I took my first baby steps

[Ann Joyce]

Congrats, Rob! Yay! I know how that feels...I held my proof in my hands 9 1/2 weeks ago and cried.

I think your cover looks great, but I do agree with you. It would be even better with the title raised up some.

[LBlankenship]

Congrats on your new baby!

[merrihiatt]

It is one of the best feelings in the world, isn't it? I thought, over time, seeing it up close and personal and holding it in my hands would get less thrilling. It doesn't. It is such a rush. I guess that makes me a word junkie.

[SamanthaLehane]

That is a sharp looking paperback!

[Spell-it-out]

Well done Rob, delighted for you.

[robertbevan]

nice one, rob. looks great!

[Katallina]

Congrats, Rob! That's totally awesome. Definitely a great way to start the holidays.

[Rob Lopez]

Yay, 2013, a new year of hope and possibilities.

Okay, first the sales report for January: Absolutely naff all.

There, that didn't take long. So, what else have I been up to? Well, I scoured the createspace proof and found a couple of formatting errors. Corrected those, but then found another problem. Halfway through the last draft I upgraded Open Office and inadvertently started using straight quote marks instead of curly ones, so my copy had a mix of the two. Not very professional. Can't get the find-and-replace function to sort it out quickly so I'm having to do it the hard way, and it's taking a while, especially since I'm devoting most of my time to working on the sequel, which unfortunately has a long way to go. It's slow work.

Been thinking about how I'm marketing the original novel and decided I needed to change it ready for the goodreads giveaway. Still not happy with the blurb and the cover will probably need changing too. When I finish the sequel I shall work on both covers to make sure they match, and give the series a title to hang them both under. After that I shall work on a couple of short stories to help promote the series before moving onto the third novel. By the end I aim to have a series that looks professionally produced and attractive. Hopefully that will then build up my reader base.

It's been a long learning curve, with plenty of ups and downs, but in spite of the setbacks I'm still determined to make it work. Let's see what the year brings.

[triceretops]

Hang in there, Rob. Your sales rank is almost identical to my first self-pubbed tittle. And heck, I have no clue what I've done wrong. I mean I really jumped on every venue I could to get the word out. Maybe I need new blood in my Twitter and FB accounts, with a huge dose at LinkedIn, Stage32, Gather, Goodreads and other places.

tri

[J. Tanner]

Originally Posted by Rob Lopez

Halfway through the last draft I upgraded Open Office and inadvertently started using straight quote marks instead of curly ones, so my copy had a mix of the two. Not very professional. Can't get the find-and-replace function to sort it out quickly so I'm having to do it the hard way,

Open the Find/Replace dialog in OpenOffice and click the More Options button. There's a checkbox there to enable Regular Expressions. Do so.

Once that's done, go back to your Find field and enter this:

"[^ ]

Note the space in there after the caret. That's important.

What this expression does is search for all instances of the straight qoutes that have a non-space character immediately following. In theory, barring typos, this will get you all open qoutes and no close quotes. You can page through a few and confirm it works. Then replace them all with the curly open qoute.

That'll leave just the straight close quotes which you can then do a normal find/replace on with the curly close quote.

/nerd

[Rob Lopez]

Originally Posted by J. Tanner

Open the Find/Replace dialog in OpenOffice and click the More Options button. There's a checkbox there to enable Regular Expressions. Do so.

Once that's done, go back to your Find field and enter this:

"[^ ]

Note the space in there after the caret. That's important.

What this expression does is search for all instances of the straight qoutes that have a non-space character immediately following. In theory, barring typos, this will get you all open qoutes and no close quotes. You can page through a few and confirm it works. Then replace them all with the curly open qoute.

That'll leave just the straight close quotes which you can then do a normal find/replace on with the curly close quote.

/nerd

Thanks JT. It didn't quite work (removed the first letter of the quote instead) but I did a bit of digging around and found a similar looking equation that appears to have done the trick for both opening and closing quotes. Oddly enough it also seems to have sorted the apostrophes, which makes me a bit suspicious, so I shall scour the whole manuscript again to make absolutely sure. Still saved me a ton of work though.

[Rob Lopez]

Originally Posted by triceretops

Hang in there, Rob. Your sales rank is almost identical to my first self-pubbed tittle. And heck, I have no clue what I've done wrong. I mean I really jumped on every venue I could to get the word out. Maybe I need new blood in my Twitter and FB accounts, with a huge dose at LinkedIn, Stage32, Gather, Goodreads and other places.

tri

Did that first title get better with time? Is there hope? Or did it stay deader than a dead thing?

[triceretops]

Originally Posted by Rob Lopez

Did that first title get better with time? Is there hope? Or did it stay deader than a dead thing?

