A Very Small Fish Jumping Into a Very Big Pond

Norman D Gutter

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M.H.:

I assume the C.S. Lewis book you're referring to is A Grief Observed. That's a great book. I hope you are able to accomplish your book in the spirit of it.

Hang on, and keep writing.

NDG
 

M. H. Lee

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Yep, that's the one. It really resonated for me when I read it about a year after my father passed away.

And thank you for the encouragement.
 

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LONG time no update. Had a cross-country move followed by family drama for a month after my grandma broke her hip and shoulder doing senior yoga. (I have an awesome grandma...)

But I figured I'd circle back and share where I am now...

I published the grief book a week or two ago. In my typical style of naming books with the absolute wrong title, I called it "Death Sucks But You CAN Survive This." I decided to go for wide distribution, so it's up everywhere I could get it.

I'm not promoting this book, because it's a very niche audience I wrote for. Basically, someone non-religious who has lost THAT person in their life and is struggling with it. As I posted on my blog for readers, that's one of the perks of self-publishing. You can write a book that matters to you and get it out there without worrying about money or profits.

Which leads me to conclude I'm definitely a bigger fan of Draft2Digital than Smashwords. I think the book is still under review for the premium catalog at Smashwords but was out with all of D2D's sites within a day. Not sure if that's standard for Smashwords or if it's because I don't want to put an ISBN number on the book, but I think Smashwords is just too slow.

I also started a new pen name in a new genre to play with Kindle Unlimited and noticed something interesting with Amazon search results. If I search by the title of the new books in quotes and the last name of the author, I get my book and only my book. If I search by my author name in quotes, Amazon doesn't show that as a match and my book is one of many displayed.

So, it seems to get accurate search results on Amazon you need to put the title of the book in quotes and the author name without quotes. ODD. (And potentially useful in choosing my next pen name.)

What else? I've also been reading the Freelancer's Guide to Survival which is available through the NaNoWriMo Bundle on StoryBundle. (Worth a look for anyone that likes writing advice books.) Great read that's making me question whether I have what it takes to do this whole thing full-time. I'm writing daily--about 2,500 words a day--but that's not enough. That's only a couple hours a day. So, I'm currently trying to find a way to up my game.

(And having the "do I tell everyone I know my pen name and ask them to support me" debate.)

Oh, and the final thing I've figured out this week that I should've already known. Momentum matters. I looked at my sales from last year and they were slowly climbing until I took seven months off to take a project for my day job at which point they declined down to zero. Now I'm back at square one. The key is to keep going and keep putting out new material. Nothing I write has the instant success of some, but I think if I kept plodding along releasing material every couple of weeks, I could gain some steady traction.

With the new pen name I'm going to try putting out something short every week for the next ten weeks and see what happens if anything. Will update when that experiment ends.
 

M. H. Lee

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Since I was logged in, figured I'd update this thread. I actually have some nice progress to report. I'm up to almost twenty borrows in KU this month across eight titles. All but one are shorts that I published (under a different pen name) in the past three weeks or so. Today is actually the fourth day in a row with a sale or borrow, which for me is a huge accomplishment. Sadly, it's not for my M.H. Lee stuff which is the stuff I care the most about, but ya know. That is life. At least it's a small glimmer that I can make something happen somewhere and my writing doesn't completely suck, right? (Ah, the self-doubting mind of a writer.)

Last month I released five things. This month I'm at six with a goal of eight more. I finally realized that the key thing I have control over is my own production and I've been pushing myself to write more each week. I'm at 164,000 words since mid-August, which is more than I did in the prior twelve-month period but still not as much per week as I want to produce. Just have to keep it going and push harder.

Oh, and I renamed the grief book to just "You Can Survive This". I didn't want the title getting in the way of reaching someone trying to deal with that kind of loss. Not sure I like the cover still, but it usually takes me a while to get to one I like...

So that's me. Good luck to everyone headed into the holiday season.
 

M. H. Lee

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I hit an interesting milestone today. I've pubbed 12 works in November so far under four different pen names. And my sales for the month are equal to my sales from August last year through October this year. Numbers aren't big on either side of that equation, but nice to see that really hustling and trying new things does have an effect.

And, hopefully, with a few Countdown sales I'm running in the next few days that number will continue to climb. Not sure how wise it was to put the short story collection on sale on Thanksgiving day, but I'm about to find out.
 

