Self-publishing by the Gutter

Norman D Gutter

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Second quarter report. Not stellar by any means.

.........1Q.....2Q.....3Q.....4Q
2011....2.......7......11.....15
2012...16.....73......45.....22
2013...14.....22......16.....13
2014.....7.....48......27......2
2015...11.....25......38......9
2016.... 9......6

The only writing progress to report is I re-read/re-proofed my first baseball novel, made a dozen or two corrections, and republished it. Last night I finished re-reading/re-proofing the sequel, and will correct and republish it this weekend. I had almost no other writing endeavors this quarter, other than research and planning for a new Bible study to teach and possibly publish. Oh, and I wrote 60 to 70 pages on a family history, but that's not a commercial project, and may never see the light of day.

NDG
 

Norman D Gutter

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Third quarter results.

.........1Q.....2Q.....3Q.....4Q....Year
2011....2.......7......11.....15.....35
2012...16.....73......45.....22...156
2013...14.....22......16.....13....65
2014.....7.....48......25......2.....82 (corrected)
2015...11.....25......38......9.....83
2016.... 9......6.......10

Sales continue slow, though I'm still not doing much promotion. I'm about to do a Facebook ad for my baseball novel, which is about the Cubs' quest for a World Series title. Seems like a good time to try out an ad—if I can figure out how to get it done.

In other news, my family history is on the shelf for a while. I completed the Bible study and am currently co-teaching it. I published a short story in September, the fourth in a series about an unconventional, female CIA agent. I'm working on a new novel, a sequel to my first, and I'm 32,500 words in to what I think will be a 90,000 word book. Although, as the story progresses, I'm further into it with fewer than expected words, so perhaps it will be shorter than I figured.

If I manage to get the FB ad done, I'll report back with results.
 
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Mclesh

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Norman, congrats on the Bible study and co-teaching. That's awesome! As well as your short story and WIP. Sounds like you have a lot going on.

Your book about the Cubs and the World Series is so timely right now. Good luck with your Facebook ad. (I haven't done a FB ad myself--except for boosting a couple of posts, but that was a while back when you could boost a post for five bucks.) I hope it works for you!
 

M. H. Lee

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Norman,
I have to say I admire your grit.

If you're exclusive to Amazon I'd suggest you set up one of their sponsored ads, too, or instead of, a FB ad. You can choose keywords and have your book show up in search results under those words. I've found them to work well for my non-fiction titles.
 

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Check out this article before running FB ads.

It seems like there's a lot of clicking going on, but the majority of hits may have no interest in your book. I don't play games on my phone, so I never knew about how an ad could be placed in the game so that the person had to click it to get an upgrade, or go to the next level.

I'm skeptical of FB ads as well. An author acquaintance who I'm friends with on Facebook is doing very well with her small publisher. They've been spending a ton of money promoting her books, and it's worked out. She ended up on the NY Times bestseller list as well as USA Today for weeks. Anyway, her publisher has dropped a huge amount of money on Facebook. Every time I've opened up my Facebook account for the past few weeks (which is a few times a day), I see sponsored ads for her series. That is hundreds of impressions for someone who hasn't bought any of her books. (No offense to her; they're just not what I'm into.) It makes me wonder about the efficacy of their targeting when I'm not the target audience other than being one of her FB friends.
 

Norman D Gutter

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Fourth quarter results, excepting anything that will be reported late by Smashwords. If any, I'll edit the number.

.........1Q.....2Q.....3Q.....4Q....Year
2011....2.......7......11.....15.....35
2012...16.....73......45.....22...156
2013...14.....22......16.....13....65
2014.....7.....48......25......2.....82
2015...11.....25......38......9.....83
2016.... 9......6.......10....17.....42

So certainly not a stellar year. I had only one new publication in 2016 (a short story, which sold 2 copies). I also got my first baseball novel into print. That was my highest selling book for the year, with 13. Eight of those were print in the month after it launched. Since the Chicago Cubs is the team of interest, and since they were doing well this year, I was hoping for a lot more. Most of those sales came after they won the series, but the number sold was disappointing.

