A Self-Pub Journal With a Side of Gross Sobbing

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Sarah Godfrey

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Hello, everyone! I had an AW account years ago when I was still a teen and going through some awesomely ugly times with lit agent research. I definitely did a lot of time with it all, querying three projects over the process of about as many years. I learned a lot. A whole lot.

With this project, however, my co-author and I decided to go self-pub for a multitude of reasons, including retaining perfect creative control. We did a ton of research and talked a lot before decided this route was ultimately best for the both of us.

Some of the research I did was actually here in this forum, with all of you lovely people and your self-pub stories. I gathered a lot of info and I want to start paying it forward!

Firstly, we published book 1 at the end of June, and we had a little bit of momentum already because we run a writing help blog on Tumblr. But when I say a "little bit", I definitely mean a little, if we're judging by a reflection of sales. A number of our followers were super awesome and reblogged our posts and spread the word, and we were extremely honored by the support. That last week of June sold 18, I believe, and then July sold 18. August sold twice as many because we had a 99 cent sale on the first book the week before we put out the second on September 1st.

This month, wellllll.

I mean, we've sold 8 of book 2, which I'm pretty stoked about because I was expecting only a couple. We've sold three of book 1 for a total of 11 books so far for September, which is 11 more than zero!

We've been lucky enough so far to have some really great book review bloggers rate us nicely, but since I have some not-so-great anxiety problems, I'm taking a break from that part of the marketing side. It's high stress and I sort of go a little crazy.

We have a novella coming out in October, which is set between book 2 and book 3, and then our goal for book 3 is December. Whew. That's 3.5 books in half a year. We were lucky that the three books had already been written by the time we decided to go ahead with self-pub -- we spent a lot of time feeling our way through things and feeling the stress of it all. It definitely would've impaired our writing output.

I've had a giveaway featured by some book review bloggers, but I haven't tried a Goodreads giveaway yet, and I'm seeing that generates a lot of traffic?? Who else has done one here? Has it made a difference? Is it best to give away a paperback, or do ebooks work too? Is a longer giveaway or shorter giveaway better?

I should be revising the novella but shhh I'm here asking questions instead.

Anyway, I guess we'll see how things go. I'm glad to meet everyone and I hope things are going well for you, too!
 

sarahdalton

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Congrats on your sales so far! I love your book covers!

I've had some experience with Goodreads giveaways. You can't actually run a giveaway for an ebook. Well, you can, I did it once by creating an event to list the giveaway and then pulling a few names out of a hat for the people who 'attended'. Events aren't great, though. You can only invite your friends. I have over a thousand friends and the last event I ran on Goodreads had about 5 people click 'yes' to attending.

The official giveaways are for paperback only and you need an ISBN for your book--you can use the free one from Createspace. It's really best utilised as a tool for getting TBR adds. I find it most useful before I've actually released a book because then it doesn't interfere with sales--people won't buy a book if there's a chance to get it free. It depends on how long you run the competition but I tend to get a few hundred TBR adds per giveaway. I usually leave it open for a month. Once I ran the giveaway for 3 months and had about 1500 shelves.

You can give away up to 100 ebooks on Librarything but I probably only received about 5 reviews from those people, which I was a bit disappointed about!
 

LBlankenship

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I mean, we've sold 8 of book 2, which I'm pretty stoked about because I was expecting only a couple. We've sold three of book 1 for a total of 11 books so far for September, which is 11 more than zero!

(high fives)

Welcome, pull up a chair, pour yourself a drink, and sob whenever you need to. :)
 

Ann Joyce

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That's a great start, Sarah. Congrats! Looking forward to reading your updates.
 

Sarah Godfrey

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Thanks for the support, everyone!

Congrats on your sales so far! I love your book covers!

I've had some experience with Goodreads giveaways. You can't actually run a giveaway for an ebook. Well, you can, I did it once by creating an event to list the giveaway and then pulling a few names out of a hat for the people who 'attended'. Events aren't great, though. You can only invite your friends. I have over a thousand friends and the last event I ran on Goodreads had about 5 people click 'yes' to attending.

The official giveaways are for paperback only and you need an ISBN for your book--you can use the free one from Createspace. It's really best utilised as a tool for getting TBR adds. I find it most useful before I've actually released a book because then it doesn't interfere with sales--people won't buy a book if there's a chance to get it free. It depends on how long you run the competition but I tend to get a few hundred TBR adds per giveaway. I usually leave it open for a month. Once I ran the giveaway for 3 months and had about 1500 shelves.

You can give away up to 100 ebooks on Librarything but I probably only received about 5 reviews from those people, which I was a bit disappointed about!

OH, I see I see I see -- that makes sense. Paperback seems like the way to go, then. (Especially since I'm only starting out and still only have a few friends!)

