Tracy Reed: Our June Featured Author
June 14, 2023 by Tracy Reed in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley, Featured Author of the Month tagged as Beautiful Men, fashion, Sophisticated Romance, the Big Apple, Tracy Reed
Tracy Reed: Our June Featured Author
A California native, novelist Tracy Reed pushes the boundaries of her Christian foundation with her sometimes racy and often fiery tales.
After years of living in the Big Apple, this self proclaimed New Yorker draws from the city’s imagination, intrigue, and inspiration to cultivate characters and plot lines who breathe life to the words on every page.
Tracy’s passion for beautiful fashion and beautiful men direct her vivid creative power towards not only novels, but short stories, poetry, and podcasts. With something for every attention span.
Tracy Reed’s ability to capture an audience is unmatched. Her body of work has been described as a host of stimulating adventures and invigorating expression.
Books by Tracy Reed
Tracy Reed: Our June Featured Author
June 7, 2023 by Tracy Reed in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley, Featured Author of the Month tagged as Beautiful Men, fashion, Sophisticated Romance, the Big Apple, Tracy Reed
Tracy Reed: Our June Featured Author
A California native, novelist Tracy Reed pushes the boundaries of her Christian foundation with her sometimes racy and often fiery tales.
After years of living in the Big Apple, this self proclaimed New Yorker draws from the city’s imagination, intrigue, and inspiration to cultivate characters and plot lines who breathe life to the words on every page.
Tracy’s passion for beautiful fashion and beautiful men direct her vivid creative power towards not only novels, but short stories, poetry, and podcasts. With something for every attention span.
Tracy Reed’s ability to capture an audience is unmatched. Her body of work has been described as a host of stimulating adventures and invigorating expression.
Books by Tracy Reed
Who’s On Your Team?
June 5, 2023 by Tracy Reed in category Pink Pad by Tracy Reed tagged as PAs, personal assistants, promotion, team
Hi, please forgive my post replay. I’m in the middle of edits. I selected this post because I’m beefing up my PA’s duties. I have come to the realization I need a little more help. Happy June.
Happy August. It’s hard to believe we are in the middle of summer. I’ll keep it brief.
I did something a little presumptive or not very smart. The past two years have been a lot different. Most of us probably didn’t stick to our writing schedules. In an attempt to get back on track this year, I set up three preorders. What was I thinking? Since I’m being transparent, I changed the release date on all three preorders.
I could expound on the many things that contributed to the changes, but I won’t. However, the reasons and changes opened my eyes to something…I needed help…a team.
I’ve been doing well with my intimate production team.…a proof reader (my mom) and an editor. After my last release, my editor and I amended our arrangement. This new arrangement left me in a lurch…she wasn’t exactly on board with the new tone of my books. I like working with her. She understood my stories and she spoke French, which I needed for my series,The Good Girl. However, now she stated she would prefer to only edit sweet, non-sexual content books. Occasionally, I write sweet books and will keep her for those projects.
I freaked out about having to replace my editor. After all, she was half of my team. After my last release, I reached out to a friend who helped me find another editor who is on board with my writing style.
The other thing I realized was I was writing up to the deadline and trying to fit marketing in between craft and graphic design. I booked a few Facebook and BookBub ads. I also booked some newsletter swaps. However, I knew I could do more.
The past several years, I’ve heard other writers talk about their PAs. I longed for a PA, but figured that wasn’t in my budget just yet. But during lockdown, it seemed like more and more writers were talking about their PAs and how helpful they were. Pre-lockdown I reached out to a few PAs and felt as amazing as it sounded to have one, at that time it wasn’t an expense I was ready to take on.
Fast forward to lockdown and an author business workshop and a business book…”We Should All Be Millionaires”…by Rachel Rodgers, I realized not having help was costing me money.
I reached out and asked what an author PA did. I was ignorant. I thought all PAs did was schedule FB parties, newsletter swaps, send out prizes and organize ARC teams. I apologize to every PA out there because I was unaware of the value a good PA offers. I also think one of the issues I had with using a PA was control. I like to or rather I’m use to doing pretty much everything myself. I do my own covers, promotional graphics and ad graphics. I write my own newsletters and social media posts. I have an editor, a proof reader and a couple of beta readers.
If I was going to do this, I needed to know what a PA could do for me. Imagine my shock when I saw the list of things a PA could do that weren’t even on my list…book formatting, managing my social media and GoodReads page, update mailing list, arrange promotions and giveaways. I was intrigued.
I reached out to one of my FB groups for feedback and referrals. However, my friend A.M. Roark hit me up and recommended her PA…Praise Ikeme. We chatted and about an hour later, I knew she would be a good fit for me. I told Praise I wanted to take things slow and once I’ve come to grips with letting go of a few tasks, I’ll hand them off to her.
My dip into the PA water has been very good. I have my PA working with me on newsletter swaps. Within the first twenty-four hours of our arrangement, she had my first two months of swaps scheduled. I like that she sends me reminders, verifies the links on my site for the books I’m swapping. She proofs my newsletter and sends me reminders at the beginning of Newsletter Week.
I have to admit, I wasn’t very consistent when it came to sending out my newsletter. Since hiring my PA, I have a newsletter schedule…twice a month…which I’ve been sticking to. I also use the newsletter copy as blog copy. Thanks to my PA, I’m blogging again…something I hadn’t done in quite a while.
Now my team consists of three people…a proof reader, an editor and a PA. I’m excited and look forward to expanding my team when the time comes.