But, there's nothing to do but go forward and keep trying, keep hoping that I'll have enough published to one day reach critical mass and see sales daily instead of not-quite weekly. My publishing plans for 2017 are:

- Complete my novel-in-progress, which is within 4,000 words of completion of the first draft; I should finish it this weekend. It's a sequel to my book that sold the most (I won't call it my "best seller", because it isn't that). My plans are to have it out in e-book and print form by mid-February, dependent on getting a cover done.

- Finish my civil war non-fiction book, currently sitting at about 40% done. I'm reading for more research now.

- Finish my workplace humor novella, a sequel, currently sitting at 30% done. E- and print publish. The first one sold 36, mostly in my office.

- E-publish a professional essay of a class I taught for my day job. Should be only a week or two's work to tweak it to be general business interest.

- Write two short stories, one in each series, and e-publish.

- Get my second baseball novel, a sequel to the first, into print. Currently it's e-book only. It would be nice to get that done before baseball season opens.

I have much more I could do, but this seems ambitious enough. Should all go well with these, I might be able to get something more done. Hopefully this will be a quieter year in other areas of life, and I'll be able to spend more time writing and publishing. Maybe some marketing as well. So far my marketing has been limited to a twice-a-month Facebook post in hopes that a few friends will buy something.

Best Regards,
NDG
 
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Catherine

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Norman,

Thank you for the update. It's extremely helpful to see the long term progress of people who are self-publishing. It seems you have one of the oldest self-publishing diaries which is still active. It helps to give a realistic picture.

It sounds like you have ambitious plans for the year. Though I have not set specific publishing goals for myself, I did find having hard deadlines helpful in completing a project.

Best wishes to you!
 

Norman D Gutter

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Time to report quarterly sales. Here are the numbers, not including any late reports via Smashwords:

.........1Q.....2Q.....3Q.....4Q....Year
2011....2.......7......11.....15.....35
2012...16.....73......45.....22...156
2013...14.....22......16.....13....65
2014.....7.....48......25......2.....82
2015...11.....25......38......9.....83
2016.... 9......6.......10....17.....42
2017...17
Total sales to date—480

So, this was my best first quarter since I began self-publishing—one sale better than 2012. Then I had four items for sale; now 24. Thirteen of the sales were short stories that people I know bought.

In the first quarter I published two items. First, a new Danny Tompkins short story, "Growing Up Too Fast", the sixth and last in the series. Here's the cover:

Second, my newest novel, Preserve The Revelation, a sequel to my first novel, Doctor Luke's Assistant. Here's the e-book cover. Print book should be published in a day or two.

Well, the covers didn't work. I'm for sure graphically-challenged. I'll put links to blog posts I did about them. If anyone wants to see the covers, you can see them there.

Here are the links to the Amazon versions of each.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XPQYBP8/?tag=absowrit-20

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XSYJ325/?tag=absowrit-20

And here are the links to my blog posts:

http://davidatodd.com/2017/03/20/growing-up-too-fast-is-published/

http://davidatodd.com/2017/03/27/preserve-the-revelation-is-published/

I did soft launches on each, meaning I had no launch team, no ads. All I did was Facebook notices. The one time I did a launch team it was a failure, so I've given up on them.

Meanwhile, I'm about 50% done with my next book, which is a non-fiction, historical-political book in my Documenting America series, the third in it. Hoping to publish it in the second quarter, though that might not be possible. The progress I make this week will help me know when it will be ready.

Best Regards,
NDG
 
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RightHoJeeves

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I'm skeptical of FB ads as well. An author acquaintance who I'm friends with on Facebook is doing very well with her small publisher. They've been spending a ton of money promoting her books, and it's worked out. She ended up on the NY Times bestseller list as well as USA Today for weeks. Anyway, her publisher has dropped a huge amount of money on Facebook. Every time I've opened up my Facebook account for the past few weeks (which is a few times a day), I see sponsored ads for her series. That is hundreds of impressions for someone who hasn't bought any of her books. (No offense to her; they're just not what I'm into.) It makes me wonder about the efficacy of their targeting when I'm not the target audience other than being one of her FB friends.

