December 3, 2013

What I've learned:

• I wasn't sure if writing original fiction would stop me from writing fanfic. My inspiration tends to stick to one story until it's complete, and it doesn't seem to care if that story is original or fanfic. As always, though, if I don't have the majority of the plot thought out, or if the premise itself isn't compelling enough, I don't want to write it and I put it off and work on something else.
• Formatting and publishing electronically is fairly easy with the software I have.
• Formatting and publishing through CreateSpace is a bit trickier, but still fairly easy.
• I have absolutely no idea how to market myself and no confidence in my product, and publishing all by itself using free tools is definitely not the same thing as marketing. I feel rather like I knitted a poor excuse for a scarf, using ugly wool and the wrong size needles and a total lack of skill, and then had the audacity to put it on a low, dusty shelf in a lonely corner of a consignment store. Where it has sat, unpurchased, for quite some time.
• I've been going through moderate to severe bouts of depression since I published Firebirds. Even pulling up the page to view my awful to nonexistent sales numbers is enough to make me feel sick and sad.

So:

• I don't think I'm going to stop attempting original fiction, but the only original story I have going right now is the next book in the Unbroken series.
• I might continue with that series (since it does sell), but I don't know if I'll publish anything else.
• I receive feedback and appreciation when I write fanfic. I receive little to no money and feedback only when I request it, on original fiction. I'm rewarded more by writing fanfic and receiving no payment for it, than writing original fiction.
• I'm disappointed, even though I acknowledge that marketing might help improve my sales numbers. I just don't know how, and I don't have any money to put into it. I'm also just as convinced that marketing would be a waste of time, even if it were free, because I don't feel like my writing is any good.

Dwelling on it is just going to make me upset. I didn't want to lie in this journal, though, so I'll be honest about all of it. This experiment didn't go the way I wanted. I didn't want worldwide fame and fortune; I didn't want to be the next E.L. James or J.K. Rowling. But I've failed at this. I'm deeply appreciative to the people who bought or downloaded the books, and I'm grateful to the people who read the books before I published them, for their feedback and encouragement. Apparently though, somewhere along the way, my self-worth has been tied up in this, and it wasn't high to begin with.

I'm not going to monitor my sales anymore through the dashboard, because there's no point and it only upsets me. I'm just going to let this go and try to find something that doesn't make me feel like this does. That might involve continuing to write, but not publishing anymore. I just don't know.

September 22, 2013

Really awesome thing: The Firebirds is now available on Amazon in print and on Kindle, and it's enrolling in MatchBook. According to Amazon, once it's finished enrolling (which will probably take a few hours, so it'll be active Monday correction: MatchBook will be launched "in the coming weeks" but I'll let you know when it's live) - if you purchase a print copy, you'll be able to buy it for the Kindle at a reduced rate. I'm stoked they've come up with that.

The Firebirds is in print now!

It will be on Amazon (US and UK), but for now only the CreateSpace website seems to have it up: https://www.createspace.com/4419812 .

It's a 6x9 book, which is pretty big.

The Firebirds is now available!

Here's a link to the Kindle edition in the Amazon US store. (The print version is in process right now.)

Summary:
Alison Stuart has one chance. She's worked hard all her life, but ten years after high school, she's a single mother doing her best to keep her head above water. When she's backed into a corner, she's given an offer she's been able to refuse before, but not this time. One night, one stranger she will never see again, one payment that will dig her out of the hole she's in—for now. At least, that was how it was supposed to be.

Owen Munsen had everything he wanted: a good job, a beautiful wife, a daughter he loved more than life itself. Then the rug was pulled out from under him, and he was left staring into the darkness, desperate for a way out. One night, one stranger he will never see again, a connection with someone that will let him forget the pain he's in for just a little while. At least, that was how it was supposed to be.

The events set in motion that night have repercussions far beyond what either of them expected.

