Falling Upstairs Towards A Door Of Prosperity: JAlex's Self-Publishing Thread

Straka said:

Great cover. I agree the facebook has good advertising. I've seen the most success there.

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Thanks, yeah it does. Mentally I'm fine with not running them and having no sells until i'm ready to do any big push. I'm going to try a video ad next.

WriterBN said:

You're one of the very few authors who has, at least from the ones I've communicated with. I may have to try it some day, but I've been reluctant to do so because most people have said it didn't work for them. What genre was your book?

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I know alot of authors who had great success with facebook advertisement. I even know a person who quadruple her sales.
I suggest watching these videos and joining this group.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1584291371854759/
With the videos it'll teach you how to build a mailing list audience and you can use what you've learned from it to build sale ads. Which is what I did. He had a course but it isn't available anymore.
Facebook ads takes alot of tweaking and testing. It took awhile before I found my audience, but it was well worth it.



An update on my serial, I completed my first episode and I'm kind of excited about it. It's about 10k words and now after I edit it today i'm going to look for beta readers. My plan is to release the first episode on BN, Kobo, Ibooks, etc for free in the first week of September and then releasing the first two episodes on amazon, making the first one permafree and putting the second one in Kindle select. I'll make it very obvious that the new pen name is connected to my one for longer works.
I'm working on my novels on the weekdays and my serials on the weekend. I never typed 10k words in two days but I was able to push it through. My first step for quitting my day job is almost complete.

Another update: Got my first book back from a proofreader. There was not as many mistakes as I thought, which is helping calm down about my reviews. I'm just going to a credit some of the negative reviews to my writing in third person present and the bad early copies I sent out on accident(And the errors on the first few days of the release). Hopefully I should get no more reviews for errors and more about the story. It does help that I got a few good reviews in a row(I consider a three and up good). But they were all on goodreads which doesn't help sales that much, but can help exposure. But I'll take what I get. This experience has definitely thickened my skin.

I'm now seeing the effects of the negative reviews in the form of promos. I got denied for the two biggest promos that would've made the countdown deal I have at the end of the month really worth it. Don't believe anyone who say reviews don't effect anything, because they do unless you don't have hundreds of reviews to drown them out the negatives. I'm going to try to do a choosey bookworm read and review to see if that would help push me back up.
Now I might use the money for the promo I couldn't get for a trailer for a facebook ad and run that through my countdown deal. I found a guy on fiverr who makes trailers starting at 50 dollars.

Update: I have been accepted for bookbarbarian and i think bookbargin, I have submitted for a few others and I'll post if I get it.

Last update until promo for next week.
Starting Sunday my book will be at .99c for a Kindle countdown. I'm hoping for enough sales to create a long tail to last a while.
The guy I found on Fiverr to do my video trailer is sick which sucks a whole amount of stuff. I wanted to run some facebook ads with the trailer while my promo was going on. But looks like that isn't going to happen.
I'm going to email my mailing list on Sunday about the sale and again near the end of it. Hopefully that'll get me some sales. But I'm not relying on them yet.
I've uploaded the first two episodes of my serial.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013VUBNJM/?tag=absowrit-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013VVSRMM/?tag=absowrit-20
I already written the first four episodes and I'm going to finish episode five this weekend hopefully. Then I'm going to take a few week break and work on my YA novel.
I also put the next book in my 'In a Universe Without Stars' series in preorder, but the link isn't up yet. I also don't have the cover done but I should have it done by October hopefully.
Here's the list of promos for next week. It might me lackluster. :/
Book Barbarian - accepted for the 26th

Bookbargin - accepted? For the 27th

Riffle - 24 - 24th

Genre pulse?

Robinreads - 15 - 24th

Ebooksoda - 10 - 28th

The kindle countdown is now in effect. Looks like I might be working a lot this week so I might not be able to update my results until the end of the week.

Promo updates
Riffle and robin reads - 42 sales
Bknights and awesomegang- 2 sales
Book Barbarian so far - 17 sales

Can't wait til bookbargin tomorrow.
I am worried about the possibility of a tail. As I only had four sales after what I would consider a good day.

Sorry for the lack of updates.
I couldn't mentally keep up with it. But I have made a lot of changes over the last few months.
I'll give a huge update in a week or two and will continue to update this thread as I made it for a reason. Just not a frequently as I used too.

So, a long update.
My serial book series failed. Only had one download after 4 releases so I unreleased them and decided to turn the series into a novel series as it is far easier to promo and market that way.
Here it is in it's current form, up for nomination for Kindle Scout.

With a badass cover

I also have a blog post going into slightly more detail about the series and will have one coming up about my inspirations for it.
http://jalexmccarthy.com/2016/02/02/changing-tides/
Which also reminds me that I updated my website to something a lot more visually pleasing.
http://jalexmccarthy.com/
Now, I'm currently working on book 2 and 3 of my In A Universe Without Stars series(It's now a four book series). Which i'm planning a dual release in the summer.
If I'm not picked up for Kindle Scout, I'll release The Men Who Killed God in the end of March/beginning of April.

M. H. Lee said:

Love that cover!

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Thanks! The guy did a really good job with the vague description I gave him.