My Self Publishing Experience

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FionnJameson

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Good luck, christwriter! :) You can definitely break the 300 mark. I'll be rooting for you!
 

christwriter

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Good luck! Love reading your updates!

Thanks!

And just for fun: Today I learned NEVER TELL THE TAX DUDE THAT THE AMAZON W2 IS FOR WRITING ROYALTIES.

EVER.

("It's self published". "Yeah, it's not my actual job because I can't really pay my bills with it. No. Don't change that part of the form." "...it's weird. Sci fi stuff." "...if I agree to read it will you go back to helping me figure out how to get around the fact that I have no w2 from my real job?")

(Yeah, the only reason it even came up was because I never got my day job's w2 form and I had to explain that the one from Amazon wasn't going to help us much.)

In fact, from now on, as far as IRL people go, I am a waitress with cats. And the notebooks are for cats. And when I am not working I am at home feeding cats. I would much rather be the neighborhood crazy cat lady than the neighborhood writer. For some reason that word shuts brains down. I throw words on paper and I call it a day. Some days I can't even manage that part. It's not that exciting.
 

christwriter

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April is now The Month When People Go Insane. Seriously. I think it's tax season or something, but...

Well, let's start with sales. 27 sales. That's sixteen in one week. That's ALMOST two a day. Yeah, it's still piddly numbers, but I'm still sitting here with the month half gone feeling more than a little excited.

Also, remember how last week I said something about "I don't give a sh*t" titles? Part of that was one of them has been languishing under a one star review and the other has been pretty much ignored since release. Both got flamingly positive reviews today.

And then there's a YA fantasy novel that has been languishing on my harddrive for over two years. After blanching at the thought of editing a 100K word book with less than a month's lead time, I've elected to serialize the thing. That's been an effective thing so far--releasing one smaller book a month--and I think I know why. If I'm right, summer will go swimmingly. If I'm wrong...well, I'll be regrouping on the other side of September.

The thing I have to remind myself--continually--is that my plan was not to be successful with the first book, or the second book, or the fifth book, but was to hammer away at this until I felt I had an audience of reasonable size, at which point I drop the books that I really care about. When I started last year, I set the goal of selling 100 books by the end of December (...and then promptly forgot about that goal, because life) and if I couldn't do that, I'd know it wasn't going to work.

I did that. Each new release is doing slightly better than the last one. Not massively better, but the trend exists.

So yeah. Summer goals:
-break 300 by the end of June
-break 400 by the end of September.
 

Barbara R.

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The gist of what I read on agency blogs is editors stop being interested once you have a poor sales record. Poor sales being defined (as per the agency blogs I've read) as "under several thousand."

Which is kind of why I've viewed self publishing as the end of the journey. Still, I'd like to believe that there's a good shot, someday.

It's not at all the end of the journey. That's one of many things that's changed in publishing over the past few years. People who self-publish and sell (not give away) large quantities of books have an advantage in gaining an agent's attention for the next book--not, as Old Hack said, the one that's already published. If the numbers aren't impressive, they still haven't hurt themselves, because publishers don't expect big sales from self-publishers. They're far more likely to look askance at published writers whose books sold below expectations. You can read these interviews with Viking editor Tara Singh and agent Gail Hochman to hear it from the horse's mouth.

So the OP should cheer up! This is not the end of the road by any means, especially because the more you write, the better your work will be.

Some of the smartest writers I know are combining publishing (new novels) with self-publishing (reissued novels and original stories and novellas.) And one NYT bestselling writer recently told me that she makes more selling her self-pub'd work than she does on the published: an eye-opener for me!
 

christwriter

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It's not at all the end of the journey. That's one of many things that's changed in publishing over the past few years. People who self-publish and sell (not give away) large quantities of books have an advantage in gaining an agent's attention for the next book--not, as Old Hack said, the one that's already published. If the numbers aren't impressive, they still haven't hurt themselves, because publishers don't expect big sales from self-publishers. They're far more likely to look askance at published writers whose books sold below expectations. You can read these interviews with Viking editor Tara Singh and agent Gail Hochman to hear it from the horse's mouth.

So the OP should cheer up! This is not the end of the road by any means, especially because the more you write, the better your work will be.

Some of the smartest writers I know are combining publishing (new novels) with self-publishing (reissued novels and original stories and novellas.) And one NYT bestselling writer recently told me that she makes more selling her self-pub'd work than she does on the published: an eye-opener for me!
At this point the OP (that being me) is very cheerful.

I've met every goal I've had, save for the ones I've just set. Sales this month and January were good, feedback so far has been good...and I was depressed for not-book-related-things at the time of my first posting. (Mostly work and being severely sick)

I'm still trying really, really hard to withhold enthusiasm and avoid the fist pumping victory speeches...but for the first time I have enthusiasm to withhold.
 

christwriter

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So. April rocked.

