is fun until the unthinkable happens — she starts to fall for him.

The Lifeguards, the Swim Team, and Frozen Custard by Carol Moncado (Missouri)
Lifeguard Alivia Collins looks forward to another summer on the guard stand at the Serenity Landing Aquatic Center. This year, she’s going to have to keep herself from falling for the cute, new guard — or realize it’s time to give love another chance.

Time and Tide by Lynette Sowell (Virginia)
When out-of-work fashion journalist Karyn Lewis uses the summer to regroup on the coast of Virginia, she plans to lie low at Pine Breezes campground. She doesn't plan for her heart to be on a collision course with old friend Brodie Reed. They must decide if the past that looms between them will be too much for them to have a future together.

Draw You Near by Jan Thompson (Georgia)
Savannah artist Abilene Dupree keeps her personal life out of her commercial paintings except one. That one painting has now brought Londoner Lars Cargill back to the coastal town and into her art world. Can she hold him at bay before he invades her personal space and her heart?

Orphaned Hearts by Marion Ueckermann (Zambia)
His faith buried with his wife, Simon devotes himself to raising his daughter and orphan elephants. Lady Abigail postpones an arranged marriage, leaving England to teach the children of Africa. Will his past—or her future—keep their hearts orphaned?

Won't you give Splash! a try? You'll find links for pre-order on my website.

Meanwhile, a true addict is always thinking ahead where they might get their next fix. I'm already planning for the Christmas 2015 season!

Valerie Comer's life on a small farm in western Canada provides the seed for stories of contemporary inspirational romance. Like many of her characters, Valerie and her family grow much of their own food and are active in the local food movement as well as their church. She only hopes her creations enjoy their happily ever afters as much as she does hers, shared with her husband, adult kids, and adorable granddaughters.

Valerie writes Farm Lit where food meets faith, injecting experience laced with humor into her stories. Her debut novel, Raspberries and Vinegar: A Farm Fresh Romance, was awarded Best Contemporary Romance published in 2013 by The Word Guild.


Think Inside the Box Image courtesy of digitalart at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Readers Love Series!

If the above statement is true, why do so many publishers cancel series before they're completed? I'm sure you've seen promising series get cut off at the knees, and you've always wondered what happened next. Maybe you've been the author of such a series, with readers asking for more and your publisher telling you it's not viable.

And, indeed, the publisher may be right. They have established marketing methods for bookstores, specific print runs to commit to, and more bright, new, shiny books to publish that might do better than your third one.

Enter the indie author, who, instead of targeting the tried-and-true paperback markets, will primarily sell ebooks online… and still make a living.

Yes, many an indie author creates paperback files, too, often uploading those to Amazon's Createspace dashboard, where books will be printed as ordered. And, while some sell paperbacks like gangbusters online, many of us sell virtually every single paperback by hand in our local areas. We may still think it's worth having them available.

But back to the topic. What does being indie have to do with series? Several things.

1. Indies are writing for the future, not the present. That may seem backwards when it's in traditional publishing that a book may take two years to get to market after it's written and approved, while an indie may write, edit, and publish a book in just a few months.

Still, each indie is only concerned with one career: his or her own. We know it takes time to build any business. We don't juggle the needs of multiple authors and an office building full of staff. It's just us and any editors, cover designers, etc, we may contract for specific duties as we can afford them.

Every time we release a new book in the series, it draws attention to the previous titles. Sales tend to go up on all of them. Nothing ever goes out-of-print these days—to the distress of many authors with bomb-proof traditional contracts. This is a bonus for indies. A new reader who discovers us in book two, or three, or four can click over to Amazon or another online bookseller and, with a few more clicks, purchase and download all previous books in a minute or two.

2. Indies can price ebooks to sell through a series. We have the luxury of offering a low barrier to entering our story worlds by pricing the first book lower than the others, or even free. An impulse buy/download will often result in sales of the other books in the series. Not always, of course, but many indies have experimented with this tactic with success.

3. Indies can adapt a series or lengthen it to suit the readership. Planned a series about three sisters, and the stories are selling like gangbusters? Add three cousins and expand the series to six books. Want to add a novella, a short story collection, and/or a Christmas tale to the mix? Go for it. We can listen to our readers and turn on a dime.

4. Indies can "value-add" to a series. I've had the opportunity to both contract an audiobook of my first book, Raspberries and Vinegar, and to submit it to a digital box set called Love Brings Us Home that also contains books by six other contemporary romance authors. This box set has been doing really well. Psst, if you haven't picked up your copy yet, hop to it! It won't be available much longer.

I've done some of this with my Farm Fresh Romance series since regaining the rights to them last summer. I republished the first two, Raspberries and Vinegar and Wild Mint Tea, in July and released the third, Sweetened with Honey, in November, four full months earlier than had been planned by my publisher.

I thought and prayed and noodled over the original idea then decided to expand the series to six books by adding more friends to the mix. I've just completed the first draft of Dandelions for Dinner and have every expectation of releasing it in early March, while continuing to write the fifth and sixth books. This will not only give more books for existing fans to purchase, but increase the number of entry points whereby new fans may discover them.

With the upcoming release of Dandelions for Dinner and the dissolution of the box set, I plan to place the first book at "permanently free" to draw more readers into the series.

I love hearing from readers who are invested in my Farm Fresh Romance series.

