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):

Firebirds cover choices!

All right. I have four six nine choices for this cover. I have the ability to change fonts/colors of words and layouts; I have less flexibility about art, unless someone finds some free for commercial use or public domain artwork. It is, of course, okay for you to say you don't like any of the covers shown - but I would ask that you at least give me some direction on what would work instead.

Row 1

Row 2

Row 3

Row 4

Row 5


Current votes:
Row 1 left: 3
Row 1 right: 3
Row 2 left: 2
Row 2 right: 0
Row 3 left: 1
Row 3 right: 1
Row 4 left: 0
Row 4 right: 1
Row 5 left: 0

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.

July 24, 2013

I had such plans for this summer. The time has gone by so quickly.

I had an interesting conversation last week, too. The book I'm currently writing... well, so far it's not fitting neatly into the usual genre conventions as I understand them. I'd like to hope it will find an audience, but I'm also wondering how big that audience is.

But then, maybe five people are meant to read it, and maybe those five people will find it.

Writing with the intention of publishing is a little different from writing and then deciding to publish. I know that I will publish what I'm working on right now, if I'm able to complete it to my satisfaction. But I haven't done the thing that scares me. I haven't studied bestsellers on the Amazon charts and broken down the books into a sort of algebraic equation, tried to follow it, and hoped that the end result would be enough money to help me retire in my mid-thirties. There is a difference between art and commercial art. No one's begging me to publish my books. No matter how long I write, I can't shake the feeling that if I were to stop writing, no tears would be shed over it. Oh, my unfinished fanfic series stories might be granted an unofficial ending by other authors, possibly... but otherwise, it's a little comforting to think that I could safely vanish beneath the surface, unmourned.

My mental state might be informing my writing a bit more than I should want, but for this story, I think that probably works.

Once I have it finished, I'll post the beginning, because I think readers will know fairly quickly whether they're interested and will want to read the rest or not.

And now I'm going to try to get a bit more done before I go to bed... although the book I'm currently reading is really absorbing my attention.

July 14, 2013

I have a website that I use to hold adult-rated versions of my fanfic that can't be posted on fanfiction.net. That's pretty cool, in a way. If someone wants to read my fanfic, it's a good centralized location. It's pretty bare-bones, though, and I haven't updated it in over a year. I've written a bunch of fic in the meantime. All that fic, or at least 95% of it, is at AO3, where I can post full adult-rated versions of stories without any problem. Everything at AO3 exists elsewhere on the internet as well, so it's not like I have all my eggs in that one basket; I generally post all my fic at my writing LJ and use AO3 as a backup.

I think I'm going to let the domain for my personal site expire and buy a new one for my original fic endeavors. This seems like a better use of the money. I could post sample first chapters there, and character bios, and fun things like that. And I suppose I could always use a corner of that website as the fanfic archive... but, eh. Happily, the majority of the reasons I needed to get a website have been met by AO3.

July 13, 2013

I'm close to finishing my rewrite of a 16,000-word segment of the story. That's just under 30 single-spaced pages on my word processing document. The current version is just over 36,000 words.

I'll be so happy once I've finished rewriting that segment so I can start on the part that I haven't been able to write yet.

July 5, 2013

I came up with an idea over a year ago. I wrote the first scene of the current incarnation a little less than a month ago. A story needs a good catch or hook, and I like the catch for it.

It's at 25k words right now, most of which has been done over the past week. I have a name for it. I even have possible covers for it.

I don't think it's going to be that much longer, but a part of me wants to get it finished before I post any of it for feedback... even though that's a hell of a lot to read in one sitting. For a piece of fanfiction it is, anyway. As a paper book, that's less than 100 print pages. Pshhh. Novella!

I have another idea I want to work on... and yet I just can't stop working on this one. Any time I have to write, I'm working on it. I didn't outline it, either. It's just happening. And it's been pretty clearly influenced by all the Mary Balogh historical romance novels I've read, just in the present. With less-tight pants and fewer (read: no) horses.

So far, anyway.

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! :)

May 21, 2013

I was asked on a survey last week whether I'm a published author, and I replied with "No."

Technically, in the weakest possible sense, I'm not. I'm writing under a pen name. Very few people I see in my daily life know that I've made ebooks available. For 95% of them, if I even identify myself as a writer (which does occasionally happen), when asked what I write, I respond with "Not very well." Oddly enough, in my public persona, the person who would be most closely identified as "me" to anyone else, I imagine that "I" would write terrible dramatic poetry, and the rare short-short story, in awful purple prose.

I have written a grand total of probably ten poems since I clawed my way out of my teenage angst phase, and I love to focus on form instead of content. I wrote a sonnet last year because I could, and published it in a small magazine; note I didn't even say "submitted it to," because there was very little in the way of a submission process. I handed it to the editors and said "If you don't want to take it, that's okay."

I seem to have developed some sort of preemptory knee-jerk reflex to dismiss my own writing as awful. I don't know when this began, and I think maybe I need to work on that. I'll put on an outfit that I like and not give a damn what anyone else thinks of it, as long as I like it. I'll refer to watching something on Lifetime Movie Network without a qualm. And yet, when it comes to my writing, when I allow people to see it, I end up apologizing before they read the first word: "I'm sorry, it's really not very good." I suppose I'm waiting for them to say, "You're right—it isn't."

Half the time I believe that apology is a lie. Half the time I think, "No, I'm very proud of what you're about to read. It represents a lot of time and energy I spent, and even if it isn't to your personal taste, I hope you enjoy it in some way."

The other half of the time, I think, "This is me being Ed Wood. This is totally me being Ed Wood. Anyone who has ever said anything nice about anything I've written was just trying to save my feelings. Secretly they all hate it. Why am I trying? Virtually any author is so much better."

But I don't honestly believe that every single positive review and piece of feedback I've received was just a total lie. Not honestly. So this is, at its heart, a self-esteem issue.

I'm supposed to be a cheerleader for my books. If I (electronically) hand a book to someone I've never met with an apology in my voice and a cringe on my face, that isn't going to sell anyone anything. "Well, if you have no faith in this, why should I bother even giving it a chance?" they might think. "I have a thousand other things I could be doing."

Would that there were some pill I could take that would temporarily give me self-confidence—without inebriation, anyway. I'd need a clear head for this, after all.

This makes me think that—right now, anyway—I'm not the best person to be writing the product description for my books. I only know what made me write it, and that was because I had these people running around in my head, or a vision of a green sash in moonlight and fingertips drifting along a rough stone wall, and I felt compelled to write it down, and then share it with the internet at large. When I read back over the stories, I see those things again, and a part of me wonders what the stories do to other people. Why are they appealing? What makes you go back and read it again, and if you wanted to convince someone else to read it, what would you say?

Hmm. All good things to consider while I'm on vacation.

(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! :)

Collection post

My Amazon Author Central page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00CS8Q7RW

My Facebook like-able Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Olivia-M-Kelley/548805201832025

I would get a Twitter, but it's all I can do to post to the blasted thing now, and I'll keep my tumblr as it is.

(The books are still being processed, which is great because it means I'm burning off all this nervous energy.)

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.)