A Very Small Fish Jumping Into a Very Big Pond

merrihiatt

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Anyway. I'm happy to be the example of how self-publishing is not overnight success and short story self-publishing is especially tricky to pull off. Be here all year.

I like your style and your attitude. Thanks for updating.
 

M. H. Lee

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I like your style and your attitude. Thanks for updating.

Haha. Thanks!

(On a side note, I saw in your thread that you just lost your father. I lost my father many years ago and I still have bad days every once in a while. Grief is a unique experience for each person, but just know that there will probably be good days and bad days and don't beat yourself up too much when you have those bad days or only want to write things you know you can't publish. Time is the best healer, at least in my experience.)
 

Parametric

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What I have found interesting is the new KDP program: Kindle Countdown deals. I'm definitely going to use it for my non-fiction and may consider raising the prices of the short stories to $2.99 to take advantage of it. (DWS and others already advocate pricing all of your short stories at $2.99 and then I could drop the price to $.99, possibly get advertising from Amazon for those seven days, and still earn 70% on each sale.)

I price all my short stories at $2.99. The drop in royalty if you go any lower is huge. I do get quite a few returns, some of which I'm sure is piracy, some of which I suspect is people not reading the description and expecting the works to be full-length novels, but I just try to ignore that column on my dashboard. :tongue

Anyway. I'm happy to be the example of how self-publishing is not overnight success and short story self-publishing is especially tricky to pull off. Be here all year. :)

Thanks for posting - it's great to get more data. Wishing you a slow, steady build of sustainable sales. :) Do you have a mailing list?
 

M. H. Lee

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No mailing list yet, although I've seen lots of recommendations to start one.

Right now I post to my writing blog when I have new releases and I have a link in the back of each book to the blog.

Quite frankly, I think having one at this point might just depress me because there wouldn't be anyone on it! I'll probably get one together in December, though, when I start to release the more expensive stuff.

Thanks for sharing about your short story pricing. I really do need to get past my $2.99 is too much for a short story mentality. I'll try it Monday and see how it goes.
 

M. H. Lee

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I'm killing time waiting for Amazon to approve my latest pub (at about twenty hours right now), so thought I'd drop in and share my teeny bit of positive news:

I noticed today that I had my first borrow! Not sure why, but this made me very excited.

It's been a slow month because I decided to put out one of my stories under a different pen name (different genre/theme) so haven't pubbed anything new under this pen name all month.

Not that sales will pick up all that much even when the latest story goes live, but I can always count on at least one sale from my mom.
 

M. H. Lee

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Time for the monthly update...

Let's see. Sales were SLOW this month, partially because I didn't remind my mom to buy my new stories, so that's three sales right there that I didn't get. BUT, I do think they were almost all from strangers, so that's an improvement.

And I did have two borrows on what was my best-liked story with short story markets and beta readers, The Bearer, so that was nice. I'm hoping those continue into December and actually decided to leave four of the short stories in Select at a price of $2.99 since I think the price is part of what triggered the borrows.

I just released a short story/essay collection of all five of the short stories I've published so far: A World Dark and Cold. My hope is that readers will buy it instead of the individual stories because of its relatively low price, $3.99, compared to the price for the individual stories.

I did leave one story, Death Answered My Call at a price of $1.49 for readers who want to try my writing but don't want to spring for the whole collection.

It'll be interesting to see how December plays out. I have a free giveaway scheduled for Freya's Tale starting right before Christmas followed by a series of Countdown deals on the other short stories. The collection will stay at $3.99, though.

On the non-fiction front, I ran a free promo for one of my books this month. No advertising other than a blog post. About 150 downloads. Hoping that generates a review or two by year-end. Will be doing a Countdown deal with the other non-fiction book about then. They don't feed each other sales-wise, but maybe I'll get reviews out of it that'll lead to some buys.

I'm very likely moving this month and starting an away-from-home, working-too-much sort of gig in January, so after December things may just go into cruise control. Not what I want to be doing, but (a) I couldn't screw other people over by not taking the gig and (b) I still earn far far more from my day job than from writing, so needs must and all. Pbbbt.
 

M. H. Lee

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As of today, I think I'm pretty much done with any further self-publishing efforts for the year. The puppy and I start our 32-hour cross-country drive next week and I can't imagine between the holiday and that that I'll have much time for anything else.

