I'm going to self publish!

Status
Not open for further replies.

lastlittlebird

avem narrans
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 7, 2009
Messages
1,316
Reaction score
161
Location
Australia
Website
lastlittlebird.blogspot.com
:ROFL: I'm gonna keep repeating that... YA... YA... YA ;)

And I keep telling myself 5 isn't really impressive cause they aren't all novel length! Maybe I'm too hard on myself lol

Length doesn't always matter in terms of workload, I've noticed.
Any completed work is an accomplishment and in this case you've had to refine five whole stories, even if they weren't novel length. That's got to be harder than a single story that happens to be longer. It's impressive.
 

Celeste Carrara

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 31, 2012
Messages
591
Reaction score
48
Location
NY
Website
www.celestecarrara.com
I give you points for juggling everything and continuing to write in the process. No small feat. So have an extra chocolate. :D

Thank you! :)

Length doesn't always matter in terms of workload, I've noticed.
Any completed work is an accomplishment and in this case you've had to refine five whole stories, even if they weren't novel length. That's got to be harder than a single story that happens to be longer. It's impressive.

Thank you so much! You know, I never thought of it that way! That does make sense.






I just want to post an update on my Free promo with select. I am doing it for 2 days and decided to do it right before Halloween for my paranormal erotic romance Give Me Forever. Yesterday my promo ended with 112 downloads. So far this morning I have about 11 downloads. Here's the best seller rank as it stands right now:

#1,849 Free in Kindle Store
#10 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Erotica > Paranormal
#16 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Erotica > Urban

Not too bad.My hope was to do better than my last free promo. I even contacted a bunch of sites/blogs so they could post about the promo but only one actually did. I announced it in the usual places, my Goodreads groups, FB, Twitter and of course here. I don't think I'll end up with more downloads than last time. Also, last time I only got one review out of it on Goodreads. But, sales of my other titles did go up. So far, that isn't happening. We'll see how it goes...
 

Celeste Carrara

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 31, 2012
Messages
591
Reaction score
48
Location
NY
Website
www.celestecarrara.com
An update...
My second free day for Give Me Forever wasn't too good in my opinion. Only 64 downloads. At this point I can't wait to get out of KDP select and get it back on the other sales channels. My enrollment will expire on Dec. 2nd and I have one more free day left and I plan on doing it on Nov. 26th.

My new adult romance, Rediscovered Love is also in KDP select & I'm anxious for that to expire on Nov. 19th. That one has 3 more free days left and I'm going to do them in a row starting on Nov. 17th. I'm really curious to see how it'll do on the other sales channels once KDP expires because I never had it for sale anywhere else besides Amazon.

My sales for Oct. were really good. I haven't done any promo anywhere either. I did have a new release, but I didn't really promote that at all.

For some strange reason, all of a sudden I have a bunch of sales on All Romance Ebooks. Things died down there for me for awhile, but Oct was great.

Intimate Desires has been my best seller but I only have 6 reviews on Amazon, 20 on Goodreads.
That keeps happenig to me. Lots of reviews on Goodreads, very little on Amazon.

In other news, No Cords Attached (erotic contemporary romance) is done & came in at 17,336 words. Still a novelette I guess. My betas loved it & no changes were suggested!! So, it's off to my editor. I'm working on the cover with my designer and I think I can have this out by end of Nov/beginning of Dec.

I just went back to a story (erotic contemporary romance) I started awhile ago & had put aside because I wasn't sure what to do with it. It's about 16,000 words, but I can see it being a novella. I finally had it hit me the other day where I want to go with it so I added a new beginning, I've been tweaking what I have already & will work on the end this week before I go away.

I'll be gone for 10 days and on my trip I'm going to finally get back to reading! I'm writing a YA fantasy novel & I need some inspiration so I'll be finishing The Shade Of Andrea Fox. (I started it & it's great, but haven't had the time to finish) I think it'll get me in the right mind set to be in the YA Fantasy world and help me with my own story.