I don't know why but it slowed to a crawl. It's got everything going for it--fast plot and great-selling genre. The artwork might need a switch as well as the blurb. I'm going on free trial in a bit to see if that picks it up. I'm Select, so I don't have other retailers batting for me.

tri

[J. Tanner]

Originally Posted by Rob Lopez

Thanks JT. It didn't quite work (removed the first letter of the quote instead)

Ah, silly oversight on my part. Sorry about that. In case anyone else stumbles across this and needs it:

Find should be like this:
"([^ ])

And Replace like this:
“$1

And as before, once completed you can do the close quotes without anything special.

[robertbevan]

j. tanner. that's some great technical advice. i'll probably end up having to use that at some point, so thanks.

rob, hang in there. put out that second book and see if you don't get a bit of a boost.

[PortableHal]

Rob, I really enjoyed your novel. My son really enjoyed tri's SF novel. As far as we're concerned, you guys both deserve solid sales....

[triceretops]

Thanks, PortableHal. When it's all said and done, those are the sentiments we keep and cherish.

tri

[Rob Lopez]

Cheers Hal. Living in hope.

[Rob Lopez]

February is over and I have a few things to report.

First, I got a sale! Seriously, ONE SALE is now something to celebrate. And why not? It may be dragging its ass in the mud, but occasionally it gets to look at the sky and dream of flying.

Secondly, I finished the Createspace thing and did a Goodreads Giveaway, which just finished last night, with 440 people requesting it.

A few lessons learned from the Giveaway. Firstly, I arranged for it to last ten days, but it took Goodreads three days to start it up, so I only got seven days in the end. Don't make the same mistake.

I thought ten days would be right for a giveaway, though I don't know why. I think I was thinking about the average auction times on ebay. Had I done my research properly, I would have noticed that quite a few giveaways last a whole month. Most of the requests, of course, happen on the last day or so (just like ebay), but if you think of the giveaway as a billboard ad, then it makes sense to have it up as long as possible, especially since it doesn't cost you extra for the exposure. I shall probably leave it for a decent interval, then do another one, for a whole month this time.

One question for you guys across the pond - I have the address of the giveaway winner, and the address is NC, followed by the zip code. On the envelope, do I lay it out like this:

NC
xxxxx

Or like this:

NC xxxxx

On another note, I was struck that the winner is a woman (as are most of those who have put the book on their to-read lists). Considering the content, this book is attracting more women than men. Useful marketing info, I suppose. I don't know what to do with it yet, but it's good to know.

The to-read lists are also interesting. Most people who put my book on theirs had hundreds of books on their lists. Sometimes over a thousand. Only one had less than a hundred - and they had 95. The chances of them getting round to reading mine? Slim. I wonder if people use the to-read as a 'like' equivalent. A sort of 'good luck with that', rather than an act of serious intent.

The other great news is that we Europeans don't have to get paid by check anymore! Amazon has entered the 21st Century and will wire me my earnings. Once I make enough, that is.

But Smashwords has updated its sales, and it turned out I sold a book on Barnes and Noble last December, rather than zero as I originally thought. Did you know that Smashwords also emails you direct when you make a sale on their own site? Until now, I had no idea because I hadn't sold anything the whole time, but today someone bought my book on Smashwords! And I got mail.

Just think of how many hours I wasted going to the dashboard to check my sales there. Now I know - if I don't hear, it ain't there.

I got two reviews too. A thoughtful 3-star (thanks Sami) and a strange 4-star that reads like a 2-star. Every rose, it seems, has a silver cloud. Or something like that.

[Tienci]

Either a) or b) for the zip code placement; doesn't really matter.

Good stuff Rob! Thanks for the updates and I look forward to hearing more good news from you.

[merrihiatt]

NC xxxxx Actually, to be more specific, it should read as follows:

First Name Last Name
Street Address
City, State (two letter abbreviation) five-digit zip code

(if you know the nine digit zip code with a hyphen after the first five numbers, you get bonus points).

An example would look like this:

Merri Hiatt
12345 Any Road Dr.
Pottersville, NY 12345-6789

And, congratulations on the sale and giveaway. I, too, first listed a giveaway for a shorter period of time. People will often wait to see if they can win a free copy before purchasing (if they ever intended to purchase in the first place). I thought a lesser period of time would work better, but have found the opposite to be true. Four weeks seems about right.

[SamanthaLehane]

Congrats on the sale!

In terms of a cover, have you thought about upping the contrast and having a heavier set font for the title? That seems to be a popular choice for sci-fi colors.

http://www.goodreads.com/choiceaward...cience-Fiction

[Rob Lopez]

Originally Posted by SamanthaLehane

Congrats on the sale!

In terms of a cover, have you thought about upping the contrast and having a heavier set font for the title? That seems to be a popular choice for sci-fi colors.

http://www.goodreads.com/choiceaward...cience-Fiction

Yes, I badly need to get myself some decent fonts. The standard ones are a bit naff for covers. I need to expand my range.

[Tezzirax]

Keep at it, Rob. Everywhere you can go to get the word out and promote your book makes potential sales.

We're tiny needles in VERY big haystacks.