Tag: ebook

new blog post: Project Shop My Shelves: Q3 2025 Update Project Shop My Shelves: Q3 2025 Update
Project Shop My Shelves

Project Shop My Shelves: Q3 2025 Update

Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

Back in March, I decided that I wanted to start Project Shop My Shelves (known as PSMS going forward). The goal of PSMS is to read twice as many books per month than I buy, but there are a few sub-goals that are equally important:

  • Don’t buy new books unless they are from marginalized authors (indie or trad)
  • A 2:1 ratio of old books to newly bought books every month (or more if possible)
  • Read through the older books to finally get them off the TBR pile
  • Be realistic about my enjoyment of an author and what medium I prefer to read them
  • Post quarterly about my progress with this project

I figured now was as good a time as any to update my progress with this self-imposed project. TL;DR: I did better this quarter, so there is hope for me. Here are my stats for the third quarter of 2025.

Stats:

July: I bought 5 ebooks, 0 ARCs, 4 physical books, 0 audiobooks. I read 9 books, 3 of which were preexisting, 1:1 bought to read ratio.

August: I bought 7 ebooks, 0 ARCs, 2 physical books, 0 audiobooks. I read 8 books, 1 of which was preexisting, 9:8 bought to read ratio.

September: I bought 4 ebooks, 0 ARCs, 5 physical books, 0 audiobooks. I read 8 books, 4 of which were preexisting, 9:8 bought to read ratio.

Not going to lie, my ratio for July would have looked MUCH worse had I counted all the books I received for my birthday as part of my purchases. I decided not to lump them into it because I didn’t buy them and couldn’t control how many I received. I mention it because I did talk about it at the end of Q2 and debated how I would count them.

Buying Books: A Breakdown

The theme of my book buying this quarter was queer and neurodivergent with a side of nonfiction. Since I’ve been hard at work on The Reanimator’s Fate, a good chunk of my purchases have been nonfiction books related to research for book 4. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole in regards to antique books, book collecting, etc. The flipside of this is that I have been loving the Murderbot books, so I bought the first six books in the series. Oops, sorry not sorry with those. July’s purchases were graphic novel heavy since several series I enjoy released new volumes that month, and of course, I bought and read them.

I tried very hard this quarter to be more mindful about what I was buying. Most of the ebooks I bought were on sale for a very good price and were books I have wanted to read or by authors I enjoy. I am trying not to get ahead of myself and buy a whole series without having read book one yet, especially if it’s by a new to me author. It’s hard sometimes to not get excited about books that sound cool or buy a whole series to support a friend. Balancing being supportive of creators I’m friends with or who are marginalized with mindless consumerism isn’t always easy for me because I know how important sales are to continuing peoples’ careers.

Reading Books: A Breakdown

My reading this quarter was heavily skewed toward a handful of authors: Martha Wells (6), Veronica Roth (3), Elizabeth Lim (3), and T. Kingfisher gets an honorable mention with 2 books read. I have been in a bit of a reading slump due to feeling mildly fried by the world and writing, so I have been gravitating toward any book that catches my interest. Unfortunately, that often meant the brand new books I just bought, like the MurderBot books and Veronica Roth’s short stories/novellas. Part of this challenge is reading the books I own rather than books I recently bought, and while I have been doing this, it hasn’t been on the forefront of my mind. Elizabeth Lim’s books do meet this criteria as they have been sitting on my TBR for over a year (oops). If you’ve ever been in a book slump, you know how fickle your reading habits can be and how hard it can be to get through books that just aren’t doing it for you at the moment.

Quarter 4 Goals/Outlook

I’m hoping to keep my buy to read ratio for Q4 at 1:1 or better. October is a month where I have quite a few preorders coming up for graphic novels and manga I enjoy. On one hand, ahhhh purchases. On the other, I tend to read them immediately, which helps keep that ratio low. The rest of the year looks pretty empty in terms of preorders because I tend to scale back on my spending before the Christmas holidays. Much like my birthday, I don’t plan to count books given to me at Christmas as part of my purchases because I can’t control the volume of books I receive. In Q4, I am hoping that I will get over my book slump and read more than I have been. Usually, my workload peaks in November, and everything eases up after that. My hope is that will help make it easier to read without feeling like pulling teeth. I’m also planning to set aside purposeful time each day for reading because once I start, it feels less onerous and does refill my well. It’s amazing how reading helps, but my brain makes it so hard to start due to being fried. I’d love to know the psychology behind that. Because I don’t have a giant stack of preorders coming, this will also force me to read books I already own (hopefully). If you follow on me on social media, you may have seen me restock my TBR coffin, and I plan to use that to help me knock my TBR down a bit.

new blog post: The reanimator's heart is only 99¢ The Reanimator’s Heart is Only 99¢!
The Reanimator's Heart

The Reanimator’s Heart is Only 99¢!

Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

You read that correctly, The Reanimator’s Heart ebook is currently on sale for 99¢ for a limited time. The price should be the same across all platforms and [most] countries (sadly, I cannot guarantee every country as the retail sites can be finicky). It is on sale from now until September 6th.

The Reanimator's Heart by Kara Jorgensen is on sale for 99cents for a limited time at all major retailers mm romance, forced proximity, a lavender marriage, murder/magic/mysteries, everybody's queer, an autistic necromancer, unbury your gays, food tour of 1890s NYC

Grab your copy now if you want an autistic necromancer who accidentally reanimates his murdered crush and teams up with him to solve his murder. It is available at all major retailers, including Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Apple Books, and library systems. You can also find it in paperback or audiobook as well, though they are not on sale right now.

You can also preorder book 2, The Reanimator’s Soul, at all major retailers (except Google Play, which is coming soon). Paperbacks will be available closer to release day, and the audiobook will come out in 2024.

As always, if you enjoyed The Reanimator’s Heart, I hope you will tell your friends about this sale and leave a review if you are willing/able. They help small creators like me more than you could know.

Writing

Release Day and Sale

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IMD Sale

To celebrate the release of The Earl and the Artificer (IMD #3), the entire Ingenious Mechanical Devices series is on sale this weekend! On Saturday, January 30th and Sunday, January 31st, you will be able to get the entire series for under a cup of Starbucks.

You can find the books here:

The Earl of Brass (IMD#1): FREE

The Winter Garden (IMD#20): $0.99

“An Oxford Holiday” (short story): FREE

The Earl and the Artificer (IMD#3):$0.99

 

**The prices above are only guaranteed for Amazon US. I’m not 100% sure if the sales will appear on all markets, so please check before you click buy**

Writing

One Week Until…

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eata final cover

In one week, the Earl and the Artificer is released! One more week to pre-order it at 99 cents.

I can’t believe the release day is nearly here.

While waiting for the release of book three, I have been hard at work formatting the paperback and doing a little updating of The Earl of Brass and The Winter Garden. I know that when I formatted The Earl of Brass two years ago, I have no idea what I was doing, so I decided to reformat the paperback version and tidy it up. The new version should be on Amazon now ready to go. Not much has changed, but as the author, the places I screwed up are glaring to me and have been since I finished book two.

proofproof1

 

The same day, the proof of The Earl and the Artificer came in the mail and looks fantastic! I was so afraid it wouldn’t get here before the blizzard that’s supposed to hit today. The paperback should be available on Amazon in a few days, so stay tuned for more updates on The Earl and the Artificer.

 

 

If you’re trapped in the house from the blizzard or just want a new series to lose yourself in, try out the Ingenious Mechanical Devices.

The Earl of Brass

The Winter Garden

“An Oxford Holiday”

The Earl and the Artificer (pre-order, out January 30th)

Monthly Review

August in Review

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Starting in January, I decided it would be a good idea to look back at each month and see what I have accomplished in my writing and marketing as well as reflect upon what needs to be improved in the future.

Much like July, August has been a rather productive month. It seems so long ago that it just started, and I am absolutely amazed that it’s already over. This month I have tried to get as much done as possible before graduate school started again for me in September. Usually when school starts, my productivity tanks for a while as I adjust, but I’m hopeful that September won’t be too bad.

What I did accomplish:

  1. Published my series companion short story “An Oxford Holiday” on Amazon
  2. Wrote 25,000 words of The Earl and the Artificer (60,000 words total)
  3. Met my “far” word count goal for the month
  4. Read For Love or Money by Susan Kaye Quinn and 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love
  5. Released the audiobook for The Earl of Brass
  6. Proofed the first 15 minute clip for the audiobook of The Winter Garden
  7. Put The Earl of Brass ebook on sale for 99 cents for a limited time.