It depends what you use them for. Generally speaking the ads are too expensive per click to justify selling an ebook with them. People have made profit on boxsets, which cost the same per ad but you can charge more. It makes more sense to me to use them as a way to drive people to newsletter sign ups and whatnot. (EDIT: my reasoning for thinking this is a) newsletter sign ups are valuable in the long term, and b) offering something for free gets a better response than offering something for sale)

As for the targeting, I think that is on the publisher. Targeting can be hugely powerful, but places I've worked for have done a kind of "set and forget" thing. So it could have been just poor execution. On the other hand, you could have just been swept up in what they thought was the target market.

Good story about niche marketing and the power of targeting here.
 
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RightHoJeeves

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Check out this article before running FB ads.

It seems like there's a lot of clicking going on, but the majority of hits may have no interest in your book. I don't play games on my phone, so I never knew about how an ad could be placed in the game so that the person had to click it to get an upgrade, or go to the next level.

I think it's worth noting the actual ad itself that she run is not very compelling. It was a picture of some piano keys, and the copy was a basically some keywords and the title. Aside from the "learn more" button there isn't even a call to action. Facebook can put your ad in front of almost anyone in the world, but it won't *make* people buy the product (or sign up, or whatever). You still need an ad that can engage people.
 

Norman D Gutter

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Time to once again report quarterly sales, and events of the last quarter, and plans for this quarter.

.........1Q.....2Q.....3Q.....4Q....Year
2011....2.......7......11.....15.....35
2012...16.....73......45.....22...156
2013...14.....22......16.....13....65
2014.....7.....48......25......2.....82
2015...11.....25......38......9.....83
2016.... 9......6.......10....17.....42
2017...17.....22
Total sales to date—502

So, I passed the 500 sales threshold! Not great for six years plus of self-publishing, but most likely 502 better than if I'd continued to pursue trade publishing. At least I keep telling myself that. Sales actually decreased monthly from April to May to June. July 19: Edited to add: Smashwords posted today that I had an e-book sale in June to a library, via Baker & Taylor Blio. That's my first sale through this vendor, and my first sale to a library of any book. It's only one more sale, but it feels good.

No promotions this quarter, other than a few Facebook posts.

No new publications this quarter. I'm very close to publishing my next book, Documenting America: Civil War Edition. It's the third in my Documenting America series. Last night I finished the third round of edits in manuscript, and will have them typed in two days. Today I heard back from my beta reader, and he confirmed that my goals for the book are met in the draft he reviewed—or partially reviewed, as Life isn't allowing him to get all the way through it. That's okay, however, as I'm glad for the feedback. I would have had it ready to publish in June, except a 2 1/2 week family trip caused me to forget about writing for a while. It's nice to be back in the swing of things as of today. I did manage to keep up my twice-a-week blog posting schedule, with several posts written and scheduled ahead of time.

So, my plans for the next quarter are:
- Finish Documenting America: Civil War Edition, and publish; should happen in July
- correct formatting errors in Preserve The Revelation, so that it can be in the Smashwords premium catalog; should happen in July
- get the paperback version of my second baseball novel, Headshots, done and published; should happen in August
- get back to work on my next book, The Gutter Chronicles: Volume 2. It's a workplace humor book; will re-start in July
- try to do a couple of new promotions; will take some research and planning
- maintain a twice-a-week blog post schedule.

See you all in three months, or sooner if I have an announcement.
 
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Norman D Gutter

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http://davidatodd.com/2017/07/20/documenting-america-civil-war-edition-is-published/http://davidatodd.com/2017/07/20/documenting-america-civil-war-edition-is-published/In my last post, I said that I should have my next book out in July. Shortly after I said that, some Life interruptions came, and I pushed it back to August. However, a busy and productive weekend, followed by some butt-in-chair time and knuckling down to do the formatting, and I was able to publish the Kindle e-book on Tuesday. Still waiting on Smashwords to okay it. Tonight I hope to get most of the work done on the print version.