Excerpt (beginning of Chapter 1):

August 11, 2013

Just finished the first novel I'm planning on publishing via both Kindle and Amazon CreateSpace print-on-demand, and sent it out to my beta-readers.

I'm kind of excited about that process, but intimidated by all the choices. Covers, for instance. Cover art feels a lot more important for a print book. And choosing the font, spacing, how the page numbers will be listed, how chapter intros will be formatted... so many choices! I have a feeling it will take an entire weekend to plan and finish. On a positive note, I don't think I need a separate ISBN.

Paper?

I need to look into this in a little bit more detail, but I thought I'd check out the interest first.

The series I have listed for sale on Amazon right now (which has just dropped in price! Helpful link!) is for the Kindle only, i.e. electronic book format only. You don't need a Kindle to read the books, but you do need to be able to buy the books from the Amazon store and use a computer/phone to read them. Amazon also has an option called createspace that would allow me to upload the books, and they would be printed on demand for those who ordered them. I believe there is a small setup fee (I think I have to buy an ISBN for each, for instance), and considering the number of ebooks I have sold so far, I'm not sure that the setup fee would be worth the cost, but a part of me does like the idea of the books also existing in physical copies. I know that Amazon apparently doesn't have a Kindle store in every country (which surprises me), so createspace might be a good option for people who can't buy Kindle books or would prefer a print version.

So, if you're interested, let me know in a comment here - whether you're interested in existing books being published that way, or future ones being published that way. Or if you're a Kindle reader who wouldn't take advantage of paper versions being available, let me know that too. :)

June 12, 2013

I made myself a goal before I started this little adventure. After all, goals are good.

I decided that my goal would be to make $20.00 from sales of my books. (That's not the sale price; that's from the royalties on the books themselves.)

The good news is that I am almost there, which is really neat. The books have been available for just under a month. I'm not really expecting them to sell much more unless I do something else; I can't run another free Amazon promotion until the current promotion period is over, which is in August. I was very pleased with the number of downloads from that promotion. But the July 4 weekend is coming up, and I like the idea of having a sale over that weekend. I think making the first three books available for $0.99 each would be pretty awesome.

So if you know someone who might like the books, promotion time! I'm trying to consider possible promotion methods that won't make me feel like a total jerk. Maybe boosting Google presence is a good thing to do... but my instinct tells me not necessarily. Availability on platforms other than the Kindle isn't a bad idea either; I would need to prepare the books before the middle of August, though, because preparing them might take a little while.

Anyway. Something to ponder.

Right now, though, I'm working on one of the Nancy Drew fanfics I've had in progress for a bit... partially because I'm almost finished with the story, and partially because I have the instant gratification of feedback on it, which is very valuable to me.

May 25, 2013

The first ebook in my series is available on Amazon for free this weekend, for Memorial Day. (I suppose that aligning these free days with American holidays is a bit strange, since it's available in every Amazon Kindle store worldwide, but it just seemed most convenient.) I'm happy that I've seen a lot of downloads for it. :)

A link, if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/Never-Always-Unbroken-Book-ebook/dp/B00CS5G4NC/ref=la_B00CS8Q7RW_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369493808&sr=1-1

I've put up a poll, and it seems that the preference is for me to work on the next book in that series instead of working on something wholly original - yet, anyway. I think that once I figure out how that new idea will go, I might work on both, but I'll focus more on All the Stars Afire.

Happy Memorial Day weekend, regardless! :)

(self-)promotion

Here's the thing - I'm divided.

On the one hand, I have zero advertising budget, and I'm not convinced that advertising really works when it comes to ebooks. I am far more convinced to buy a book via personal recommendation or testimony. If someone whose opinion I trust recommends a book, I become interested in it. I feel like there's something inherently disingenuous in asking bloggers to read my work just looking for a recommendation or review.