If you’re looking for a PA, I recommend Praise Ikeme (praiseikeme@gmail.com).
Who’s on your team?
Next month I’ll do a goals update.
Enjoy your summer and happy writing and reading.
Tracy
Author Self-Care
May 5, 2023 by Tracy Reed in category Pink Pad by Tracy Reed tagged as author self-care, motivatrion, tracy read
Happy May.
Yes, I’m going to say it . . . I can’t believe it’s already May. The year is almost half over and I still have things from the first quarter I need to do.
Okay, so I’m going off course with this post and talk about a subject we as authors are guilty of not doing . . . self-care . . . wellness. I don’t know about you, but I am slowly moving back into society after three years of isolation. I still wear a mask. No judging. I happen to be highly allergic . . . grass, watermelon, horse hair, peanuts, cats, some dogs, dust…the list goes on. The other reason I’m still masked up, I’ve been undergoing some dental work and don’t want to catch anything before my next procedure..
Thanks to COVID, I have neglected myself. My beauty or maintenance regime has been very inconsistent. Prior to COVID, I went to the salon regularly. My hands, feet and hair were always on point. I worked out five days a week between 60 and 90 minutes per day.
As we are on the back end of the pandemic, I got a revelation. I need to take regular breaks. I also realized, haven’t been good about my self-care. I did a self-check and was shocked how easy it was for me fall back into some of my old habits. Not getting enough sleep was at the top of my list. When I don’t get enough rest, my thinking is cloudy and clear and my writing makes no sense.
So how am I going to resolve this? With baby steps.
First off, if I were to go all in with a major wellness change, I think I’d freak out. I really want to rest from all work for three consecutive days a month. Then I want to break the late night television binge. I have been hooked on Perry Mason reruns as well as the new HBO version. These two shows have kept up beyond my sleep time. The next thing, I want to do is gym five days a week for an hour per day. Third, I want to eliminate junk.
Believe it or not, the easiest thing on this list to do is eliminate junk food. Telling my body no to junk food was easy. Telling my body to go to bed earlier wasn’t. Here’s the weird part, my body clock still wants to get up at it’s designated time regardless of when I got into bed..
What does all of this have to do with self-care/wellness? If we don’t take care of ourselves, we can’t count on anyone else to do it for us. The main reason for self-care is to live better . . . get stronger . . . get healthy.
If you haven’t already, I challenge you to start a wellness plan and or journal. Pencil in three day breaks every quarter. Remember, on these breaks you aren’t allowed to do anything work related. Then I want you to adjust or evaluate your sleep schedule. I won’t ask how many are on a regular sleep schedule, because we’re writers. We write when the muse speaks, but let’s train the muse to visit us during the day so we don’t have to be up late..
Next on the list, cut back on the junk food. Do I really need to explain this to you? You know junk food isn’t the healthiest option. However, the occasional hamburger and fries sort of just hit the spot. If you aren’t working out, get a plan. Start out with a brisk walk a few times a week. Then add some strength training. Trust me on the strength training. You need all the strength you can get to set up your book tables at signing events.
These few changes will help you stay healthy and wise. Trust me, your brain will welcome the opportunity to recharge.
Here’s to a new healthy second half of the year.
Tracy’s Books
First Quarter List Building Results
April 5, 2023 by Tracy Reed in category WritingHappy Spring.
This is a special week for me. It’s Easter and my birthday.
Let’s get to this month’s post. I just finished the first quarter of my newsletter building project. As of this post, my efforts have netted 2365 new subscribers. I am beyond excited about this number. As I mentioned before, whenever I send an email, I lose a few. My current loss number is 65…less than 3% of the new subs. I can live with that. Right now, I’m averaging approximately 17 new subs per day. I can live with that as well. If I stay on tract, I’ll reach my goal of 10,000 subscribers.
If you’re looking to build your newsletter list, I highly recommend using Book Funnel group promotions. They’re free, easy to set up, offer multiple genres with minimal effort.
The only thing I haven’t done, is check for duplicate email subscribers. I know that’s a possibility, because each download requires an email sign up. Once I export all the lists, I’ll get the answer to the question of possible duplicates.
While the email sign up promos are doing well, the sales promotions aren’t going as well. I’m not sure why, but once I do I think it will be good for sales. I’ve read a few articles or posts about the success authors are having direct selling ebooks. Direct sales don’t allow refunds. YEAH!. I don’t about you, but I’m tired of readers binge reading and then returning the books. I’ve gotten to the point when I see a series has been ordered, I cringe waiting to see if the books will be returned or not.
In a nutshell, I’m about to join the ranks of authors direct selling ebooks. I believe this is the answer to dealing with Amazon’s read and return game. Sure, I can’t stop Amazon from allowing people to read and return, but I can offer another ebook option that will work to my benefit. It may take me a little while to set up my books and get readers used to this option, but I believe it will work.
One of the reasons why I think I’m tanking on direct sales at Book Funnel, is incorrect sign up. Once I get that fixed, I expect see a vast difference in my direct sales numbers. As well as studying authors who are doing this successfully.
Speaking of new sales options, I was reviewing my Kobo sales and discovered I’ve been earning sales with Kobo Plus. I completely forgot I had put some of my books in this lending program. So while I was a little disappointed in my sales, I’d actually been earning money. The reason I didn’t know about the Kobo sales is because Kobo Plus sales don’t show up on the Kobo sales dashboard.
Have a wonderful Easter and see you next month.
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