Print editions are here!

The moment your bookshelf has been longing for has finally arrived! After much trial and error (and many messed up books) print editions of A DRAGON OF A DIFFERENT COLOR and 2K TO 10K are now available!

Yay!

Both books are trade paper back size printed on good quality paper, and for my book collecting Heartstrikers fans, #4 should line up with all the others for that classy series-on-a-shelf effect. Oh yeah, we're stylish.

I know this took much longer than expected. Thank you all so much for your patience and for being my fans. I hope you enjoy the print editions of A DRAGON OF A DIFFERENT COLOR and 2K TO 10K! Make sure to take the time and breathe in that new book smell!!

I'd like to promise the next one will be on time, but the whole "making a physical object" bit has been the hardest part of self publishing for me so far. Damn, you, physics! I'm going to be looking into ways to make better books faster for the future, but in the meanwhile, I hope you enjoy these.

Thanks again! 

Yours,

Rachel

A DRAGON OF A DIFFERENT COLOR is out now!

It's time! It's finally time! 

Heartstrikers book 4, A DRAGON OF A DIFFERENT COLOR launches today!! The ebook is now up on Amazon and available to read for free on Kindle Unlimited! Hooray!

BOOM BABY!

For those of you who love the audio edition, Vikas Adams is recording it right now and it should be available in September. To be notified when it drops (and get a lot of other awesome stuff before anyone else), sign up for my New Release Mailing List! 

We're also working on the print edition right now and that should be up soon as well, so you can have dragons in whatever style you want!!

As always, thank you all so much for subscribing and reading! You're the reason these books exist, and I cannot thank you enough for being my fans.

Happy reading, and I hope you love A DRAGON OF A DIFFERENT COLOR!

Yours always,

Rachel

Interview with the Creative Penn!

I've been a fangirl of Joanna Penn's The Creative Penn since I first started wondering about self publishing. Naturally, then, when fans suggested Joanna and I do an interview on Twitter, I could not say yes fast enough, and here it is!!

We had a fantastic time, and if you enjoy publishing shop talk, I think you will, too. We talk abut writing fast (obvs), how to write for long stretches, marketing, working with spouses, creating story arcs, and a whole bunch more. It really was a blast, so go listen!

Audio podcast link. (with links for Apple and Android)

There's also a text transcript of the interview at the bottom of the post, in case you just want to read!

If you don't already read it, Joanna's Creative Penn is one of the best sources for serious business talk about indie publishing on the internet. I've been a fan for years and stolen many, many good ideas from her and her guests. Can not recommend enough! Thank you so much to Joanna for having me.

Hope everyone's week goes well, and happy writing!
- Rachel

Heartstrikers 4 sample chapters!

The wait has been long and brutal, but...are you ready to read a sample of A DRAGON OF A DIFFERENT COLOR?

The book has been up on Amazon for about three weeks now, and the preorders are blowing me out of the water. You guys are amazing!!! 

To fan the flames of anticipation even higher, we've put up a sample from Chapter 1 on the website for all of you to read! 

Of course, those of you are on my mailing list already know this, because I just sent you an exclusive link to an even bigger chunk of the book. Twice as big at least, because you're awesome like that :D!

So if you're on my mailing list, make sure to check your inboxes! And if you're not on my mailing list, why not? That's where all the good stuff is! It's free and I promise never to spam you or give your information to anyone else. I only send emails when I have books coming out or when I'm giving you exclusive content, like this sample and the Heartstrikers short story Mother of the Year, so if you're not signed up already, do it! If you like my books at all, it's basically a funnel of awesome stuff.

Okay, okay, enough promo. I really hope you enjoy the sample chapters! Thank you as always for being my readers, and be sure to preorder your copy of A DRAGON OF A DIFFERENT COLOR so it can magically appear on your Kindle at midnight!

Yours always,

Rachel

It's finally here!! Heartstrikers 4 Cover Reveal and Release Date!

