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!
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?
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!