“Online piracy is a major factor contributing to the decline of authors’ income. Each year, the publishing industry loses hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales to piracy—and with each lost sale, authors lose royalty income. There is a clear correlation between the decline in income from writing and the exponential growth of online pirate channels dedicated to distributing and selling illegal ebook copies.” —The Authors Guild
You CAN Get Free Books — Legally and Honestly
Authors often give away books to reach new readers and build their audiences. For example, the first book in my Waterspell fantasy series, The Warlock, is free at a whole host of retailers. Anyone can get it from their preferred store absolutely free: see the list of retailers at books2read.com.
Rather than downloading bootlegged ebooks from pirate sites, please sign up for one or more of the following legitimate book-lovers’ newsletters/emails. Subscribe for free, and enjoy a never-ending supply of free books:
- BookBub
- Freebooksy
- Robin Reads
- EReader News Today
- The Fussy Librarian
- Hello Books
- Book Doggy
- BookRaid
- Book Cave
Happy reading!
If you find a book you particularly like at any of these sites, please consider purchasing an additional book from that author. Writers can’t keep writing if we have no income. Please support us with your book purchases. Thank you.
Category Archives: Discoverability
Waterspell’s Winter Sale! 2024
My Black Friday sale was encouragingly successful, so I’m repeating it. Through 5 January 2025, every book in the Waterspell fantasy series is on sale. Book 1: The Warlock is free, and the five subsequent ebooks are $1.99 each, which means you get the entire six-book series for only $9.95.
But wait! There’s more! Save $1 if you purchase the boxed set for $4.99 and add the two linked sequels for $1.99 each.
Available for all ebook devices: Kindle, Kobo, Nook, Apple, Google Play, etc.
Universal Book Links:
- Book 1: The Warlock
- Book 2: The Wysard
- Book 3: The Wisewoman
- Book 4: The Witch
- Boxed Set (Books 1–4)
- The Karenina Chronicles
- The Fires of Farsinchia
“A must-read for fantasy enthusiasts who enjoy immersive world-building, well-developed characters, and a storyline that seamlessly blends magic and human emotion.” NetGalley
“In this saga, the author has created an epic fantasy world full of magic, danger, romance, and travel through time and space. The characters are vivid and complex, including a young woman on a hero’s quest, and a powerful warlock who isn’t sure whether to kill her or embrace her. This is a most enjoyable read for fans of fantasy and fine writing.” NetGalley
A Waterspell Black Friday Sale! 2024
My first-ever Black Friday Sale! Now through December 4, 2024.
Get the four-book Waterspell bundle plus the two linked sequels for only $8.97. That’s a savings of $7 off the regular list price of the ebook editions.
Quick Links to Retailers
“A must-read for fantasy enthusiasts who enjoy immersive world-building, well-developed characters, and a storyline that seamlessly blends magic and human emotion.” NetGalley
“In this saga, the author has created an epic fantasy world full of magic, danger, romance, and travel through time and space. The characters are vivid and complex, including a young woman on a hero’s quest, and a powerful warlock who isn’t sure whether to kill her or embrace her. This is a most enjoyable read for fans of fantasy and fine writing.” NetGalley
Release Day! The Fires of Farsinchia
It’s finished! 🎉 With the November 2024 release of The Fires of Farsinchia, the Waterspell series is complete.
Fires (published 19 November 2024) picks up where The Karenina Chronicles left off. Nina doesn’t get to spend much time in her island world. She’s barely landed on those tropical shores before she’s called back to fight new fires in her native realm. Because let’s face it: For a storyteller, Ladrehdin is a more interesting place. Particularly down in the South Country, where magic is returning, but only in fits and starts, and with unpredictable results.
I’m grateful to every reader who has followed the Waterspell story since the first book came out in 2011. I’ve obsessed over these characters since about 1996. They’re completely real to me, they’re alive, and so is their world. I’ve loved tagging along on their adventures, but the time has come to let them go on about their lives without me looking over their shoulders.