Here's a link to her photo (I can't seem to figure out how to insert the photo without it being too big. I really need an HTML refresher.)
http://mhleedotme.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/img_1088-copy.jpg

Finally managed to get my short story collection (A World Dark and Cold) up on B&N, iTunes, and Kobo in addition to Amazon. (Full links on the bibliography page of my blogs. The one in my signature is to Amazon US.)

I also bumped the price up to $4.99 because I wanted enough of a price difference from the individual short stories which are at $2.99. (The good thing about not being well-established--no one really cares what you do with your prices.)

Starting next week I have Kindle promos running on the individual stories, so we'll see if that drives any sales of the collection. (I'll report back at the beginning of the year. I have one free promo and, I think, four Countdown promos scheduled between the 23rd and the new year. One is for my non-fiction, though.)

So far this is my best month revenue-wise. I have my non-fiction books set at $4.99 at the moment and have had a few sales of those, which makes for a nice return. I mentioned them on a blog with lots of traffic that was asking authors for the names of their books for holiday gift ideas and I think that's what drove the sales.

I'd love to break $100 for the year. I'm at about $60 right now, so that would be a bit of stretch, especially with no advertising, but one can hope, right?

And, if I cave and tell my FB friends about my writing, I'm pretty sure I could hit that. Just not sure I'm ready for that step just yet especially with the work situation that's going to bury me next month. If things are going to take off, I'd like to be in a position to leverage that and I just don't think I will be.

So...there you have it. Wishing everyone else many sales over the silly season and into the new year.
 

FionnJameson

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Good luck, I hope you can break $100! I noticed the Kindle reader went down from $69 to $49 for a day or so, so that's good news for us, right? :) Take care on that long drive with your adorable doggie.
 

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I think they dropped the price on a few of the Kindle readers a couple of times this shopping season. Here's to hoping for lots of December 26th sales! :)
 

M. H. Lee

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Thanks guys! I posted about my results in the Countdown thread. Basically, I haven't seen any reviews or follow-through sales from my promos, but I did make some sales I wouldn't have made otherwise, so it wasn't a total bust. (Didn't reach $100 for the year, but that would've required a big bump in sales to hit.)

I definitely think advertising is essential for any real sort of sales and based upon my current work situation and an inability to capitalize on anything if I did get a big bump in sales, I just can't see myself doing any advertising push for a bit still.

So, here's hoping to limping along at $10 in sales a month until real life settles down a bit.

Good news is that pup and I made the move without any issues at all. She was an absolute champ the whole time and survived 32 hours of driving and staying in four different hotels and has settled into our new home with no issues. I love my puppy!
 

Ann Joyce

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Your attitude is stellar! Glad to hear you and the pup are all settled.
 

M. H. Lee

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This is the way my year is going to go: I had to move again ten days after settling into the new place. (My request because my commute was hell, but still annoying to have to pack up so soon.) In the process I forgot that I'd set up a free promo for a short story I wrote under a different pen name that hadn't had any sales.

Oops!

Turns out it did okay on its own. Promo ends today and I've given away more copies of that story than I did of Freya's Tale in December and more copies than I gave away of my non-fiction title in November. And I got a review on the story already, so, can't complain.

Because I don't have the time to get my stories into the other channels right now, I went ahead and reupped for Select and set my two non-fiction books and four of my short stories up for Countdown promos in February. I figure if it generates a handful of sales then that's a handful more than I'd have otherwise, right?

Anyway. Good luck to everyone in the new year. Hope to occasionally drop by and see some inspirational stories of great success!
 

M. H. Lee

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A new month so back to staring at the brown bar of death on Amazon. Hopefully that will change by the end of the month since I have Countdown promos running on six "books" this month.

Life is still insane, so other than a blog post I won't be promoting any of them. Running Countdown specials is just my way of selling the short stories at a reasonable price and getting 70% payout on them. (I HATE the skewed pricing that results from Amazon's and the other sales platform's pricing constraints. I wish they'd just let me charge any price and pay me the same royalty. If they did, I'd probably price everything around 49 cents. Alas.)

I only had a couple of sales in January, but good news was that, as far as I know, they were to strangers. So, yay! And one was for one of my non-fiction titles and at full price.

I also gave away 150 copies or so of a short story I wrote under a different pen name. (Seems to be the number you get for free with no advertising.) Garnered one review on the story, which worked for me. I hadn't sold any copies of it before that, so I'll take it. Kind of silly to give it away since I have nothing else out under that pen name and likely won't anytime soon, but I figured it didn't hurt anything either.