Even though it's only Nov I've set a few goals for myself for next year:
I will get Give Me Your Love (Paranormal City Book 5) done if it kills me lol
I will get the story I'm fixing now done & I will finish my YA novel. So next year I will release 3 books (2 novels, 1 novella). Also, I'm going to spend some more time (and money) on promo. Not sure how I'll go about that yet. But I think these are reasonable goals for next year! :)
 

Tienci

Lost in the Land of Giants
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 2, 2005
Messages
840
Reaction score
66
Location
Everywhere and nowhere
Celeste, I'm so glad to see you still chugging along like a champ! :)

Do you plan to use ads to boost downloads for your upcoming freebie days? I can PM you some free and pd ones I've used, if you'd like.
 

Celeste Carrara

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 31, 2012
Messages
591
Reaction score
48
Location
NY
Website
www.celestecarrara.com
Celeste, I'm so glad to see you still chugging along like a champ! :)

Do you plan to use ads to boost downloads for your upcoming freebie days? I can PM you some free and pd ones I've used, if you'd like.

Thanks!
I tried contacting blogs about my past freebies and not one of them posted the info. But I never tried free or paid ads. I'd love the info you have on the ones you used, thank you so much.
 

Tienci

Lost in the Land of Giants
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 2, 2005
Messages
840
Reaction score
66
Location
Everywhere and nowhere
PM sent! :D And don't be afraid of NaNo :poke:Do eeeet...
Hehe! Maybe next year?
Thanks for visiting my thread. :)
 

Celeste Carrara

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 31, 2012
Messages
591
Reaction score
48
Location
NY
Website
www.celestecarrara.com
PM sent! :D And don't be afraid of NaNo :poke:Do eeeet...
Hehe! Maybe next year?
Thanks for visiting my thread. :)

Thanks so much for your help!

I might have given NaNo a try this year if I wasn't going away this month. I promised myself no writing on vacation, only reading lol
 

Judy Koot

WordDreamer
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 3, 2013
Messages
432
Reaction score
15
Location
The Netherlands
Hey Celeste, thanks for the update. It's always inspiring to see what you're up to.
 

Celeste Carrara

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 31, 2012
Messages
591
Reaction score
48
Location
NY
Website
www.celestecarrara.com
Hey Celeste, thanks for the update. It's always inspiring to see what you're up to.

Thanks Athena! :)



Ok, I'm back from my cruise, which wasn't long enough lol ;) and I took a few extra days off before jumping back in to things.

Here's a small update.
My new adult romance, Rediscovered Love is finally out of KDP select so I uploaded it to B&N, Kobo, ARe, & D2D to get it on iBooks. I also put my other single titles, Intimate Desires, and In Circles on D2D to get it on iBooks. I figured, why not?
*I did use the last 3 free days for Rediscovered Love and only had around 130 downloads! I consider that pathetic but it is what it is. I did contact numerous sites to promote the free days, but I'm not even sure which ones actually posted about it because I was away.

I know now that being in select just isn't worth it for me.

My editor has my novelette, No Cords Attached & is almost done with it so I do plan on a Dec release which makes me very happy!

Sales are good, I'm going to spend the rest of my year marketing, I have 3 books planned for next year and I have a bunch of books in my "to read" pile I'm going to tackle over the holidays! That's all the updates I have for now. :)
 

M. H. Lee

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 24, 2012
Messages
501
Reaction score
67
Not sure how steamy your books are, but you may also want to consider putting any that qualify up on Selena Kitt's new site Excitica. (Not linking here in case AW has any issues with links to sexy sites...)
 

Celeste Carrara

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 31, 2012
Messages
591
Reaction score
48
Location
NY
Website
www.celestecarrara.com
Not sure how steamy your books are, but you may also want to consider putting any that qualify up on Selena Kitt's new site Excitica. (Not linking here in case AW has any issues with links to sexy sites...)

My books are very steamy and would fit in well on that site ;)
Thanks for bringing it to my attention, I'll look into it further!
 

Celeste Carrara

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 31, 2012
Messages
591
Reaction score
48
Location
NY
Website
www.celestecarrara.com
Hi everyone! :hi:

Just thought I'd pop in on my journal and give an update.