I think I'll definitely set up a paperback giveaway, then. Visibility is visibility! OH, and you have sequels too, so do you hold giveaways for only the first book or all the books?

Also 1500 shelves, holy cow.

I love your book covers too!!! I especially remembered yours back when I was just creeping. I'm also a fiend for bright colors, though, and I love the color combinations! The red with the blue subtraction or lightening effect is something I abuse like crazy. When I made these book covers, I shamelessly put all my favorite color combinations together.

Thanks for all the info! Yo, I haven't even dabbled in Librarything yet! I guess five reviews are better than zero?


Hi Sarah and welcome!

I did the Goodreads giveaway and the number of people signing up was ego-satisfying. Sales didn't grow and reviews didn't flourish and nothing financially-positive resulted from it...but it was still fun.

I say the ego boost is a necessary vitamin supplement for the writer! I could use one of those, for sure.


I'll have to take a look at the books, they sound interesting.

Thanks for your thoughts and journal :)

WOO! Thanks, Kole! *dances*
 

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Do check out LibraryThing, and their giveaways. I don't know why, but I've had better luck with Giveaways on LibraryThing in terms of review numbers (good or bad, I don't care, it's a review) on LibraryThing than on GoodReads.
 

Sarah Godfrey

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Lisa, I did just that and I'm definitely going to look into the giveaway. Visibility is visibility! Thanks for the advice!

Sales this month occurred only in about the first week or so and didn't see any change after that, so here's what we're looking at:

Dance in Shadow and Whisper: 2 Kindle / 0 Nook / 1 Createspace

Fracture the Spider's Web: 6 Kindle / 1 Nook / 1 Createspace


Total: 11

Toughest month so far, but after the last three-ish weeks had no sales, I'm wary about the fate of October.

On the upside, the writing help blog climbed about +200 followers in the past week or so, bringing the total to 4.2k. So that's cool.

My co-author and I did finally finish our revisions of the novella, which landed at just over 30k, and it's off to our critique partners for now. We're going to put it out this October at 99 cents for Kindle and Nook, and whatever appropriate price for the paperback (mostly since we have fans who prefer paperback). But we were also thinking of having it free to read on the blog.

Next, after all the awesome advice I got here (I've been reading a ton of self-pub journal threads that have really been so helpful), I've been brainstorming a new game plan.

A friend of mine is currently chugging through book one and she caught a few errors. I wanted to go ahead and make a "second edition" of the first book, with a couple small changes, and also add (probably) the first chapter of the second book to the end. I'm also going to freshen up the synop, and I've already jotted that down. I spent about two hours reading synops on Goodreads so I could write the best synop I could.

Once I've done that, here are a few of the things I've been thinking of doing:


  • Uploading the second edition, taking the Nook version off sale, and then trying the KDP Select free download days. I've read that the way Amazon handles the upswing of downloads now is different than before? So it might not increase sales? Is it still best to stagger the free days, or does it not matter now? I may try to locate a thread on this -- I'm sure there's gotta be one somewhere. Whatever the case, I'm trying to decide if this would be a good thing to do now or just before the release of book 3 (which is set for December) or the month of book 3.
  • Holding a Librarything giveaway in November and set the end date for December, that way I can give out edition two and have book 3 (and the novella) already available.
  • Same with the Goodreads giveaway.
I'm really just trying to get my brain to figure out what order of events would be best as far as doing Select and the giveaways with the release of book 3. All my brain really wants to tell me is, "Yes. The answer to everything is yes." And that's not very helpful.


As I continue processing, I'm gonna check out more threads! Thanks for reading!
 

Sarah Godfrey

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Thank you, Merri!

Also, I found that thread I needed on KDP Select. For my own ref, and for the convenience of anyone else who might follow this, here's the link:

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=272162

If I do Select, I think I'll do it during the month of December, after the third book goes out. B&N is my weakest seller anyway by far, and it seems that series tend to do better with Select, which might be a boost if all goes well. With three books in the series and the novella, that's a plus. So I'll probably have the giveaways in November. By then, book 3 will at least have a Goodreads page. Just gotta get on with finishing that cover.

I also see that it helps to actually advertise the free days, and I found this link through one of the many writing help blogs I follow:

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/free-ebook-promotion_b52130

It's a list of sites that will advertise your free book for free. However, I did find some that are no longer doing what they did at the time of posting, so be aware of that. I looked up one of the websites through Google and found some rather unsavory tactics.

Does anyone else have any good sites for free book promos?
 

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Whoever did your covers did an excellent job - I really like the design and it's quite professional looking, at least from what I can see in your sig line.
 

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wanted to go ahead and make a "second edition" of the first book, with a couple small changes, and also add (probably) the first chapter of the second book to the end.

