Remember the Coffee Shop Girls? (now Coffee & Curves)

Posted on March 6, 2022 by lorelei

If you’ve been following me for at least a couple of years, you might remember that at the end of 2019 I released a sexy little Office Christmas story, Mistletoe, which led into a series called the Coffee Shop Girls. And then the pandemic hit and I neglected to finish the series. Yeah, I know. Such a cliche. 😉

But, I’ve picked the series back up for 2022 and have decided to do a little rebrand first of all. From now on the series will be called Coffee & Curves, which I think is much snappier and catchier than before.

And to really kick things off, I’m releasing a bundle of the first 3 books (actually books 0-2 in the series), called Coffee & Curves: Books 0-2 (very original, I know). So, if you haven’t read these yet, now is the perfect opportunity to dive in at a discount! You’ll get Mistletoe, Fireworks and Illicit at an introductory price of only $3.99 if you buy it during March of 2022. (The price will go up to $4.99 after that, which still saves a bit of money compared to buying the three books individually!)

Happy reading!

Coffee & Curves: Books 0-2

Author: L. Moone
Series: Coffee & Curves Collections, Book 0
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Tag: Out Now
ASIN: B09TDYS8MX

About the Book

It’s all fun and games…
Until you fall head over heels for that hot older guy you’re not even supposed to look at.

And then you fall into bed together. Even though that’s wholly inappropriate. And then… Well, you’ll just have to read on to find out!

Catch up on the first three titles in L. Moone’s Coffee & Curves series: Mistletoe, Fireworks and Illicit, and let each story melt your heart as well as your kindle. If you love to read sexy & steamy instalove romances featuring curvy heroines and hot older men who can’t keep their eyes (as well as their hands) off their younger lovers, this bundle is going to tick all your boxes.

#0 Christmas with my Boss
Ian is my boss, at least until the end of the night. He’s off-limits, so naturally I’ve been crushing on him basically forever. But he’d never be interested in little old me, right? Then again, what if he is? Tonight might be my last chance to find out…

#1 Fireworks for the Billionaire
Lawrence isn’t a boy, he’s a man. From the moment I nearly accidentally stole his drink at the local coffee shop, I had an instinct that he’d be trouble. So obviously, I say yes when he asks me out. I had no idea just how much trouble he would end up being…

#2 Falling for myi Friend’s Dad
Who makes out with her friend’s dad? I do, apparently. But now that we both realized who we are to each other, surely we can just pretend it never happened and move on. Right? Right? Wrong. FML.

L. Moone

L. Moone is a Contemporary Romance and Women's Fiction writer based in rainy England. Addicted to caffeine, chocolate and impure thoughts, she likes to write short stories and novellas dealing with those aspects of the human condition that we all think about, yet dare not discuss openly. She also writes Paranormal Romance as Lorelei Moone.

Other Books in the "Coffee & Curves Collections"

Coffee & Curves: Books 3-5

Coffee & Curves

Look Inside

The Amazon Free Promotion Experiment; 2

Posted on February 6, 2013 by lorelei

amazon

Back in November I did a blog post about my first experience doing a free promotion with KDP Select on Amazon.

This initial free promotion was a bit of a failure considering I fell ill and didn’t manage to tell a single person about my free book. However, the results were interesting, giving me a baseline for what to expect with zero promotion.

Just to recap, I managed to get a bunch of downloads;
Amazon.com – 87
Amazon.co.uk – 33 (one of these was me)
Amazon.de – 11
Amazon.fr – 1

And the book reached spot 98 in the Amazon UK Erotic Fiction Free Bestseller category.

This time, I’m giving away a different book, Just Another Day at the Office – I and I even have a bit of a cunning plan.

