Gift or Curse?

Tip of the Day: Um, uh.... Be kind to chickens. They come from broken homes. (That's one of my mom's favorite jokes. I suppose it also qualifies as a tip.) ;)

We self-pubs seem very focused on the raw numbers. How many ebooks we sell. How much we make per month.

It's almost an obsession. We have access to data our trad pub friends are dying to see. Or so they think....

Sometimes I think it's a curse to know exactly, on a minute-by-minute basis, how I'm doing. I made an announcement on Facebook about a new book and within minutes, I knew how many people jumped over to Amazon to buy it. You'd think that would be great. It's really not.

In the beginning, I was super-focused on my sales. I checked about nine thousand times a day. Now I check once a day, in the morning, and enter the numbers into my spreadsheet. I used to check every sales outlet every day. Now I only check Amazon (though iTunes is coming in a very close second lately - thanks, Australia!).

Many writers say this can help you market better. They say it can help you keep track of what matters to readers. They say lots of things.

I say it simply drives us insane. Don't get me wrong, I love the business side of self-publishing. I grew up in a family business and owning my own corporation is very fulfilling. But sometimes I think too much information at our fingertips is more distracting than advantageous.

It makes us proud at times, but it can also make us horribly insecure. A couple months ago, when my sales fell off of the Amazonian cliff, I panicked. I tried everything in my marketing toolbox to bring sales back. It worked - a bit - but I never did get back into the high sales I'd had earlier in the year. It's fair to say I was a smidgeon depressed for a couple of weeks. Now? Meh.

It took some time, but I remembered I didn't get in this business to rake in cash. I did it because writing is the ONLY career I've ever wanted with all of my heart. I wanted to write something other people might like. I've done that. Maybe that should be enough.

Happy Friday!!!!

Megg, Miss Enchanted ePubber

I Live in the Middle of Nowhere, How Can I Promote My Book?

Tip of the Day: Trying to decide between ePublishing and Traditional Publishing? Download the free excel worksheet on this site (click on "simple spreadsheet" in the 2nd paragraph), enter your info, and see how much money you could make from each route.

I ask myself this question all of the time. I'm not a big name author so I'm not travelling around the country on a book tour each time a new book releases. I don't get heavy promotion like ads in magazines or online ad space on busy web sites. I don't live near NYC or LA so I can't attend a lot of the big author events so many other authors are always talking about. And it's hard to get a book faced out at the book store for more than a couple of months. So what can I do?

1) I can do everything I can locally. That is go to schools to visit classes, attend school reading nights (I'll be at the Barnes&Nobles in Oakbrook, IL this Thursday @ 6:30pm for the Westmont Junior High Reading Night), attend author fairs, local conferences, and group book signings (it's always more fun in a group!).

2) I can offer free skype visits to schools that I can't travel to.

3) I can offer signed bookmarks and swag to bookclubs that read my books and skype with them during their club meeting.

4) I can be as present as possible online, that is blog/facebook/twitter.

5) I can make a book trailer and put it on youtube. Here's mine for The Espressologist.

6) I can participate in blog tours and answer interview questions for various web sites.

7) I can send stacks of bookmarks to teen librarians to put in their teen section at their library.

8) I can send signed bookmarks to YA book bloggers to put in their giveaways.

9) I can send out postcards announcing new books to independent books stores and libraries. Need to find addresses? Here's a great link to independent bookstores and their mailing addresses. And if you want to find library addresses check out worldcat.org. Click on Find a library and enter a place (like Illinois) and you'll get a list of all the libraries.

So there is stuff I can do out here in the middle of nowhere! Can you think of anything else I might have missed?

Kristina, Miss Author in Action

"I don't care who's wrong or right, I don't really wanna fight no more"

Tip of the Day: Click HERE for the Be Our Valentine Giveaway! You have a chance of winning three autographed romance YAs (The Espressologist, Stupid Cupid, and A Match Made in High School), handmade Valentines from the authors and yummies. And happy release day to A Match Made in High School today!

One thing you may not know about me is that I hate fighting. And I suck at holding a grudge. Really, it's almost a negative quality sometimes because people can do really nasty stuff and I'll totally forget and I'll be all, Hi! How are you! the next time I see them. I've got relatives that can hold a grudge for a good 30, 40 years so I have no idea where I get this from.

Anyway, the whole Amazon versus Macmillan thing of last weekend-- ay yi yi yi yi. That really had my head spinning. I'll admit, when I saw the buy button for my book disappear off of Amazon I was freaking. The A2A girls got a panicky note from me. I saw people on twitter saying I don't get why authors are freaking out and really? We were freaking out because a major distributor wasn't going to be carrying our book anymore. That sucks. When you are a new author and not a bestseller, your book doesn't have a long shelf life in the stores. They say the typical book has 90 days before getting sent back to the publisher. Now this isn't a hard fast rule or anything-- if a book is doing well at certain stores they'll keep it longer. Lots of books do see 6, 9 months etc. But the 90 day thing does happen. So from there your book is sold at independents (hopefully) and online retailers. And if Amazon goes away, well, that's not so great.

The whole situation was confusing, especially to me as a newer author because I don't totally get all of the book publishing world yet. I know a heck of a lot more than I did last year but it's constantly a learning process. Luckily there were some really articulate people ready to put the problem into more comprehensive terms. Like Scott Westerfield here. When he explains it, it makes sense.

Anyway, what were your thoughts on the whole fiasco? I'm glad they stopped fighting (for now) and hopefully things end up where both sides are content (maybe?). I 'm not so sure we've seen the end of it though-- as of now the Buy button is still not back on my Amazon page. Hmph.

Kristina, Miss Delighted to Debut