Writing and Publishing; News About Writing, Publishing, Blurbs, Covers, Marketing, and Newsletters

Hi, Everyone!

I’ve been busy! Not only has real life been hard and has kept me on my toes, BUT I’m still working on revising book 3 and are almost ready for the final read through. There’s a lot going on in this unknown author’s little publishing world.

I’m excited!

I may not be selling many books, but I am loving the journey. Sure, I’ve had ups and downs and have been close to calling it quits a few times, but this whole author thing is so much fun and every day I learn something new. I think I’m even starting to enjoy the plotting, revising, and editing part of it (which I didn’t before). I get excited about my made-up deadlines and thinking about covers, blurbs, and ads. 

I have many plans and even when I don’t do this full time (yet<-notice my wishful thinking?) I work on the little things in my spare time. Let’s talk about how things are going in my author world. Please feel free to read along or skip to the section that interests you. The indie publishing world is huge and there’s a lot to do.

Right now my WIP is The Fall of Witchcraft. This is the third part of my six-part vampire agency series. I usually plot, write, revise and edit. I write using Scrivener (which I love) and I revise using the paid version of ProWriting Aid. Then, I read it out loud and edit each chapter with the free version of Grammarly. One day, after my books sell enough copies, I will hire a professional editor… so, please, help the cause! 🙂

Right now, I wake up at 5:30am and revise for 20 minutes before going to work. I also work about an hour on Fridays and five hours total Saturday and Sunday. Compared to other authors, I don’t work that many hours, but I do have a full-time job, two kids and a husband. I still think that I will be able to release two books and one short story this year. That’s my goal. 

I also plotted part four – A Magical Bond – two weekends ago and are excited to start writing it. Before I revise and edit part 4, I will publish the first short story based on this series’ characters. I will talk more about that soon.

Like I was saying, my goal for this year is to publish two books and one short story this year. 

The third book in my series in The Fall of Witchcraft and I am planning to start preorders on March 9th to release it March 30th. It will be on Kindle Unlimited and I will link it to the series page (I love having a series page). 

I like to release books on weekends. I don’t know why. I guess I think most people don’t work and can browse around. 

There will be a paperback version and a Kindle version. I love my paperbacks, they’re so amazing! I can’t wait to finish all six books and rent a table at my local comic con. I’ll feel like a big deal even if no one comes to my table. Maybe my best friend will fly over to do it with me. Excited!

After this release, I will publish my first short story during the summer and work hard to get the fourth book of the series published at the end of this year. Wait to hear more about those.

Blurbs are the descriptions about a story readers see when they click on your book. 

I have gone through a handful of blurbs. I even had a friend write one for me at some point. Unfortunately, it wasn’t right. In fact, my paperbacks of book 1 and 2 have the last blurb I made on my own after reading a lot about blurb writing. It still wasn’t enough.

After poor sales and lots of clicks on my AMS ads in January, I decided to pay for a blurb. At least for my first book. I went to Fiverr and found the most amazing blurb writer. His name aawarren and he wrote an amazing blurb for me. I paid for all his services, which was about $100, but I think it was worth it. He’s so nice and flexible, too. I felt he really tried to help. I then paid him to rewrite my blurb for Werewolf Phenomenon (book 2). I paid $27 for that, but since he had book 2 still in his mind, he did a great job. He even commented how “fun my series was to work with”. I like hearing things like that. Good customer service, right?

From now on, I will write blurbs and have aawarren take a look.

There are some things I need to do about covers.

First of all, I need to find all the stock photos my Fiverr cover artists used and pay for them myself on depositphoto. I already have three, but are missing 2. That’s item number 1. 

A while back I had the cover artist finish the covers for 5 out of the six books in my series. Part’s 5 title still isn’t very convincing, but I have Photoshop (which is paid by my husband’s company, so it isn’t really my expense) and I can fix the title easily. I am still missing book six’s cover. I know what the title will be, I just need to get an idea of what I want… and I don’t yet. Book six is the end of the series, so it has to be something worthy of the finale. I’m still thinking about it.

I am also thinking about the covers for the four short stories I’m going to publish. The ones that are a part of that same series. I don’t want any people on them, just an item. Since they are short stories and will be $0.99 and only looked for by people who’ve read the series, I was thinking I may be able to design them myself. I can take the template I got for the other books I paid for and move things around. Find some pictures and edit them. We’ll see how it goes.

