Happy April. One of the reasons I chose this day of the month to post is because my birthday is the 5th of the month. I knew I’d remember the fifth day of the month. However, this month I actually forgot today was my day to post. What’s more shocking, I forgot it was my birthday. I’m not saying I’m old and forgetful. I’m saying I’m on a major deadline focused on one thing, completing my book.
I thought setting up preorders with Amazon would help me stick to my writing goal for the year of three books. I’m on track to meet that goal. However, setting up preorders has been a little stressful. I made a mistake after my last release…I took a break. During that break, I got blocked. I love the story I’m writing. The characters are fun and it’s been exciting watching them grow. What I didn’t expect was I would hit a wall with the story.
I’ve been careful to have one major surprise revealed in each of the books. In part four, the heroine discovered her lover’s secret. In part five, she has to figure out her next move. For all those author who outline this wouldn’t be a problem, because I’m a panster I don’t know where the story is going or if it’s going anywhere until the inspiration or muse hits.
When I decided to write a fifth book in this series, I knew the main plot revolved around the heroine deciding if she wanted to remain married to a man she really didn’t know. If she did, it would open the door to a sea of problems and new characters. So now I’m faced with a few decisions: a) push the release date back a month and risk punishment from KDP; b) make part five VERY long or add a sixth book; c) spin off the other characters into stand alone books; d) new covers again…I never expected the series to go beyond four books so I didn’t really have covers for more than five books…well that’s not exactly true. I have a cover I can’t use because Amazon will probably banish me to the EZone (erotica) and there’s no way Facebook will allow me to run ads.
Four pressing questions all because I set up preorders in order to stick to my publishing goal. So what would you do? Would you push for a fat book five or add a sixth book? Here’s an advantage to a sixth book in the series, additional revenue.
As for the rest of my goals list, here’s the update. Goals achieved are striked out
Get my letters
Triple my income
Triple my mailing list – Signed up for a Book Sweep newsletter promotion later this month…hoping for maximum resultsMaster Facebook ads – This is ongoing, but achieved so far
Update covers – 13 covers in total to update. 8 completed.
Learn how to write a sellable blurb
Use Ingram Spark
Direct distribution – One down
Increase BookBub US Followers to 1000 – 1000 US are needed to qualify for a new release promotion alertIncrease my prices – All of my ebooks are $4.99 except for the preorders I set up before making this change.
Release 3 Books – One down, two to go. I added a short story as part of an anthology. So that gives me a publishing bonus.
How are you doing with your goals so far?
Happy Birthday to me and see you next month.
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Happy March. I’ll keep this brief because I know everyone is focused on the turmoil that’s going on in the world right now. As a writer you are probably feeling a little guilty about writing romance. But we must remember, it’s our job to make people smile. I challenge you to write something that will make people smile and forget the crazy in the world and give readers an escape.
I’m coming off release month for The Good Girl Part Four. It didn’t pan out like I planned, but I’m pleased with the results. I didn’t meet my sales goal, but I exceeded my monthly sales goal by 3.7%. I missed out on money because this book and the next book in the series weren’t part of the price increase. I set these preorders up a while back and I didn’t feel good about raising the price when there were people who purchased at the lower price. This decision cost me money, but I know I’ll get the lost money back.
The Good Girl Part One and Girlfriends & Secrets were gifted some free advertising which pushed sales and preorders. I also did an author newsletter promo which generated sales and preorders. These ads put eyes on both series. I also ran a BookBub New Release For Less Ad. I hoped high for the day the ad ran, but fell a little short that day. But the ad had tails. Honestly, I think the tails are still growing. I love this BookBub new release tool and hope to use it with every release.
However, I over-estimated my writing schedule for my next release, the Good Girl Part Five. I thought I’d be finished with it by now, but I’m not. I’m pushing to complete the rough draft by March 19th. I’m hoping to end the series with book five, but it feels like there might be one more book. It also feels like the series might spin off.
As of this post, I’ve made some progress, but not as much as I would have liked for the month. I also added a couple of goals: release 3 books and increase BookBub US followers.
Here’s my updated goals list:
Get my letters
Triple my income
Triple my mailing list
Master Facebook ads – I made a change last month to how much I spend and it’s paying off. Last month, I scaled back to one ad and it’s paid off. This one ad for a first in series free has led to sales of the books in two of my other series. I’m going to ride this strategy for a little while before scaling up.
