Joining the self-pub fray

Thanks for the encouragement guys! I'm pretty tough when it comes to criticism. A couple of rounds through QLH and SYW and an editor known for her brick to the face style will toughen up that skin real quick. Also, maybe it's because I'm a native New Yorker, but what other people consider blunt, I see as kind of friendly. Like how my friends and I greet each other with insults and no one blinks twice.

Has anyone ever listed their books on Google Play? Someone on my Twitter feed made a comment about getting more sales from Google Play than B&N. I figured the more outlets the better!

After the book's been out a month or so, I'm thinking about posting small freebies on the website. Deleted scenes of a thousand words or less. People like freebies and maybe doing one of these a month until book two comes out will keep people interested.

Oh, thanks for the tips! I checked my listing and sure enough, they'd discounted it.

It's been a week and I've seen enough sales for a large pizza with all the toppings!

Things have been stagnant for the past few days though, so to combat the fear of never seeing another sale again, I signed up to offer a giveaway on GR. Immediately saw an uptick in people adding to their TBR lists. Not money in the bank, but it makes me feel better.

I also joined Marketing for Romance Writers. It's a yahoo group that offers promo opps and advice. I'm curious to see if they can provide real opportunities or are just glorified spammers.

December 17 my book will be on ARe's Book-a-Day Giveaway. I'm hoping to get some interest going there. ARe has some interesting advertising opportunities, but they are much too pricey for my blood right now.

Back to book two, the rough draft that continues to kick my ass.

I'm not so sure about the MFRW group. It seems like a bunch of authors blogging and retweeting each other. I did find out about Canva through the group and will be using it to design some promo pieces to use on Twitter.

Sales have flatlined. I dropped the price to 2.99 until the end of the year. I saw somebody mention that December is a good print book month, while January is when ebooks pick up speed.

I put up a freebie short and have consistently seen increased web traffic. I'm definitely going to work on getting more of those up.

Book two is 3/4 done. Yay! I'm on track to finish it in the next week or two. Looking for an April or May release depending upon how the crit-beta-edit process goes.

I've been quiet because there hasn't been much to report. Sales still trickle in every six days or so.

Good news? I got a review on a blog! Bad news? They hated it. Even worse? I totally understand everything they didn't like. It totally gutted me, but one must press on.

I'm running a discount for the next week. After that it's time to back off blogging and reviewing and tweeting and get back to just writing. This damn book isn't gonna write itself.

Something is happening. And it's good news! I don't know if that bad review inspired people, but I've been getting consistent sales for a week straight. No records are being shattered, but the book hasn't gotten this much attention since it debuted in Dec. It's not coming from Amazon either. B&N and Apple have been the big winners for me.

I'm also hosting some authors to the blog this month. I hope to bring the eyeballs from their blogs to mine and vice versa.

I'm having a hard time with book two and have instead decided to work out the kinks in an old novella that's been sitting around for a couple of years. It does no one any good to force fetch to happen. The important thing is to get new content out there.

March sales have already outsold February and we're only halfway through the month. I'm gonna hold steady at the 99 cent price point. It seems to be the only way to move copies and 35% of .99 is better than 70% of 0. I'm nearing the 100 copies mark!

It's kinda silly, but the thing that makes me happiest is that my other half is finally starting to support this writing thing. For a long time he had no interest in what I spent my days doing. Didn't ask. Didn't care. Wanted dinner on the table at 7pm. Screw anything else.

Since the book's been for sale, he actually asks me about my day when he gets home. In a weird way it's changed our relationship. It's kind of odd and I'm not sure how to talk about it. Maybe a different thread. Something about how those of us who write full time, but have family financial support survive day to day.

Anyway, this post has gone on long enough. March has been a great month so far. I hope it continues and I'm kind of curious what's going to happen with my next release. It's the launch of another series and I'm kinda scared how this will work.

It's been a relatively quiet summer. Lots of doctor visits and followups. One surgery down. One more to go. I've not been a mood to write, but that doesn't mean I'm not busy!