On the other hand, I'm more accustomed to fanfic, and it's easier to find stories in that format. Want a Chuck/Sarah story? Look in the Chuck fandom section, find something tagged with the Chuck/Sarah relationship, read the description and see if you're interested. The important thing is finding a large archive with plenty of stories. Then you're good. What about original fiction? There's so much of it out there. How do I reach my audience? I just want to announce to the world: "Hey, I've written a book. If you're interested, check it out. If not, that's cool too." I think awareness is really the important thing, maybe even above recommendations. Recommendations don't matter if the possible audience never sees them.

The tips I'm reading say that I need to picture the ideal audience for my work, but I don't have an ideal audience in mind. Just "a person mature enough to read adult material who understands English." I don't think I'm writing genre fiction, but then maybe I am. Maybe the story I've published is definitely just romance-genre, even though it feels like more than that to me.

It feels very hard to step away from what I'm writing and evaluate it with any objectivity whatsoever. I'm reminded, again, of the Ed Wood parallel. I love writing, maybe with the same zeal Ed Wood did. I've never been convinced that that passion is related whatsoever to actual ability.

I suppose this is why authors generally need agents and publishers. I'm interested in the writing side of things. I'm fine with putting it out there into the world and making it available for other people to read. Connecting the audience to the work, however, seems to be beyond me. I've let the people who know me as ndnickerson know I'm publishing. The rest of it - why would I want to waste time updating a Twitter feed or Facebook page when I could be writing instead?

Maybe I'm being naive. That's okay. I think I'm allowed to be naive, at first anyway.

Hooray!

People have bought my books! This makes me very happy. :)

It's kind of interesting, though, that I feel the same happiness I do when I see sales, as when someone leaves feedback on one of my free (fanfic) stories. I think it's because I still feel like I'm testing here. My first series was to see if I could do it.

Now, though... now I want to post more books. I'm only going to do one other originally-fanfic story, though. After that, it will be new stuff. I think I'm ready for that.

It's scary, honestly. I feel incredibly out of my depth when it comes to publicity and promotion, although I did decide to make the first book of my series free on Amazon over Memorial Day weekend, just to see what happens. Much like I felt the first time I posted a story online and a reader took the time to comment on it, I just feel amazed. I'm not sure what made anyone read my stories before, but I'm grateful to those who have, and I hope they got something positive out of them as a result.

May 15, 2013

I'm fighting the urge to refresh every page I have open about once every 12 seconds. I'll be happy when I've burned all this nervous energy off. More caffeine would probably be a bad idea, right?

Pshhh. Live dangerously!

On a positive note, it looks like the books are available for sale with no problems! :)

May 13, 2013

I'm uploading my books onto my Amazon KDP bookshelf right now.

And freaking out.

Things I've discovered:
-Just exporting from Pages into .doc format sucks and doesn't come up right once Amazon translates it. I have to open it in Word once I've exported it, and then save it in .htm format. Even then, Word does a few other minor bizarre things to it. (Maybe I should upgrade my version of Pages; apparently the newer one will export as epub. Mine doesn't.)
-I have always thought a 0.5" indent is too much. It doesn't seem to affect the Kindle preview, but I hate it on the Kindle Fire preview, so I made it 0.25".
-The Kindle Preview app freaks out on my computer and wants to install X11 and all other sorts of fun things happen.

I'm second-guessing everything. Pricing. Covers. My entire life thus far. I'm tempted to ask someone else to push the button for me on it. I finished putting everything in, and at the bottom of the screen I saw a "Save & Publish" button, and... oh God. Oh God.

I'm doing this. I'm going to do this. Yes. I am.

Oh God.

(ETA: I pressed the button. I PRESSED IT. Now I should probably go to sleep... or work on another story.)

(ETA2: Twelve hours after pressing the button, now the status is "Publishing"... which apparently takes another twelve hours. So they might be available for purchase around 1 a.m. Eastern time on May 15.)

covers!

I've been working on covers... and I'd like some feedback. The text is a bit bigger on these than I would design it on a print book, because it still needs to be readable when the cover is a thumbnail. Makes sense. (I went ahead and threw together the cover for the sixth book as well, although I'm still in the process of writing it.) They're in series order.