Be careful about adding back matter, especially if it's on a novella. Readers can be annoyed when they think they've got a dozen pages left in the main story, only to find out that it's back matter. It may be preferable instead just to add a link to the new book (where there's a look inside or first chapter excerpt anyway). With digital books, it's different from paper books, since it's not really necessary to include the whole excerpt since it's immediately accessible (at the reader's option instead of being forced to have it) from the e-reader.
 

Sarah Godfrey

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Whoever did your covers did an excellent job - I really like the design and it's quite professional looking, at least from what I can see in your sig line.

Ohmygosh, thank you! I've made all the covers myself using my own photos in Photoshop CS2 (which we downloaded for free). College student budget, so I'm glad it paid off!


Be careful about adding back matter, especially if it's on a novella. Readers can be annoyed when they think they've got a dozen pages left in the main story, only to find out that it's back matter. It may be preferable instead just to add a link to the new book (where there's a look inside or first chapter excerpt anyway). With digital books, it's different from paper books, since it's not really necessary to include the whole excerpt since it's immediately accessible (at the reader's option instead of being forced to have it) from the e-reader.

Ohhhh, that's a good point, I didn't even think about that. I'll have to put that into consideration. Thank you!
 

Sarah Godfrey

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A smaller update -- I've finally finished putting together the cover for book 3! If you'd like to see, I've posted it up on the blog:

http://marionettesandmonsters.blogspot.com/2013/10/book-3-cover-reveal-new-updates.html

I knew for this color scheme that I wanted to do something monochromatic with a splash of red. I threw in the yellow as a whim and ended up loving it for what it signifies. Just like with the first two covers, the decorative font is hand-drawn. I was a bit more precise with the structure of the typography this time, but I wanted something a bit less, well...pretty. Definitely going for a darker theme this time.

This cover will also be identical to the paperback cover (hence the extra spacing for bleed purposes) now that I've learned how to plan ahead. There's very slight spacing differences with the first two.

I've been tied up revising and blogging and doing zero marketing, and I know that's going to hurt the sales (whew, I can already see that very clearly), but now that I have the new marketing plan, I'm not worried. I'll get momentum building again come next month!
 

HannahWing

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The new cover looks great! Thanks for sharing your journey. I've heard from a lot of authors that the best publicity is a new book, so don't worry too much about slacking on the marketing.
 

Sarah Godfrey

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Hannah and Anna -- Thank you!

I suppose I can do a little summary of progress so far. FTSW finally got a couple awesome reviews on GR which really put a lot of the worries out of my head. I did everything I could to avoid the second book slump, and everyone who's read it has said the second book is actually better. So, *great big relieved sigh*.

No marketing recently, as expected. I managed to finish updating the first draft for the second edition, and I made a wrap-around version of the cover so I could make the spine look a little less horrendous. But, when I finally received the paperback, I noticed the image quality had that JPEG static look to it. I think I've fixed the problem, so now I just have to finish flipping through and looking for any formatting problems. Once I approve it, I can finally hold a freaken Goodread's contest. I'm already behind on my plan, but oh well. Unforeseen issues.

My betas are also running late with the critique on the third book, but we heard back from one yesterday and she loved it, so I'm stoked. My second one promised me tomorrow.

Also, I've been participating in NaNoWriMo this year! You can find me here:

http://nanowrimo.org/participants/sarah-godfrey

I actually want to do 100k for November, buuuut with revising book 3 and flipping through the paperback of book 1, not sure how that'll fly. We'll see.

Also, as far as sales go, I sold one of the novella and one of book 1 in October, which is more than I expected. I have no idea where the sale of book 1 came from!

But, also surprisingly, I've sold three of book 1 for November so far, and one of book 2. I think I know who bought the sequel, but I don't know who bought the other three?? I'm so stoked about that!

Anyway, that's it so far. I can't wait to try out the new marketing plans come December. I hope everyone's well!
 

Sarah Godfrey

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Okay, so, it's been a while, but not quiet. The last few months of the year had been especially tough in regards to our surroundings, so everything that I had planned to do took some extra needed time. I'm just glad 2013 is conquered and in the past now.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, the marketing plans for us were highly experimental and led to some fairly interesting and unexpected results. Ummm, basically, prepare for an essay, because here's everything in some sort of cohesive order:


Final Releases
I managed to get myself together in time to put out the "remastered" first book in both ebook format and paperback (which Createspace now has a new matte cover option that I did backflips over, and while it's still cheaper matte, it's a million times better than the cheaper cheap shiny lamination), and I also released book three long after the intended release date of December first, but still in December.

I wanted to have all of these things prepared and ready before I started promoting because I've heard having a series already available for purchase really helps the books market themselves. The series will be a lot longer, but I wanted to have at least the first three books (and the "remastered" first book) ready before I began.