Goals for September:

  1. Write at least 10,000 words of The Earl and the Artificer (but optimally more like 15k to 20k)
  2. Read 2-3 books
  3. Manage my grad school stress
  4. Continue to write every day
  5. Balance life, writing, and fun
  6. Refill my creative reservoirs
  7. Possibly work on another bonus short story (if an idea takes shape)

So I think I have finally found something that works when it comes to keeping my productivity up and at a good pace. Seriously, the word count tracking spreadsheet has done wonders. I’m now about 60,000 words into The Earl and the Artificer, which blows my mind because I’m over 2/3 through it! A few months ago, that was unimaginable. Now, the end is in sight in a few months (probably October). During this time, I also finished and released the audiobook of The Earl of Brass and the ebook of “An Oxford Holiday” on Amazon. Now that I know I can work on a short story and a novel without sacrificing either, I hope to release more companion short stories in the future. The best case scenario is that I might be able to release a Halloween themed one in October, but I can make no promises there, especially with the semester starting. I also got a glimpse of the audiobook for The Winter Garden, and it is perfect! I am so looking forward to hearing more, and while I would like to say that I hope my narrator will send me some this month, I won’t push it. He has a life outside of narrating.

This has been an odd month. I’m feeling very productive in terms of what I have produced, but as of the last few days, I’m feeling incredibly drained. Last week, I had a workshop to go to, which is mandatory for my degree. I enjoyed it and it was incredibly interesting (about teaching writing), but it kind of drained me. It’s hard for me to be social and outgoing while surrounded by new people. It’s done now, just in time for the semester to start. Yay… Prepare to see me crawl back into my shell for about a month while I continually scream internally until I’ve adjusted to dealing with people again. Current status: exhausted and in denial that school is starting again in a few days. Today, I will be reading and chilling with my dogs in hopes of recovering some of that creative mojo since it’s edging toward burn-out level.

Kate

This month also brought a new addition to our family: Miss Kate (named by my dad). Kate is a border weenie, meaning she is dachshund and border collie. If you think she looks oddly familiar, it’s because we have 2 other border collie mixes (Edgar and Finny) who are also black and white and look a lot like her. The boys are still ignoring her, but they seem to be getting along. Don’t let her cute face and squeaky toy voice fool you, she has plenty of attitude. She already hip-checked Edgar and took a bone from his mouth.

For September, my hope is that I can keep writing every day, even if it’s only a few hundred words. 500 a day for 30 days still equates to 15,000 words. I only have two more semesters of grad school left until I have my MFA in creative writing, so I just need to power through and get it done. Who knows, maybe I’ll even be able to start outlining book four of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices. I’d love to begin writing that while editing The Earl and the Artificer.

One last thing of note: The Earl of Brass is on sale for 99 cents for a limited time on Kindle. You can pick it up here.

eob 99c promo

Writing

Project Announcement: An Ingenious Mechanical Devices Short

Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

Hi everyone,

I have decided (now that I’m about halfway in) to announce that the first short companion story for my steampunk/historical fantasy series the Ingenious Mechanical Devices will be out by the end of the summer.

What is it?

The story will be roughly 5,000 words or so and will take place after the events of The Winter Garden (IMD #2). It will be a standalone, but obviously, it would make more sense if it was read along with the other Ingenious Mechanical Devices stories. The working title is “An Oxford Holiday,” the story revolves around Adam journeying to Oxford to visit Immanuel. Unfortunately, getting a little privacy and time together is more difficult than it seems. The story will be offered for free on all platforms when it is finished (Amazon may take a few days to catch up with the other ebook platforms).

Why do this?

It may seem odd for an author to post something so short and for free, but I’m thinking of this short story as a free sample, a bonus for being a loyal reader or an incentive for new readers to give my work a try. I also know that it will take me a while to finish writing The Earl and the Artificer, so by releasing a short story, I’ll hopefully keep my readers interested between the two books. Recently, I have been reading K. J. Charles’s A Charm of Magpies series, and one of the things I love about them is that she writes short stories to go along with her books. It’s a great little teaser between stories, and I devour them just as I do her full-length novels. It’ll just be a light, fun story, but it will hopefully add a bit to the series and give a hint as to what will happen in book four when Adam and Immanuel reappear.

Additional Information

If you get the chance, please drop by my Progress and Projects page at the menu bar. Every few days I’ll be updating my word count bars as I progress. You can also check out what I’m working on and what I’ll be tackling in the future. Stay tuned for more info about my projects, and hopefully in the coming weeks, I’ll have a date for the release of “An Oxford Holiday.”

If you would like news about new releases, promos, and previews of future projects, please sign-up for my newsletter.

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Writing

Diversifying Distribution

Kara Jorgensen5 Comments

d2d

For the past year, I have had my books on only Amazon/Kindle because I wanted to be enrolled in their program KDP select, which allowed me to run sales and for others to download my book via Kindle Unlimited, which gave me a certain amount if the reader read past 10% of my book. Honestly, I have no complaints about being strictly on the Kindle (along with paperbacks), but I know that many of my readers do not use a Kindle.

