Plagiarized, Hungary, Finland and an ebook list

Daily downloads tally:
1771 on Smashwords.com
29 on Amazon.com (the price is still .99)
0 on Barnes and Nobel (price is still .99) Strangely there is a review.
Not sure if that means that it is being downloaded there for free or not. Hmmm.


Book promotion.

Sounds so simple until you sit down and try to outline your strategy.

• Tell everyone. (Check -- friends, family, and I listed it on: http://ebooksfreefreefree.blogspot.com/. My goal is to try to do one thing to promote it each day. )
  
• Join like minded people and discuss your book. (Check)
• Add a tag to your email announcing the book. (Not really appropriate for my work email and that's the email I use the most.)
• Create a new email account to help promote book. (Check -- RCardelloromance@yahoo.com)
• Create a blog...and share information that is valuable. (Check -- hope. This blog is designed to document the ups and downs of self-publishing an ebook.)
• Use the social network. (Check -- created a Facebook web page just for RCardelloromance. Today I received my first email via that site. A woman in Finland wanted to know when I was going to release the 2nd and 3rd book because she loved the first one and really wanted to read the next two. I was dancing when I read that!)
  

Ok, that was all I had...until I found out other ways word of my book was getting around....

I was searching the net last night for any possible reference to my book, hoping someone had referenced it somewhere. Bam. There it was. I was entered into a contest....well I wasn't....someone who had taken my name off of the first two chapters of my book and added their own was. The good news was that she was doing pretty well...lol 400 people had read the first chapter that she had posted.

I sent an email to the website explaining and I added a comment below her entry. I said, "Although I am happy that people like the story, I wish the poster had given me credit for writing it since it is published in its entirety on Smashwords.com and Amazon.com." Something along those lines. I added that she should take it down and that I was reporting it.

I received the nicest response from one of the other contributors to that site. She said she thought that it was awful and that she would support me on Smashwords.

When I told my friends about the plagiarism, one gave me a good outlook on it. She said that 400 people had read the first chapter of my book and might now want to read the rest. Hmm, looking at it like that maybe I should have left it up.

It was under -- Maid for the Billionaire, Chapter 1 -- Unbreakmyheart
http://www.wattpad.com/1337318-maid-for-the-billionaire?allcomments#commentss


I also found my book being sent as a PDF to Hungary? Not sure. It was called CanadaHun. http://canadahun.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2932300 It would be something to worry about, I suppose, if I were getting paid per book...but since I put it up for free and I did receive credit for writing it, I was sort of thrilled to see my book on the same message board next to Nora Roberts. Ah, the small joys of writing. Hard to explain to someone who hasn't smashed their forehead into their keyboard at 2 am and wondered if they could write at all.

The best place I found my book last night was on a site that lists the most popular ebooks to download! I was thrilled. http://online-novels.blogspot.com/2009/01/temp-most-popular.html

So, it has been two weeks since I put my ebook up online for free. I've made less than
$10, but I am writing up a storm and loving the adventure.

Finally, I stumbled across a website that said that keeping a blog about something you are working on is the easiest way to write a book....so here I am blogging away.

• Keep writing and look for new projects (check). lol