Self-Publishing and Me: by bearilou

welp.

The current Great Amazon Purge of 2013 is still going strong and so far on the 'zon I only have a couple of titles that got hit with the ADULT tag. Which is okay. I'm still new to this whole thing and if I could have turned that on (or figured out how I could turn it on) I would have. I'm all about erotica being labeled as such. I realize that maybe my sales suffer from being relegated behind walls that casual searches won't turn up but I'm really okay with that.

So far, I have 5 titles that I suspect soon will get flagged/suspended/banned once the 'zon finds them for problematic covers/blurbs/content. I'm undecided what to do about them. For 2 of them, I can change the titles and/or blurbs and take care of the biggest objections, I think. 2 more that skirts the ban by the skin of its teeth but a change in title/blurb will fix that.

For these 4, it's not the content that is a problem, but the titles that I'm using to draw the porn reader in.

The fifth, of course, flaunts the banning by waving a big read cape at the charging bull. It does contain problematic content, even if the title and blurb are actually tame.

So...it's time for some decisions. Revamp the four titles/blurbs, downplay the draw?

Not even sure what to do about the 5th one. :/ Try to get around everything by changing the blurb (because the title isn't a huge red flag - the blurb is)?

At first, all this activity really squelched sales. Now, with the purge going on, one of my stores, one of my biggest sellers (also the one who has the most problematic title (BFF and his daddy and f*cking) which I'm sure will be hit with banhammer any day now)...is selling like hotcakes again.

Go figure.

It's going to be a new year and I've decided that I'm going to up my game for 2014.

There have been some changes affecting sales, how to tag, what to say in blurbs, how to design covers and I go into 2014 with these things in mind.

I will be revamping my titles and blurbs that got ADULT tagged onto them and see if I can get them out away from the search event horizon that is dragging sales down to almost nothing.

I have several 'series/niche' ideas for future writing.

I have a better sense of what sells and what doesn't as far as to what I write.

The whole process as been a hell of a growing experience, and a lot of fun. The challenge since I started to was to do this and see what I could do with minimum input. Now the challenge will be to see what I can do with a direct, concerted effort and focus, especially since I have determined that I can actually do this.

It's been exciting up until now, it's going to get more exciting for the next year.

Once I get my goals set up for next year, I'll share them with the class.

Ohh Googleplay, how thou vexest me.

Vexes...

Vexi...

youknow? Whatever.

The thing is I can't get anything uploaded. They keep telling me I have something wrong in a subject code and I'm following every damn guide I can get my hands on to dot my i's and cross my t's.

I hate leaving money on the table but dayum. Can they make it any more convoluted and complex?

I'm crossing this off my list until they can make it more upload/user friendly.

Oooh, thanks for the pointer. I wasn't letting the field autofill. That may be the trick. I'll give it a try when my hair grows back.

Update time!

Decided I would prefer to keep my hair and let Googleplay rest for a bit. Along with vacation and stress of mother's upcoming knee surgery, had to let some stuff go, figuring out Googleplay was one of them.

I'm here with a question.

Mailing lists. I hear they're all the rage so I figured I would give it a shot. Yeah, I'm a little behind on that. :/

Any suggestions for a good and easy and cheap one to set up and use?

Also, for those who have one, what do you use it for? Do you just keep subscribers updated on when a new release is coming out? Do you use it to advertise a new blog post? Do you have special content you send only to subscribers?

The line between author of fiction with a mailing list is starting to blur with blog author of niche content....