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.
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.
Happy March. This month we’ll usher in the beginning of spring. You wouldn’t know we were close to spring by the way the weather has slammed us. Last week I kept looking outside for Noah and the ark, but he never appeared. Instead, my neighborhood was hit with hail about three times. Then we get hit with a wind storm. It was so severe I kept looking for Dorothy and her crew to drop by.
I’ll keep it brief. As I mentioned earlier, this year I’m trying new things to grow my mailing list, BookBub followers and Facebook presence. I tried TikTok, but it’s not for me. I ascribe to that statement of only using the social media you understand. Right now, I don’t have the time needed to learn or grow a following on TikTok. My priority is to grow my mailing list because these are my people and I want to reach out to them when I want to, not when the algorithm wants to.
How is my mailing list project going? As of this post I have added 1800+ new subscribers. Let’s just pause and scream as I do a happy dance. Unfortunately, I’ve lost 48+/-. I’m not upset about the ones that left because I’m still ahead. February only had twenty eight days, which means I lost two days at thirty new subs per day. I’ll make them up with the months that have thirty one days.
I have to admit it’s getting trickier each month working with the swaps. I have yet to make a sale via the sales swap. However, I’ve had a few clicks.
The other thing I messed up on was posting/sharing. I misread the details. I thought I was only to post via my newsletter, which I did. However, I was also supposed to post to my socials. The other day when the March swaps went live, I started posting to Insta and FB. Within a few minutes of posting, I started getting clicks and downloads. As of this post, I’m at 115 new subs for the month of March. Overall, I’m averaging between 28+ new subs per day. These are great numbers considering in order to reach my goal I only need to average 19 new subs per day. Where I made the mistake, was not calculating for loss. I need to stay at this pace of 28 per day in order to reach my goal and cover any losses.
The other mistake I need to correct is focusing on sales. I’ve put most of my energy into growing my list that I’ve neglected sales. So far, this year’s sales have been dismal. Bright side, my Kobo sales are picking up. Praise God. I have been hoping to crack the Kobo freeze. I do well with freebies, but not sales. I hope this is the beginning of a fabulous relationship with Kobo.
The other area I’ve wanted to grow is my FB group. Thanks to an anthology I’m in and a release event, my reader list has grown to 120. YEAH! I am so excited about this. I really want to get this in the high hundreds. I would love to have at least a thousand followers here by the end of next year.
Then there’s my BookBub followers. I’m not at 1000 US followers yet, but I’m getting close. I’m currently at 684. I really want to get to a thousand US before my the end of the second quarter.
I know it’s going to take a little while to get to the numbers I want on my mailing list, BookBub and reader group, but I’m patient.
See you next month.
Happy New Year…Bonne Année…
Let’s get right into it. It’s that time of year when people make a lot of empty promises to themselves in the form of resolutions. Then they berate themselves when they come up short around the three month mark. The other thing they do in January is recap.
I refuse to allow myself to feel guilty about not completing all of my goals. I take pleasure in the unexpected things that occurred.
So what did I set out to do last year?
Get my letters -Didn’t happen
Triple my income – Didn’t happen. In fact, I finished the year less than 2021
Triple my mailing list – Didn’t happen. I gained about a 600, taking my list to 4000. However, not all of them want to receive email.
Master Facebook Ads – This is one of those ongoing things because Facebook or Meta is always changing. I did learn that I need to upscale for better results.
Update covers – Still working on this one.
Learn how to write a sellable blurb – I’m going to take the easy way out and farm this out. I found a service I like. I’ll still work on getting better, but I’ve learned it’s okay to ask for help
Use Ingram Spark – I loaded one book.
Direct Distribution – Still loading books. Last month I set up my first ebook direct sale from website and Book Funnel.
Increase BookBub US followers to 1000 – I’m 400+ away from my magic number.
Increase my prices -Did this.
Release Three books – Did this. In fact, I also participated in two anthologies and started one of my books for 2023.
I came up short a few times, but I also did some things not on the list I’m proud of.
My first Google sale
My first Eden Books sale
Wrote my first rom con for an anthology for February
Increased the followers on my Facebook passion page.
(I’m shocked about this it’s at 2800+ followers in less than a year)
Wrote my biggest book, so far (107k words)
Started creating large print books
Hired a PA and she’s got me on a regular email schedule
Wrote 300k+ words
Completed NANO
I had one BookBub Featured Deal
(It landed me in the 100 free in the Amazon store. (This was huge.))
So what’s on tap for this year? Everything I didn’t do last year. SMILE. I’m serious. I put those things on my goal list because I had every intention of getting them done. I could easily blame my lack of goal completion on a lot of things, but I’m not. Although, having COVID and searching for a new editor are very legitimate reasons for a schedule interruption. Truth is, I could have put forth a little more effort, but I didn’t.
I’ve already started working on my list and it’s only the fifth day of the month. I really want to get my mailing list to 10k and my BookBub to 1000 US followers. To do so, I joined about five Book Funnel Newsletter promotions. So far, I’ve gained 110 followers. I’ve also joined a BookSweeps BookBub promotion for February. I tried one of these last year and gained a hundred plus new followers.
To sum up, 2022 may not have been the year I planned, but it was a very good year of firsts. There’s a scripture I like that says your latter days will be better. I’m counting on that to come true in 2023.
See you next month.
I’m going to make this very short, because I’m preparing for two releases at the end of the month.
Congratulations to everyone who participated in NANO. Whether you finished or not, isn’t the point. What matters is that you made the effort. I successfully finished NANO. I completed it with 50K+ words, however that wasn’t my number one goal.
My main goal was to complete my book, which I didn’t. The book I selected for NANO was the fifth book in my Alex series. The books in that series are 90k+ words. I’m preparing to release book four in the series on December 29th. It’s over 100k words. When I completed book four, I knew there was going to be a book five. I figured, while the characters were still fresh in my mind, it was the best time to write book five.
In order for me to complete book five, I would need to write approximately 3k+ words per day. I started the month well and then I hit a road block. Somewhere around the middle of the month, I realized I wasn’t going to finish the book. Instead of kicking myself, I focused on the NANO goal of 50k words. I finished NANO on the last day with my story at the mid point and 50k+ words.
This year for NANO, I did something I never do, make a writing plan. Unlike previous years, I periodically referred to my plan. Although I had notes, I still stuck to my pantser style. I knew I was going to introduce a new character. In my notes, she had at least three other names and a slightly different physical look. I sketched her out, but when it came time to introduce her, the only thing she had from my notes was her profession and her original fashion style.
I would love to finish this book by the end of December, but I’m not going to pressure myself. Instead, I’m giving myself until the middle of January to complete the book. This book caught me off guard. I’m still not sure if it’s going to be book five or if it will be a spin off stand alone. Right now, it could go either way. Only my writing muse knows what will happen.
How was your NANO season?
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
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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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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