Planning for 2019

I'm excited about starting a new year. I don't really believe in resolutions, but I do believe in goals. What's the difference? Intent.

In my mind, people set resolutions to try to change some sort of behavior. They resolve to lose weight, get fit, stop drinking, do their chores... Those are all good things, but a resolution feels more like a punishment. I must stop eating chocolate. Like that's ever going to happen.

Goals are something you aim for. A healthier lifestyle is a great goal, but it doesn't include giving up chocolate. My choice is for good quality chocolate in small doses that I can savor. So it's a change. A step in the right direction, but it isn't a punishment.

Staying healthy is a goal I have every year, so that's a given.

Sticking to my writing schedule is a fairly new goal, but one I hope to achieve this year. Even though I'm already a little behind because of a side project.

Now the harder one - learning new things about marketing. I've finally accepted the fact that marketing is required for one's business to succeed. However, I've also realized that my brain doesn't really work that way, so I need to figure out some habits or routines to make that work. I set up a schedule for 2019 and we'll see if sticking to it actually works. The industry is constantly changing, so I need to stay flexible.

I might even try poking around in social media again. The first time I did it, my attempts were luke warm and scattershot. I know I need a plan, so that will need to come before I start wildly posting cat photos across the internet again.

So that's my plan. We'll see how it goes.

Looking Back on a Wonderful Year

I don't think I knew it while I was in it, but this has been a pretty good year for me.

I took a look back on my calendar and was very surprised to see how much I've gotten done. Part of that is probably because I've been very healthy this year. You can't believe the difference in your energy level when you are healthy.

I released 4 books this year. That amazes me. I planned it, stuck to my schedule and got them out on time. And a lot of that happened because I stopped buzzing around the forums trying to figure out what I should be doing. I put my head down and got to work. And that turned out to be easier and more enjoyable than debating the next steps an author should take.

Lessons Learned, book 4 of A Changed World post-apocalyptic series came out in January. High Barrens, the first book of the Tales of Haroon fantasy series came out in March. Blood Relations, the third book of the Asher Blaine Mysteries series came out in August, and Desperate Measures, book 5 of A Changed World came out in December. I don't know if I will be as prolific next year, but I am sure going to try.

Through trial and error, I sort of got a handle on the art of marketing. Then in June, I got the golden ticket - a Bookbub. Books flew off the shelf for a week, then marched, then strolled and it slowly worked its way down to a number of sales much higher than all the previous months. I made a lot of money and that feels amazing, too.

I cracked 10,000 sales. Lethal Seasons has over 100 reviews. I took my books wide and starting selling them in new markets like Kobo, Google Play and Apple.

And I still managed to do a little traveling, visit with family, work in the garden and start on a family history that I've been thinking about.

In the fall, we started work on turning a shed into an office for me. It took a little longer than expected, but the outcome is fabulous. I have all my things in one place. There are big windows to let in natural light and a ton of storage space for all my odds and ends.

This has been a wonderful year, and I hope you've had a good one, too.

Here's hoping for a great 2019 for everyone!

A Whole Lotta Books!

I was trying to work out the read-thru rate on one of my series when something occurred to me. Thanks to the Bookbub, I was going to break 10,000 sales very soon. For the year! Wow.

Let me put this in perspective. I started publishing in 2012 and I sold a whopping 33 books that year. It wasn't until 2016, when I finally had a few books under my belt, that I even broke 1,000. Last year I sold 1241 books. That includes ebooks, paperbacks and the occasional audiobook. A step up the ladder, but not by much.

Year to date for 2018, I am at 9866 books sold. That means I need 134 sales to hit 10,000. Last month I sold over 300 books so that is very doable. I am in shock. It totally snuck up on me. I was so immersed in sorting the numbers and resetting goals, that I didn't realize how much I had actually achieved.

This definitely calls for a dinner out.

Thank You!

A great big thank you to everyone who took a chance on Lethal Seasons. This is now the most successful month ever, for me as an author. I am beside myself giddy about it.

A few new reviews have trickled in that show that you are enjoying the journey with Nick, Wisp, Angus, Tillie and and all the others at High Meadow. Thanks for taking the time to post a review. It really helps.

The read through shows me that a lot more of you are engaged also. Sales of the other books in the series are continuing nicely. That's a big Whew! for me. It means that I got it right in the rest of the books too.

And a nice little side effect is that a few people are reading some of my other series. So thanks for taking a chance on them, too!

You guys are the best!

The Cheese Keeps Moving

Think of a maze where the paths shift around, new ones appear and old ones become dead ends. That's not the plot for a new horror story, it's the playing field of self publishing.

