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

Motley said:

The cover is amazing. Thanks for sharing your process and your results here. It really helps those of us who have not quite yet jumped into the self-publishing waters

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I hope my upcoming failures will show you what not to do when you self publish

Update! Facebook ads works! It's a powerful tool if used right. 'Used right' is a big part about it as I spent 100 dollars trying to figure it out and randomly boosting post without variables and such. I have about 250 on my mailing list from $200, so far I have a 50% click ratio for the confirmation email. So I think it's money well spent. My ratio is a lot better now that I've gotten somewhat of a hang of it.

My next foray will will be into paid ads. Which I think might or might not work. So it could be all for nothing. Some people are doing better than others at them and they have a lot more reviews. So far I have 6 reviews on amazon averaging 4.3 and 6 ratings on goodreads, averaging 4 stars. But I'm not sure that would be incentive enough for buys, but i'm going to try it anyways.

I'm 1/5th done with my next novel in the in the universe without stars series. A bridge between book 1 and 2. I'm writing in past tense, since i'm open to trying every style of writing. It's kind of fun and I can see why some people prefer past over present. But I don't see the need for the intense hate for present though. My word seemingly flows better but I don't feel as an intimate connection with the characters, maybe from the immediacy of the style of writing. For book 2 i'm probably will keep with present tense since the first book is written in it, also since I want to keep it consistent. I still dislike 1st person even though two of my favorite novels is written in it. (Red rising, Golden son and the name of the wind.) So I might try it on my YA novel i'm going to do.
I should be finished with it in a month hopefully.

This is my first draft of my ad for sales, it's going to take me awhile to get this right. My mailing list one is fine but I have no idea how this will do.

Treehouseman said:

I've heard good things about BookBub advertising. They're pricey though, and I't might be wise to do something like that once you have two or three books in the series out. The first "discounted" book will be your loss leader, so to speak.

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Getting into bookbub will be difficult, but having complete creative control over facebook seemingly works well. But it's hard getting over 100% ROA, at least for me. Also I got my first negative review yesterday, two stars, which will stifle any bookbub plans. I'm guessing he read the old netgalley version based on what he mentioned, even without any typos and grammar issues of the old version I don't think he'd like the way I written the book anyways(could be that it was in present tense). I'm not saying the current version is perfect but it is alot better than the version he probably has. But even still I'm thinking of making a comment asking if he got it from netgalley and if he did, I could give him a corrected copy but I'm not sure if that'll look good. I know he didn't purchase it as he wasn't verified and I could do the unethical and I could report him to amazon as he didn't state he got the book for free, which is against Amazon's TOS. But again, I find that unethical. So, i'm thinking of just straight up making a comment of giving him an updated version.

One thing i'm going to plan for on my next release is hiring a proofeditor after I get a regular editor and do my edits. Totally unrelated to the netgallery issue I had but I noticed small mistakes I made fixing somethings. Like in the first few pages, after it was proofread and ready for release, I changed a sentence. Which mention my main characters hand, but I then decided it would be better if it said hands instead of hand, but I didn't change the tense of the verb in the sentence. Which I didn't catch my mistake until a day after I released the damned book. So getting a proofreader after the fact is good.

I'm about 2/5ths done with my next release, book 1.5 of in a universe without stars, i'm planning to release it five months from now. I could release it sooner but it will bridge the gap between book 1 and 2 of my series. I don't want to release it in two months and then have people waiting for book 2 for 9 months. Guessing by my outlines it'll be over 700 pages and will take awhile to write. Especially since I have a job.

Sales for May

I'm really excited about facebook ad, but it's getting annoying, everytime I add more than $5 my ROA seems to go to crap. The chart is off, on the 28th I had 3 sales, which is also the day I started do the sales ad. But when I started to increase what I put in, It seems like facebook loses its effectiveness. Of course that doesn't happen for everyone who does them. But it is annoying since i'm trying to get steady sales and also boughts. Hopefully the negative review don't hurt my sales.

J. Tanner said:

You can rarely go wrong by following the standard advice to not engage with customer reviewers. There's such a high chance of things going badly regardless of your intentions. That said, the fact that the reviewer mentioned only being partway through the book makes me think this -might- be one of the exceptions. I could see the argument for saying something like "It sounds like you may have a pre-release galley version rather than the final proofed release available from Amazon. I'd be happy to send you a copy of the final which has a lot of the minor typographic issues resolved if you contact me at X." Still, your sample on Amazon contains a lot of the kinds of things he mentioned that I wonder if, even if everything went perfectly with the conversation, it would result in him changing his review.

