Just a quick reminder that I’ll be teaching “Your How-to Guide to Self-Publishing” starting on Monday, September 15, 2014. That’s this upcoming Monday!
It’s a 4-week online course that will help you take your completed manuscript, and format it and upload it so it’s finally for sale. Yay you! Someone asked, if your manuscript is not quite complete, can you take the class anyway and use a test version to go through the steps so you know what to do when you’re ready? Yes, you can!
The class will consist of written lectures with step-by-step instructions for getting your book ready, as well as videos showing you what to do. You may have already read dozens of blogs and books about how this person or that person created their self-published book, so you already know there is more than one way to go about this. I will show you how I do it and, as a class, we’ll all help each other as each person chooses their own tools (software, distributors, etc.).
For only $30 ($20 for OCC members), this class is a great deal! And half of the proceeds go to support the Orange County Chapter of RWA. Tell your friends and sign up today!
Have questions? Email me at Kitty at KittyBucholtz dot com. I hope to see you in class!
Kitty Bucholtz decided to combine her undergraduate degree in business, her years of experience in accounting and finance, and her graduate degree in creative writing to become a writer-turned-independent-publisher. Her novels, Little Miss Lovesick and Unexpected Superhero, and the free short story, “Superhero in Disguise,” are now available at most online retail sites. Superhero in the Making will be released this year.
0 0 Read moreJohn buying his new motorcycle |
You may know that my husband John was in a motorcycle accident four months ago. He broke his leg badly but, as I’m fond of saying, his brain and internal organs are all in their original packaging. He’s alive, and that’s all that really matters to me.
That being said, I was on a major writing roll when the accident happened, and I’ve written very little since. I had my year planned out with my production schedule, speaking schedule, etc. all posted on my calendar in color-coded sticky notes. Those of you who have taken my goal setting and time management class know what I’m talking about. And you also know what I have to do now – hit the restart button and move all the stickies to new dates.
The thing is, that’s not the only hard thing that has happened this year. John’s current project ended (he works in the entertainment industry); we’re packing up our apartment in preparation to move to the next job even though we don’t know when or where that will be; our car decided it can’t go on any longer; and we had another death in the family so we had to put plane tickets on a credit card. There are days when, as blessed as you know you are, life just sucks.
But then one morning as you’re lying in bed trying to figure out how to juggle the day’s tasks, you remember that despite not having been on some of these roads before, you do know what to do. You accept that accidents happen in life – life happens – and you hit the restart button.
You remind yourself that you only have to move through the now. You don’t even have to be sure how you’re going to handle the afternoon. You only have to decide the first thing to do today. Maybe even the first three things. You tell yourself that you choose to be positive in spite of life’s difficulties – because we all know that going through difficult times with a bad attitude only makes it worse.
You keep doing the next thing that needs to be done. On a To Do list that feels a mile long, when you don’t know which is the most important thing to do next, you just choose one. You keep moving. You remember to be grateful for the things that go well, no matter how small. And before you know it, you’ve made it through another day. Not just survived, you had a few moments of thriving – you smiled at a stranger, had a short but nice conversation with a friend or neighbor or family member, you got a few things done that needed to be done.
And soon, you realize that a week has gone by, a month, four months, and you’re still standing. The things that haven’t gotten done, including the book that was to be published months ago that still isn’t finished, they will be done eventually. Life has ebbs and flows, sunny days and storms, accidents and accomplishments, and you have what it takes to get through them all.
You do.
Kitty Bucholtz decided to combine her undergraduate degree in business, her years of experience in accounting and finance, and her graduate degree in creative writing to become a writer-turned-independent-publisher. Her novels, Little Miss Lovesick and Unexpected Superhero, and the free short story, “Superhero in Disguise,” are now available at most online retail sites. Superhero in the Making will be released this summer.
0 0 Read moreMost writers are curious about what is and isn’t working for other writers when it comes to selling books. I’m grateful for what others have been willing to share, so it’s only fair to share in return. Even though my results are a bit embarrassing.
I’ve only bought ads three times. I bought an ad last year with The Wordsmith Journal Magazine (online) for Little Miss Lovesick. After one month, I had zero new sales. Ouch.
In August, while Unexpected Superhero was enrolled in the KDP Select program (meaning it was only for sale on Amazon for the first 90 days), I took advantage of the program’s free days option and made the book free for five days in a row at the end of a conference I was attending. I also bought an ad from BookBub that appeared on the first day of the promotion.
There were a whopping 17,561 free downloads during those five days! Over 10,000 copies were downloaded the first day, which I attribute primarily to the BookBub ad. During the next two weeks, I sold only 24 more copies when the book went off sale (back to $3.99). Then the sales dropped back to the 0-3 per week average that has been more common for my books so far.
A month or two ago, I dropped the price of Unexpected Superhero from $3.99 to $2.99 to see if I could see a change in sales. There might have been a slight increase. At 0-3 sales per week, it’s a bit hard to say. 🙂
My third promotion-with-paid-advertisement was last week. I dropped the price on Little Miss Lovesick and promoted it with 19 other lovely romance authors and their books last Friday. I also took out a then-free ad from eBookSoda, a newer email list like BookBub that advertises free and reduced-price books. (The ads were free, then $5, and I’m sure they’ll keep increasing in price as they grow their list. The problem with this ad is that I don’t know if it went to 100 people, 1000, or 20,000.)
I dropped the price from $2.99 to 99 cents a week before the promo with Smashwords so it would be 99 cents at the other outlets by the day of the promo. I decreased the price on Amazon two days before, and it went into effect the day before. I saw that I sold one copy on Amazon a day or two before the promotion, then two more copies total during the weekend of the promotion and ad.
That’s it – 3 sales. At the high end of “usual” for me.
Little Miss Lovesick got a new (second) cover a few months ago, but it’s barely changed the sales. Unexpected Superhero got a new (second) cover at the end of March, too early to tell if it has affected sales yet. I took out another eBookSoda ad (the free ad that went to $5 when I did it this time) for Sunday, May 4 (my third choice date, Fantasy category, same as last year’s BookBub ad). I’ll leave Superhero at its current $2.99 price and see if anything happens when it’s not on sale but advertised.
And that’s about all I know so far. My second superhero book was to be ready next week for WonderCon, and which I expected to help sales of the first book. But my husband’s motorcycle accident and injuries trumped anything and everything that used to be on my To Do list. 🙂
I’ll keep you updated so you get a well-rounded view of self-publishing and advertising. (It’s less embarrassing to write about your successes, so there are a lot more of those stories out there.) It would appear that my experience underscores what other successful writers have said about success coming after you have several books out. Unfortunately, “life” has thrown a wrench in making that happen soon, but as the Brits (used to) say, Keep Calm and Carry On.
And keep writing! 🙂
Kitty Bucholtz decided to combine her undergraduate degree in business, her years of experience in accounting and finance, and her graduate degree in creative writing to become a writer-turned-independent-publisher. Her novels, Little Miss Lovesick and Unexpected Superhero, and the free short story “Superhero in Disguise,” are now available at most online retail sites. Superhero in the Making will be released this summer.
0 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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