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I wish I'd started this thread in the beginning, but I know that I have a long ways to go on this journey still. It's always better to start later than never, so here we go!
Background:
I've wanted to write and publish my work for as long as I can remember. Seriously. When I was very young, I wrote short Chip N Dale Rescue Ranger episodes, using images from coloring books to illustrate them. Later, I started writing my own short stories. I wrote a couple of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine episodes, sending the scripts in. They were returned, of course, but it was cool at the time to know that someone there had held them in their hands. lol
I continued writing, submitting short stories to a few magazines here and there. I did have one short story published in a tiny little magazine where likely five people read it. But it was encouraging (and yes, I still have a copy of it somewhere). I turned to writing a science fiction novel as a teen and finished it before I graduated high school. I wrote it in a series of notebooks using pencil. I recently typed it all into the computer and it was over 70,000 words. That book is the first of a trilogy and one day I intend to give it the attention it deserves (not to mention the vast amount of editing).
Once I entered college, creating writing fell to the background for the most part. I picked it up again for a few months after graduation before I started working full time. Again, writing took a back seat. I would write in spurts of a week or so, then wouldn't touch it for months. I had a lot of partial stories and ideas jotted down all over the place.
My husband has always encouraged me to write and it wasn't until January 2014 that I decided I was going to take one of my partial books and finish it. It was during that time that I turned my sights on self-publishing. I spoke with a friend who had been doing just that for several years. I found a fantastic group of people online who were all working on self-publishing as well, and I did a great deal of research.
Book #1: Calming the Storm (A Christian Romance Novel) - Self-published August 6, 2014
This story was one that had been on my heart for years before I finally finished it. As a hobby photographer, I was determined to create my own cover. I struggled with it for weeks. I finally finished it, compiling two separate images into one. My paperback version of this book still has the sunflower cover I designed. A few months later, a friend of mine who also designs covers suggested it might sell better if the cover fit the story a little better. She designed the cover you see on the Kindle version. I do agree with her, though I sell so few paperbacks, I haven't bothered to change that cover to match.
For this first book, I didn't have money for an editor. My husband read it as did my mom and several friends. Everyone gave me advice and suggestions, found typos and errors, and then I read through it two more times before finally submitting it to Amazon. Creating the Kindle version of the book was super easy. It was going from that to the CreateSpace template that was a nightmare. I learned then to type my book into the template because it was much easier to go from that to a simple version for Kindle than the other way around!
I got my book up on Amazon and then realized I had absolutely NO idea what I was supposed to do to promote the thing. Which led into a whole different kind of research.
I ran some ads with several places over the last ten months or so. The most effective were ENT and Book Basset.
To date (July 7th, 2015), I have sold 1060 Kindle copies of this first book.
Book #2: Finding Peace (Love's Compass: Book 1) - Self-Published January 3, 2015
I took what I learned from my first book and applied it to this one. I hired the same friend who made the other cover to make this one right off so I didn't have to worry about designing it myself. I put the book up for pre-sale on Amazon and made the introductory price $0.99. I ended up with 8 pre-sales before it's release. I also scheduled an ENT ad upon its release so I had some good advertising right out of the gate.
Writing the book within the CreateSpace template made the process of producing a paperback a whole lot easier and I was glad I went that route. I was able to easily convert it to a document for Kindle from there. I also chose to go with a matte cover instead of a glossy and preferred that look as well.
I didn't hire an editor (still not making enough money for that) but I had a much stronger beta reading team in place for this one. Including a wonderful person who walked me through some lessons of showing rather than telling as well as some other points that improved my writing tremendously. I felt a lot more confident about putting this book out there than I did the first one.
The combination of it being a new book with the ENT ad seemed to hit things just right and it did really well on Amazon for the entire month of January before sales dropped off.
To date (July 7, 2015), I've sold 1794 Kindle copies of the book.
Book #3: Finding Hope (Love's Compass: Book 2) - Published July 1, 2015
By now, I'd heard many people tell me that the more books I put out a year, the better my sales would be and I could drum up more interest in my books. Which is all well and good, except that I wasn't about to sacrifice quality. I might not be able to hire an editor still, but I wanted what I put out there to be something I could be proud of. I had intended to start writing this book right after Finding Peace was published, but I didn't really get to work on it solidly until March. Still, I feel six months between the two was still very good.
This book was a little easier to write, too, because I had already created the town and many of the characters in the previous book. I went back to my cover designer and she produced this one - my favorite of the three by far.
A new editor who is building her portfolio edited my book for free and helped a lot with some of the character and content development. I also went through my usual beta readers who were fantastic as usual. Again, I put this book up for pre-sale and had 25 purchases through that. I opted to keep the book at the usual $2.99 this time around to see what happened. I did not get any ads in for the release.
So far, I've sold only 32 Kindle copies total. I'm sure a lot of that is due to the fact that it's the second book in a series. I also didn't have an ad running for it. After the success of the first book in the series during it's launch month, I'll probably re-think how I release my next book.
