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I have an account on Wattpad, but don't have the time to invest in building up a following there. I focus on Faecbook, my blog and twitter. It is not for workshoping your book. It is simply about getting your name out there and attracting readers. I have one of my published books on there. I figure if they like it they may check out my other published books.

I have a free membership with Grammarly through my college and I love it. I am actually in the process of doing another round of edits on my published books with it (because nothing is ever perfect). Grammarly isn't the be all end all, but it is really good. I would guess the article you linked to is old and that Grammarly has improved on its service since then. I ran the first 5 examples through and Grammarly caught all of the mistakes the article says it missed.

I've used editminion and liked it, but I now have a membership with autocrit and that one is really good for non-grammatical editing.

JP, I'm not sure I can do a read through quickly. I'm pretty backed up on life and other commitments, but I can try.

Congrats to everyone!!

Gracela,
I would start by establishing a social media presence. If you don't already have a website or blog you can start with a wordpress or blogspot blog. Use it to talk about your books, other books in your genre, and to get share a bit about yourself with potential readers. Have a facebook page (separate from your personal one) to interact with readers there, same with twitter. I think one key piece to remember is not to spam people on these sites. Share a bit about your book, but keep it about interacting. There are tons of writer/author/reader facebook groups you can join. Search for them in the facebook search bar by typing in keywords. When you join make sure you see if there are any standard rules about what and when you can post links to your book. Some groups are more about interacting with others, while others are pure promotional groups.

And don't forget about setting up an Amazon Author central page. This will let readers click on your name (under your book title) and find all of your books in one place. You can also link to your blog and twitter.

Hope that helps you get started. I always find marketing the hardest and most frustrating part of being an indie author. Nothing works for everyone, and most of the time the only way to figure it out is through trial and error.

Ang

Thanks!

Most of the Christian fiction books I've read are Young Adult novels, so there would be limited foul language regardless. In one series I read there was no cussing and it worked. The author managed to bring them to life without it. That said, I read another set of books and each of them was horrendously self-righteous and so 'goody-goody' fake I could barely finish the books. I felt like a horrible Christian afterwards because I'm not as perfect as every Christian character in the books (only the non-Christians had imperfections or committed sins).

Make your characters real. The fact is Christians are not perfect. We sin, we make mistakes, we are as human as everyone else. What makes us different is our belief in Jesus and in his sacrifice to cleanse us of our sins. Expressing frustration or anger through words is not a sin. The closest sin to cussing would be taking the Lord's name in vain.

A word is simply a word until we add our expression, intention, and emotion into it. I often say the word crud if I'm angry or upset by something, thinking it's better than saying a cuss word. Well, my daughter repeated it the other day with the same type of expression and I realized it was just as bad as if she'd been saying s**t.

I supported you via Twitter. Have you joined the thunderclap campaign page on Facebook? They allow for head talker campaigns and people are very good about reciprocating.

Thanks This final book has taken me forever!

The marketing strategy that had the greatest impact on my sales was having one of my books be part of a huge box set with 19 other authors for a limited time. I went from making a handful of sales each month to a few hundred. It helped that through the process of working with these authors I learned a bunch more about marketing, and have continued with those strategies as well.

One thing I learned recently is that the price of your book impacts ranking. You need to sell more 99cent books to have the same impact as selling 1 book at $3.99 or higher. Borrows or lends count towards ranking, and people are more interested in borrowing a more expensive book than a 99cent one.

Typically YA is with characters 13-18/19. Any genre (Romance, sci fi, fantasy, contemporary, etc.) works as well.