Here we go! Rebecca McKeown's self-publishing diary

HistorySleuth said:

I had the pleasure of meeting Rebecca tonight at our local writer's group. Imagine my surprise to find she was a fellow AWer! She brought her book with her and I think it came out lovely.

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Thank you! It was wonderful to meet you and to find you here, too! Looking at the cover in your signature, I actually have seen you around here before. (The cover is quite striking--I remember loving it the first time I saw it. Can't remember which thread that was in, though.)

Spell-it-out said:

Congrats on the official release Rebecca!

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Thank you so much!

I'll do a quick sales update tonight. I plan to do some more marketing this afternoon, so we'll see if it pays off!

HistorySleuth said:

I'm getting the book version so I can snag your autograph on it at the next meeting.

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Thank you so much! You guys were great--I can't wait for the next meeting.

OK, here are my sales numbers for my newly released book!

Amazon KDP: 4 (I'm not including the copy I bought to test on my Kindles haha)
Barnes and Noble NookPress: 1
No paperbacks or Smashwords sales so far, which is pretty much what I expected. We'll see if Smashwords picks up pace at all.

Overall, I'm pretty happy. It's better than selling none! I figure a couple more sales from friends who know about it will trickle in over the next few days. Other than that, I may not sell much more than this, but I'll try!

My Goodreads giveaway for one signed copy started today and runs until June 6. So far 40 people have entered and 13 people added the book, which I think is pretty decent for a short collection of poetry by an unknown poet.

OH! I got my first bit of "fan mail" on my Facebook page yesterday. A girl I don't know, but who has been interacting with my page for a while now, sent me a message saying she bought the ebook and loved it. Then she gave me a 5-star review on Amazon! I'm quite happy that my first review is from a stranger.

That's it for now. Hope everyone is doing well!

robertbevan said:

hi rebecca. i've been following this thread for the past couple of days, but today is the first day i've had the time to write and congratulate you.

welcome to the club, and congratulations on your first few sales, and especially your first fan mail from a stranger. that always feels great. i wish you good luck and continued success.

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Thank you! I saw you just updated your thread, so I'll hop over there in a second to see how you're doing. I'm getting addicted to reading everyone's updates

I felt like dancing around the room when I received her message, and I'm especially pleased she took the time to write a review. Those can be hard to get.

Thanks, everyone!

Ann Joyce said:

Hi Rebecca. I wanted to offer my congratulations on your very nice first review. I checked out your book, too, to see what was showing in the 'look inside' feature. You must have added back matter because I see your ToC is still intact in the front the way you wanted it to be. Makes sense in a book of poetry, I think.

I was a bit surprised though, to see 4 poems showing out of 18. That seemed like a lot in such a small book. Anyway, I'm glad you got it all worked out. Congrats on the sales - I wish you continued success!

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Judy Koot said:

I've noticed the Kindle sample now does show a couple of your poems.
Just wanted to let you know, in case you didn't do this yourself.
Or if you did, how did you do it? By putting more backmatter in the book?

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It's odd because I didn't do a thing! When I contacted Amazon about merging my Kindle and paperback versions, I did mention that I'd like more to show in the sample, if possible. They didn't address that in their response, but I guess they must have done something.

Okay, time for a sales update!

Amazon KDP: 6
Barnes and Noble NookPress: 1
Createspace: 1
Smashwords: 8 sample downloads, but no sales

I've been slacking on promotion lately as I've been swamped with work and family things, so I do need to kick that up a bit.

AgathaChristieFan said:

Congrats on your first sales! May many more come

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Thanks and same to you!

MmeGuillotine said:

Awesomeness. Good luck with June - hope you sell loads of books!

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Thank you!

merrihiatt said:

Continue on. We'll be here supporting you.

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Norman D Gutter said:

Good work, and best of luck & success to you.

NDG

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Thank you both! I'm going to browse some of the AW promotion threads and SP diaries to get some new marketing ideas, too. Even though I work in the marking/PR field, it seems like a different world when it comes to promoting my own book!

Just a quick little update about promotional stuff. I'll post updated total sales on Sunday... if I remember.

My Goodreads giveaway ended yesterday and I sent the signed paperback off to the winner today. Here's hoping she leaves a review! (A good one, while I'm hoping.) 342 people entered to win a copy and 146 people added it to their "to-read" shelf. We'll see if it ups sales any.

I did make a mystery Kindle sale this week and I think it might be because of Tumblr, though I'm not sure. I posted a photo of one of the poems in my book and put it on my author Tumblr, made the photo link to my site's book page where all the sales links are, and made sure to tag the photo well. I'm talking "unrequited love poems," "breakups," "breaking up," and every other tag I could think of that would appeal to folks looking for some poems about failed love haha. One great thing about Tumblr is that lots of users like and will reblog poetry. And lots of users are angst-filled teenagers who go through breakups a lot.

As of right now, the post has 39 notes, which include likes and reblogs. Not too shabby. Again, I'm not sure if that's where the Kindle sale came from, but it may have.

My other Kindle sale this week came from a kid I went to HS with. My HS English teacher bought a copy a while back and shared it on Facebook, so that must be how he found out about it, since I haven't announced anything about the book on my personal Facebook. It was kind of weird when he messaged me about the book because while we were friendly in school, we were never super close. But he's a musician and said he was happy someone from school was still making art, so maybe that's why he bought it. Who knows. It was nice of him and I was glad to hear he liked the poems.

That's it for right now! Hope everyone's doing well.

Hmmm... I'm not sure. I have no problem with answering it here to the best of my knowledge, but if the mods want you to start a new thread, that's fine, too!

The Goodreads giveaway I ran was really easy. I just followed the guide here: http://www.goodreads.com/author/how_to. They choose the winner and you send out the book when it's over. I'm not sure how LibraryThing works.

If you want to do a giveaway on Facebook or a blog, you can use Rafflecopter. https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/ I used it for my lit mag, and it was pretty easy, though some people got confused by some of the entry tasks, so I'd keep it simple.