Update covers – 13 covers in total to update. 8 completed.
Learn how to write a sellable blurb
Use Ingram Spark
Direct distribution
Increase BookBub US Followers to 1000 – 1000 US are needed to qualify for a new release promotion alert
Increase my prices
Release 3 Books – One down, two to go.
How are you doing with your goals so far?
See you next month.
Happy February. Happy Love Month. Happy Valentine’s Day or Galentine’s Day.
Let’s get to it. Last month I made a bold post and shared some of my goals with you. I did this because I felt the accountability would help me achieve them.
Here are my goals:
Get my letters
Triple my income
Triple my mailing list
Master Facebook ads
Update covers
Learn how to write a sellable blurb
Use Ingram Spark
Direct distribution
Increase my prices
As of this post, I’ve completed one goal…Increase my prices. I was a little nervous about raising my prices because I didn’t think readers would be receptive to the increase on the smaller books. So far, there hasn’t been any negative feedback. Raising my prices also helps with tripling my income.
My strategy for tripling my income, is Facebook ads. Last year, I took Skye Warren’s Facebook Ads Intensive and did well. I still haven’t reached the sales goal I desire, but that will come in time. 2020 wasn’t a good sales year for me. I can’t blame the poor sales on the pandemic because I didn’t release anything new. Nor did I push my back list.
Last year, I released one book prior to doing the Ads Intensive. I really wish I’d known about the Intensive sooner, because I think the first half of the year would have turned out differently. I ended last year by multiplying my income by 4.8 times.
Fast forward to 2022 and a price increase across the board…I made all of my ebooks $4.99. This bold move helped to boost my income by 39% as of this post. Meaning I already made February 2021s income. Grant it, I had a release on February 2nd with the majority of the preorders paid out on that day.
In addition to Facebook Ads, I’m also doing BookBub ads. I turned off my AMS ad because they weren’t working. I heard Amazon doesn’t like racy covers, which could explain why the ads performed so poorly. However, the FB ads, have been consistently making the daily spend back…plus or minus two dollars. So far, I’m ahead and considering increasing my ad spend. I have a BookBub New Release For Less ad scheduled for February 8th. The tails will determine when I increase my FB ad spend.
To summarize, increasing my prices and running facebook ads are pushing me towards my goal of tripling my income.
Update my covers. I don’t have as many to update as I thought. I have seven covers I need to update and two are almost complete. I also have four I’m on the fence about. This project is time consuming because it’s not just the cover, but the chapter headers as well. Thank God for Vellum because it makes creating print copies easy.
I need to add one additional goal. Offer all books in large print. I have one live already, The Good Girl Part One. If you haven’t done large print, I recommend doing so.
The other goal I forgot to list was my new release goals. I went super bold and set up preorders for three books this year. Setting up Amazon preorders was a way to make sure I fulfilled this goal. I don’t want to end up in preorder jail, so I have to keep this goal. I am so grateful Amazon offers an extension without penalty which I am taking advantage of.
One goal down, ten to go. How are you doing with your goals?
Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season.
I have a very important question for you. Are you ready to make this year your best writing year? I hope you answered, yes. If so, then I challenge you to take this year long journey with me.
I spent a good portion of last year getting schooled in self-publishing. I have been a self-published author since December 2014, but there are some things I didn’t know. Like some authors, I have yet to reach all of my writing goals. Today, I’m going out on a limb announcing this is the year I work on making some those goals a reality. I know it sounds like a resolution, but it isn’t. It’s a statement of faith and a declaration that I’m ready to take my writing to the next level.
So what are the self-publishing goals I’m going to attack this year?
Get my letters (make a list)…I know it really doesn’t matter to readers if their favorite author is a bestseller, but it means a lot to the author. At least it does to me. In the past, I didn’t care if I ever made a list or had the title of Best Selling Author. Over the course of time I realized, I did. It’s not an ego thing, it’s a validation thing. I know I’m not Nora Roberts, Terry McMillian, E L James or Sylvia Day, but it sure would be nice to be known as a best seller like them.
Triple my income…This is a big one. I’m not sharing numbers yet. We’ll see how this year long challenge ends before discussing numbers. All I’ll say on the matter is if I fulfill this goal, it will be the first time I’ve earned that much money. Last year I did two major conferences, gained a lot of knowledge and some tools on how to push my sales and exposure up a few levels. This is the year I put all of those tools to work.
