News and Notes from the Writing Desk: June Edition

I'm trying to keep busy this summer (like that's hard to do). Here are some updates:

What I'm Working On:

By studying the entire independent publishing industry, much of which I probably still know little about, I've realized that while four pieces/projects/books/whatever-it-is is a good goal for writing, it's not a practical schedule for publishing. An indie writer has to be ready with the next-big-thing as soon as the buzz dies down from the most recently published once-big-thing.

My project for the month is not one, not two, but three romance novellas. These will be sweet romances where readers will be eager to find out whether the main characters thrown together as temporary roommates will eventually see that they were made for each other (spoiler alert: they are, and each book will rise to the height of the first kiss). The series is based around the specific place rather than the same cast of characters, so there will always be new people to meet.

The reason for waiting until three are complete? I want to have backups when the first book's sales drop off. Whenever these are ready, they'll be on KDP Select and probably only available as an ebook for a time so that it's easier to managing sales and freebies. That means I can't explore other retailers with this set of work, but having only one sale outside of Amazon in the past five years has taught me that other retailers don't hold the same weight as Amazon. I have to go where the most potential for sales would be, at least until I've established a bigger audience.

Once all three novellas have fallen from their brand spankin' new status? They'll get bundled into a box set, of course, which appears as something new, and gives new readers a chance to get a bargain on all three. It's a good plan, but whether I can execute it in the timeline that I give myself, I'm not sure.

What I'm Reading:

Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad books. So bad I won't even call them out by name. Not all of them, of course, but two of them are ready to get some harshly worded reviews next week. These books are not at all what they portray themselves as, either by synopsis or by average review, and that's getting on my nerves.

What I Wish I Was Doing:

Um, I don't know... writing more? Having more new patrons to get to know on Patreon? I would say traveling the world, but I would be lucky if I add half a mile to my weekend bike route.

Oooh! I know! Getting more reviews! I found a new site that does daily emails like BookBub and FreeBooksy that is way more within my budget for promotions. The problem is I still have to meet the minimum requirement of ten reviews (a four or five-star average) on a single title before I qualify. I wasn't going to use the promotion until I had something new to put out, but in order to get a new book in, one of my previous books has to meet the ten review requirement. I'm still very willing to give digital copies of my books for free, but I really need the review if anyone ever decides to request one. Or, you could just drop $1 a month on Patreon and get digital access to all of my books instantly. You know, whatever gets you in the mood for some book review love.

The Realities of Launch Week

It is still the launch week for If It Was New York, Summer 2009 and I'm seeing all of the positives and the negatives of my marketing process.

The first place I always go when I want to get some traction is Reader's Favorite. All of my books (except the last Kindle Worlds novella) have bee reviewed by the service and it works well to get a review out there, even though most of the reviews are not posted directly to Amazon by the reviewer. I'm still waiting on this review--if I get one at all. Hopefully I do, but I will probably still be waiting a few weeks for it.

Next, I posted about it on Twitter which is always iffy--I can't post too many tweets about it because I'll get unfollowed, but not enough and no one sees it. Balance. It's a good thing.

Then there's BookBub. No, I'm not talking about getting into the email blast, I'm talking about on their website. I set up an author profile awhile ago because it was recommended for all authors, even if they are not intending to buy a BookBub email placement. So I did, and I set up this book before the release date so that BookBub would notify my followers about it on the day of release. And they did, because I got the lovely email that would have sold me on checking it out had I not written myself. The catch? I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who received that email blast.

New Release email.

Continuing with BookBub, I got curious and decided to check where I was on the New Releases page. In the poetry category, my book landed on page four.

Page Four.

I'm a bit disappointed by this, but I then I looked at page one. I was competing what a bunch of poets I read, including Laurie Halse Anderson (I thought it was a memoir, not a poetry book, but whatevs...) and two of those wildly popular Instagram poets, Tyler Knott Gregson and Amanda Lovelace. Occasionally I let myself believe I'm their poetic equals, then I have to remind myself they have publisher backing, which still counts to reach higher sales numbers in the publishing world, thought Lovelace did publish her first collection on Amazon before Andrews McMeel got a hold of it. The verdict? Not jealous, but inspired to make it to a better position next time.

The Top Dogs.