What’s next? An old manuscript has been sitting in my files for about 20 years. Long dormant, it’s finally stirring, calling to me to pull it out of the dark drawer and let sunlight fall upon it. What I read in its pages may make me cringe. I’m a better writer now than I was 20 years ago. But then again, those mostly forgotten pages might hold pleasant surprises. Time will tell.
If you’ve got time for a six-book, 680,000-word fantasy series that reviewers say is “nearly impossible to put down” (bless you, Dear Readers 💙), then by all means, begin at the beginning with Waterspell Book 1: The Warlock. But if you’re not looking for a commitment of that size, might I recommend that you start with The Karenina Chronicles? It’s a linked sequel, but it IS a standalone. It’s fully accessible to readers who have no knowledge of the previous four books.
And when you’ve finished The Karenina Chronicles, you’ll be ready for The Fires of Farsinchia, the book that answers burning questions, including: Will Nina find love again after the death of her Earthly husband? Will she figure out where she belongs? Or is she doomed to remain a restless wanderer who finds no peace on either side of the Void?
Filed under Books and Readers, Discoverability, Waterspell fantasy trilogy
Online Identity Housekeeping
Regularly updating one’s author bio is an entirely tedious but necessary part of the interconnected online world. Every time I have a new book coming out (and I do! November 19!) I chase down all of the sites where my little biography appears. I’ve now spent the better part of a week doing this mind-numbing task.
In hopes of simplifying the process for any necessary future updates, I’ve created a list. Google finds most of these, but not all. Some of the more obscure locations were sporting badly outdated info. With this list to remind me, perhaps I’ll more easily catch them all, the next time I must refresh my online presences. (“What has it got in its presences?”)
- Amazon author page
- Authors Guild website
- Authors Guild member profile
- Goodreads
- Books2Read
- The Black List
Also my distributors, Draft2Digital and Lightning Source, so that booksellers who use their databases will pick up the most recent author info.
Also Google Play Books (the catalog of which, like Lightning Source, must be updated individually <sigh> since the Google Partner Center does not have one universal Author Profile option that applies to every book in an author’s catalog):
- Book 1: The Warlock
- Book 2: The Wysard
- Book 3: The Wisewoman
- Book 4: The Witch
- Waterspell Boxed Set (Books 1-4)
- The Karenina Chronicles
- The Fires of Farsinchia
With this many individual places to update, you would think that I’d be absolutely certain of the wording I want in my “official author bio.” But after a week of updating myself everywhere, I’m already wondering if I’ve included too many details, and will the info be stale before my coffee gets cold? <sigh>
Author Bio: Deborah J. Lightfoot
Castles in the cornfield provided the setting for Deborah J. Lightfoot’s earliest flights of fancy. On her father’s farm in Texas, she grew up reading tales of adventure and reenacting them behind ramparts of sun-drenched grain. She left the farm to earn a degree in journalism and write award-winning books of history and biography. High on her bucket list was the desire to try her hand at the genre she most admired. The result is Waterspell, a complex, intricately detailed fantasy comprising the original four-book series (Warlock, Wysard, Wisewoman, Witch). In the “Nina sequels” to that earlier quartet — The Karenina Chronicles and The Fires of Farsinchia — new generations of powerful wysards carry the saga into the magical future of an ancient world. Having discovered the Waterspell universe, the author finds it difficult to leave.
Lightfoot is a professional member of the Authors Guild. She still lives in rural Texas. Find her on Instagram @booksofwaterspell and explore her overflowing, catch-all website at waterspell.net.
Filed under Discoverability, On Writing, Writers
The Karenina Chronicles Audiobook Is Live!
Already! It’s live!
The brand-new audiobook of The Karenina Chronicles is now available at several retailers including Chirp, Kobo, Apple, and Nook; and at Spotify it’s a STEAL for only $11.49! 
Audiobook retailers set their own prices, and this must be a new-release special price that won’t last long.
Please help me introduce Hannah Eggleton to audiobook listeners who will love to hear her work. This is Hannah’s VERY FIRST audiobook narration, and she has done a beautiful job. Wherever you get audiobooks, you can find it at Books2Read. Thank you for your support! 
