Category: What’s Up Wednesdays

eBooks to Keep, Part 2: Smashwords

Options are great — especially when it comes to where to get eBooks to KEEP! 🙂

Today, I’m going to take you down a rambling path to show you some about how to get eBooks to keep from Smashwords (and there’s a freebie that only free from until May 1 because I needed it for demonstration purposes. The link is below the video.)

So, how many times do I say “and I think that’s it” before I finally mean it? LOL You’ll have to watch to find out — but it’s more than one and maybe more than three? I forgot to count when I was editing.

I also tried my hand at a few edits to increase or decrease the size of my image and move it around during the video. Always learning and hopefully improving over time.

Enjoy!

PS. Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel. Thanks!

Link to And Then Love at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1189409

Link to With Quill and Ink at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1189190

Link to Don’t Tell My Heart It Can Heal (that’s my Annilee book) at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1508867

Find me on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/leeniebrown


Writing While Wearing Jane Austen Coloured Glasses (Touches of Austen books 1 and 4)

In this video, I’m talking about my Touches of Austen series. Well, two books from it actually — His Beautiful Bea and His Irreplaceable Belle. These are two original sweet Regency romances that include some deliberate nods to one of my favourite authors — Jane Austen.

Enjoy!

Some Extras:

His Beautiful Bea is now available to listen to for free here on YouTube at this link:

There is also a short and sweet vignette that was inspired by the youngest Clayton brother and some things that happened in book 2 of the series. You can listen to that at this link:


Ebooks to Keep, Part 1: Patreon

Recently, there was a kerfuffle about Amazon, when the way they allowed people to download ebooks was altered just slightly. (You can no longer download and transfer books via USB.) This led to an Amazon boycott by some, which came on top of a couple other boycotts of Amazon for various reasons.

(And candidly, those boycotts hurt small sellers on Amazon a whole lot more than they do Amazon itself. But I don’t want to get depressing here, so I’ll leave it at that for now.)

Today, I’m sharing both a way to help support me and my work, and a way to get copies of my ebooks to keep — and transfer to other devices via USB if you so choose. 🙂

There are actually two ways to get my books in such a fashion, but I’m starting with how to download them from Patreon if you’re a paid member.

I use Bookfunnel to distribute advance reader copies of books, too, so this how-to would be the same for those.

Enjoy!


Novelettes . . . where nature plays a part

Today, I’m sharing my (Leenie’s) Nature’s Fury and Delights collection of novelettes with you. Or should I say rambling on about my Nature’s Fury collection since I was struggling with some brain fog issues when I recorded this yesterday. 🙂

I’m also trying out a new mic set up. One of these days I’ll get all the tech stuff figured out. (I hope LOL) Probably about the time I start to feel a bit more comfortable being on camera? Maybe?

Enjoy!


BTS: How I upload a story to Patreon collections

Sorry this one is getting posted a bit late today (in the afternoon rather than the morning for me). I managed to pick up a head cold somewhere and so took a couple of sick days. I’m still sick, but I can think a bit better today and my eyes aren’t watering too badly so I can wear my glasses and see. 🙂 And that meant I could get this video sorted out and posted so I could share it here. (Thankfully, I had recorded this before I got sick!)

Here’s what it’s about:

In this What’s Up Wednesday installment, I’m showing you the process I use to upload a book to the Collections section of my Patreon page.

AND…

In the process of getting this video ready to share, I learned a new editing skill. (yay!) You’ll hear me apologize for background sounds that I knew my mic was going to pick up in the background. And did it ever pick them up. (I need a better mic)

I thought that this video was going to be a lost cause. That I was going to have to just scrap it and start over. But then, I searched YouTube for how to remove background noises in videos, and while I did not find one that told me to use the software I had, the steps were the same. Here’s what I did:

  1. I opened the video in Clipchamp and detached the audio.
  2. I downloaded the audio from there and then, uploaded it to the voice isolator on Elevenlabs (that’s the software I use to create my audiobooks).
  3. I clicked the isolate button. Waited. And then downloaded the new file.
  4. Then, I just uploaded the new audio file to Clipchamp and replaced the old audio with one that didn’t have the annoying humming and all that in the background.

This is an exciting new skill for me since I don’t have a door on my “office” and my mic is not super great, so there are frequent sounds going on around me and being picked up by the mic. So, this is one step towards better videos (or so I hope.) 🙂

Anyway… I hope you enjoy this look behind the scenes at one task from my author life.

Enjoy!

Leenie

This video is long — just over 27 minutes! There are links to various portions (chapters) of the video in the description on YouTube if you want timestamps to jump between.