The wait is finally over!

A DRAGON OF A DIFFERENT COLOR comes out July 28!

I love this cover! Who is that fire dragon on Marci's shoulder, hmm?

To save his family from his tyrannical mother, Julius had to step on a lot of tails. That doesn’t win a Nice Dragon many friends, but just when he thinks he’s starting to make progress, a new threat arrives.  

Turns out, things can get worse. Heartstriker hasn’t begun to pay for its secrets, and the dragons of China are here to collect. When the Golden Emperor demands his surrender, Julius will have to choose between loyalty to the sister who's always watched over him and preserving the clan he gave everything to protect.

Pre-order it nooooooooooow! 

At long last, the wait is over! The fourth Heartstrikers book, A DRAGON OF A DIFFERENT COLOR comes out July 28!

What happened in China? Where's Marci? What the hell is Bob doing? I know book three left you with a lot of questions (because you flooded my inbox with them), but now the answers are finally upon us.

A DRAGON OF A DIFFERENT COLOR is the next to last book in the Heartstrikers series (that's right! 5 books!). If you've liked the books so far, you are going to love this novel. It's huge, it's epic, it's full of dragon drama, Bob's pigeon wears a a cute little hat...I'm just totally in love with it, and I know you will be, too!

Closer to launch, I'll be posting an excerpt from the new book on my website, so keep your eyes on the blog or follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter to make sure you get in on that sweet sample chapter action.

Of course, subscribers to my New Release Mailing List get even more sample chapters, exclusive special content like the Mother of the Year short, and they get all my announcements first, so maybe sign up for that if you're not already? I promise not to spam you! ^_^

Bethesda voice, "You know you want it."

As always, thank you all so so much for reading. I couldn't do any of this without you guys. You're the reason Julius, Marci, Bob, Chelsie, and everyone else is here, and I really can't thank you enough.

I really hope you check out the book. Happy Friday, and I'll talk to you again soon!

Yours always,
Rachel Aaron
Mother of Dragons Bethesda's Unpaid Intern

A DRAGON OF A DIFFERENT COLOR is the fourth book in the Heartstrikers series. If you're new, start from the beginning with NICE DRAGONS FINISH LAST! I promise you won't be sorry!

Which Paid Marketing Works (and Doesn't Work) for Books

Hi Folks,

See? We're not gone totally! In fact, I have a massive, crunchy, and highly informative blog post for you all today. This post was over a year (and more money than I'd like to admit) in the making. I do hope you all find it useful, we certainly have. Today's post is all about marketing, paid marketing in particular.

Which Paid Marketing Works for Books. (and which doesn't...)

This summer, we embarked on a massive marketing effort for No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished. I had the whole campaign planned out with something new and interesting happening every week or every other week. We had our target customers, channels, and funnels all setup. To complete the package, we tracked the crap out of everything we did.

For the important parts of this article, we ran Facebook ads, we used Amazon Marketing Services, we commissioned art, and dropped list bait. We did a LOT is what I'm saying.

We spent thousands of dollars on marketing and today I'm going to share our data with you. 

I cannot bold that enough. This was, at the end of the day, a grand experiment for Aaron/Bach, LLC. We put down serious cash and we hired a professional data-driven marketing firm, Proof Industries to help us put it all together. Additionally, the whole effort coincided during a time of the year (launch) when we had maximum leverage working for us.

Now, I'm going to show you what we actually did, how well it's worked, and compare it to past marketing efforts to show how it stacks up. This is going to be one hell of a post.

So, first...

I want to plug the good folks over at Proof Industries. We threw an entire multi-channel marketing campaign at them in May and they made it happen starting in June. I could not have set up all the tracking infrastructure and hundreds of Facebook ads myself. They also helped us monitor the whole shebang as it happened and ran the post-mortem. 

Big thanks to Zach, Josh, and Ansley for helping us pull it all off!