Hi, all.
So, the last month has been really productive--or at least my productivity is showing results all at once. I've self-published my first book, and it's flanked by two trade anthologies.
I finished self-publishing Dragon Hoard this morning. It had a lot in common with giving birth. I don't think of my book as my baby, but by the end, all I wanted was for the pain to stop. It was incredibly difficult. The emotional resistance was so extreme, I couldn't do it sober. And I know we joke about how we write drunk, edit sober, but I'm a generally sober person. I'm still amazed at all of the "Who are you to think you can do this?" types of thoughts I had to fight my way through. I don't think there's anything wrong with my courage, but the issue was in doubt at numerous points.
Formatting is seriously not an area of strength for me, so my publishing happened in fits and starts over the past week. I didn't go with KDP select. I couldn't have even if I'd wanted to since Dragon Hoard is a collection of short stories, and the publishers aren't about to pull the ones I've sold off their sites. But even without that, I'd not have gone that route, for various reasons.
All the ebooks for Dragon Hoard were supposed to be free, but Amazon won't price match Smashwords, iBooks, B&N, etc. so it's $.99 there, which is a setback. Serious, articulate groveling had no effect on Amazon's decision. I've done a lot of research, and I decided to make the first book free for a number of reasons. So that's the first hitch, right at the start.
I wanted the book to be free because the number one reason people buy books is because they've read a book by that author before and liked it, which makes sense because I do the same thing. But this means that every debut author is inherently screwed.
The research I've done puts it another way. Basically, I guess you have to decide on what your goal is for your book, between reach and income. I decided the best thing I could focus on was increasing my reach. As of today, I have 3700 Twitter followers, 129 blog followers, and 25 people on my email list. It's my third month with over a thousand hits on my blog. That's probably only enough to give away a book. Besides, I really like the idea of giving something back.
Anyway, in the past week I've had 75 downloads through Smashwords and nothing on Amazon, which would seem to indicate that free is better right now. That's utterly without promotion. I haven't told the rest of the world that my book is for sale yet. I was going to do that tomorrow on #SundayBlogShare because my blog stats on Thursday (Thanksgiving) were absolutely dismal, and Friday wasn't a whole lot better. Today was back to normal, but I had no idea it would be. For all I knew, the entire Thanksgiving weekend could have been a black hole.
Besides, I just finished with CreateSpace this morning. Something in my soul likes everything tidy to start off.
I've read a bunch of these threads, and a lot of the focus seems to be on how much money is made or how many copies sold, neither of which are things that really apply to me. I can relate how many people downloaded for free, but my understanding is that a lot of people download books for free and then don't read them. So I'm uncertain what the conversion rate is. How many downloads are usually unread? Half? More than that?
I'm not even really certain what success is for someone at my level. In my genre (fantasy) and furthermore in my subset which would currently be fairly clean fairy tales, what is a positive result? It started as an experiment. Will the genre of Tolkien and Lewis still support the type of tales I read as a child? Or has it all gone grimdark, and I'm writing for an audience of one? I have absolutely no idea.
People say encouraging things, but they could just be trying to help me.
But at least it's up. Fear didn't keep me from publishing. Right now, I'm happy with that victory.
So, the last month has been really productive--or at least my productivity is showing results all at once. I've self-published my first book, and it's flanked by two trade anthologies.
I finished self-publishing Dragon Hoard this morning. It had a lot in common with giving birth. I don't think of my book as my baby, but by the end, all I wanted was for the pain to stop. It was incredibly difficult. The emotional resistance was so extreme, I couldn't do it sober. And I know we joke about how we write drunk, edit sober, but I'm a generally sober person. I'm still amazed at all of the "Who are you to think you can do this?" types of thoughts I had to fight my way through. I don't think there's anything wrong with my courage, but the issue was in doubt at numerous points.
Formatting is seriously not an area of strength for me, so my publishing happened in fits and starts over the past week. I didn't go with KDP select. I couldn't have even if I'd wanted to since Dragon Hoard is a collection of short stories, and the publishers aren't about to pull the ones I've sold off their sites. But even without that, I'd not have gone that route, for various reasons.
All the ebooks for Dragon Hoard were supposed to be free, but Amazon won't price match Smashwords, iBooks, B&N, etc. so it's $.99 there, which is a setback. Serious, articulate groveling had no effect on Amazon's decision. I've done a lot of research, and I decided to make the first book free for a number of reasons. So that's the first hitch, right at the start.
I wanted the book to be free because the number one reason people buy books is because they've read a book by that author before and liked it, which makes sense because I do the same thing. But this means that every debut author is inherently screwed.
The research I've done puts it another way. Basically, I guess you have to decide on what your goal is for your book, between reach and income. I decided the best thing I could focus on was increasing my reach. As of today, I have 3700 Twitter followers, 129 blog followers, and 25 people on my email list. It's my third month with over a thousand hits on my blog. That's probably only enough to give away a book. Besides, I really like the idea of giving something back.
Anyway, in the past week I've had 75 downloads through Smashwords and nothing on Amazon, which would seem to indicate that free is better right now. That's utterly without promotion. I haven't told the rest of the world that my book is for sale yet. I was going to do that tomorrow on #SundayBlogShare because my blog stats on Thursday (Thanksgiving) were absolutely dismal, and Friday wasn't a whole lot better. Today was back to normal, but I had no idea it would be. For all I knew, the entire Thanksgiving weekend could have been a black hole.
Besides, I just finished with CreateSpace this morning. Something in my soul likes everything tidy to start off.
I've read a bunch of these threads, and a lot of the focus seems to be on how much money is made or how many copies sold, neither of which are things that really apply to me. I can relate how many people downloaded for free, but my understanding is that a lot of people download books for free and then don't read them. So I'm uncertain what the conversion rate is. How many downloads are usually unread? Half? More than that?
I'm not even really certain what success is for someone at my level. In my genre (fantasy) and furthermore in my subset which would currently be fairly clean fairy tales, what is a positive result? It started as an experiment. Will the genre of Tolkien and Lewis still support the type of tales I read as a child? Or has it all gone grimdark, and I'm writing for an audience of one? I have absolutely no idea.
People say encouraging things, but they could just be trying to help me.
But at least it's up. Fear didn't keep me from publishing. Right now, I'm happy with that victory.