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Yeah, i'm going to say exactly that. He probably still won't like my writing style(third person present) but at least he can enjoy the story. So far I haven't gotten that many negative remarks about my story so that's a positive.

I just got in another negative one star review, commenting about the same thing, but it's also not a verified purchase(so from netgalley/story cartel again) and he/she went out of their way to post this review
So far my biggest regret is posting my book on netgalley, all because of this simple uploading issue. I'm not claiming my book is error free but the netgalley version was atrocious. One positive though is that they said the story was interesting :/
My biggest fear is that they did have the updated version and still found errors everywhere.

I use facebook ads for work rather than my writing, but there's all sorts of counter-intuitive stuff like this, and even with a direct line to a facebook account rep, the ad placement algorithms remain a black box. Basically, if you have a working ad, don't touch it. Create a second (third, etc) new ad. Kill ads that are ineffective and build up a mass of smaller, effective ads. It's a real headache to manage as you scale up. (And yes, this seems dumb to me compared to a system that allows you to just give them more money to get more of the results you're happy with but their reps say it's working as intended.)

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Yeah it's a mystery box, I just noticed that I was getting more click at a cheaper cost for serving to the desktop website. But I was getting served to mobile at a far higher rate so I turned it off. It was good for the first half of the day and then it just stopped getting clicks. I think i'm getting close to the perfect ad but my main issue is that I don't know whose work I can compare too, making it hard to target. Right now, I target the big sci fi and fantasy writers but their results are inconsistent. The best target I got was Robert Jordan, but even though he is a huge inspiration of mine I don't think my work is similar to his. I tried out Brandon Sanderson as his work was more diverse but after a great few days it would drop off hard
I'm getting clicks with Peter Hamilton but I don't think they're converting to sales. The worst part is I have people commenting on the ads saying 'the book seems interesting' and liking the post but there's not a single tick up on my dashboard.
I'm found that comparing myself to other authors is getting more results but I don't think I'm as epic and thrilling as Brandon Sanderson and/or Pierce Brown. But I'm told as a new author I have to be bold.

Truth be told, that last review was mentally hard hitting for me. I had the same amount of clicks yesterday but no sales. So, I'm going to turn off the ads for a few days and just worry about my next book(almost half way done) and let some more reviews pour in, hopefully mostly positive as I haven't had any major story complaints yet. I wanted to get a boost of sales before the supposed 30 day drop off but I'll just deal with it. I have another plan in store that I'll post later that has to deal with Kindle countdown(I took my novel off smashwords) and my mailing list as this post is getting long.

J. Tanner said:

I've only read your sample on Amazon, but I would not characterize that portion as having "errors everywhere." It has a word choice here and there where I wonder if it's conveying what you actually meant or you just got the word wrong. It's been a few days, but I think I only noticed one grammatical error. I'm not a huge fan of your take on first-person present narration, but that's super subjective.

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It's in third person present. But I see what you're saying. The funny thing is, when I started writing I didn't even know there was a huge clash between past and present, first and third tense. I was just writing. Now while thinking of other books I want to write I'm thinking more about which tense and person to write in. I could go for the safe third past or I could just write without thinking about it. I had a review on goodreads who said it would've been better in first person present so I can't win

Keep in mind that Netgalley is a service that's been used by trade publishers for years. By entering that arena, you are setting yourself into competition with books that have veteran authors and huge support teams and you shouldn't expect to be graded on a curve so to speak. Readers don't care about the circumstances of creation. They care about getting a good book, and if they got it off Netgalley they sure as heck are going to post publicly about it either way. (On the bright side, they won't be shy about cheering like crazy if you please them--they totally want to discover a new author they love.)

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Yeah I agree with you, i'm putting myself out there so I should own up to my mistakes. I was contacted by someone who read my book to clarify a point in it and she said she thought the story was great and some other things. That's the reason I write. But of course I want it to support me as well. For some reason I have a better rating on goodreads than on amazon. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around.

I wouldn't read much into ad comments. Think about how many ads you see a day, and how many you find mildly interesting, and how many you actually act upon. I see hundreds of ads a day, dozens about books alone, and I haven't even clicked on one in weeks. You can't scry from the tiny number of interactions you're seeing. It's a fools errand.