I have to admit I don’t know much about marketing. Like a lot of writer’s, I’m an introvert and I have difficulty connecting with people sometimes. It’s hard to connect in RL and online. I’m still trying to create a network of people like me and people who I admire and who motivate me to be better by the things they do.

I’m also listening to podcasts and reading books about marketing (and AMS ads in particular).

There is something I need to talk about regarding AMS Ads books on Amazon. 

I bought Brian Meeks’ book, but I had a terrible experience with Brian Meeks and the book didn’t really work for me, either. 

I know Brian Meeks is an authority in what he does, and I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but when I bought his book and entered his Facebook group I got trolled by other more experienced authors there. They treated me like I didn’t know what I was doing and I wasn’t worthy of the group. They made me feel like I shouldn’t even try and told me the honest reviews my book had were from my relatives because clearly, my book couldn’t get reviews on its own. So, I did the sensible thing… I didn’t participate in the group for about a month. I wanted to get away from the trolls and rebuild my confidence. 

By this time, I realized this book wasn’t for me. I didn’t have the money or the reviews or the network or the newsletter needed for the AMS campaigns to work like Brian Meeks described. Not only that, Amazon changed the ways they did ads a few months after and a lot of the things just didn’t work anymore. I’d rather listen to Dave Chesson over at Kindlepreneur than to Brian Meeks.

And that wasn’t the worst part. After I was trolled by the members of the group and I decided to step back, I got banned for something I didn’t do while I wasn’t even active in the group. I contacted Brian Meeks and he didn’t believe I hadn’t done what I was being accused of doing. So… I guess bullies are everywhere, right? Since then, I left all author groups on Facebook and stayed on the only one I felt I got support from the other authors.

It doesn’t matter. I moved on (or are still moving on, ha!), trying to find answers to my questions and trying to get my books out there. 

I am trying new keyword lists on AMS ads (I got KDPRocket last year). Raising my bids month by month as I try to understand how things can work in my favor and get more people to read my books.

There are two other services I subscribe to, apart from AMS. They are AskDavid and ReadFreely.

AskDavid.com is a website that advertises your books on Twitter. You pay $30 a year (in two installments) and you get a bunch of tweets per year. You can submit all your books and they create a page for you that links to your sales page on Amazon. Every time I do a Kindle Unlimited deal I use AskDavid to spread the word. I don’t know how effective it is, maybe it isn’t, but it makes me feel like my book cover travels around twitter. Maybe it’ll pay off one day.

The other service, ReadFree.ly, is also a paid service. This website offers you an ad in their daily newsletter. For $6 your book can be featured (I think usually they have 4 or 5 books in each newsletter). If you pay a little more ($10), then you get to choose the day your book will be mentioned in their newsletter. This service hasn’t worked for books that aren’t FREE, so now I only use it for when my first in the series has free days with Kindle Unlimited, which isn’t often.

For example, The Recruit will be free for 5 days when book three is released and Werewolf Phenomenon will go through a Kindle Countdown deal for a week. The Fall of Witchcraft will be on promotion for $0.99 during pre-order and the first week after release. During this time, The Recruit will get a paid spot on ReadFree.ly.

Take advantage of these discounts when they come!

Newsletters is the only beast I haven’t tackled. In the books/podcasts/articles I read, everybody says I need to have a newsletter. Even my best friend who is into Urban Fantasy says she subscribes to Ilona Andrews’ newsletter and she insists I must be like her (I wish!).

Newsletters scare me. I don’t know what to write or when to write it. I don’t feel comfortable with it.

So, as I was listening to my new favorite podcast (The Creative Penn), I listened to author Tammi Labrecque talk about newsletters and I loved what I heard. I quickly went over to Amazon and purchased her book: Newsletter Ninja. I just got it two days ago and I can’t wait to start it (as soon as I finish reading Children of Blood and Bone). I have also decided to use the newsletter software Dave recommends in his Kindlepreneur website. I’ll pay for it, but that’s ok. After all, people pay for a lot of their hobbies, right? 

I’m excited about starting a newsletter after I’m done reading Tammi’s book. We’ll see if getting a few subscribers help me get my books to more readers. Excited about that, too!

As you can see, the self-publishing world is vast! There’s a lot to learn and a lot to invest in. I can’t say I love all of it (especially not paying lots of money, but who does?), but if my writing career is ever going to become a career, I need to start getting into more serious products. 

The most important thing is I’m doing what I love and I’m having fun with it. So, while it becomes a career, it’s a great hobby!

cheers!