In May I packaged a couple of short stories that were on the blog and offered that for free. Got a lot of downloads from ARe, but it didn't result in any sales. I think ARe might be better for people with a larger catalog and/or high heat levels.

On the other hand, the freebie helped give the book fresh legs on B&N, who continues to outsell Amazon by leaps and bounds. My friend says lots of people like the Nook better than Kindle once they try it. I need ways to reach those people!

In the past, I've used D2D for all distribution except Amazon and ARe. I didn't want to bother with going to a gazillion different sites to update a cover or download a report. After reading an article about Kobo, I've decided to go direct and see how sales go. Kobo has a much more international audience and people have seen their sales improve greatly after submitting their book directly. I made the switch a few days ago. D2D really spoils you on the customer service. It takes the Kobo folks twice as long as D2D to respond to questions. The books are live so we'll see how things go. If things go well with Kobo, I might do it with B&N and Apple. It's way easier to do this kind of thing with two books than later when I'll have ten!

End of the year update. The Kobo experiment was a dud. I gave it three months and saw zero sales. So, I'm back to having D2D do all non-Amazon and ARe distributing. D2D has added a new book subscription service to their distributors. 24Symbols originated in Spain, but now wants to broaden their English speaking audience. I hate to sound like a shill for D2D, but using them is so damn easy it's criminal.

Book two has gone through an alpha read. A multi-chapter snafu spanning the last third of the book nearly ended me last month, but I'm back on track. I'll be looking for betas in January. The snafu was actually a blessing in disguise because the fix for book two will lead perfectly into book three. This third book will be one helluva challenge. 3 POVs and a menage HEA. Hey, if you aren't challenging yourself, you aren't trying.

Amazon sales flatlined months ago with the only signs of life being downloads of the freebie. On the other hand, B&N continues to deliver consistently. I'm pretty stoked that as an unknown author with only one book I'm still getting sales.

Promo wise I haven't done much. Two spots through blogs on Fiverr gave a few sales on Amazon. I've got a promo scheduled through Bargain Booksy for 12/14. The one thing I'm excited for is bookmarks. I'm kicking myself I didn't have them for the summer of doctor visits. Eh, better late than never. There's still a flurry of poking and prodding to be done before the next surgery. Which means offices full of women in the romance reader demographic!

Book two has taken one more step closer to publication. Cover is done and it is GORGEOUS! I can't say enough good things about Najla Qamber Designs. It took about a month from brainstorming to final product, but they're halfway around the globe and I'm a super picky control freak. The FMC for Blood Awakening presents as Asian. Finding quality stock photos for WOC is a nightmare. Finding cover art for book three just might break me. Anyone got any recommendations on finding stock photos with a full-figured women in a badass pose? I've only got an outline, but it's never too early to start!

I tried KDP Select. OMG. Never again. I wanted to do Select because everyone and their dogwalker is making money on Amazon. I get crickets. I've tried changing keywords, changing pricing and running Kindle specific promos. There might be a blip, but nothing that's caught on. Meanwhile, I'm crushing it at B&N and even see regular sales from Kobo and Apple.

So I put Brief Awakenings (a freebie short) into Select. Too late I discovered Amazon turned my freebie into free for KU, but 99 cents for everyone else. I emailed them to fix it, but they said they choose the pricing and I could go kick rocks for all they cared. Since then sales everywhere have disappeared. There's about a week left to this horrible experiment and I won't do this again. I can't wait to get my freebie back with all vendors.

Back to good news. Book two is making the beta rounds. The feedback has been invaluable. Looks like early May for a release. I have to hire the editor and finalize the back cover copy. I'm also looking at taking part in a box set. There are a couple of authors out there that have a real gift for managing these things.

In the meantime, I'm taking advantage of the Amazon Giveaway program to get some attention. They allow ebooks in the program now, so it's not such a heavy investment.

Quick update on the Amazon Giveaway. I chose the Amazon follower option. 280 something or other folks entered. One claimed the prize. I still have 2 unclaimed copies that I can use to give to reviewers or gifts. Probably won't bother doing it again.