Writing the next book is always a good choice.

Advertising is hit and miss. I see no harm in getting your feet wet but you may have had your expectations set too high. Ads (and promotion in general) tend to be more effective with a larger catalog of books.

Writing for money is a marathon, not a sprint.

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Yeah, after sleeping on it i'm better mentally. I'm going to start back testing the ads tomorrow. I think what got me was how inconsistent they were when I see other authors with more consistent results in a group i'm part of(if you want the marketing group i'm part of I'll tell you). They're actually on par with what I was expecting except for the consistency thing. But i'm going to keep writing and working on the next plan.

Which the next plan is to move my book onto kindle select and once I have my mailing list over 1500, i'm going to do a kindle countdown deal and build a launch team with the people who have read my book. So, that my next release would have more than a couple reviews on it before release.

I do have a question, which timing of release do you think would be better for a new author, releasing a sorta sequel book 1.5 of my series as soon as it's done, which would be in a two months, or release it in 6 months? The full sequel won't be out until a year from now and I don't have anything to release between the time that I release book 1.5.

Here's an example
Book 1.5 release would be in december
Book 2 release would be next June
or Book 1.5 would release in August
Book 2 release would still be next June
Is the first example too long?
I have an YA book i'm going to do as well sometime in between them as well. If I release it when it's finished book 2 won't be out for 9 months after that. And the YA book 3 months after book 1.5. So I would have nothing for six months in between book 1 and book 1.5. Or I could have nothing for six months between book 1.5 and book 2.

J. Tanner said:

For self-publishing I recommend releasing books as they're ready. Don't rush them, don't hold them for a nebulous "better" time. (Obvious non-nebulous exceptions like if you finished a Christmas book in the summer.)

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Yeah i'm thinking about releasing it when it's done done now. But I still want to save two months for marketing after my last experience.
A note, I got another negative review by someone who read the netgalley version So far out of the 35-40 people who downloaded it on that site, i've accounted for about 20 of them. I told him the same thing I told the other guy.
Also I don't have any also-boughts yet, which is weird as I thought they come up after 20 books have been bought.

Old Hack said:

JalexM, I'd be grateful if you'd check the size of the images you've posted in this thread and make sure they're within our maximum allowed size of 400px by 400px. The two on this page are definitely too big. Thanks.

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Fixed, I think.

So my cash flow has slowed completely because most of the jobs I work for are in hiatus now. Last friday, I turned down my sales ads to only a dollar a day. I'm glad I joined select cause I'm getting only 1 borrow a day but I suspect they wouldn't have bought the book anyways. It won't be until august until I'm able to do a big push in sales sadly, but i'm going to work on getting a review/launch team with my mailing list and building that up and then go from there.

Another note is I updated my keywords and I think those will help my book, hopefully, to get discovered.

I'm more than half way done with my next novella and I think I'll be finished by wednesday of next week hopefully. But I can't release it immediately thanks to the cash flow issues, because I'll have to get an editor(Which I want a developmental this time because of the things i'm trying to do in the book), and a cover artist. (I have an idea for the cover and it's a shorter book so I might go with someone cheaper than Damonza.) I might have to wait until fall to release it, but I'll continue to work on the series and my next books.

J. Tanner said:

With your limited cash flow, you might consider investing time rather than money. Take part in Share Your Work here, or find another offline or online critique group like Critique Circle or Critters. You give feedback on other's manuscripts, and they give feedback on yours. You'll only use a fraction of the feedback, but you'll apply those lessons for years to come. In my experience, your craft will improve quite quickly, and you'll also learn a significant amount about yourself and your writing by thinking critically about others' writing.

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Yeah definitely, on Skyeater the forum helped chose my cover and helped me with my blurb. I'm definitely going to start posting more in SYW, but only after I'm done writing as I find myself getting easily distracted.

AlexisRadcliff said:

I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your experiences here. It's so crazy helpful and really appreciated.

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Thanks! I just wanted people to follow a journey of what could be something successful! I'm glad I helped.

Since my main novel is out, I'm thinking of unpublishing Yes, Even The Stars and only using it for mailing-list sign ups. I'm out of select on the 1st and I think I'll do it then. It ran it's purpose and only my main novel is being bought.