Okay, that gets me caught up. I will just jump into where I'm at now from here.
Background:
I've wanted to write and publish my work for as long as I can remember. Seriously. When I was very young, I wrote short Chip N Dale Rescue Ranger episodes, using images from coloring books to illustrate them. Later, I started writing my own short stories. I wrote a couple of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine episodes, sending the scripts in. They were returned, of course, but it was cool at the time to know that someone there had held them in their hands. lol
I continued writing, submitting short stories to a few magazines here and there. I did have one short story published in a tiny little magazine where likely five people read it. But it was encouraging (and yes, I still have a copy of it somewhere). I turned to writing a science fiction novel as a teen and finished it before I graduated high school. I wrote it in a series of notebooks using pencil. I recently typed it all into the computer and it was over 70,000 words. That book is the first of a trilogy and one day I intend to give it the attention it deserves (not to mention the vast amount of editing).
Once I entered college, creating writing fell to the background for the most part. I picked it up again for a few months after graduation before I started working full time. Again, writing took a back seat. I would write in spurts of a week or so, then wouldn't touch it for months. I had a lot of partial stories and ideas jotted down all over the place.
My husband has always encouraged me to write and it wasn't until January 2014 that I decided I was going to take one of my partial books and finish it. It was during that time that I turned my sights on self-publishing. I spoke with a friend who had been doing just that for several years. I found a fantastic group of people online who were all working on self-publishing as well, and I did a great deal of research.
Book #1: Calming the Storm (A Christian Romance Novel) - Self-published August 6, 2014
This story was one that had been on my heart for years before I finally finished it. As a hobby photographer, I was determined to create my own cover. I struggled with it for weeks. I finally finished it, compiling two separate images into one. My paperback version of this book still has the sunflower cover I designed. A few months later, a friend of mine who also designs covers suggested it might sell better if the cover fit the story a little better. She designed the cover you see on the Kindle version. I do agree with her, though I sell so few paperbacks, I haven't bothered to change that cover to match.
For this first book, I didn't have money for an editor. My husband read it as did my mom and several friends. Everyone gave me advice and suggestions, found typos and errors, and then I read through it two more times before finally submitting it to Amazon. Creating the Kindle version of the book was super easy. It was going from that to the CreateSpace template that was a nightmare. I learned then to type my book into the template because it was much easier to go from that to a simple version for Kindle than the other way around!
I got my book up on Amazon and then realized I had absolutely NO idea what I was supposed to do to promote the thing. Which led into a whole different kind of research.
I ran some ads with several places over the last ten months or so. The most effective were ENT and Book Basset.
To date (July 7th, 2015), I have sold 1060 Kindle copies of this first book.
Book #2: Finding Peace (Love's Compass: Book 1) - Self-Published January 3, 2015
I took what I learned from my first book and applied it to this one. I hired the same friend who made the other cover to make this one right off so I didn't have to worry about designing it myself. I put the book up for pre-sale on Amazon and made the introductory price $0.99. I ended up with 8 pre-sales before it's release. I also scheduled an ENT ad upon its release so I had some good advertising right out of the gate.
Writing the book within the CreateSpace template made the process of producing a paperback a whole lot easier and I was glad I went that route. I was able to easily convert it to a document for Kindle from there. I also chose to go with a matte cover instead of a glossy and preferred that look as well.
I didn't hire an editor (still not making enough money for that) but I had a much stronger beta reading team in place for this one. Including a wonderful person who walked me through some lessons of showing rather than telling as well as some other points that improved my writing tremendously. I felt a lot more confident about putting this book out there than I did the first one.
The combination of it being a new book with the ENT ad seemed to hit things just right and it did really well on Amazon for the entire month of January before sales dropped off.
To date (July 7, 2015), I've sold 1794 Kindle copies of the book.
Book #3: Finding Hope (Love's Compass: Book 2) - Published July 1, 2015
By now, I'd heard many people tell me that the more books I put out a year, the better my sales would be and I could drum up more interest in my books. Which is all well and good, except that I wasn't about to sacrifice quality. I might not be able to hire an editor still, but I wanted what I put out there to be something I could be proud of. I had intended to start writing this book right after Finding Peace was published, but I didn't really get to work on it solidly until March. Still, I feel six months between the two was still very good.
This book was a little easier to write, too, because I had already created the town and many of the characters in the previous book. I went back to my cover designer and she produced this one - my favorite of the three by far.
A new editor who is building her portfolio edited my book for free and helped a lot with some of the character and content development. I also went through my usual beta readers who were fantastic as usual. Again, I put this book up for pre-sale and had 25 purchases through that. I opted to keep the book at the usual $2.99 this time around to see what happened. I did not get any ads in for the release.
So far, I've sold only 32 Kindle copies total. I'm sure a lot of that is due to the fact that it's the second book in a series. I also didn't have an ad running for it. After the success of the first book in the series during it's launch month, I'll probably re-think how I release my next book.
Okay, that gets me caught up. I will just jump into where I'm at now from here.