January was a BAD month for writing. I'm hoping February will be better. Problem is, priorities are work and puppy and between the two they're not giving me much free time these days and I've never been one of those people who needed to write. (Tell stories in my head, yes. Put it on paper, not so much.)

Best of luck to everyone else in February.
 

M. H. Lee

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Yeah, pup will mellow out in six months or so, but I'm okay prioritizing her right now while she's young and has lots of energy.

So, figured I'd drop by and mention something interesting I noticed in this recent run of Countdown deals: The sales I'm getting are NOT at my lowest price point. Most are at the second lowest. So, if I run one of my short stories at 99 cents and then $1.99 and it's normally sold at $2.99, I'm seeing sales at the $1.99 price. And for non-fiction at the $2.99 price.

I thought that was really interesting, especially since I'd considered keeping them all at the lowest price for the whole run.

Assuming no returns (can you see how much faith I have in my stories), I tripled my sales this month!

Haha. It was a low number I was tripling. But still. No promo. No friends and family. And across four titles and two markets. So, not bad...

And it looks like one of the short story sales led to a follow-through purchase of my short story collection. (I hope!)

Anyway. This will probably serve as my monthly update.

Glad to see that some of the members of this board are having some great success with self-pub and thank you all for creating such a nice environment in which to share and discuss.
 

M. H. Lee

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Long time no update. Last month was pretty slow because I didn't do any promos, but I did get my first sale in Italy! So, there's that. Sadly it seems that my non-fiction, train of thought books (and blog) do much better than my fiction. But, since I have those priced higher ($4.99 each), I'll take it.

Still not writing as much as I should, but hopefully that'll change this month. Finally finalized moving and have settle into a routine. So if I can just quick watching Chopped, Property Brotherd, and Love It or List It I will be well on my way to writing again.

Of course, the next three projects are novels or book-length non-fiction. So...A few months before anything is ready for subbing or publishing. (Unless I do the non-fiction idea which generally takes about twenty hours from start to finish. Seems I also write non-fiction faster.)

Anyway. I did update a lot of my covers and released a couple of short story combos of my longer shorts. They're going to both be on Countdown specials this month. One starting tomorrow. One next week. We'll see how it goes...Countdown promos are usually good for a few sales and with the story combos and new covers maybe I'll get a few more.

Thanks to all who keep posting to their own threads in here. I lurk a lot, but comment seldom.
 

M. H. Lee

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I came in here to finally update my thread after too long of not commenting and stumbled across the fact that Merri's thread was locked and then saw why and was so sad to hear the news. Then I look at my thread and, of course, because she was always so supportive and kind, the last post in my thread is from Merri.

Aw, this sucks even if it is a few months after the fact. Just scanning up through my little thread you can see how much she contributed to everyone around here, even the small fries like me.

The update can wait.
 

M. H. Lee

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I should probably rename my thread to "what not to do." Today I went into KDP to remove a sentence from three of my book blurbs. They were all books I had taken out of Select over a month ago. Well, when I got the confirmation e-mail for the first one it was somehow re-enrolled in Select. So, caution to anyone who updates a book that is not currently in Select because it seems the default is to throw the book back in. Hopefully I can figure out how to cancel that because I just submitted one of them through Draft2Digital and it's already live on one site and will be live on all the others as soon as that happens.

In terms of sales, this will be my first month with a big fat zero. That would be because of (1) no advertising and (2) no new material. I pulled my standalone short stories and kept the two-story combos and moved their prices down to 99 cents, but without either (1) or (2) there's just no visibility on Amazon for old work. So...to be expected. Which calls into question my intelligence a bit if I know the cause and don't take steps to fix it, but life.

Good news is I will hopefully have some time to devote full-time to writing in August/September and I can address (2) if nothing else. I have a slew of ideas waiting to be written just need to sit down and bust them out. I actually think the next thing I write and publish will be a book on grief in the spirit of C.S. Lewis' book on the subject which really helped me after the loss of my father. Twenty years later I think I can finally approach the subject with a little coherence. I hope.

Well, as always, good luck to everyone else with your books. Happy to see the success stories and grateful to see that I'm not the only not-yet-a-success story.
 

Polenth

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Taking the standalones down is probably for the best. They don't seem to do too well in speculative fiction, outside of stories that won awards and the like. Collections don't do fabulously well either, but they do have a better marketing hook at least.