I’m spamming the hell out of Facebook especially and to a lesser extent Twitter and Google+. If you’re my FB friend, you might want to ignore me during this period, after getting your free copy of course!
After reading the free book, readers who want to read more of my work can actually do so because I have more published (Last time the free book was my ONLY book).
Just Another Day at the Office – I, obviously, is only the first part of a larger work. My free promo coincides with the launch of part two. Hopefully my free promo will hook readers into buying the next part.
Compared to last time, I have some lovely writer friends who are helping to put the word out about this promo, and I even have some reviews already up on the book I’m giving away which should make it more attractive.

I cannot wait to see how this promo will play out!

Check back later, when I’ll update this post with the results.

Please note when comparing figures that the first giveaway lasted only one day, the current one will last two days.

The results are in!

Downloads; 2157 in total!
Amazon.com – 1887
Amazon.co.uk – 202 (one of these was me)
Amazon.de – 55
Amazon.fr – 2
Amazon.es – 2
Amazon.it – 1
Amazon.co.jp – 1
Amazon.ca – 7

Rankings:
#4 in Free Erotica on Amazon.com!

#9 in Free Erotica on Amazon.co.uk!

Reviews/Likes
I’ll be honest, I am not sure how many likes I had before the promo so it would be hard to measure any effect. But on 6 and 7 February (while the book was free) I did manage to get two awesome reviews on Amazon.com and one on Goodreads. Also, a few people marked it as “to read” on Goodreads on the 6th.

Resulting sales
It’s too early to tell if now that Just Another Day at the Office – I is no longer free, I might get sales based on how it performed in the rankings. I will post an update about this in a week or two. But, part two, which I launched at the same time as the free promo (with very limited marketing efforts comparatively) managed to achieve quite a few sales in these two days. Some will have been by readers who were already waiting for it to come out, but I suspect that a fair number were from people who may have wanted more of the same story after reading part one.

UPDATE:

18th Feb – Almost 2 weeks after the free promo, I can see a clear trend in my sales on Amazon. Note the graph below. the horizontal axis represents days, 1 being the day I did the free promo. The vertical axis shows the total sales up to that day. (Growth = I’ve sold something, Flat = no sales).

After giving away part one for free on 6 Feb, you can see a sharp rise in sales immediately after, since things have calmed down but I am still seeing more sales than I normally would during times when I’m not actively promoting my work. There is also a little effect on sales of Ladies’ Day, which I haven’t promoted at all for months.

Salesperday

Verdict
This went way better than I expected! I never thought I’d get close to 1000 downloads, never mind exceeding 2100! And hopefully using the free giveaway as a hook to get readers to try out more of my work will pay off beyond these few days as well. I’ll definitely do this again, whether with the same book or something new perhaps.

Thanks for the love :-)

Posted on January 24, 2013 by lorelei

I know it seems a whole lot like bragging, but I wanted to express how very grateful I am to have received some lovely reviews lately. Really!
Not bragging!

Just Another Day at the Office – I

UPDate 2019: The serialized version of Just Another Day at the Office is no longer available. Stay tuned for the re-release of the novel edition in Autumn 2019.

Good beginning to a series; 5* by Adam

Well, she’s done it again.

Hedonist Six – or Six, as her friends call her – is back up to her usual tricks, writing a story that is long on emotions and heavy on the innuendo, with lively and realistic dialogue.

She switches POV seamlessly between her male and female characters, giving each a unique voice; voices, I might add, which ring totally true to their genders.

And when the book ends, you REALLY want the next volume to be out. Like, NOW.

So – buy this book and maybe she’ll get cracking!

Should that be Ms Sex? 4* by Elizabeth

I like the structure of this book. Ms Six, or maybe I should say Ms Sex, moves the pace along using flowing paragraphs for intimate scenes, resulting in a breathless romp, eagerly driving her reader forward in an uninterrupted stream, a waterfall of prose delivers a sense of urgency. Both John and Cathy have humanity, which is cleverly drawn; it’s refreshing that there are no perfect creatures in this realistic story.