Here's what one reader had to say:

"I literally had moments where I missed this group of characters now that I've read all the books in this series so far… love the stories - each character is distinct from the others, which sometimes isn't true in series. These are not remakes of the former books. I love the entire atmosphere on this farm."

What do you think of series, both as a reader and as a writer?

An Interview with Canadian Author Kimberly Rae Jordan

Today I'd like to welcome my friend and fellow Canadian, Kimberly Rae Jordan. She grew up a missionary kid in the Philippines but has made her home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, since graduating from high school. If you look at her photo, you'll think that must have been last week, but no. Kim is the mom of four, one of them in university!

Valerie: Welcome to International Christian Fiction Writers, Kimberly! It's been fun getting to know you in the past few months. How did you become interested in writing fiction?

Kimberly: I have always been an avid reader and as characters and their stories would linger in my mind, I would begin to think about how the story might have gone if this or that had happened. Pretty soon I was creating stories in my head each night before I would fall asleep. Sometimes a story would span a week or so of nights, but then it would be gone. Realizing that I didn’t want to lose touch with those characters, I started to jot down parts of stories when I had the time. I was around nineteen or twenty when I first wrote out a whole story… and I have never looked back!

Valerie: What drives you to write?

Kimberly: It seems to be the burning need to give my characters life. It is through the words I write that those characters become real to me and — hopefully — the reader. As I get to know each character that I write about, their story just begs to be shared. Whichever story I’m working on is present in my thoughts night and day. Somehow it just needs to be told, and I’m happy to oblige! I find that if I go more than a day or so without writing on a current work-in-progress, I start to get antsy.

Valerie: How many books do you have out now?

Kimberly: I currently have ten full-length contemporary Christian romance novels, one book of Christian romance short stories and a sweet Christmas romance novella.

Valerie: What are some common themes?

Kimberly: Family is probably my most common theme. My two series are both based around siblings. Another common theme is trying to show a realistic Christian walk. Whether that is a character who is currently struggling a lot with their faith or someone who is confident in their faith but still dealing with the daily struggles we face as Christians.

Valerie: Which story is your favorite?

Kimberly: My favorite so far is probably The Long Road Home, which is Book 4 in my HOME TO COLLINGSWORTH series. Cami, the heroine, was one that wasn’t very popular with readers in previous books of the series. I knew that in writing her story, I would have to really work to gain the readers’ sympathies for her. It’s a romance after all! If a reader doesn’t like the hero or heroine, the story is basically a flop. It was a challenging story to write, and I worried a lot about how readers would react to it. I prayed each night that God would use the book to encourage and uplift people even as it entertained.

The day that book was published until the first review came in were torture for me. A few weeks after it was published, I received a review from a reader who said that they only bought the book because they’d read the other three but weren’t thrilled to read Cami’s story. However, when they finally did read it, her story became their favorite in the series! I am glad that even though it was a rough book to write at times, I pushed through with God’s help. It is one that will always be with me.

Valerie: Readers, you'll get introduced to Cami in Home is Where the Heart Is if you pick up the Love Brings Us Home box set for only 99 cents. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to place my novel Raspberries and Vinegar in the same limited- time collection. But there's more!

Love Brings Us Home contains SEVEN sweet stories celebrating love and home in one amazing collection!

Greater Than Rubies by Hallee Bridgeman: Antonio Viscolli asked and Robin Bartlett said "yes!" Soon, she will say "I do." Or will Boston's "Royal Wedding" leave someone standing at the altar?

Raspberries and Vinegar by Valerie Comer: Josephine Shaw, a feisty environmentalist and local-food advocate, falls for Zachary Nemesek, the junk-food-loving reluctant farmer next door.

Awakening by JoAnn Durgin: When Lexa Clarke tumbles from the top beam of a house and straight into the arms of TeamWork Missions Director Sam Lewis, Sam suspects his life will never be the same.

Home is Where the Heart Is by Kimberly Rae Jordan: Free spirit Violet Collingsworth never expected to return home to live. But when she goes back to attend her grandmother’s funeral, she meets the sheriff and begins to reconsider.

Wildfire Wedding by Lynette Sowell: During the height of Texas wildfire season, Krista and Luke prepare for their wedding while battling past guilt and future fears, when a fire breaks out, threatening the town.

Cowboy by Staci Stallings: To all the world, Ashton Raines has it all: fame, money, and the adoration of millions of fans. Then one night he walks away from it all. Can down-on-her-luck waitress, Beth, let God work through her to lead Ashton back to hope and faith?

Reunited at Christmas by Debra Ullrick: Shelby Davis thought she’d never again see the ex-fiancé who dumped her. Then Ryker Anderson gets lost in a blizzard, and she’s on the snowmobile search and rescue team. Now what?

Now what? That’s easy! Pick up this digital-only box set from Amazon, Kobo, or Nook and enjoy seven novels from some of the genre's most popular authors. I'm thrilled to be included!

Valerie Comer's life on a small farm in western Canada provides the seed for stories of contemporary inspirational romance. Like many of her characters, Valerie and her family grow much of their own food and are active in the local food movement as well as their church. She only hopes her creations enjoy their happily ever afters as much as she does hers, shared with her husband, adult kids, and adorable granddaughters.

Valerie writes Farm Lit where food meets faith, injecting experience laced with humor into her stories. Her debut novel, Raspberries and Vinegar: A Farm Fresh Romance, was awarded Best Contemporary Romance published in 2013 by The Word Guild.