Tried and true only seems to last for a few months, symptoms of an emerging industry. When you think of how young self publishing is, you have to expect bumps in the road. A new ereader could hit the markets tomorrow requiring a brand new distributor. Or a new distributor could wrangle a bigger hold on the market making authors migrate as quickly as possible because the first ones over always have an advantage.

Free isn't as big a boost as it used to be. Advice on sweet spot pricing ranges are all over the map. Every day I read another article or blog post with advice that is immediately poo-pooed in the comments as being old hat. Which comes down to the truth of the matter - nobody really knows.

What worked last year doesn't always work this year because everything is evolving. From formatting to distribution to discovery, things change so rapidly it's hard to form a roadmap.

Last year I tried just about everything and failed at most of it. I was reading the "Get Out There!" articles and going against my nature to do it. This year I dropped the ball in January when I got the flu-from-hell. By the time I felt up to tackling the dreaded marketing again, I knew I needed to reassess things. I did a very basic Return on Investment analysis. Were my sales up from all this flailing about in social media? Nope.

So I dropped the things that were painful or that I didn't understand well enough. I had spread myself thin joining up to every new site and forcing myself to post something somewhere. I think I have an adequate internet presence that anyone could find me easily. I'm not going to tie myself in knots to be on any site that doesn't come easily.

And I will keeping on doing what I think is the simplest and best advice - keep writing and publishing good books.

Unintended Consequences Audio book is out!

It's taken a bit longer than anticipated, but the audiobook is now complete. I added the link to Audible and it is also available through Amazon. Just click on the tab at the top for Unintended Consequences to get to the links.

I've already had some sales, very exciting!

Done!

Unintended Consequences is finally up on Kindle and Smashwords. Whew.

The print book is in the works.

One thing I have to share about my second round of publishing - get your ducks in a row first! I spent some time, gathered all the information I would need and things went sooo much more smoothly this time.

I struggled with some formatting issues until I discovered tutorials on YouTube. Wow. There's just about anything you need to know out there.

Onward to the rest of it!

Not really resolutions

I have decided to dedicate the beginning of the year to just writing.

Silly. I thought I was doing that last year, too. But all sorts of things crept in...

I got the marketing bug and spent hours spinning my wheels on pointless schemes.

And I got stuck a few times. There's nothing like a dull scene to make you wander around the house cleaning, tidying, filing...anything to avoid that ugly scene.

And I got distracted by new ideas and short stories that insisted on being written.

I planned and plotted and organized myself out of writing time.

Now I have been telling everyone that I will have the new mystery story out by March. Um...but it isn't even half done yet. So that means LOTS of writing. Which means I need the time to write. And that leads me to curtailing everything else.

As Erma Bombeck used to say - If it doesn't involve blood or vomit, leave me alone.

I am planning on writing only the novel for the next month or 2. So blogging may be spotty. I'll try for at least once a week. No marketing, no short stories, no futzing around unless I get my goal number of words on paper.

Whew. Hope this works.

A summary of what I did in 2012

Sometimes I feel like I'm really not getting much done. And then I look at my list. I was surprised by how far I've come in just one year. It may not seem like a lot to some people, but I'm pleased with the progress - slow and steady! And I feel like I've learned a lot from each step. Of course, I have to add in the meetings with my critique group. We try for every 2 weeks. It's good to have a deadline. And it's good to look for mistakes in someone else's work. I think once I see a problem in someone else's work I can then see it in mine.


January
Published Catburglar on SW and KDP
Sent White Lies out to readers

February
Submitted A Loss of Standards to a contest and a magazine (rejected by both)
Published White Lies on KDP Select - exclusive for 90 days

March
Made Catburglar free (289 downloads to date)
White Lies free promo on KDP - 492 downloads
Interviewed on Kris Wampler's blog

April
Published A Loss of Standards on Smashwords and KDP
White Lies free promo on KDP - 68 downloads
Posted White Lies on Wise Grey Owl website

May
Published White Lies on Smashwords and CreateSpace (print)

June
Goodreads Giveaway of White Lies - 607 signed up, 81 added "to read", 5 given away - got 3 reviews

August
Blog's 1st anniversary - a whole year of consistently blogging

September
Truth's Enigma rewrite to readers for feedback
First payment received from KDP

October
Submitted Home Inspection to a magazine (rejected)
Started rewrite on Unintended Consequences

November
Sold a drawing off the blog!
Put White Lies up on ACX (an audio book creation site)
Put Truth's Enigma on back burner to simmer while I finish Unintended Consequences
Entered White Lies in a self-published book contest on Underground Book Reviews

December
First reading at the Asheville Public Library West Branch - sold 1 book!
Submitted Keep Moving to a magazine
White Lies is now for sale in my local bookstore - Malaprops

And according to my notes on Goodreads I read 37 books.