I just tried, for over 30 minutes, to link or upload a photo of the cover, and just can't seem to get it done. When I link to the url from the image at my blog post, it says it's too large of an image, even though I sized it down to 90x135 pixels. When I try to insert either a jpeg or png file, it says it's not a valid image file. I give up with this stupid image inserter program. It has defeated me too many times. So here are links to my blog post announcing publication, and to the Amazon listing.

http://davidatodd.com/2017/07/20/documenting-america-civil-war-edition-is-published/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0741S9TW2/?tag=absowrit-20
 

Catherine

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Congratulations on your new book!
 

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Thank you for sharing your journey! It helps to see other people's numbers. Are you going to bundle the first three of Documenting America?
 

Norman D Gutter

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Thanks for the comments, Catherine and Stefan.

I don't think I'll be offering a boxed set on Documenting America, at least not of the first three. The first one covered a sampling of documents from 1650 to 1896, with no theme, other than "America's got documents and we ought to know them." The second volume was simply a homeschool version of the first one. The basic text was the same, and I added student stuff to it. So, in terms of different material, I really only have two volumes. Someday I hope to have several. The next one I'm thinking of will be the writing of the Constitution. After that, who knows?
 

Norman D Gutter

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Another quarter finished, another report to make. Here are my sales, by quarter, since I started self-publishing in February 2011. I currently have 25 titles published.

.........1Q.....2Q.....3Q.....4Q....Year
2011....2.......7......11.....15.....35
2012...16.....73......45.....22...156
2013...14.....22......16.....13....65
2014.....7.....48......25......2.....82
2015...11.....25......38......9.....83
2016.... 9......6.......10....17.....42
2017...17.....22......22
Total sales to date—524

18 of those sales were of Documenting America: Civil War Edition, and 15 of those were paperback, eight self-sales.

So sales are slow, but steady. This is with no promotion except an occasional Facebook post.

I have a new book ready to publish except for the final formatting and covers. It's a boxed set of my Danny Tompkins short stories and will be titled When Death Changes Life. I hope to have both e-book and print book out in two weeks. And, I began work on a new novel this quarter, a prequel in my church history series. I also plan on finishing the second novel in my workplace humor series, which is currently about 30-40% written.
 

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Good job, Norman. Keep up the productivity. I wish I had the discipline to sit in my chair to write/edit every day, then it wouldn’t take me a year between each new book release.

What’s your favorite book you’ve written so far?
 

Norman D Gutter

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Thanks, ACF. My discipline is thin, and easily broken for both important and unimportant distractions. Haven't made time to work on my WIP since late-November.

My favorite book I've written so far? What, you want me to choose between my babies? I like them all. I suppose two that stand out are the ones that have the most of my life experiences in them. The Danny Tompkins Stories, which explore teenage grief at the loss of a parent, are semi-autobiographical. My novel Operation Lotus Sunday follows the itinerary we followed through China in 1983, though the couple and pre-school children in the book aren't us. Well, okay, I suppose the children slightly resemble our then 4 and 2 year olds, but I made the ones in the book more rambunctious than ours were.

NDG
 

Norman D Gutter

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2017 is gone, and it's time to report on sales.

A better year than 2016, it still is best described as dismal. Here's the table:

.........1Q.....2Q.....3Q.....4Q....Year
2011....2.......7......11.....15.....35
2012...16.....73......45.....22...156
2013...14.....22......16.....13....65
2014.....7.....48......25......2.....82
2015...11.....25......38......9.....83
2016.... 9......6.......10....17.....42
2017...17.....22......22.....13....74
Total sales to date—537

Some highlights:

This is only the third year (of seven) for each quarter to be in double-figures.

I published four items in 2017: a short story and three books. These four accounted for 45% of my sales.

Of my 26 published items, I had sales of 23 titles.

