Writing and Publishing: “A Few Drops of Fantasy” and Why Is It Not Selling?

I love my short stories. I think they are amazing. I’m not saying this only because I wrote them, I’m saying this because, if I hadn’t written them, they’d still be amazing. I’m not alone.

Unfortunately, no one is taking a chance on it and this is cause it to go down Amazon’s rank so much it’s basically in the Twilight Zone.

This is horrible.

The short story collection is not free. These are good stories and I think it’s only fair people pay a small price to enjoy them. Besides, I’ve heard too many times of people expecting free books from indie-authors only because they are indie-authors. So, I’ve decided to join the force of indie-authors who stay away from offering their work for free. Sure, my first book in a series is free, but that’s a different story.

So, back to A Few Drops of Fantasy.

I think there are different things that need to change about it.

1) The cover. I like the cover. It’s dark and the stories are dark. If you like the series “Black Mirror” you will really enjoy these stores. Unfortunately the cover is too dark and when you look at it on Amazon you can’t really tell what’s going on. I paid for this cover, but now that I’ve thought of a good design for a cover, I’m going to try to do it myself. When I do, I will do the following:

2) The book is lost in space on Amazon.com. That means whenever people try to look for books like it, it’ll appear like on page 300 (or more). So, unless readers type the name straight to Amazon’s browser, they won’t find it. EVER. To solve this, I plan on doing two things:

2a) Unpublish from Draft2Digital and move it directly to KDP. This will accomplish one thing temporarily, it’ll become new and available for readers to find… at least for a while.

2b) I will pay for Amazon’s marketing. Not too much, since my budget is limited. I will trust my new cover as well and I will make awesome banners.

These actions will take a while, but it’s okay. First, I will publish my second book in my series (The Vampire Agency) directly to KDP as well. I will not pay for marketing on this one until I am done with book three in KDP, but it will come.

Being an author is not only hard work, you also have to teach yourself a lot about marketing and such, from finding a good cover, blurb, format and then, how to get people to know you and take a chance with your awesome stories.

I know not all people will get me as an author, but who pleases everyone? At least I can tell you my stories are good quality and fun to read, even if sometimes they can get a little dark.

So, take a chance readers! You won’t regret it! If you think about it, it’s just $1.99 😉

cheers!