M. H. Lee

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Yeah, it was a lot. I'd love to do it again in December, but I may not manage it. I'm planning on starting a new novel, but I do hope to get out ten short titles next month and finish two spec fic stories that I'll sub to the pro markets.

By pen name? Let's see..

M.H. Lee - 8 total - Six short stories/story combos (each around 5K words each), 1 collection of short stories/essays, and 1 non-fiction title. (Non-fiction pubbed last month and 1 story combo pubbed this month. Rest pubbed last year with no promo.)

Non-fiction pen name from last year - 4 total (2 pubbed last year, 2 this month)

New pen name 1 - 9 titles (4 pubbed last month, 5 this month)
New pen name 2 - 4 titles (all pubbed this month)

And the majority of the sales? From the second new pen name. Proof that it really does matter what you write. What I write as M.H. Lee never fits well in any of the categories, which is a problem

Although my sales on the collection have already doubled today, so who knows where my numbers will be by the end of the month...
 

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Happy Sunday to me! I woke up to see that I had as many sales/borrows from Friday to Sunday of this week to equal all the sales/borrows for my self-publishing for August 2013-October 2014. AND a short story I wrote is on the top 100 list for contemporary fiction short stories on Amazon. (Under a pen name other than this one.)

Lessons I knew, but am actually learning this time:

1. Promo helps. I had one of my shorts featured on a promo site and it led to numerous sales of that title as well as someone buying every title by that pen name in one click.

2. Which leads to the second lesson which is that series and number in series count. Three times last week I had people buy or borrow every title in a specific series for a pen name. The more titles, the more buys/borrows that is when it happens.

3. Also, genre counts and writing to the market counts. The story in the top 100 is holiday-themed. I thought I'd take a shot given some comments I'd seen and am very pleased with the result.

4. Price isn't as much of a factor as you think. Granted, I'm in Select with a lot of these titles which means I'm about 50/50 borrows/buys at the moment. But that person who bought all the titles in a series? $2.99 for each and they don't seem to have hesitated. (I keep waiting for them to return them, because I'm paranoid that way, but they haven't.)

5. Cover, Title, Blurb matter. I messed with the covers for one of my pen names. One try, sales died. The next try, two people borrowed all the titles under that name the next day.

6. Keep going even if you don't see the sales right away. I had two new pen names. One was doing twice as good as the other, but I kept plugging away at both of them. That promo I ran? The non-performing pen name easily caught up with the other one.

7. Volume. I have some stats people have put out about their career success. I'm sure some people do well with a really strong series or a really strong book, but the ones I'm trying to emulate achieved high revenues through volume (eight or nine titles out per month). Each month they saw exponential growth as a result. So far in December I have sales/borrows across 19 titles. They all contribute to the bottom line and no way to know (although market research helps) which will be the one that does the best.

8. Length isn't the issue. I did decide to put out a novel that I didn't plan to shop to agents (wrong genre), but most of my stuff is under 30K words and much of it is around 5K words. Sales-wise? I'm making more off the short stuff. I can also write a short in a day versus a novel that takes me three months start to finish. Publishing short pieces allows me to keep up that steady production level that I need to hit the volume numbers.

So, very pleased with how the last six weeks have gone. Hoping it continues into the new year. I have a plan to write another 90K words this month, so probably won't post again until January because I'll be quivering in the corner completely insane trying to hit that goal. I'm about to try a new non-fiction title in a completely different area than my other non-fiction titles. Fingers crossed it does well. If not, then hopefully one of the ten other things I plan to publish does.
 

Deirdre

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For some people, price matters, and for others, price doesn't.

When I started reading H. M. Ward's The Arrangement, I'd bought each book individually until the fifth, and then I just sucked it up and bought the next five. When I finished those, I bought the remaining five. (There are now 17, but there were 15 then.)

Your results echo the advice in Write. Publish. Repeat..
 

M. H. Lee

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Okay. So, we're close enough to month-end that I figured I'd post an update. December has been MUCH better than any other month. I'm at about four times the revenue as last month and about five times the sales/borrows.

