Spring Fling Blog Hop - Giveaway!

 Update: and the WINNER is: burbanette
 Congratulations!


What's to win on this blog?

If you are in the US, you can win an autographed paperback copy of Edge of Passion (Cloak Warriors #1), and if you're an international entrant, you can win an e-copy of the same book.

All you need to do is to leave a comment with your email address, and write US or International in the comment. The winner will be drawn on April 28 - and the paperback will be mailed after May 9th (since I'm currently traveling in Europe).

Enjoy,
Tina

Review

... up there with the likes of J.R. Ward and Lara Adrian ... - Book Devotee Reviews
... Just perfect. I can not wait till the next Cloak Warriors installment comes out!! - Bitten By Love Reviews
... Awesome new series & so different than anything I've read in a while... - Goodreads

USA Today called Tina Folsom an e-book rock star!

Product Description

From the International Bestselling Author of the Scanguards Series:

Able to render themselves invisible, immortal Cloak Warriors like Aiden have been protecting humans from the dark power of the Demons of Fear for centuries. But the demons might soon have a powerful tool in their hands to seduce humans to the dark side. And the person to provide them with this elixir is the human scientist Leila. Unbeknownst to her, the drug she's developing to cure Alzheimer's Disease has the unexpected side effect of weakening the mind's resistance to the influence of demons.

The Council of Cloak Warriors is divided, some of them believing the only safe way to eradicate this threat is to eliminate its inventor; others are bent on protecting the human scientist. Aiden is a loyal Cloak Warrior who accepts the assignment to protect her, despite his own beliefs that humans can't be trusted. However, when her life is endangered, his beliefs shift, and he's drawn into a battle whose participants are unknown: is he fighting the demons or his fellow Cloak Warriors?

Forbidden desire flares between Aiden and Leila as they are forced to rely on the only people they can trust: each other. And even if he can save her and defeat their enemies, a union between them might be the most dangerous undertaking of all.

Any fan of J.R. Ward, Kresley Cole, and Lara Adrian will love Edge of Passion!

 

Are translations the next frontier in e-book self-publishing?

In October 2010 I was interviewed for my hometown newspaper back in Germany. I had just started to make money in self-publishing, but had no idea that only two months later, things would really turn in my favor, making me into a ‘self-publishing e-book rock star’ as Joyce Lamb from USA Today  calls me.

One question, the journalist from the Bayerwald Echo in Cham, Germany ask me was, why I didn’t write my books in German. At the time, I laughed and told him that there was no way I would find the right words in German. After all, I now think in English - living in English-speaking countries for over 25 years can do that to anybody!

But the idea of having books out in German didn’t quiet down. At first, discouraged by the high prices some translators were quoting, I decided to contact foreign rights agents to see if they would consider selling my self-published books to foreign publishers. That way, I wouldn’t have to take on the daunting task of finding a translator, an editor, and proofreaders. Alas, no foreign rights agent wanted to touch me.

A few months passed before I decided to just jump in and do it on my own. I searched long and hard for translators in three languages: German, French, and Spanish. It took me a while to put the right teams together. After all, you can’t expect a translator to turn over a perfect product: there’ll always be words and sentences that could be translated to sound better, there’ll always be typos and grammatical errors. 

It was lucky that at least with German and French (which I speak fluently, but not perfectly), I could check up on the accuracy of the translations myself. In German, I do even more: I now edit the text that comes back from my translator. And I think this really helps: my voice comes through in the German editions of my books, turning my books into what I want them to be. And this might be one of the reasons for my success in Germany: so far, I’ve published the first three books in my bestselling Scanguards Vampires series in German, and all three of them have hit the Top 100 Kindle Bestseller list on Amazon.de. 

That’s something I never expected. Now, my income from Amazon.de from three books alone is a nice salary on its own. And if the French and the Spanish markets develop in the same direction, I’ll be ecstatic.

Germany is one of the largest romance market in the world, and US self-publishers should not ignore this market, nor the rest of Europe or Latin America. There are untapped areas here that have still not been exploited. Publishers are slow to move into those areas, but self-publishers can act quicker. And maybe it’s time they should.

German Edition of Gabriel's Mate hits Top 100 Kindle on Release Day!

This is so exciting and totally unexpected: I released my third German book in the Scanguards Vampires series on Kindle overnight. Less than 24 hours later, it has hit the Bestseller list in the German Kindle Store on Amazon. That's the ENTIRE German Kindle store, not just Romance!

Now, all three German Scanguards books have hit the Top 100 Kindle Bestseller List in Germany!

My translator is already busy working on book four, which I hope to release in June this year.

Many thanks to all my loyal readers in Germany!