Filed under Audiobooks, Books and Readers, Discoverability
Book Promo Sites: Ranked and Updated
Here’s my annual analysis of my marketing efforts. This is pretty much all that I do in the way of marketing: I run a promo every month in a different email/newsletter.
In 2023, I branched out a little from my regulars (Book Barbarian, Fussy Librarian, Written Word Media). I added Hello Books to the rotation, and will continue to use them. EReader News Today was also new on my list in 2023, and it did well. GoodKindles, however, was a complete bust. They’re off my list forever. With BookRaid, I have seen diminishing returns over the two or three years that I’ve been advertising there. Not sure they’re worth the money any more.
A full-series promo at Written Word Media continues to deliver the best results. It’s pricey at $170, but cost-effective for promoting the five books in the Waterspell series all at one time. Written Word Media offers several promo options. I tried their “Readers’ List” promo for the first time in August 2023, with disappointing results. Even combined with a concurrent Book Barbarian promo, the $125 “Readers’ List” email blast failed to produce the number of book orders that the $170 full-series promo brought me.
To summarize, this is how I’ll rank the effectiveness of these sites, in terms of the book orders they brought me at Amazon and how much I paid for each promo:
- Written Word Media full-series (Fantasy/Paranormal Series Promotion)
- EReader News Today
- Hello Books
- Book Barbarian
- Fussy Librarian
- Written Word Media “Readers’ List”
- BookRaid
- GoodKindles (a failure, so I’m not linking to it)
To see how my choices and experiences have evolved over time, you can look at my earlier posts on this subject — 2022’s Book Promotion Sites: Ranked, and back to 2021 when I was Focusing the Plan.
Since I hate marketing and I’m really bad at it, running promos this way is the easiest and the most effective approach I have found. Most of these promos cost $45 to $65. I budget to run one promo a month (rotating among these sites, and sometimes doubling up with less-expensive ads at BookDoggy and ManyBooks). Occasionally I splurge on a $170 Written Word Media full-series promo. I was an election clerk in November 2023 and got paid $188 for the day’s work. That will buy a promo. 😁
What promo sites do you recommend? What have your experiences been with pay-per-click ads at Amazon, BookBub, and Facebook? I tried those, but I found them to be way overpriced and ineffective for my books.
Karenina Chronicles: Ebook Edition
Release Day Redux! Now it’s the ebook’s turn. The print edition came out November 17. On December 1, pre-orders of my newest book hit readers’ libraries and devices. I’ve been scrolling through it on my tablet, obsessively double-checking the table of contents and interior illustrations. Everything looks good!
Thanks to everyone who pre-ordered my latest. I’m hearing from my dearly beloved readers that some of you are rereading Waterspell Books 1-4 before starting in on the sequel, the newly published Karenina Chronicles. Bless you, dear friends! But for those who don’t have the time to reread four lengthy novels, please be assured that The Karenina Chronicles is pretty much a stand-alone. There ARE references to What Went Before, but I believe I’ve supplied enough backstory that any reader will be able to follow the new story (of The New Generation) without rereading (or reading for the first time) the previous quartet.
Example: It’s been YEARS since I read His Dark Materials. But I’ve recently listened to the audiobooks of Philip Pullman’s return to that world: The Book of Dust, volumes 1 and 2. Because of the little reminders that Pullman sprinkled through the sequels, I followed the story perfectly well, despite the many years that have elapsed since I read the Dark Materials trilogy.
So please do not feel that you must read Waterspell Books 1-4 before starting my new one. Though of course I love you for your willingness to do so!
Thanks to everyone for buying and reading. Please remember that books make great gifts! 😀
Release Day! The Karenina Chronicles
Release Day! The print edition of my latest book is now available at all of the booksellers. I’m excited about The Karenina Chronicles. There’s a strong streak of a woman’s simmering rage in this book.