I'm Local!

White Lies is now available in print at my local independent bookstore, Malaprops. It is so exciting to see it on the shelves! Malaprops has a special section for local authors. There are a lot of writers in the area. It's always been artsy, back to F. Scott Ftizgerald and Thomas Wolfe.

Can you tell it was a brutally cold day when we went there?

First reading done!

Whew!

This is a picture of Michael Havelin, author of the Ben Bones series, and me at our first reading. There were about 7 people in the audience, which was a good number for my first event. I wasn't insanely nervous. I didn't plan much, thinking that I would interact with the audience, if there was one. Oops. Not the best plan.

I am a quiet audience member myself. I don't jabber at the speaker...not sure why I expected that to happen. So now I need a plan for the next one.

Thanks to David Pereda for stopping by and giving me some advice.

And thanks to Jim Weikart for filming it. It's very weird watching myself, but helpful!

I'm learning and things will only get better!

Looking at the business side

I've worked in business for a long time and in lots of different places. Every new place I moved to, I did temp work. So I've seen all sorts of businesses. And my family has always been business oriented, bookkeepers, office managers, CPAs.

When I was working free lance as a scenic artist and submitting my artwork to competitions and galleries, I was also learning the business side of the arts. It was hard. It wasn't something that I wanted to spend my time on. Luckily, I had lots of resources to fall back on. Some things I may have simply absorbed from general conversation in the family - business plans and systems and budgets.

Now that I'm am working on the writing, I still have to look at it as a business. It sometimes is very scary that the business is me! I produce the work and publish it and market it. I'm selling things that were made up in my head. Amazing. And now I am going to be doing some local readings.

In all my other jobs I was never required to tap dance in public. I have to get up in front of a crowd and speak. Whooo! This is going to be another new experience.

More artwork and other things

I am posting more artwork today.

This week I took the first steps toward turning White Lies into an audiobook. It looks like it should be an easy process. Hopefully, I will be surprised and it really will be easy!

Thr Self Published Book Contest is still running. You can vote until December 3rd. Here's a link if you haven't voted yet. Underground Book Reviews

I'm working on a story for another flash contest. And I dove back into the next mystery. Things are finally moving along!

Book Nurse

I am starting an editing service. I have heard of book doctors. That name, to me, has the connotation that something is seriously wrong, like needing surgery or prescription medicine. Something only a doctor can do to make it right. I am leery of anyone who wants to take charge of my writing.

Nurse on the other hand, is something that takes some training, but is also a mindset. I could not be a medical nurse. It's not something that comes easily or naturally to me. But editing does. When I read anything, books, articles, comments in forums, I find myself going over the words - is it clean, clear to the reader? Is the intent coming through properly? Does it make sense? Does it flow?

So I am offering my services for hire. I will be slowly building a page here on the blog until I sort out a website.

The first 10 clients will get an introductory rate of $30/hr for a full read with analysis on plot, characters, pacing and reader experience. I'll also let you place a limit on how many hours you want to pay for and I will fit in whatever comments I can on however much I've managed to read in that time.

Email me for a quote or for more information at asabo_56@yahoo.com.

How Much?

There's a lot of discussion on the internet of late about pricing ebooks. I don't have any answers, in fact I probably have more questions.

When I was painting and trying to get work into galleries I had the same problem. How do you put a price on a painting? One theory was that you looked at it as a product. How much do you need to live? How many paintings can you produce in a year? Divide that and that's what it should cost.

Right.

That assumes you can sell all the paintings. I did the shows and the fairs and sent off slides to galleries and competitions. Sales are not guaranteed.

The same goes for books. You can forecast all the sales you want, but you can't guarantee anything.

And the other side of the coin is - what do readers want to pay for books? As a reader I would love for the price of books to come down. I promise I will buy lots more!

However, the flood of cheap and free books on the market has tainted it. I downloaded a bunch of free books and I have to say, a lot of them have problems. So now readers expect the cheap books to be bad books. They don't want to weed through the dreck to find the pearls. And I can't blame them. It's time consuming. Sometimes the reviews are a little too generous. I can get past the occasional typo or missing word, but most of them are just out too soon.

I priced my ebook at $2.99. It was priced higher based on some articles I read about not underpricing your work. But then I read an article that most readers had seen so many books at the 2.99 price that they wouldn't go higher.

I'm waiting for the dust to settle. I think 2.99 for self-pubbed ebooks is reasonable. If I see a rational reason to raise it, I might on another book.

Print books are a whole other thing. The cost pretty much dictates the price. But I've seen some arguments there, too.