A lot of that is due to one short story that'll earn me about $250 this month. Wrote and published it in a day, so one month out it looks like that story will pay me $40+/hour. I wish they all did that. This one just happened to hit a lot of the hot buttons and has had sales or borrows every single day since release. Which has also helped this be my first month ever with sales/borrows every single day. (I'm up to 13 today, so pretty sure tomorrow will generate something somewhere.) I also had my first week of double-digit sales each day and a freebie that resulted in over 600 downloads (a huge increase over any other giveaway I've done thanks in large part to a $5 bknights ad) this month.

I've seen a few folks on here talking about writing in different genres. It's definitely helped me. I've been experimenting across erotica, erotic romance, and romance since October and I think my sweet spot may turn out to be erotic romance. (The erotic portion gives me a goal to work towards...)

Ironically, I expect my writing is actually going to move in the direction of less sexy rather than more sexy in the new year. (I say this because I think a lot of people who try erotica gravitate towards as extreme and kinky as they can find. At least I've certainly seen that advice given elsewhere. From what I've seen from other's reported numbers it can definitely result in the biggest boost in sales, so there's a reason it happens. But the story ideas I keep hitting on want to be more about the relationship than the sex, so I'm going to go with it and see where it takes me.)

For those who are thinking of changing it up: My advice is to write something you want to write within whatever genre you choose. If you succeed you'll be writing it for a LONG time, so best to start off with something you like.

You may not see immediate success if you go that route. One of my series, the first five weeks the first story was out I had two borrows on it. Two. But I kept writing the series, did a free promo on one title and some advertised countdown deals on the others and as readers discovered later stories they read the whole series. Now I average 1 or 2 borrows or sales of that story each week and, when I do, it also results in borrows or sales of the entire series which is up to eight stories at the moment.

I suspect those numbers are going to increase rather than decrease, too, as people read through freebies or stories they bought while on sale.

To each his own, but I already had the well-paying career that didn't satisfy me, so now I want to find something that I'm excited to do every single day so I can do it for the next forty years.

I've also been reminded this month how easy it is to get dissatisfied even when you're seeing far more success than you ever were before. (The reason, at least for me, that it can't just be about money.) If you'd told me in October that I'd have as many sales as I do this month, I would've said, "Wow, that's amazing." Now? I'm wondering why I don't have even more and what I can do to fix that.

Which is why comparing yourself to others is dangerous. I'm pleased with my progress, but then I read someone say how they made $10,000 on the launch of three books under a new pen name in two months and wonder why I suck so bad. Or I see someone say they're making thousands a month their first month of writing erotica and think how my little increasing sales look paltry next to that.

I'm lucky in the sense that I'm trying to hit some numbers that someone posted about their own self-publishing journey and as long as I keep hitting those I'll know I'm on track with where I'm aiming. But it's not easy to keep positive even when you start seeing some movement, because there's always someone out there doing better and doing it faster and claiming that it took them absolutely no effort.

So there you have it. My goal for next year is to release at least thirty titles and write another spec fic novel to pitch to agents. In some respects, that's a pretty modest goal, but it could also be very ambitious depending on the choices I end up making about whether to continue writing full-time.

Money, it's hard to say no to even when it might keep you from reaching your dreams.

Oh, and total new titles put out in December was 13 to bring me to an even 30 for the year. 25 of those were pubbed in the last two months. (I had plans for another four, but the holidays kicked my butt...Note to self: Don't volunteer to host Christmas next year.)

Good luck to all in 2015!
 

M. H. Lee

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I guess since I've been logged in here twice today I can post a brief monthly update.

I published another 12 short titles last month. I think I made a mistake by adding a new pen name instead of really working the existing ones hard, but the new pen name's stories did fairly well for new releases by an unknown author. Better than the ones for my first pen name in October.

I was hoping to hit $500+ in January but didn't, so that made me panic that I'm not making the leap I've seen others make. But most of those leaps were at the 40 title mark, so...could be a problem with splitting the romance/erotica titles across multiple names. Or the fact that I'm not yet at 40. (Or just not as good?) Oh, and one of the authors I was modeling my output on was recently interviewed and said they think it would take more titles out than 40 to hit the same numbers they did. So, could be that, too.

My hit Christmas story keeps chugging along which I find incredibly bizarre. It was over half of my December sales, a third of my January sales, and is still selling well in February.

I'm letting titles roll out of Select and definitely seeing a huge hit from that.

This month I have plans to release all of my non-fiction titles in paperback. (I went with Createspace. Waiting on the proofs now.)