Direct links to the major booksellers for the print edition:
The ebook will release on December 1. Find it anywhere ebooks are sold: books2read.com/waterspellbook5
Summary: In the grip of a grief-fueled wanderlust after the death of her Earthly husband, Lady Karenina of Ruain — Nina to family and friends — escapes into unfamiliar lands, a harsh and distant country peopled with enigmatic characters: the Leviathan, the Nomad, the Outcast, and the Wolf. In their company she finds adventure, danger, champions, and rogues — some of the latter worth killing, but at least one worth loving.
Continue the family saga that began in the WATERSPELL fantasy quartet (Warlock, Wysard, Wisewoman, Witch). Follow the further adventures of eldest daughter Nina in The Karenina Chronicles.
Thank you for your ongoing interest and support!
I’m proud of this installment in the series. It’s a journey tale that covers a lot of ground. Karenina (Nina) would not leave me alone until I’d consented to tell the story of her “grand tour.” She insisted that I slip inside her saddlebags and make the trip with her. I’m glad I did. It’s been a journey of self-discovery for myself as well as for Nina. This addition to the series might not be a true standalone novel, but I believe readers can connect with the characters and follow their stories even without having read the first four books. There’s enough backstory scattered through this book to give readers the necessary background.
If you’ve been thinking about dipping your toe into the Waterspell ocean, The Karenina Chronicles is the book to start you off. These books mean a lot to me, and this newest one has a special hold on my heart.
Books 1-4 on NetGalley: November 2023
Available on NetGalley until December 1.
When the boxed set of Waterspell Books 1–4 came out in April 2022, I offered ARCs on NetGalley. Optimistically, I hoped for 40 or 50 reviews.
I got six.
Those six, however, were all highly positive. There’s also a chance that some of the readers who downloaded the ARC did eventually post a review somewhere else. At the very least, as I noted in my observations back then, I gained exposure in a much larger arena than Bookstagram and Facebook, and got my work in front of all sorts of industry professionals, including booksellers and librarians.
With the new book, The Karenina Chronicles, coming out soon (paperback November 17, ebook December 1), I decided to offer the original quartet on NetGalley once more. Of course I revised the epub file to include a teaser for the new book:
Continue the family saga! Follow the further adventures of eldest daughter Nina in The Karenina Chronicles.
In the first couple of days of the boxed set’s new availability on NetGalley, I’ve received 30 requests. I’ve denied a few of those, in cases where the requester seemed to have no interest in the fantasy genre, or showed a tendency to DNF books. I figured they wouldn’t likely read a boxed set of 1,200 pages in a genre they didn’t especially like. Mostly, however, I have accepted all comers. As somebody once said: For most writers, piracy isn’t the problem. Obscurity is the problem. With the wider distribution that NetGalley makes possible, I’m trying to become a little less obscure.
Once again, I’m using the Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op, which enables me to “rent” a slot on NetGalley for one month for $50. Pretty cheap way to get reviews and exposure.
The Blessed Six
Fingers crossed that my return to NetGalley will bring in some additional reviews, to build on the strong foundation that my initial experiment produced. Looking back through those six lovely reviews, I must share excerpts:
“In this four-book saga, the author has created an epic fantasy world full of magic, danger, romance, and travel through time and space. This is a most enjoyable read for fans of fantasy and fine writing.” —Shirley
“A good choice for those that like fantasy. This has rich character and world building, and the elements of a good fantasy story.” —Paul
“An entertaining, fast paced, and well plotted fantasy series. Riveting. The world building is fascinating, and the characters fleshed out. Highly recommended.” —Librarian
“An addictive-to-read epic fantasy with drama and adventure. I binged through the books, eager to see how the story unfolds.” —Reviewer
“An extraordinary book, 4 in fact! I read these over a five-day period and found the storytelling fantastic.” —Reviewer
“A riveting series. Well written, excellent world-building with an engaging plot in each book and well developed characters. I was gripped right from the start with twists I didn’t see and unpredictability.” —Aria
Thank you all! 💙 🎉 Here’s hoping that my return to NetGalley will meet with as much success as my first time out, and maybe more.
If you’re a NetGalley member and would like a free copy of Waterspell, please snag it before the title is archived on December 1. The link: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/306678
Filed under Books and Readers, Discoverability