Personal sales accounted for 38% of all sales, and 59% of royalties earned.

Sale of print books was 55% of total sales, a big turnaround from prior years.

13% of sales came from Smashwords distribution.

I did no advertising. The only promotions were an occasional Facebook post.

I haven't yet formulated plans for writing during 2018. I've been thinking about it, and will finalize it tonight and blog about it tomorrow.

Always onward,
NDG
 
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Well, if it's any comfort, you have way more sales than I do (all my books are currently free).

I don't know what to tell you, other than to try to find people who have more success and to do what they do, within reason. I don't see myself releasing six books a year or starting my own podcast. I can stand Facebook and Twitter, so I do that. I guess some people like Instagram, but I've already dumped all the time I'm willing to in starting new social media accounts. But find stuff you can stick with and do that has been the best advice I've gleaned. And don't give up. :)
 

Norman D Gutter

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Time for the 1Q 2018 report. Here's the updated table.

.........1Q.....2Q.....3Q.....4Q....Year
2011....2.......7......11.....15.....35
2012...16.....73......45.....22...156
2013...14.....22......16.....13....65
2014.....7.....48......25......2.....82
2015...11.....25......38......9.....83
2016.... 9......6.......10....17.....42
2017...17.....22......22.....13....74
2018.....6
Total sales to date—543

They were all e-book sales at Amazon. No personal sales. No sales via Smashwords distribution. That's unusual, as for the last three years about 20% of my sales came from retailers I sold at via Smashwords. Given the small number of sales, maybe those retailers will pick up later in the year.

I didn't add any new publications this quarter, so I remain at 26 items for sale. I finished my next book around mid-March. It's the second volume in my workplace humor series, poking fun at the civil engineering business and the company I work for. I'm almost done with my second editing pass through it, and my beta reader has it. Last night I read three chapters to my wife, and she liked it, showing the right anticipation of what was coming. Since she's not an engineer, maybe I got the right mix of humor and details in it. Right now, I think I can have it published in April, assuming Life doesn't get in the way, as it has a habit of doing.

This was with doing no promotion other than a few Facebook posts and mentioning it to new hires I do orientation with. I just can't deal with promotion right now. I hope to get into that after I retire in 8 months and 24 days.

NDG
 

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Good luck getting your book finished in April. Congratulations on the sales. I work for a local newspaper, and something tells me no one would like if I wrote a book about them haha. It's cool that your coworkers are supportive.
 

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Time for the 2nd Quarter 2018 report. First, the totals:

.........1Q.....2Q.....3Q.....4Q....Year
2011....2.......7......11.....15.....35
2012...16.....73......45.....22...156
2013...14.....22......16.....13....65
2014.....7.....48......25......2.....82
2015...11.....25......38......9.....83
2016.... 9......6.......10....17.....42
2017...17.....22......22.....13....74
2018.....6.....18
Total sales to date—561

In the 2nd quarter, as in the first quarter, I had no sales at retailers I distribute to through Smashwords. This is the first year to go so long into the year without sales at those retailers. If others besides me are experiencing this, I wonder about the long-term viability of using Smashwords as opposed to going Amazon exclusive.

This quarter I published a new novel/novella, The Gutter Chronicles, Volume 2: The Continuing Saga of Norman D. Gutter, Engineer. It accounted for 10 sales, nine of which were my direct sales. So a lot less interest in this than in the first in the series, The Gutter Chronicles, Volume 1. Also, I had four sales of that one this quarter, so Volume 2 dragged Volume 1 along just a little.

Once again, I can't get the photo uploader to work right. I resize the photos to be within AW specs, but when I upload them the uploading tool tells me they're too big. If you want to see my sales table, go to this blog post and click on the table photo.

I plug along at my next book, but life isn't giving me much time to write these days. Retirement is 5 months and 29 days away.
 

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Retirement is a worthy goal. And you can start working the whole newsletter promo, Instafreebie, pay-per-click ad stuff then. I'm just dipping my toes into the water on the first item on that list.