So... yes? No? Start over with something else? (ETA: I replaced the From This Day On cover; the original was a bedsheet.)

pay as you go

I've been a fanfiction author for quite a while now. Technically since I was a pre-teen, I guess, although I definitely haven't published anything I wrote before the age of probably eighteen or so. (My first story, what I can recall of it—it is lost somewhere in the attic, I think/hope—was hilariously bad. I can't imagine how much it would make me cringe to read it now.) I'm used to being "paid" in comments/feedback, and sometimes on FFN I'm paid with follows/favorites instead of comments, and sometimes on AO3 I'm paid with kudos/bookmarks instead of comments.

And because I love that form of payment so much, I try to reciprocate. If I take the time to read a story, I try to leave a comment, but sometimes it's very hard to know what to say. "That was great!" sounds so trite. "Awesome story!" Again, is there any way to be less original? "You fucking rock!" Hmm. Sounds almost stalker-esque, eh. So I'm sad to say that sometimes I have indeed paid with kudos instead of words.

Professional authors, though, are paid in money instead of comments or verbal appreciation from the readers, generally. But the money doesn't come after the book is read; instead, it comes before. And then, of course, a person might buy another book in the series to show appreciation for that first book, or as a gift to someone else... so in a way, that's appreciation. Kind of.

However, now that I'm thinking about publishing, and possibly getting paid for my work for the first time, I'm falling back on what others have discovered or are saying about digital publishing. But I wonder... if I gave my ebook to someone without asking that person to pay up front, and said, after she (or he? Are men real?) finished reading it, "So, how much would you pay for the experience you just had?" I wonder what would happen. After all, I pay a set amount of money for concert tickets, movie tickets, actual books themselves, and hope to be entertained at least equally. But what is five dollars' worth of entertainment? What about fifty? What about a hundred? What about that concert where I paid for a right-smack-in-front-of-the-stage pit area ticket and was only able to stay for four songs because I became incredibly sick? Bands don't pro-rate, and I'm not exactly saying they should.

And sometimes I pay $10 for a DVD that I think is easily worth $20, because I know how much I love it and how much it will continue to entertain me. (Anchorman? Yep.) On the other hand, no matter how much I enjoy watching Chopped, I still think paying $3 per episode to watch it via iTunes is ridiculous.

What about other people who have been reading my work for free all this time? I'm thinking about offering a coupon to them once I have ebooks available for sale, as a way to show my appreciation. After all, they didn't have to read what I wrote. They still don't. But they have, and I'm very grateful.

April 26, 2013 - counting chickens

Because I like to worry about things well ahead of time (or not at all), I did research today on paying taxes on royalties received from book self-publishing. (It looks like I'll be able to file my taxes using cheap tax prep software the way I always have, which is nice.) Then I did research on metadata. (I'm wondering how many terms or words I can put into metadata - and I wonder how hilarious that's going to get. Does anyone even search Amazon for "painplay"? Is "erotica with plot" even a thing yet, or is that considered "hardcore romance"?)

Now I'm really trying to tell myself not to a) convert the other book I have written, which I talked about in the last post, or b) start on an idea that has suddenly become very exciting. I've figured out how it starts, but I don't know where it will go after that. I think I had better have at least a vague game plan before I start, though, or else I feel it will ramble or get otherwise out of control.

Confession: I don't have much confidence in my own writing abilities, but I do love to write. I also write the kind of things I would like to read. Considering some of the topics I've written about, I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Oh, I wish I didn't have a weekend full of non-writing work in front of me.

April 25, 2013

Finished converting five stories into ebook format - practically. Now I'm just waiting on cover art. :D

Also had the idea yesterday to do another one, but I probably wouldn't publish it until the second book in that series was done.

April 19, 2013

I've decided to take a series of stories I've written and publish them via Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. I'm excited about it! I can't wait until I have them ready to publish. :)