In other news, a local shop owner is open to carrying a couple of copies on consignment. I'm giving her two weeks to read the book and will check back with her to see if she wants to go forward. Even if it doesn't work, I'm thinking of approaching a couple of the local beauty shops to see if they'd be interested. Thanks AW article from 20--? for the idea!

I looked at a previous post...LOL what a difference 18mo makes! First of all, I've really come to enjoy being a part of MFRW. It's a really good resource for those new to self publishing or working with a small press. There's several authors who've been at this game a long time and give consistently good advice. They're also on the ball when it comes to keeping scammers and spammers out of the group. So, apologies for my earlier perceptions.

The beast is finished. It took so much longer than expected. Unforeseen setbacks. Personal struggles. A book every two years is no way to start a career.

That being said, this book is getting a much bigger push than I've ever tried before. I've dropped some major cash for Rebecca Hamilton's Book Blast and other promotion opportunities. I call Hamilton the Queen of Boxed Sets for romance writers. Whenever she puts one together, they almost always hit the NYT and USA Today best seller lists. I'm also using the genre specific newsletter, I Love Vampire Novels. Others have been happy with their results and I like the idea of a company devoted to reaching readers in my genre.

Angel's Awakening has enough reviews on Amazon to be considered for Ereader News Today and EbookSoda, but I've read mixed reports on results from ENT and no one is talking about EBS anymore. The promotion game changes so fast!

In other news Angel's Awakening will be part of a box set (not Hamilton's unfortunately) that will release Dec. 1. Shades of Prey Vol. 1 is on Amazon only and I've had mixed feelings about their rank. I'm in Vol. 3 which will be available wide and hope for better results.

Now, I want to focus on the newsletter. There's no doubt they work, but there's so much info out there on how to grow your list. It's overwhelming. I got a whopping five subscribers, none of who opened the email.

Maybe I'll just go back to working on book three instead.

That sucks about ENT. Have you tried Ebook Discovery? I ran a promo with them in August and it practically raised an old book from the dead. Will definitely use them again in the new year.

Barb, check your email

Update time!

Still not setting any world records, but steadily moving forward.

First of all, a big shout out to GenreCrave. I cracked the top 50 in my genre and got a 1934 overall Kindle ranking for the day. It was really exciting to see those kinds of numbers. It has led to the illusive "stickiness" other authors talk about, but I'd never experienced. I am now seeing steady sales on Amazon AND B&N. I did another promo with Rebecca Hamilton and boosted my newsletter from 20 to 1900. Her promos aren't cheap, but this woman and her team gets results.

I've also started using Amazon ads. Most of my keywords are authors that show up in the Customers Also Bought for my titles. It's been interesting learning who reads my stuff and what they like. It's a little different than what I originally thought.

The promo with ILVN was a bust. $77 was way too much for less than 20 sales. Ebook Discovery still works well. There's a few promo sites out there I would love to crack (BB of course), but lack of reviews keeps me from being qualified.

After seeing steady growth with two books, I'm really excited to finish book three. It'll be the end of this story arc and I'll finally be able to put together a box set. Speaking of boxed sets, the one I was supposed to be in fell through. These days, the successful boxed sets feature new content and until I have at least a novella length work, getting involved with one won't be worth it.

The hardest thing about self publishing is not being a fast writer. I just can't produce like a lot of the more successful authors. The world of SP changes every six months and I always feel like I'm fifteen steps behind. Not giving up though. I'm starting to connect with readers through the newsletter and Twitter and people tend to like my books. This is what makes it all worth while. This is why I never want to stop.

Most bizarre connection? I'm really into progressive lefty politics and have struck up a Twitter friendship with one of the hosts of a podcast I listen to. I've gotten a bunch of new followers, some of who ask about the book. Check out Politics and Grits on Spreaker where they shoot the shit about current events and play music clips.

Goals for the first half of 2017? Finish first draft and beta book three. Write a novella to enter in box sets. Keep on keeping on.