Triple my mailing list…This is almost as daunting as tripling my income. I have a decent mailing list of 3200+. However, I want to push that number up. A larger list will allow me or make me more attractive for swaps with other writers. I was surprised how many authors are open to swaps, but size matters and I can understand. You don’t want your swaps to be one sided. Swaps will allow me to increase my list. It will also allow give me some clout when seeking out anthologies to join. Bringing more readers to the table makes me an asset and not a liability.
Master Facebook ads…I did Skye Warren’s Facebook ads class last year and saw significant growth in my sales. I’m doing it again this year and expect the results to be even better. Here’s what I learned about Facebook ads…the system is constantly changing so you always need a refresher. I did Mark Dawson’s class, which was good. However, Skye’s class was a lot easier to understand. Within the first month I saw results. I was surprised how much could be achieved with five dollars a day. This year, I’m going to kick it up a few dollars and see what happens. FYI, this will also help with me tripling my income goal.
Update Covers…This is one of those areas I think is constantly changing. I am about to embark on the third iteration of covers for my series A Southern Gentleman. Why you ask? Because I didn’t know manchest equaled or implied sex. I thought you used a shirtless guy to sell a book. I didn’t realize it implied a certain heat level. Book one in the series is sex free. Book two is a completely different story.
I learned a little about covers which has caused me to review all of my books and see if the covers match the heat content. Unfortunately there are a few that need to be changed. The other reason for the cover change is, Facebook. They don’t like manchest…it’s too hot. I hear you saying, “how is that possible when manchest covers are constantly popping up in my Facebook feed.” Simple answer…the bot. The Facebook bot randomly picks and chooses covers it likes. Unfortunately for me, the bot doesn’t like my manchest cover making it impossible to use in ads. I found a work around, but I don’t want to have to use it constantly. The real solution is new covers. To prove their dislike for my cover, they shut my account down for a moment. Lesson learned. So now I’m working on new covers with a clothed man. The other thing I learned about covers in my genres (African American Contemporary and Billionaire Romance) is a woman only cover doesn’t sell as well as a man only or a couple cover.
Learn how to write a sellable blurb…What is it about authors and blurbs? We can write a hundred thousand word book, but can’t sum it up in three short lines. I’m not going to stress about this. I was introduced to a service that could help me. But first I really need to figure this out.
Use Ingram Spark…I did a little experiment last year. I ordered a set of proofs from Ingram Spark and a set from KDP. I loved the proofs from Ingram. Everything I heard about Ingram was true, the quality was far superior. I loved the books. As much as I want to use Ingram exclusively, I can’t. KDP doesn’t really like to share, so here’s my work around. Set up ebook, print, large print and hardcover at KDP and likewise at Ingram. This move with will allow expanded distribution. More outlets…more money. Another step towards that increased income goal. Another added pro to use Ingram, the proofs don’t have that ugly proof strip on the cover like KDP.
Direct Distribution…I’m a wide author, but I use a third party for Nook and some international outlets. I just found out doing this, has kept me from participating in Nook promotions. Going direct will allow me to participate in some NOOK promos. More promotions equals more exposure…more sales…increased income.
Increase my prices…I was at a conference a few months ago and this came up. I was a little hesitant about doing this, because some of my books are less than ten thousand words. So in a bold move…except for a couple of preorders, I made all of my books the same price $4.99. Amazon still hasn’t updated all of the prices, but I’ve seen sales at the other outlets with the new prices. This move taught me to get out of my way.
I have a few more goals, but these are the ones I’m going to focus on this year. What about you? What are your author goals for the year?
1 0 Read moreA Slice of Orange is an affiliate with some of the booksellers listed on this website, including Barnes & Nobel, Books A Million, iBooks, Kobo, and Smashwords. This means A Slice of Orange may earn a small advertising fee from sales made through the links used on this website. There are reminders of these affiliate links on the pages for individual books.
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More info →A Slice of Orange is an affiliate with some of the booksellers listed on this website, including Barnes & Nobel, Books A Million, iBooks, Kobo, and Smashwords. This means A Slice of Orange may earn a small advertising fee from sales made through the links used on this website. There are reminders of these affiliate links on the pages for individual books.
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