Between a Rock and a Soft Place; 4* by Lee

You know from the title, “Just Another Day at the Office,” this is not going to be just another day at the office and the surrealistically-pseudonymed author Hedonist Six keeps us turning pages waiting for that special day to arrive.

Cath Davies has just scored a new job and immediately finds herself between a rock and a soft place, the rock being Dick ‘pervert’ Porter with the smelly armpits and drooling lips, the soft place being the arms of the delectable Jonathan Hall – where Cath isn’t but would like to be.

In this coming of age romance, we are treated to an array of office politics, sexual and otherwise, and there were times flicking through my Kindle when the wry smile that appeared on my lips came from memories of the Ricky Gervais comedy “The Office.” Like Mr Gervais, Ms Six is in tune with the zeitgeist and her characters when not stealing amorous glances may well be chatting about the latest developments on X-Factor.

I must admit I’m intrigued by the name Hedonist Six – is that six of the best, the dream of all girls, at least in the land of erotica? I am sure that in time I will find out and, in the meantime, I look forward to the next episode of office politics.

The Amazon Free Promotion Experiment

Posted on November 2, 2012 by lorelei

My last blog post, for those who read it, already announced that I have self published my first ever work on Amazon. For better of for worse I opted to enroll in KDP Select which means I can choose to give away the ebook for free during 5 days in each given 6 month period.The downside is I am locking myself into an agreement to exclusively sell on Amazon, and not on any other ebook market places such as Smashwords, Apple iBooks, etc.

Now, obviously I’d prefer people to buy it so I get paid royalties, but I have read on other author’s blogs that a free promotion can do wonders for future book sales. So I thought I’d give it a go.

For 24 hours yesterday, my ebook, “Ladies’ Day” was available for free on Amazon Kindle. Now I was planning to be very productive and promote this fact on Facebook and Twitter, and also on this blog, but it didn’t quite work out that way.

Instead of waking up fresh and ready to spam the internet, I woke up with a terrible sinus headache and opted to stay in bed all day. I didn’t post a single link to my book page, didn’t tell a soul that it would be free for 24 hours. Though not ideal, at least I figure this free promotion can serve as a benchmark for any future marketing I do. And for the benefit of other self publishing authors out there, I decided to publish my figures for what might happen when you give away an erotic story (normal price $0.99 or so) without doing a single bit of promotion for it.

Downloads:
Amazon.com – 87
Amazon.co.uk – 33 (one of these was me)
Amazon.de – 11
Amazon.fr – 1

Rankings:
No idea what it was like yesterday but this morning I was ranked 98 in the Amazon.co.uk Free Bestsellers within the Erotic fiction category. My book was nowhere to be found in the Amazon.com bestseller list. This tells me that potentially the market for Erotica in the UK is very small, if I can make it into the top 100 with only 33 downloads.

Reviews / Likes:
I don’t see any discernible increase in Likes on my book, but then I haven’t really been keeping tabs a lot on how many likes I had before. There have been no reviews.

Verdict:
I have no idea yet if this was worth it. But it seems once you start giving stuff away for free, someone or other will notice and download it. This alone is quite promising. I’ll have to assume that at least some of the people who got a free copy will read it, at least in part. And just maybe they’ll later be inclined to leave a review, even if it’s negative.

On the other hand, the next time I do a free promotion, I hope to actually manage to plaster my link all over Facebook/Twitter and maybe websites that list free ebooks. And if I do that, I should be able to see fairly easily if the downloads I’m getting are similar to these current figures, or if there will be a visible increase in downloads due to the social marketing efforts I’ll be putting in.

2 Weeks later:
Although of course I was very pleased that I managed relatively many downloads with zero promotion, it’s the commercial results that count. To be honest there haven’t been any that I could find.

No reviews as a result of the free promotion.
No increase in sales that could be attributed to the free promotion.

Next time I give away my book for free and actually advertise that fact, I’ll write another post which should show a dramatic difference in exposure and hopefully an increase in sales by the end of it.