This week I received my second royalty direct deposit from Kindle/Amazon for the sale of my e-books. This one was $20.78 bringing my grand total to somewhere around $41. I'm proud of that $41 and it serves as continued encouragement for me to move forward with self-publication and wherever it may lead me. It isn't much, a tank of gas give or take a few pennies, but to me the knowledge that people found something I created worth buying is priceless.
To give a few updates I'm currently sending out e-mails begging for reviews from different blog sites. If you, or anyone you know, has a book review blog please let me know so I can grovel for your honest opinion of my work. I've been working on being thick skinned so when they start telling me I suck I'll only cry for a little while. LOL In all honesty I value all reviews good or bad because if well meaning and done without malice a bad review can be more helpful than a good one.
On another front I have uploaded both books to Smashwords and they're being converted as we speak. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how this site works, but as soon as everything is converted and available I will put up links. The way I understand it Smashwords make the e-books available in a variety of file types so that people can purchase them for download on many different types of e-readers, smart phones, etc.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Paddling a slow canoe...
There really isn't much to update on in my little writer's world at the moment. I'm hard at work on The Wolfman's Halo, the third book in the Alpha Men series, as well as some quick detours into the other works-in-progress I have on my multi-burnered writing stove. I feel a bit like I'm spinning my wheels with Wolfman's Halo at the moment... even though the words are coming along fairly well I still feel like something just isn't right with the storyline and the characters are dragging me all over hell's half acre trying to find the correct path to the ending we all know is coming. I'll figure it out eventually, but it may mean printing out the 205 pages I have done and ripping that sucker to pieces before putting it back together in some completely new order!
On other fronts, I'm trying to focus on finding book review blogs that I can request reviews from. This is my first cautious step into the world of actually promoting and advertising Saving Alexandria and Guardian of Dreams and it's a little scarey. I've sent 13 requests over the past 12 days and I haven't heard anything back from any of them as of yet. It all takes time, but it's as bad as when I was pursuing mainstream publishers and agents and spent half my evenings checking and rechecking e-mail waiting for the rejections to come in. I suppose I should look on the bright side and say that at least I haven't gotten any rejections yet, but that would be stretching my newly minted confidence a bit too far I think. Sales are down this month, only 2 copies of
Saving Alexandria, but that's to be expected and hopefully will be helped along if end up with some decent reviews.
For now I will paddle along (the paddling canoe is an ode to the fact that my area has gotten a Noah's boat load of rain in the last month) my little stream of self-publication until I hit something solid.... hopefully it will be a nice sandy beach and not a freakin iceberg!
On other fronts, I'm trying to focus on finding book review blogs that I can request reviews from. This is my first cautious step into the world of actually promoting and advertising Saving Alexandria and Guardian of Dreams and it's a little scarey. I've sent 13 requests over the past 12 days and I haven't heard anything back from any of them as of yet. It all takes time, but it's as bad as when I was pursuing mainstream publishers and agents and spent half my evenings checking and rechecking e-mail waiting for the rejections to come in. I suppose I should look on the bright side and say that at least I haven't gotten any rejections yet, but that would be stretching my newly minted confidence a bit too far I think. Sales are down this month, only 2 copies of
Saving Alexandria, but that's to be expected and hopefully will be helped along if end up with some decent reviews.
For now I will paddle along (the paddling canoe is an ode to the fact that my area has gotten a Noah's boat load of rain in the last month) my little stream of self-publication until I hit something solid.... hopefully it will be a nice sandy beach and not a freakin iceberg!
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Here We Go....
Welcome to my new blog. Unlike Welcome To My World this blog will revolve completely around my journey as an aspiring author. Or maybe I'm not aspiring anymore; I guess it depends on whether you consider self-publication a legitimate avenue for having your written words viewed by others.
A little background...
I've been a writer for as long as I can remember, quite literally. I taught myself to hunt and peck type when I was about six or seven years old and from then on I wrote a million different little stories. In the early 1990's I published a contemporary romance novel with a company out of Littleton, Colorado that published books on floppy disk. To those of you who weren't yet born in the early 1990's the floppy disk was the forerunner of the CD, DVD, and the now wildly popular e-book formats. The book was called Wylde Skies and if you ever manage to run across a floppy disk copy of it let me know because it only sold one copy before the company went bankrupt. The rights to the book reverted to my when the company folded, and at some point I will probably pull it out, revise it, and publish it on Kindle.
Up until about a year or two ago I pretty much gave up entirely on publishing. I still wrote whenever I had a story in my head, but I was too busy going to college, and then law school, and raising my five kids to really pursue any kind of publication. Then about two years ago at work one evening story worked itself into my mind and I really couldn't get rid of it. I wrote on it obsessively for several months until I had it finished.... all 600 pages of it... That book became Guardian of Dreams, the first full length book in the Alpha Men paranormal romance series.