This is the main reason I decided to branch out. I didn’t want to limit my audience to my own preferences, so I decided to look into services that distributed to other ebook servces. There are basically two choices: Smashwords and Draft2Digital.

When I first published The Earl of Brass, I decided to get my manuscript professionally formatted, so I could upload it to Smashwords. I paid less than $50 for formatting, but despite being professionally formatted, Smashwords still wouldn’t release the story to iBooks or put it in their premium catalog, which is reserved for perfectly formatted manuscripts. No matter how many times I or the formatter tinkered with it, it still wouldn’t go through. I gave up and pulled my manuscript off Smashwords and stayed exclusively on Kindle. I was frustrated and not particularly willing to try to branch out again despite possibly finding a wider audience. At that time, Smashwords was the main deal because they branched out to the most services, but since then, Draft2Digital has stepped up as a viable alternative.

I’m trying not to make this a PSA about how wonderful D2D is, but I have to gush over how much easier it was to use than Smashwords. Instead of having to feed my manuscript through a “meat grinder,” which usually kicks it out telling you what is wrong with the formatting of the manuscript, D2D allows you to simply upload a word document, and they convert it to other formats. No following a 200 page long style guide, no meat grinder, no putting my head through the plaster with frustration. I was in heaven. It would still be prudent to use a cleanly formatted word document (12 pt font, times new roman or garamond, 1.15 spacing, and justified), but the process was so easy. At first, I was suspicious. How great could it be if it was that easy and they only take a small royalty? Well, they may not distribute to ALL of the sites Smashwords does, but it distributes to these major distributors: iBooks, Nook, Scribd, Kobo, Tolino (big in Germany, which has a high English-speaking population), and the Page Foundry. I uploaded The Earl of Brass on the 9th, and by the 10th, it was on all six of the platforms. It even automatically created a table of contents for my book by searching it for the distinctive bolding and font size I used on chapter headers. It was fantastic.

Okay, well, I lied when I said I wouldn’t gush. The downside is that unlike Smashwords, D2D does not have a centralized store/directory where I can directly sell all of my books in epub or mobi format. Hopefully in the future they will open that service. One of the things I love is that they are still expanding their distribution channels and website, so who knows if D2D will catch up with Smashwords in terms of distribution channels. For now, I’m content to have my books out on seven different channels along with paperbacks.

Some may wonder what the point is of diversifying platforms when Amazon has such a high percentage of the market? Well, I want my book in as many readers’ hands as I can, and I can only do that if I hit most of the major platforms. More than likely, Amazon will still be where the majority of my sales are, but I know several people personally who use a Nook or Kobo. Plus, I want my books to be perceived as professional, and while Amazon is great, a professional author should also have their books on other platforms (or at least that is what I think). I want people to be able to read my book and not have to download a special app to do it.

Over the weekend, I plan on uploading The Winter Garden as well, but it doesn’t faze out of KDP Select until the June 12th. By Sunday, it should be live on iBooks, Nook, Scribd, Tolino, the Page Foundry, Kobo, and Kindle in ebook form. If you’re interested in picking up a copy on these new platforms, please head to the tab at the top of the page marked Buy Links where all of the ebook links have been updated for The Earl of Brass and will shortly be updated for The Winter Garden as well.

If you would like news about new releases, promos, and previews of future projects, please sign-up for my newsletter.

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Writing

Both Books on Sale This Weekend

Kara Jorgensen4 Comments

For the holiday weekend and the vote for gay marriage in Ireland, both books of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices series are on sale for 99 cents on Amazon.

2 books 99 centsThe Earl of Brass: http://amzn.com/B00L4CWBVE
The Winter Garden: http://amzn.com/B00RU0R0YW

Both are set in the Victorian era and explore characters navigating a world that they feel excluded from. There’s cross-dressing, archaeology digs, underground civilizations, mad noblemen, soul-stealing machines, and a bit of romance.

If you’re willing, please spread the word and tell your friends. Sale ends Tuesday morning.

Writing

The Winter Garden has Launched!

Kara Jorgensen6 Comments

wg proof 1kindle wgThe Winter Garden, book two in the Ingenious Mechanical Devices series, has officially launched in ebook or paperback, which can be purchased here.  The ebook is still 99 cents for a limited time.

Okay, now that the shameless self-promotion is out of the way, I want to thank everyone who pre-ordered a copy or will buy one in the future. Writers are nothing without readers, and I have been made to feel loved by my readers and appreciate everyone and anyone who has ever asked when the next book was coming out or how they could help me promote my work or left a review. Continue reading “The Winter Garden has Launched!” →