I also released two of my M.H. Lee stories as permafrees. Ran a Bknights promo on one of them on Tuesday and had about 400 downloads between Tuesday/Wednesday. We'll see if that leads to any sales of any of the other stories. Got a nice 5-star review on the other short story a few days ago, so that was nice.

I had a short story decide to morph into a novel and I think I'm going to go with it rather than push out as many shorts this month. The novel I released as a one-off in December has been selling nice and steady since release and did really well when I dropped it to 99 cents for a Countdown/bknights promo (it's normally at $4.99), so I think there is something to be said for writing longer works.

Of course, that one 8K word story still blows everything else out of the water. So, maybe not?

Well, I guess at the end of the day if I don't make this work it definitely won't be for lack of trying. It might be for being all over the place, though. I spent the last day working on the print version of a new non-fiction title that I'll be publishing under my real name. (Shakes head at self.)

Oh, and my mom offered to pay for getting one of my fantasy novels self-published if I want to go that route, so now I have to make that decision. Still waiting on one agent who has a partial and then I'll be at a decision point with the most recent novel.

Anyone with good fantasy cover designers they can recommend? I know my GIMP skills aren't up to that and pre-mades just don't work as well for fantasy from what I've been able to find out there.

Also, anyone have a good developmental editor for fantasy? I paid to have my first novel edited and wasn't impressed so am very leery now of spending that kind of money and just getting a glorified line edit.
 

J. Tanner

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Also, anyone have a good developmental editor for fantasy? I paid to have my first novel edited and wasn't impressed so am very leery now of spending that kind of money and just getting a glorified line edit.

I don't write novels, but I think it would be hard to go wrong with P.N. Elrod who's currently running a banner atop this site.
 

Old Hack

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Seconding the Elrod recommendation. She's a wonderful editor and works really hard.
 

M. H. Lee

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Thanks for the recommendations, guys. I'll put her at the top of the list. I liked her attitude about it, too. Sounds crazy, but I would love to have someone rip my writing apart so I can get to the next level.
 

Ann Joyce

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Glad to see you're keeping busy. Doubt that I could ever manage your level of energy. It seems to be paying off for you, so that's wonderful. I wish you all the best. Write on!
 

Celeste Carrara

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Wow you've been busy! That's great! I'm so happy for you! Now if you wouldn't mind letting some of it rub off on me, that would be geat lol ;)
 

M. H. Lee

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Thanks guys! It helps that I have no commitments or responsibilities other than walking the puppy and visiting my grandma and mom on a regular basis. I actually feel like a huge slacker most days since this is supposed to be my day job at the moment...But I did start tracking my non-writing writing time and feel much better about the time I'm putting in towards this. (Much closer to a full-time job when you take all the cover design and publishing work into account.)

Sending some encouragement and energy your way...
 

M. H. Lee

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Well, it is March so I guess I should give an update.

I find myself disappointed with my progress while at the same time trying to remind myself that I really have made some good steps forward. Hell, at least I'm still getting sales, right? But I wanted them to keep climbing and they're not.

It's weird. I released titles in January and February and the first day or so they had the same number of sales as titles I released in December but then they just died. I think it's a discoverability or algo issue on Amazon, but I don't know how to fix it.

A long-winded way of saying sales were down from January. Then again, I only released three new titles in February, too, so that hurt my visibility as well.

I focused my efforts on getting my non-fiction books into print. And, interestingly, the sales of those were more than 10% of my income for February. I also went wide with a number of titles and saw a few new sales from that direction. Nothing earth-shattering, but better than zero.

I have four fiction titles I plan on getting out in print this month and we'll see how they do. Have to say--coolest feeling ever to feel your own writing in print. (And I think I may actually reveal my pen name to my facebook friends finally just so I can show off the print version of my short story collection.)

I also got some nice reviews on my M.H. Lee free titles as well as on some of my other stuff. Even the 3-star review was a positive one, so that was encouraging. Lets me know that at least as far as readers are concerned I'm not a complete hack. Haha...

I've turned back to non-fiction titles so most of this month will be spent finalizing and publishing five non-fiction titles in both print and e-book.

I took a couple of writing craft classes that end mid-month and I just want to let those sink in a bit before I turn back to the fiction writing. (I used to do that when I was just focused on novels. Write a novel, take a break to read craft books, write the next one. I think I've been missing that pause to regroup since I started really going hard with self-publishing in October.)

