Self-Publishing experiment with old NaNo novel

I'm starting this thread to document my self-publishing experience as a sort of experiment.

THE DEAL:
Last NaNoWriMo I spewed out a YA Fantasy novel. It was really fun to write and it has some (I think) good elements, though it was fairly trope heavy (which I did on purpose, mostly I just wanted to finish a silly/fun book). I sent it to a few beta readers and they LOVED it (more than the adult fantasy I've slaved over for many years, sigh). After a few rounds of editing, I queried a few agents.

I got very enthusiastic responses from agents, but they all ultimately passed because it wasn't "breaking enough new ground." I already knew it was fairly cliched (fierce young girl finds out she has special powers, saves her loved ones...). One agent also objected to a GLBT element of my book (not the presence of a gay main character, but she worried that it might put off readers hoping for a romance between the MC and the cute boy).

Though I'm still working toward a traditional publishing career, I've been reading a lot lately about hybrid authors and thought, even though this YA is kind of trope heavy, I suspect there's an audience for old school "girl with magical powers" type books. Soooo, long story short, I don't think this book is a good candidate for traditional publishing, but I do think it could find a readership -- in other words, perfect for self publishing.

My first thought was to just toss it up on KDP and forget it. Let it sink or swim on its own. My initial goal was to make a little money (I was thinking maybe $100 as my ultimate goal)...but now that I'm in the middle of this whole thing, I really want my little book to find a readership and maybe even do fairly well.

THE PROCESS:
I made the cover myself (I have a tiny bit of design experience) and I formatted it in about 2 hours. I felt like the basic formatting was fairly easy and I pushed publish.

I priced it a $2.99 after looking at a few web sites about pricing.

I also decided, since I didn't think I would put much effort into it, that I would just use Amazon select so I could use their free promotion tools.

Right after I put it up, a family member bought it and promptly found about 30 typos. Ug. I pulled it down and did another major editing pass with a beta reader.

I put it back up and then....waited.

In the first few days, 10 people bought it. I know 9 of them, so exactly 1 stranger bought it over that first weekend.

Then, nada for many days. So I decided to put it up for free since everyone says a few good reviews are necessary to get the ball rolling. I definitely didn't want friends or family to review, so I figured giving it away, maybe someone who downloaded it for free would write a review.

For the first attempt, I did absolutely no promotion. It was free for a weekend and 49 people downloaded it. Not great, but cool, almost 50 strangers reading my book.

Then...nothing.

Two weeks later, I decided to promote another free weekend. I certainly didn't want to spend any money, so I just sent the info about my book to a bunch of those "free e-book" promotion sites. That took me about 2 hours to send the info to as many places as I could find, giving them about 2 weeks notice.

The weekend it went free (which was last weekend), almost 800 people downloaded the book. So...yay! The free promotion obviously did something. During that time, I climbed to #1 in a few subcategories (YA Fantasy - Mythology and Legend, Sword and Sorcery) and I made it up to #380 in overall free Kindle. I read about some people managing to get 20,000+ downloads, usually with some paid advertisements, so my free promotional attempts weren't the best, but I was plenty happy.

Now, today, about a week after my second promotion, I got my first review from an actual stranger (5 stars, yay!!!).

THE RESULTS:
That's where I stand now -- I've made $10.30, mostly from people I know. About 850 people have downloaded my book. I've gotten one review.

I'm now very curious to see if the single review helps sales at all.

POSSIBLE NEXT STEPS:
1. A free giveaway on Goodreads. The downside to this is I would need to set up a way to get a hard copy of the book since they will only do giveaways with hard copies. I've looked at a few publish-on-demand type places and have balked at the amount of work I'll have to do to format the thing to make a print copy look decent. So I'll hold off on this a month or so and see how things are going. If I have flat sales, and enough free time to work on formatting, I will probably try this.

2. I will also look around at a few review blogs for YA fantasy books (and other categories that might be interested) and I'll see if they want a free review copy. Since I only really want to use reputable reviews sources, there's no guarantee they will be interested but I will probably send out a few copies just in case.

Otherwise, I'm not sure where to go next. I don't plan to blast this on twitter or FB since I'm trying to keep it separate from my other life as an academic. Overall, I think I will do a little more promoting, but might let this little book fly on its own for at least the next month. Overall, I'm really enjoying this experience!

I'll update as things unfold. http://absolutewrite.com//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/

I should add that I totally welcome any thoughts/suggestions about next steps from those who've done this before!

Thanks Queen of Swords!

I'm planning on uploading another edit sometime in the next few days and will add that one.

I totally hear about describing brown skin. I've actually gone back and forth a million times about that exact passage. On one hand, I want it to be perfectly clear that she is a PoC and I feel like, unless you state it in very a very clear way, readers default to white. Which is something I really don't want. I tried a few other ways to express the idea, but that worked best for me, despite the cliche (I've seen the "if white skin were described in terms of food" which made me laugh me ass off).

However, I've seen you around here and think we are probably pretty close in our interests in diversity in books. That you reacted SO negatively that you put it down gives me pause. I'm pretty dedicated to stating bluntly that she is a PoC in a way that leaves no room for missing the point, but I'll have to think about changing it somehow.http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/

Alrighty, two majorly negative reactions means I'll change it. Thanks for the feedback! Of all the things I want people to say about my novel, good or bad, this is definitely not something I want to be a negative, especially since diversity is a major issue for me.

Thank you so much WriterBN! This is such a learning curve.

9/25/14 update

Very Clear Lesson #1: If you don't promote your book, no one will buy it.

Since my last update, I've had 2 sales. That's all. No new reviews, nothing.

Which makes me think that there is also...

Very Clear Lesson #2: Unless you have other books available, giving away free books is basically useless. I'm sure experiences vary, but I got 1 review from hundreds of free giveaways so I'm not convinced it was worth it. I can definitely see it being worth it to have the first book in a series up for free, then sell the second (and third, fourth, etc.) for those who will then buy to keep reading. But, just giving away a book to hope for reviews didn't work so well for me.

I haven't had time to figure out my next step, but think a Goodreads giveaway and some time spent over there will be my next goal (when I actually have a second free....).