My indie journey, part 5

Midnight Treat has been for sale for 3 weeks now. I made the decision last week to increase the price from .99 to $2.99. I'm still doing little to no promo--I purposefully haven't done much just because I wanted to see the results of doing, um, nothing. :)

Week 3:

Smashwords: 5 copies

Amazon: 18

Barnes & Noble: 21

Total: 44 sales

Week 2:

Total: 37 sales

Week 1:

Total: 24 sales

My sales are low, but I'm averaging about 2 books a day if you look at the total three-week period. That's not bad for a relatively (okay, almost completely) unknown author.

But now it's time to kick it up a notch. I plan to pick one area of promo/social marketing to focus on at a time. I'm currently on Triberr and Facebook and some indie boards, but I am not too active on them. So this week, I will focus on Facebook. I will post a status every day (right now, I'm lucky to post once a week) and will comment and like others' statuses on the Home page each day. I'm also going to start blogging more. How? Not sure yet. What will I blog about? Not sure yet. But this is my week to figure that out.

Will these two things generate sales? Check back next week to find out. I'd love it if you followed me on Facebook, too.

Happy writing. Happy reading.

:)Becca

My indie journey continues, part 4

I considered not writing an update this week, because my sales haven't really sped up, but I started writing this series so anyone thinking about self-pubbing could go through the process, good/bad/ugly, with me.

I'm still not really doing any promo for this story, so the slow sales reflect that. But my goal this week is to come up with a promo plan and actually follow it. :)

My sales after 2 weeks:

Smashwords: 5

Amazon: 14

Barnes & Noble: 18

________________

Total: 37 sales

I learned yesterday that Midnight Treat was approved for Smashwords' premium catalog, which means it'll now be available at Apple, Kobo, Sony. Hopefully, that'll translate into more sales.

WEEK 1

Smashwords: 3 copies
Amazon: 8 copies
Barnes & Noble: 13 copies

______________________

Total: 24 sales

PRICE CHANGE:
After reading some interesting blogs about how Amazon is reconfiguring their algorithms (don't ask what that means, cuz I really have no idea), and how lower-priced ebooks might be affected, I decided to try an experiment. I upped the price of Midnight Treat from .99 to $2.99. Which means I'll get 70% royalties rather than 35%. Which means I'll make more money selling fewer books. But it could also mean I'll sell fewer books period.  I'll keep it this higher price for 3-4 weeks and see what happens, if anything.

As always, I'll keep you posted.

Part 3...Dipping my toes in the indie waters

Well, I did it. I uploaded my story and it's now "out there" for everyone to see and buy. :) I was afraid about the learning curve for formatting for nothing. It was actually very easy to upload on the three main sites (Amazon, BN, Smashwords)--all three just require a .DOC file. Each has a few different specifications, but it was quite simple to do. Whew!

Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Smashwords

Available now for just .99!

My problem? I uploaded before really having a promo plan in place. I think I was in such a hurry to get something out there, that I rushed things a bit. So, I'll share with you my numbers for the first week, but keep in mind the only promo I've done is to announce it on my Facebook page and once or twice on Twitter.

My sales after one week:
Smashwords: 3 copies
Amazon: 8 copies
Barnes & Noble: 13 copies

Yes. I'm putting in my 2 weeks notice at work. Not.

Considering I don't really have a name yet, thus nobody knows me (yet), I'm okay with these sales. Did a little part of me hope my story would jump right into the Top 100 lists? Well, of course it did. But I didn't really expect that. Really.

Dipping my toes in the indie waters, Part 2

If you want to read the first installment of my little series about my foray into self-publishing, please go here.

Okay. It's been about two weeks since I got my rights back to my short erotic romance. I honestly thought it would be uploaded and "out there" by now. I was so naive. Sigh.

Here's what I've done so far. I have a sexy new cover. Check this out!

Isn't it gorgeous? And hot? Thanks to the fabulous Tamra Westberry for designing the perfect cover for a reasonable price. Her turn-around time was quick, too. I highly recommend her.

I rewrote the blurb, changing it just a bit from the original.

Midnight Treat blurb:

Josh Panetti breaks into an apartment Halloween night, thinking he’s fulfilling the sexual fantasy of a woman he met at a costume party. Instead, he’s broken into Cassie Snow’s apartment. Cassie realizes immediately his mistake—she’d seen him at the party with her sexy upstairs neighbor. She should tell him he has the wrong apartment and the wrong girl.

But she’s always the wrong girl. Would it be so terrible to be the right girl for just one night?

*****

But now, the hard part. Formatting. Again, my naive little mind thought I'd read an article or two about how to format, then I'd take a couple of hours and format my story, and voila, it would be done.

Yeah. In my dreams.

Considering that I'm a techno-dork, I have a steep learning curve. I'm reading a series about ebook formatting at Author E.M.S. (a great resource for authors, by the way), and this blog post by Cameron Chapman. I don't know yet if I'll learn all the answers here, but I'll keep you posted.

Damn. I hope the next time you hear from me, it's to give you the buy links to my newly uploaded story.

Dipping my toes in the indie waters...

So easy a caveman can do it? We'll see.

I've been following with interest the journeys of my friends and fellow authors as they've decided to try their hands at self-publishing. Some of them have published original works and some have re-released stories that were originally published elsewhere.

Well, it's finally my turn. I just got the rights back to my erotica novella/short story MIDNIGHT TREAT, originally out with The Wild Rose Press in 2008. At first, it sold pretty well and garnered some great reviews, but now it's just selling 2-3 copies a month. On a good month LOL. I still plan to write for TWRP as they're an awesome, author-friendly publisher, but this story is making neither of us any money right now, so why not try self-publishing it.

MIDNIGHT TREAT has a Halloween theme, but other indie authors convinced me to release it now. Even though it's nowhere near Halloween.

I know next to nothing about self-publishing, so I thought I'd journal about the process on my blog. You can learn with me as I go.

The first thing I did, as mentioned above, was ask for my rights back from my publisher. I looked in my contract and realized they owned my rights for two years. It's been almost three. Your contract should specify how to go about getting your rights back. In my case, I just sent a simple email to the editor-in-chief. No big deal at all. I had the rights back within about a week. I was a little concerned about asking for my rights back when I hope to continue publishing with them, and mentioned this in my email to them. They were very kind about it -- no bridges burned there. Whew!

Next, I want to hire a cover artist. I asked around for some names, and already knew of some myself. I checked out their websites and portfolios, then contacted my top three choices. One immediately wrote back and said she's booked out and isn't taking on new clients. One never wrote back. But the third is available--yay!

Tamra Westberry was actually my first choice, so I'm really excited to work with her. She sent me a cover art questionnaire, which I'll be filling out ASAP.

What are my next steps?

1. Choose some stock photography that might look nice on my cover. This is easier said than done. Any idea how many zillions of photos there are out there? Holy cow. Trying to find one that suits my story is going to be a challenge.

2. Find out if I can use the original blurb, or if I need to rewrite it. If I need to rewrite it, then...

3. Rewrite the blurb

4. Read over the manuscript and make any necessary changes. After it was originally published, there were a few things I wish I'd written differently. Well, here's my chance.

5. ???? I don't know enough about this process to know what comes next. So, I guess I'd better start asking around, eh?

Until next time...

:)Becca