So I unpublished Yes, Even The Stars, I havent gotten any sales on it since my debut release and It did it's job I guess. Plus people were wrecking on it's proofreading and I don't want to deal with it when i have to look into the future. I think releasing a excerpt of a novel would work better with a second or third release than the first. I did get it proofread though a service and will keep just for my mailing list sign ups. Surprisingly I actually worked this week so I might have some money to put into mailing list sooner than later.
I'm going to send an email to try and build a launch team. I'm not expecting much from only 300 subscribers, seeing how most won't join the team but it's better for me to get the email copy down and set up the autorespond.

Weird thing with Yes, Even The stars, some didn't like the second half and yet some people I talked to said that's when they became invested. I don't know what to think anymore.

I might have done a bad thing and I might have four reviews removed for not stating they got free copies of the book, but I think I have a better understanding to marketing and getting reviews now.

Also sales/borrows came to a sudden halt on sunday, which was weird because I was a better than average day the day before(Which was two sales and two borrows.) I still don't have also boughts after 50 sales/borrows

My next book is done, I just have to type it up because I handwrote everything. I worry that people won't like it because I wrote it in a different style and it's slower paced. Plus the story takes place in a whole new location. I screwed out of beta readers as I didn't have any for my first book(People offered to read it but never heard back I had more beta readers for Yes, Even the Stars) and since this is a somewhat sequel a read of the first book is needed.
I won't have the money to edit it until august so i'm just going to outline my next three novels and take July off because I haven't had personal warranted free time in three years.

Alright so I set up a launch team, from my 300 mailing list subscribers about a little more than 10 responded. I'm also working on a video ad, I'm thinking of paying someone to do it for me but I might try my hand at it first. It will probably be horrible but it'll be a learning experience. I also noticed that if I don't make a large change my look inside for amazon updates almost immediately.
I'm also trying to save up for an editor, it looks like I won't be able to afford one until August, i'm going to use the same editor but this time will use a developmental edit to see how that experience is and after I do my final edits I'll also get a proofreader.

Here's a update
So my main work stopped so I completely stopped my facebook ads so my sales and borrows dropped immediately, it seems like I got less borrows anyways since the KU update. I will restart them in august when my jobs starts working more and I finish a book trailer. I have a plan on trying out chooseybooks to get some reviews and then having a kindle countdown at the end of August and my select term. I'm still not sure if i'm going to stay in or not. I'm going to stop checking on my amazon page, sales reports or anything books until August, I've hit a point where since I don't have anything to give for marketing, I don't care what my sales are or anything for the book.

So my next round of prerelease work is coming up for my next novella release.
At the beginning of August I will send it off to an editor and get a cover artist. I'm not going to use netgalley this time as it's only a 100 page novella. Oddly enough I'm still getting reviews in from netgalley for Skyeater, mostly positive but for some reason the positive ones never get posted on goodreads or amazon, but it helps me mentally that some people are enjoying it when i'm getting negative reviews from people who had earlier badly edited copies(even though the netgalley people had the same version, meh). Never had anyone say they didn't like the story yet.

I plan the release at sometime in November and will put it up for preorder when the cover is finished.
I'm kind of wondering if I should release it, since it's written totally different than my first novel with aliens as the main characters. Sadly I have no beta readers who can be the judge for me but I will get it up to snuff first.
My next book on the agenda is my urban fantasy YA novel, which I'll start to write in August and hopefully finish it by october with a goal of a February release. Then I will start on the main sequel to Skyeater. With this plan after the novella release I'm hoping to have a release every three months, so I can steadily increase my bookshelf.

Also submitted it to publisher's weekly indie book program in hopes for a review. Personally I don't think they will do to the tense and person it's written in.

All in all, Skyeater had an imperfect launch, with the netgalley issue with me uploading a bad copy, with my amazon launch book being a better copy than the netgalley but still having a few mistakes, and not learning facebook sooner, i'd give this launch a 2/5. I learned immensely from this and I know now what to do for my next launch. I will use Netgalley for my YA book as I heard they do the best on that site. I truly believe if my marketing fails for Skyeater that my YA will be the one to break me in.

Game plan change, my work is pissing off to much so I'm going to make a plan to earn enough to quit my job in six months if not sooner. I'm going to move up all my novel releases a month and work on a serial series and release it under another pen name(Just J A Mccarthy) and will make the connection clear to my regular name J Alex McCarthy.
I have a lot to write

Also coming up on finishing my next release, i'll post what I pay for and what I usually do for a release.