Local authors tap into the world of e-publishing

At the beginning of 2011, writer Kathy Dunnehoff had little social media savvy.

An instructor at Flathead Valley Community College, she knew and shared a lot about writing, yet had never had a book published.

She celebrated 2012’s arrival with a blog, two Facebook pages, a Twitter account and a publishing company as her two e-books shoot up the Amazon charts in several categories of romantic fiction. Dunnehoff tweets that she has begun the final revision of her third e-book, called “Back to U.”

“It was a huge learning curve for me because I hadn’t ever done social media,” she said. “I went from nothing to a small publishing company, Blue House Publishing.”

The name describes the cottage on Kalispell’s east side where Dunnehoff spun her first two romantic comedic novels, “The Do-Over” and “Plan on It.”

The company name also reflects Dunnehoff’s desire to publish both e-books and physical books. She learned from a friend that her house combines the earlier traditional Victorian style as well as the more modern Craftsman styles of architecture.

“That’s exactly how I felt I was,” she said. “I had come up with traditional publishing, and then I kind of felt like I had a foot in both worlds. That’s why I called it Blue House publishing.”

With the morning sun highlighting her dark hair, Dunnehoff looks like one of her heroines winding up an escapade, such as the one who took a vacation from her life in “The Do-Over,” or the professor who set up her hunt for a sperm donor like one of her biology experiments.

At 47, with one of her two children nearly grown, Dunnehoff could play the role of her next tortured female lead in “Back to U.”

“It’s a woman whose only child is going to college and her husband has just left her,” Dunnehoff shared. “The night before her daughter leaves for college, she announces that she is running off with an-all female Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band and will not be going to college.

“The mom is now alone in the house with absolutely nothing that she previously had. She goes to the university to take care of the paperwork for her daughter and ends up taking her daughter’s place. It’s the university she dropped out of 20 years before, and she runs into a man there who was the cause of her dropping out, who is now back as a professor. In my mind, it’s set at the University of Montana.”

No worries about Dunnehoff’s real-life husband, Thomas, a juvenile justice professional, leaving her, even though one of her heroines pummels her husband with boxes of Kleenex. She credits her husband with stopping her from dumping her dream of publishing when she hit a brick wall of doubt a few years ago.

As Dunnehoff reviews her astonishing year of finally moving from writer to author with help from local e-publishing guru Roxanne McHenry, she recalled running into McHenry at the annual Authors of the Flathead writing conference.

The two had known each other casually through their patronage of a coffee outlet in the KM Building. After the conference meeting, McHenry called Dunnehoff and invited her to do a podcast for her website.

“Of course, I had to figure out what she did,” Dunnehoff said with a laugh. “She was helping writers with e-publishing. I had known her for probably 15 years, and here is someone right here who could help me.”

After striking an agreement with McHenry, she called her agent in New York and told her that she wanted to take one of her novels and put it out on her own as an e-book. Her agent agreed because, Dunnehoff said, it’s never been worse for new writers in traditional publishing.

“So I formed a small publishing company and hired a local graphic artist, Anna Mahlen, and worked with Roxanne,” she said.

The first novel, “The Do-Over,” came out in early summer, but really got moving with an after-Christmas promotion. Following McHenry’s advice, she and writer Deborah Epperson joined a new Amazon program allowing premium members to borrow their books for free.

In return, they share a half-million dollars set aside for authors in the promotion and get the right to give their books away up to five times on their own. McHenry advised both writers to give books away the day after Christmas as a way to secure new readers and move their books up the download lists for more visibility.

 Dunnehoff admits she had a secret hope of a thousand downloads with at least one in England. She said she dared not even speak her “wildest dream” because it might jinx her.

To promote the giveaway, she used blogs and websites like Goodreads.com as well as Facebook, Twitter and Kindle forums. Dunnehoff will never forget Dec. 26 when “The Do-Over” was free, and the following day when she gave away “Plan On It,” her book that captured the Zola award from the Pacific Northwest Writers Association.

“It started, and it was click, click, click, and I would refresh the screen. It was crazy. The 26th was the biggest download day of the year,” she said. “It was insane.”

She had 6,000 downloads in the United States and 500 in England by the time her promotion ended. The books continued selling in the following days.

Her giveaway also got her more e-book reviews.

“Reviews really sell books on Amazon, which is, I think, really democratic,” she said. “It’s not all the advertising. It’s not who publishes it that matters. It’s what people say about it. And that’s why some of these indie authors do so well.”

Dunnehoff expects to have her third book, “Back to U,” published around Valentine’s Day. She plans to again have a giveaway day timed to a blog tour that McHenry organized for her.

She still has the dream of a traditional publisher printing physical copies of her books. Dunnehoff said she would sell the print rights in a minute.

“I can do both,” she said. “I can keep an agent in New York and see what happens there and do this thing. It’s been the most positive experience I’ve had on the business end of writing. I love it. I love all of it.”

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.