As you can see, (my avatar) the cover is out for my next release, No Cords Attached. It'll be released on Dec 19th. I've really done no promo (more on that later) for it other than a Tweet, FB post and post here on the announcements board. I decided to put this one for sale at Amazon, Kobo, B&N, iBooks & ARe. I will not use KDP select again ;) I will be selling it for $1.99 keeping it the same price as my other novellas even though it's a little shorter word count than the rest.

I made a decision about something that I had been going back and forth with for quite sometime. I set Give Me Forever (the 1st book in my paranormal series) to Free everywhere. I'm waiting for Amazon to price match, but it's free already at iBooks, Kobo, Scribd, Page Foundry and I'm still waiting on B&N. I used D2D for everything but Kobo & Amazon obviously. I was hesitant to do this because this is my only novel, (the rest are novellas & a couple of shorts/novelettes) my highest priced book and my baby ;) BUT, I do think I made the right choice. The hope is that because the 1st book is free, people will love it and want to continue with the series, and maybe give some reviews too! I also set my book Give Me What I Need (book 2.5 in the series) free as well. It's a short story and really a sister book to the 2nd book and I thought it would be nice to offer that one free for those who are enjoying the series. This all just happened today, and I've already had quite a few downloads on ARe.

This series isn't selling well so hopefully this will give it a boost!

Intimate Desires is still my best seller.

I've had new business cards made & magnets too which turned out really nice! I put a QR code on the back of my business cards that leads to my website. I love it & Vista Print did a great job with them.

I still plan to release 3 books next year. One is actually not too far from completion. The other two are started already.

Rediscovered Love is suppose to be a group read for a new adult book club on Goodreads in Jan and I'm really excited & anxious for that to happen. I really hope they like it. I also hope some will seek out my other titles which brings me to the subject of promo...

It is my goal to start promoting my books more. I've been wanting to do this, have tried before (but life kept getting in the way) but this time, I'm going to make it a priority. I've got a list of places to do free ads, a list of blogs with FB pages to do promos and I'm hoping my free books will gain me more readers.

I have a couple of Arcs out of No Cords attached and a few review copies of Intimate Desires out now. I'm hopeful they will be favorable reviews.

I'm trying really hard to get more reviews because I would really like to purchase a BookBub ad. Maybe someday... lol ;)

I guess that's all for now! Thanks to all who are still following me on this crazy journey!!!
 

Celeste Carrara

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 31, 2012
Messages
591
Reaction score
48
Location
NY
Website
www.celestecarrara.com
Since it's the last day of the month, and year, how about an update?

Boy am I glad I set Give Me Forever perma free! I've had 100's of downloads across all sales channels & its doing what I hoped it would do, people are buying the rest of the series! All my sales have increased as well so I'm really happy with my decision.

My new release is selling well and has a few reviews which are really good! My other books are getting more reviews too which is awesome, but still most of these reviews are on Goodreads.

Since Amazon owns Goodreads, I would love it if one day they would combine reviews. A girl can dream right? lol

More and more of my childhood friends are discovering my books, purchasing & loving them. It's a great feeling to hear how much they are enjoying them!

So I now proudly say to anyone & everyone that I am an erotic romance author & no longer care what people think ;)

I really can't wait for 2015!!!

Thank you all for still following along on my journey! Happy New Year!!
 

akaria

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 23, 2011
Messages
579
Reaction score
61
Location
Brooklyn represent!

Mclesh

It's too hot
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 18, 2010
Messages
4,526
Reaction score
1,804
Location
Southern California
Website
www.storyrhyme.com
Good news, Celeste! I'm so impressed with how you've developed your brand. I have a feeling you'll keep gathering sales as you go along. Keep up the good work!

As far as Goodreads, I've been glad the GR reviews don't always show up on Amazon. They tend to be harsher. ;)
 

Ann Joyce

It's all about grace
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 1, 2010
Messages
636
Reaction score
37
Location
Minnesota
I just came over to see how you've been and what you've been up to. Lots, by the looks of things - how exciting for you! I'm glad to hear you've been doing so well. I need to stop by more often. Keep on keeping on. Blessings!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.