Despite my mom's generous offer about helping with publishing the novel, I still can't bring myself to do it. I don't know why. I think novels do sell better, but I just can't give up that trade pub path just yet.

The novel I did publish with no promo in a genre I don't normally write has made me $100 and sold 74 copies (I did a countdown promo on it that sold a bunch of copies), so I know there is some money there. I just...I'm not ready to take that step yet with my speculative fiction. Although I may publish a serialized novel starting this month that'll be either a romance or erotic romance title.

It's a constant process of second-guessing and wondering if I can do this, but I'm not ready to give up yet. (And as I mentioned in the thread about writers who are writing full-time, I have about six fallback plans in place if this doesn't pan out, but I'd have never been able to forgive myself if I hadn't taken the risk and at least tried. Plus, the time I've been able to spend with my family as a result of this choice is priceless and worth all of it even if I "fail.")
 

M. H. Lee

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Quick update for the month. Still seeing sales even though I didn't publish anything last month and didn't advertise. (I was working on a series of non-fiction books I wanted to publish all at once and put six more books into paperback.)

Not as many as when I'm actively publishing and promoting, but glad to see that older titles are still chugging along.

Interestingly, one of my titles that did the best this month is one of the first titles I published. I updated the cover recently when I put out the paperback version and that seems to have resulted in a nice sales bump. I don't know why, but seeing and reviewing paperback versions of my books somehow changes my perception of them and leads me to make further tweaks that I don't make in the e-files.

For anyone who writes non-fiction, I'd highly suggest putting out paperbacks. It took me about six hours per each to do and the sales I'm seeing from them make it worthwhile since the per-book profit is much higher than on my e-book sales.

Best of luck to everyone else going into April.
 

M. H. Lee

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Forgot to give a May update. Still chugging along slowly but surely. Had a nice bargainbooksy ad last month that generated a nice number of sales on a book I'd released in March that didn't sell incredibly well out the gate. (I tend to price my non-fiction high.) Planning on doing a couple more this month and seeing how those go. As long as they pay for themselves, I guess they're worth it but it hurts to start spending real money on advertising. (Ridiculous way to think of it, I know. What other field do you put out a product and not advertise it and expect that to work? I have an MBA but don't use a single thing I learned in that program for my writing...)

I seem to have hit a plateau with sales and revenues. Better than the zeroes I was seeing some months of last year, but not pay the bills money. Right now I think I'm a solid draft horse of a writer. People read what I write and are fine with it, but they don't walk away talking about it with excitement and recommending it to their friends. Until I can make the leap to more of a show pony, it won't matter how many titles I put out.

Then again, I have yet to do what you really ought to which is release novels in a series. Hoping to do that later this year. And if that doesn't get some traction, well, writing is a nice hobby? (I'm not good at quitting, so will likely take another run at it in the future. May just have to step back to something more traditional for a while income-wise.)

My promise to myself is I can't quit until I've released 100 titles and written a million words. Should be at a million sometime in June. Over halfway on the 100 titles, but if I switch to novel-length fiction exclusively, a long ways to go.

My advice to others: Be more focused than I am in what you write. Get one pen name or maybe two moving along with steady releases and steady sales before you get off on a tangent. Print, at least for non-fiction, is worth it in my opinion. Free only works if what's free is so engaging that people want to read more of what you write.
 

AndreaGS

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A million words is a huge milestone! Go go go!! :D

I'll bet you get a lot more readers if you start a series. I've actually had someone ask me if my debut was part of a series, because they didn't read books that weren't part of a series. People like those series... Best of luck with it!
 

Mclesh

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A million words IS a lot of words. I don't think I'm there yet--even though I keep writing then deleting in my WIP. :D

I appreciate what you say about being more focused with what you write--I think I'd be having an easier time with my promotion efforts if I could channel them in one particular area instead of several. (I had absolutely no strategy when I started writing. Still don't really.)

Best of luck with your ongoing projects!
 

M. H. Lee

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Thanks McLesh.

Yeah, I'm all over the board. (still) And, interestingly, I usually get sales across all the pen names if not all the titles each month, which is why I think if I'd published that much under one name in one series I'd be doing much, much better. But, on the other hand, it's also helped me find what I do/don't like to write...

We each take our own path, mine just happens to have a lot of side trips and detours, but hopefully I'll get there eventually. (I'd say you are already well on your way.)