Update (and some thoughts on self-publishing)
Normalish and
Finding A Man For Sylvia have now both been re-released in ebook format. I should be getting the paperback proof for
Normalish any day. (I went for the matte cover, even though I first planned for glossy.
FAMFS will also be matte.) We’re in the final tweaking of the paperback for
FAMFS before uploading the files to Createspace. So now I’m managing four SP books, and each one is a different category--Nonfiction memoirs, YA, MG, and Chick-lit. I definitely did NOT plan that well.
What I learned back at the end of 2012, when
Normalish and
FAMFS were published by the small digital publisher: Selling books is really hard. Surprisingly so. People may seem interested and excited beforehand, but a lot of the time they’re being polite. (I don’t blame them at all.) And I think there’s a fair amount of skepticism a new author encounters; we have to prove ourselves one reader at a time. I had wrongly assumed that I’d have--oh, I don’t know--maybe a couple hundred ebook sales per month? I mean, that sounds reasonable; right?
I thought, well, I won’t get rich, but maybe I’ll receive enough in monthly royalties to pay a bill or two. What I very quickly found out was that I had to basically work for every sale. The publisher provided editing and art, but that was it. (And an education.) In a sense, I feel like I
was a self-publisher with my first two books.
So now that I’m managing four titles and have two works in progress, I can definitely say that it would have been easier sales and promotions-wise to stick to one genre and write a series. (My MG book is part of a series, but I had to put the sequel off for a while because of the re-releases.) When my WIPs are finished, I’ll have one more MG title and one more YA title. Having my books spread over categories, though, it is much tougher to build my audience. My true fans (I mean friends and family) do end up reading everything, but they’re nice that way.
On the other hand, when I was reading over
Normalish and
FAMFS, getting them ready to re-release, there were several times I laughed out loud (and cried in the case of
Normalish), and that’s really important to me as a writer, to be able to entertain myself with some dumb thing I’ve written. (And
FAMFS is
very dumb.
)
Since the two titles have been out for over two years now, pretty much everyone in my social realm that’s interested has bought them already--some ebook holdouts may buy the paperbacks--but the only way I’m going to sell these two is to connect with new readers. So I decided to run a 99-cent promotion this week on
Normalish with a couple of inexpensive ads, and I’ll run another promo next month with
FAMFS and see how that goes.
In the two years the two titles were with my publisher, they were available through several outlets including the publisher’s own site, Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Smashwords, Omnilit, Google Books, ARE, and others. I’d say probably 95% of my sales were through Amazon. I waffled over whether to sign up for Select with both or distribute widely and decided to experiment. With
Normalish, I’m selling through Amazon, B&N, and Kobo. With
FAMFS, I decided to sign up with Select and see how things go with a Countdown Deal next month. Of the two so far, my sales up to this point,
Normalish has outsold
FAMFS about eight to one--which is the opposite of what I thought would happen. It just goes to show, you never know!
Hopefully I’ll have good things to report back after my sale. *thinking good thoughts*
My biggest challenging now is finding the time to write. So often it feels like I’m trying to wrangle the squirrels in my brain, who are burying their nuts ALL over the place. Mostly, though, it’s fun. So I’ll not complain. Much.