With the book finished I started surfing the internet for online writer's groups and I stumbled across Fan Story where I met a lot of wonderfully talented people and got great feedback and critique on my work. Then in November 2009, I joined several of my friends at Fan Story in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge. The challenge is world wide and broken down into smaller groups in writers geographical areas. Each area has groups that sponsers write-ins where participants can go to work on their novels and interact with other writers. The particular write in that I went to led me to the single most awesome writers group in existance; Western Ohio Writer's Association (WOWA).
WOWA meets the first Wednesday of each month at the Fairborn Community Center on Kauffman Avenue in Fairborn, Ohio... which most conveniently happens to be about 5 minutes from my apartment. I would encourage anyone in the area who writes in any capacity to join us for a meeting. It's an awesome, talented group of writers who give fabulous constructive criticism.
At the January 2011, WOWA meeting a few of the people in my critique group (we break into smaller groups to do critiques) were discussing self-publication and specificially self-publishing novels in e-book format. That night I went home and started looking into self-publishing. I found that at Amazon.com you can self-publish a novel of pretty much any length for free in their Kindle e-book format. I decided that I had nothing to lose, and that night I uploaded Saving Alexandria, the 10,000 word novella that introduces the Alpha Men series. A few days later I uploaded Guardian of Dreams.
I've sold a total of around 26 copies between the two, and while that's hardly lofty sales it isn't bad considering I've done nothing to promote, market, or advertise either book. Occasionally I drop their links onto my Facebook, but that's it. After three months I'm figuring the word of mouth sales are pretty much dried up, and I've started e-mailing the owners of book review blogs to see if I can interest them in reading and reviewing my novels. I'm also starting this new blog where there will be permanent links to both the e-book and print versions of my books.
I've no idea how to go about growing a blog following, but this I'm sure is the first step I need to take. It's certain to be an interesting, and probably very bumpy ride... so hang on, because here we go....
A little background...
I've been a writer for as long as I can remember, quite literally. I taught myself to hunt and peck type when I was about six or seven years old and from then on I wrote a million different little stories. In the early 1990's I published a contemporary romance novel with a company out of Littleton, Colorado that published books on floppy disk. To those of you who weren't yet born in the early 1990's the floppy disk was the forerunner of the CD, DVD, and the now wildly popular e-book formats. The book was called Wylde Skies and if you ever manage to run across a floppy disk copy of it let me know because it only sold one copy before the company went bankrupt. The rights to the book reverted to my when the company folded, and at some point I will probably pull it out, revise it, and publish it on Kindle.
Up until about a year or two ago I pretty much gave up entirely on publishing. I still wrote whenever I had a story in my head, but I was too busy going to college, and then law school, and raising my five kids to really pursue any kind of publication. Then about two years ago at work one evening story worked itself into my mind and I really couldn't get rid of it. I wrote on it obsessively for several months until I had it finished.... all 600 pages of it... That book became Guardian of Dreams, the first full length book in the Alpha Men paranormal romance series.
With the book finished I started surfing the internet for online writer's groups and I stumbled across Fan Story where I met a lot of wonderfully talented people and got great feedback and critique on my work. Then in November 2009, I joined several of my friends at Fan Story in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge. The challenge is world wide and broken down into smaller groups in writers geographical areas. Each area has groups that sponsers write-ins where participants can go to work on their novels and interact with other writers. The particular write in that I went to led me to the single most awesome writers group in existance; Western Ohio Writer's Association (WOWA).
WOWA meets the first Wednesday of each month at the Fairborn Community Center on Kauffman Avenue in Fairborn, Ohio... which most conveniently happens to be about 5 minutes from my apartment. I would encourage anyone in the area who writes in any capacity to join us for a meeting. It's an awesome, talented group of writers who give fabulous constructive criticism.
At the January 2011, WOWA meeting a few of the people in my critique group (we break into smaller groups to do critiques) were discussing self-publication and specificially self-publishing novels in e-book format. That night I went home and started looking into self-publishing. I found that at Amazon.com you can self-publish a novel of pretty much any length for free in their Kindle e-book format. I decided that I had nothing to lose, and that night I uploaded Saving Alexandria, the 10,000 word novella that introduces the Alpha Men series. A few days later I uploaded Guardian of Dreams.
I've sold a total of around 26 copies between the two, and while that's hardly lofty sales it isn't bad considering I've done nothing to promote, market, or advertise either book. Occasionally I drop their links onto my Facebook, but that's it. After three months I'm figuring the word of mouth sales are pretty much dried up, and I've started e-mailing the owners of book review blogs to see if I can interest them in reading and reviewing my novels. I'm also starting this new blog where there will be permanent links to both the e-book and print versions of my books.
I've no idea how to go about growing a blog following, but this I'm sure is the first step I need to take. It's certain to be an interesting, and probably very bumpy ride... so hang on, because here we go....
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