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My new paranormal thriller : The thunderbolt effect

  My new paranormal thriller is here. The blurb: Frustrated with her job, Susan Grant is desperate to change her life. Curious about what her future may hold, she visits her aunt Dorothy Brown, a tarot master, for a reading. As Susan and her husband Charles return from the trip to Dover, they are involved in a car accident, during which a thunderbolt hits Susan leading to shocking consequences. Nothing will be the same after Susan's personality changes. The review: Multi-genre author Kristina Gallo has a talent for writing high-octane novella length thrillers, and ‘The Thunderbolt Effect’ is no exception. The plot revolves around the female members of one family: Dorothy Brown, a widow and accomplished Tarot reader whose accurate predictions are much sought after; her sister, Alice Smith, an adulteress who died in a suspicious car accident; and Alice’s daughter, Susan Grant, trapped in a dead-end job as an advertising analyst. Driving home from Dover after a Tarot reading with her ...
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Recent posts

How you will recognize indie author - amateur?

Inspired by a lot of messages I got on Instagram from authors, I wish to make difference between amateurs and professional authors. It is clearly that you can't come in inbox with your link and asking for a review or purchase. This show egocentrism, bad manners and a lack of knowledge about promotions.  What makes confussion to some new authors? The act of following. If I follow you, it doesn't mean I will automatically read your books. I will not.  Your likes or comments. If I like your book cover, I will not automatically buy the book. I do it from courtesy or I return the like. The view on stories. If I view your story, I will not buy the book. The fact is, I am the author. This means I write my books, I have daily job, I make promotion for my books. Yes, I have TBR list but this is about 30 books per year, that is made at the start of this year and it will not update soon. A professional author will not brag about lack of followers. He will not brag about many followers, t...
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Artificial intelligence : bad master and good servant

Everyone talks about AI because this is a topic you can't avoid . What you knew about books and writing could be forgotten when you talk about AI. I start to write when I was sixteen. I was writing in my notebook. Soon I had a bunch of notebooks, and many pencils. Some of that manuscripts stayed on my shelf, never published. The pages of notebook are yellow and full of dust. After this, I was writing on a typing machine. It was unpractical work . My hands got  dirty from black color of printer toner and I had many of typing errors that wasted my time.  With the age of computer, my work progressed. 2017 I was publishing my first book in Amazon Kindle. Today, I have cell phones, tablet and laptop, I can pick where to write. What did not change is my desire to write. I have this narrative instinct inside of me.  When I hear people talk about AI covers and AI books, I froze. It looks, anyone can write with a help of AI. That is gross. I remember guys from my high school who w...
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Is it fair to talk about editing in the review?

As someone who is not a native English speaker, I face with opinions about book editing. I worked with few editors, but nobody is perfect and almighty. Errors are something that is a part of the book. Even famous authors have errors in their books, but readers are not complaining. If you are indie author, you need to be perfect, your books must be polished because you are not famous. It is good to warn readers about bad editing if a book is not readable. What is not fair, is when you based your review only on editing errors. When you wrote: "A book needs a work of editor. " "A book would be benefited with American or English editor", you are making a bad marketing for the author. The author might have small errors that are not noticeable, but for someone who is thinking about to buy the book, this could be a reason to give up. Besides, the book can be lost in a translation, when you have some phrases in your language, that doesn't sound the same in English versi...
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How social media drown book posts?

I f you post about books in social media, your images and links will get unnoticed. You will not get a big engagement. In average, you can get 10-20 views in Threads, 20 likes in Instagram and few reposts in Bluesky. X is worse, you can get few reposts and likes. Facebook will give you few shares and likes, if you post in author's groups you might get more.  YouTube will give you in average 200 visits and few likes, and the same situation is with Tik Tok. The conclusion is: people are not interested for book posts of indie author, because you are not Emily Henry, Freida Mc Fadden or Stephen King. When people see indie authors posts, they think how anyone could write and publish. If you try to get attention with personal photos, funny videos or concerts, even if you review movies and other books, situation is different. For video from the party I got 1.730 views, that is more than good. When I posted about Pisces Zodiac and tranzit of Saturn, I got 77 likes.  Algorythms are mer...
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Why you can't get a profit with Amazon ads?

Using Amazon advertising as a way of promoting books can get you sales. But, in the end of the promoting month, you will not get a profit. Probably, you will get less money than you invest. That is a reason why I am calculating with this way of promotion. When I advertised books in Amazon Germany, I paid eight euro for targeting my product. I got over 5000 impressions and many clicks. The unpleasant surprise was when I saw additional taxes for advertising, 8 euros bonus.  Who can get profit with this? It happens, when someone buy your book, Amazon advertising will do everything to get you as much money they can. First, they will count additional taxes. Then, Kindle will get their part of your royalties. After this, a national bank will get their part. What you get from this are remains. So, when I got 27 dollars of book sales, what was left was 16 dollars. For indie authors, Amazon ads are way of harrasing our wallet. We are not Emily Henry or Freida Mc Fadden to get a profit. If I...
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How much time you have to read books?

I saw an article about the influencer who read 200 books last year. Many people want viral post, and talking about reading books became a popular way to gain followers in social media. While authors post links in hope to sell their books and get reviews, scammers are using ways to get noticed by huge engagement. If we think realistic, it is impossible to read  a huge amount of books in a short time. To read you must have a good eyesight and plenty of free hours. Most of the people don't have this luxury. We have 40 hours working week, housework, and all this make us tired. If you can't sleep enough you will not have will to read. For reading books, you must be focused. When you have notifications in social media, that steals your focus. To be honest, I read 15 books last year. The rest of my To Be Read list I will finish this year. We are not robots, we can't stare at our phones 24 hours a day.  If you need to choose between walking in nature or reading, you will choose fre...
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Five myths about promo sites

Recently I asked for a featured Bookbub deal for one of my books. I got response that my book should be free priced and my expense would be 230 dollars. This is really funny, because I could expect people grab my book for free and give me one star (as it happens when books are available for everyone). To pay such amount of money would be waste and without a purpose. I am mix of traditional and indie author. Having a publisher, but not bestseller books, I am looking for ways to increase my book sales. Promo sites like Bookbub are very expensive and they offer their deals for 25% books from authors who applied for this. I had an insight to author's books who grabbed Bookbub deals. It works will authors who are already selling a good amount of their books. In general, promo sites are not working for favor of indie authors. These are five myths about promo sites: Promo sites give many readers. It is not true, because you will get visibility and many trolls, but not readers. Promo sites...
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