KDP Select Free Days

I meant to have these start the weekend of December 28-29th, but the KDP calendar fooled me because their week begins with Monday and ends with Sunday. When I had selected what I thought was Saturday, I had actually hit Sunday. By the time I realized this, it was too late.

Initially, I was pretty %#&%^@ about it. I really wanted this particular weekend because it was the first weekend after Christmas and not the weekend right before teens go back to school (I remember high school clearly enough -- spending all my money the week of New Years and, oops, homework cramming at the last second).

I ended up setting the days for Sunday through Tuesday, the last day of 2013, and I'm thinking that might have actually worked out for the better.

I announced on the writing help blog prior to the free days, and I think that helped a lot. During the free days, a few of our fellow writing help blog friends also reblogged our post, which got it a whole lot more visibility. We had a ton of support, and I think the notes represents only a small fraction of that.

So, by the time we went to sleep on the first day, we had over 1k downloads.


Goodreads Giveway
This...was also something I set for the 28th, but my lacking experience let me down in this case. I didn't know I'd have to wait for approval, and I think it might have said up to 2 days or 2 business days? Either way, the giveaway didn't go through until the second free day. I was pretty %&@^@# about this too, especially since the numbers trickle in only slowly.

But, I'm thinking having the giveaway running with the free days was an additional boost. By the end of the second day, we had about 3k downloads and we reached #4 on Amazon's Teen free books page, and that put us right in the front. I think #4 was a brief stay, but we spent most of our time hovering between #5 and #7, which was also reflected on Amazon's Paranormal/Urban Fantasy free books page, too. I was pretty stoked, to say the least. Didn't know what to do with myself all night.


Final Free Day
The downloads slowed considerably on Tuesday (New Year's Eve and all that), but we stayed in our top position for a while, til about the end of the day when we slipped down to #11. I debated over whether or not to use the last two free days, waffling and waffling for all of Tuesday.

I ended up deciding against it. Instead, I decided to keep those two days for the final days of the Goodreads giveaway, when the book will be on the list of "giveaways ending soon". That'll be at the end of January, and I'm hoping to hit a fresh group of readers by then.

So, we concluded December and the 3 free days with 4750 (and then an additional 12 the following day, not sure why). I was hoping to see 5k, but still absolutely pleased with 4.75k!


Actual Sales
I'm super surprised that I haven't had one month with 0 sales. Here's what things have looked like since my last post:

November
Book 1 - 4 ebooks || 0 paperback
Book 2 - 2 ebooks || 0 paperback
Novella - 1 ebook

December
Book 1 - 3 ebooks || 1 paperback
Book 2 - 7 ebooks || 1 paperback
Novella - 2 ebooks
Book 3 - 2 ebooks

January (so far)
Book 1 - 7 ebooks || 0 paperback
Book 2 - 8 ebooks || 0 paperback
Novella - 1 ebook
Book 3 - 1 ebook

We've had about three or so returns? Yeah -- two book 1's and one novella (which are not included in the above numbers). The latter is the odd part to me, but oh well. I try to focus on the "net units sold" and not "units sold" or "units refunded". Good things, not mixed feeling things. Er. Something like that.

Most of December's sales ended up with the free days, but not all of them. Surprised about that, too. I was also hoping to see more sales of the sequential books during the free days, and I even priced book 2 at 1.99 for the second day to see if that made a bigger response. It didn't. There wasn't any conceivable change. I suppose romance series do better in this regard.

But! I'm also totally thrilled to see readers are coming back to get the sequential books! We've had sales each day this year, and I'm glad I have a part-time job now to keep me from hitting refresh every hour. Because I would.


Reviews
Nothing new on Amazon as of yet. Goodreads has had more ratings, a few good ones too, but I have extremely high levels of anxiety, so when I saw a couple of lower ratings, I started to nose-dive into a panic attack. Luckily a 5-star mellowed me out enough to keep from crashing, along with some well-rehearsed words of, "No book is for everyone."

It also helps to see some sales, but my co-author has officially banned me from looking at Goodreads at all anymore. She's much better at handling it than I am, so I'm now leaving that thing to her. Freaking out over ratings and reviews just keeps me from writing.


So, that's about how it's been recently. I'm counting this all a success and I hope to see some more momentum. Hoping hoping hoping. Excited to see how January will play out! Ahhhh!!!!

Thanks for reading and I hope this essay info helps!
 

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Surprised about that, too. I was also hoping to see more sales of the sequential books during the free days, and I even priced book 2 at 1.99 for the second day to see if that made a bigger response. It didn't. There wasn't any conceivable change.

I would cautiously suggest that the free downloads may have a longer-term payoff than you'd expect. I think people tend to download a free book, but not necessarily read it for weeks or even months after downloading, so even if there's no surge in initial sales, the sequel sales should keep trickling in for a long time.
 
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