My next avenue is all of those things are never seen, such as approaching book bloggers and trying to get people in one of the Goodreads groups to request a free copy, which I've had some mild success with in the past. But book bloggers usually require free paperbacks (of which I'm not satisfied... but that's a complaint for another day) and/or payment, so we'll see. I've decided to skip trying a NetGalley listing this time around, mostly due to the cost, but also because the places where I can buy a listing from don't actually list poetry as one of their genres. I thought about trying the Reedsy Discovery site as well, but again there's a fee and it's new, so I would need to see some positive outcomes before I take a $50 chance.

If you haven't picked up your copy of If It Was New York, Summer 2009 yet, please check it out on Amazon and other retailers.

News and Notes from the Writing Desk

News and Notes will be a new feature of this blog, mostly because coming up with titles for every small update is getting tiring. I'll save the clever ones for future use. So here are some of the quick updates before July comes to a close:

BookBub

I've claimed my BookBub author profile. I've read in a lot of places that this is a great thing to do, whether you purchase a BookBub feature or not. I still haven't been able to get in because of the minimum review requirements, but from what I'm reading, if you have a deal going on, your followers will be notified of it by BookBub. Of course this only works if there are people following your author page, so...

And if you see a commonality between the three favorite books on my profile, it's mostly because I didn't know I could only have three, so those may change (though all three are great biographies).

When Inspiration Strikes!

There's no telling where a writer will find their inspiration. When it comes to me and where I found it this week, it was an interesting place. I happened to catch a tweet about pre-made book covers. I clicked out of curiosity, because sometimes these things look terrible or are priced above my pay grade. Turns out, these pre-made covers weren't bad at all, and one caught my eye. Immediately a title came into my head and stuck. I thought about it for awhile, and it would make the perfect title for a YA novel. I have part of the outline still working itself out in my head.

The real question is--did I buy the book cover? Well, no. I didn't. I don't have the first sentence of the story written yet. I may still go and purchase this cover, just so I have it on hand when I get this project up and going. 

Camp NaNoWriMo is a No Go

Camp NaNo is not my friend right now. I thought changing to page numbers instead of word count would help, but I always lose momentum. I still have some time, but I know I won't come close. However, I will still post an excerpt of what I've been working on so if you want to check that out tomorrow, make sure to check out my Patreon page--just $1 gets you tons of exclusive content. Even if you aren't ready to pay for access yet, you may still want to follow my Patreon page since many posts are free or only exclusive for a short time, then made public. I'm trying to reach my first milestone goal of $100 a month, and so I'm ramping up the types of things I'm posting.

That's what I've been doing. What have you been doing this week? 

If Amazon Didn't Love Me Before, They Do Now

I finally did it--two weeks ago I actually bought two ebooks. I know that I've said before I have so many free ebooks on my Kindle that I probably have the equivalent of a 5-year reading list, but I thought that it was important to start supporting authors whenever I can. Well, at least when I have a gift card laying around...

The two books I purchased were John Lennon: The Life by Phillip Norman and Last Train to Istanbul by Ayse Kulin. Clearly these titles do not belong to indie authors, but indie authors are the ones that offer their books for free, so the support for my indie peeps is still there.

I purchased the first book because it was just $1.99 and I discovered the deal through BookBub (proof that BookBub works--they actually enticed me to pay for an ebook). I'm also a full-on geek about the Beatles, so it was an obvious choice. You'd think I would have learned everything from the dozen or so Beatles-related books already on my bookshelf, but this book has went above and beyond my current knowledge, and I'm only 11% into the thing.



And that brings me to the other reason I really bought this ebook: I've looked at the hardcover copy at a bookstore before, and this is an 800+ page tome. For less that two bucks I saved myself months of neck and wrist pain from trying to read the physical copy. Totally worth it just for that!



I haven't started reading Last Train to Istanbul, but Amazon caught me just at the right time with this one. It was the next morning after I purchased The Life and it was a recommendation in one of my many daily Amazon emails. At just $2, I checked out the synopsis and decided that I had to get it--after all, the next biggest thing I geek out about besides the Beatles is a good WWII tale. I have to get a few other titles read first, but I can't wait to dig into this one.

What was the first ebook you spent money on?