47 sales, some pretty good movement on Smashwords and Barnes and Noble. Of course, every new release of this series does incredibly well.

I've revised my goals upward, in light of this: I will now shoot for 365 total sales by July 17th. That will be a book a day for every day I've had books on sale. That would be awesome.

I've also got a TON of work planned for myself over the summer. I'm wrapping up my two main series. Not permanently, but in a sort of "Season Finale" kind of way. Because I am tired and I need a break from both worlds for a while. So we're moving into a new book that I'll serialize, because that's been WORKING. I also plan on releasing an Omnibus for Exiles (the paranormal fantasy series) and Omnibus for Starbleached (the sci-fi series) and print versions of the Starbleached series. I'll save a print version of the Omnibuss (...Omnibuses...Omnibi? Screw it. Plural form on Omnibus) for when I can afford professional help. Which I can't. Yet.

The rational behind that kind of plan is, I do plan on continuing those series, so releasing something relative to them while I'm taking breaks should keep them from falling off the map completely. I hope.

New book drops in a couple of days, and I am actively getting excited about what might happen next. My goal through all of this has not been jaw dropping sales. It's been momentum. Because momentum is what will lead to jaw dropping sales. I hope. And I'm seeing momentum.

I'm having so much fun.
 

everywriter

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christwriter, I was just wondering what are your strategies for selling more books?
 

Tienci

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What a great read! Thanks so much for your detailed posts and congrats on your latest positive swing.
Good luck with your upcoming projects--you'll make your goal. :)
I look forward to the rest of your updates.
 

christwriter

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christwriter, I was just wondering what are your strategies for selling more books?

At this point, publish more books. Seriously. I've tried advertising and that didn't work, blog tours seem to be a lot of pomp and circumstance and not a lot of results for the efforts, and I can't find a reviewer willing to review (...at this point I'd be happy if my simi-hate-stalker did a review, though that would really hurt because this person hates my guts). But that first month a book is out increases traffic for all other books. And so far it seems to be working. I did not release a book last month, numbers were down, I released a book this month, my numbers were well over double what they were last month.

KDP Select give-aways help, a little, but in all honesty at this point the best advertisement is a brand new book.

This summer, for example, I plan to release one book next month, two books in June, including one I've been promising since Feb. that I had to skip because I was very tired, a book, an omnibus of one series and a print book in July, and a book, an omnibus of the other series and another print book in August. I *should* be able to manage all that because I've got 90% of it written.

I'm going to regroup at the end of the summer and reassess. For now, I'm satisfied with growth and momentum. Right now I want to break 50 books a month by June, which I don't think is unreasonable, 75 books a month by September, and 100 a month by December. If I can't do that, I'll sit back and regroup.
 

christwriter

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So we're at the halfway mark for May, and I've sold 38 books. Nothing is an outstanding bestseller this month. It seems to be slow and steady across the board.

Which means, fingers crossed, I'm going to break the 300 mark by the end of the month.

I am very happy with this. That's over two books a day, average, though actual sales are clustered more towards the weekend.

I can't wait to see what the rest of the month looks like.
 

Spell-it-out

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CW, best of luck trying to break the 300 mark. Love following your story here.
 

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I went a slightly different way.
I sold 25 of my first essay on lying in six months but I was invited onto radio shows and found it all interesting so I created a digital publisher. Now we have about fifteen books out from several authors and sell though Ingrams using Lightning Source. Not a fan of the only two paper choices but the quality is equal to main stream.

It's all a lot of work.
 

Ann Joyce

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Good job! I will be watching for your, "I broke 300!" post.
 

christwriter

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AND THE THREE HUNDRED MARK IS PAST. Beat it last night while I was sleeping.

Whoo. That was fun. Also have sold 55 books this month as of today. I am EXCITED. I can finally say that.

The new goal is to sell 365+ books by my one year anniversary.

June is going to be fun. I'm going to try to release two 30K books (Sci-fi book and book I've been promising but putting off for a while) and then release a third book by July 4th. That latter one might get delayed about a week. The fourth is psychologically important to me, because it was the day I publicly committed to self publishing, but July 18th is technically the one year anniversary. So we'll see what happens.

The third book is going to be a brand new YA series involving dragons and kidnapped teenagers. It's been sitting on my harddrive for two years. We'll see how it goes.

The momentum. It is here. :D
 

Ann Joyce

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And... *drum roll* a big w00t! on reaching your goal of 300, and 55 sales this month! Congratulations. May it ever continue to go well for you!
 

Judy Koot

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Congratulations! I think a bottle of champagne is in order *popping the cork*
 
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