It's all very confusing and trends are changing and I just want to wait it out and see where the chips lie.

CreateSpace

I have been spending a lot of time working on putting White Lies into the proper formatting for CreateSpace. I went into this with completely the wrong idea. It isn't like Kindle or Smashwords where you just upload a clean doc. Oh no. You are designing the book!

Which for me is fun. I took a bookbinding course once. It was essentially for artists creating their own books of original artwork, but it helped me understand some things for CreateSpace. I got to choose the look of the book. But wow, was it time consuming!

I've been busy with pay-the-bills work lately, which eats up my writing time. Add the book designing in and I didn't do any writing at all last week. At first I felt guilty, but all my spare time was going into getting White Lies ready for print, so that isn't bad. It isn't like I spent all that time shopping or surfing the net.

I'm pretty much done with the interior text and cover. Unfortunately, the cover I designed for the ebook won't work for the print. It was easier to go with their template and come as close as possible to the original version. The next step is to get an actual book to proof. Way cool!

Now maybe I can get some writing done today!

Random Ramblings

First of all, I got a very nice review on Catburglar on the Smashwords site. Thanks Pete McCumber! And best of all, I don't know him. It's always a treat when a stranger likes your work.

Of the nearly 600 free copies of White Lies out there, I have 1 review from someone I don't know. Sigh. That makes 2 reviews on the Amazon page. And I am sure that anyone browsing through could think they were both from friends or family. Which is always suspect. I am impatient for more reviews to come in, but what can you do? There's no way to force someone to read a book, or read it faster, or even review it when they're done.

Some days I am just terribly impatient.

The weather roller coaster has taken a dive. I have all the windows closed and the heat came on. Last night I even regretted taking the flannel sheets off the bed as the temps dipped down into the 40s. Sheesh.

I am sure what spring flowers that weren't blasted to dust by last week's 80s are very appreciative of the lower temps. I've already got a handful of radishes that bolted. Maybe the cooler days will soothe them back into forming roots.

My garden routine was shifting towards cleaning up and planting. Now every morning I have to pick strawberries and peapods first. I'm getting about a basket of berries every day and a handful of peapods. Last year the strawberries were overrun with weeds and I just didn't have the energy to sort it all out til the fall. So this year they are recovering and much happier.

I shouldn't complain about harvesting, but it does cut into my maintenance time. I need more hours in the day, and more sleep!

Learning Curve

I am trying to take all the advice and pull out the bits that make the most sense to me. Like:

Don't keeping flogging your only book to the detriment of all else.

Keep writing.

Don't obsess over the sales.

Think long term.

And then I panic because my book isn't selling and I should be out there shilling it and I haven't a clue how to do it....

Whew. Big breath. Small steps.

So I am looking into various places to promote the book, carefully, politely.  I started a Facebook Author page. If I can figure out how, I'll add a link to it. And I posted the book on Wise Grey Owl.

And I am working on the next book. A little slowly, but I'm making some progress. Now I need to stop futzing around and get to writing!

Marketing, Frost and Phase of the Moon

First - marketing.

This week I had my second free trial for White Lies on Kindle Select. It didn't go as well as the previous one. So maybe it has to do with being on a Tuesday and Wednesday. Or maybe I hit just the right post at just the right time, last time. The first free trial didn't give me any bump in sales. I'll have to see how this one affects sales.

I only have 1 review on Amazon right now (Thanks, Georgia!). So, if you have read it for free, I would really appreciate it if you would leave a review.

Also, A Loss of Standards, a short story, is now up on Smashwords for $0.99. I have set up tabs  for my writing at the top of this page. Click on Short Stories for the link to Smashwords.

Second - frost.

Ugh, we may have lost a lot of fruit to the frost on Tuesday night. The apple farmers in the area are very worried. When the fruit is this small, the damage doesn't show up right away. I can see discoloration on a lot of fruit - apricots, plums, cherries, blueberries and grapes. Just have to wait to see if it means ugly fruit or no fruit at all. And we were so excited about how well everything was coming along. Bummer

Third - the moon.

Now I'm not sure whether it's the moon or the tremendous wind for the past few days, the barometric pressure or sunspots, but I have been antsy and cranky and seriously ADD. No writing, no reading and a bare minimum on gardening. Today I feel better. Hopefully, I'll be able to concentrate for more than 10 minutes on something.

Now back to writing!

An Interview by Kris Wampler

Please check out this interview (of me!) on Kris Wampler's Blog. He is the author of Love Train. This is my first interview.

A lotta firsts happenin'.

There has been another sale! I have now sold 2 books. Woo hoo. Burning up the charts. Still no reviews posted. Must be patient...must be patient...think long term...ugh.