To recap, my publisher closed on the 1st May, taking down five of my titles with it - three novellas and two short stories, one of the latter barely a few days old. It left me with just one novel still with a small press, and two free short stories and three other paying shorts self published, none of which paid me more than a few cents a month. On a good month, I'd sell a title maybe every other day. ONE title. And with the shorts only earning me $0.52 each. >_<
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| A Science Fiction Romance Novel Goodreads | Available from... Amazon | All Romance eBooks Kobo | iTunes | Scribd | B&N Google Play | Smashwords Print available from... Amazon | B&N | CreateSpace |
If not for the generosity of my ex-publisher, I probably couldn't have done it. Or at least not for months, if not years. Between them allowing their authors to keep and use the edited versions of our books and selling us our cover art at a discount (publishing logo removed), and with huge thanks to my cover artist and editor Dani Fine, it's mostly been a case of time to restore four of my BP/LP titles. (Well, there were unexpected costs too, but it could have been worse).
And I've done it. Five books back up at online retailers in less than five weeks. Well, Tethered is still awaiting upload at Smashwords and Google Play, but I was supposed to be on HOLIDAY last week. Between the 7th and 31st of May, I have done: two cover reveals, five re-launches, a print release, and organized a six week online blogging event for June/July. That included uploading five books to six separate retailers EACH, and a new listing on Goodreads with a free downloadable pdf chapter, plus organizing seven weeks of blog posts, inlinkz and rafflecopters, plus graphics, for over 40 authors.
Yes, I'm still sane. Mostly...
But the most marvellous thing about May has been the reception for Keir's return and the sales. While I don't get three figure sales per day like the really successful authors I see, I did hit three figures for the month, which I've never done before. Ever. In fact, I sold as many titles this month as I'd normally sell in a YEAR! Over 90% of them were at Amazon, and 80% of those were for Keir. A book I've re-released and that was my best seller while out. In a month, I've sold more than half as many again of Keir than I originally sold in the entire 19 months it was first out. And I've no idea why. Marketing has always been a mystery to me, even when I've tried to analyze and organize it. I'm still none the wiser.
And it drives me totally nuts that I still have NO IDEA WHY?! There are things I've done differently this time, but I've done no more marketing than with my other titles. I've been a few new places, wrote out a relaunch plan and schedule, but nothing that I can point to and say 'that did it'. In truth, I've probably marketed less (though I had some very awesome promo pics created by Dani Fine that I used to count down to release). Keir did get a new cover (though the old one was popular), a new tag, a new blurb, new editing, and gained an extra 11K. It also got new tags on the retailers, and Amazon now has a Romance>Science Fiction category that it didn't before. Perhaps ALL these things have contributed. I don't know. But I'm certainly not going to complain about it.
At least now I'm back on track for 2015, though with a modified schedule. Keir's Fall has officially gone to my editor this week with a possible November release (at last!). I plan to release a side story set between the two early next year, with a related story in June 2016. I'll be working on book three next year too (BTW, it's written and clocking in at 75K, but needs a huge overhaul). The planned five books of the series will be released over the coming years, and there may be more side stories. There will also be at least one more Venus Ascendant story to come, since my sales have provided enough for me to get edits and artwork for that on top of the other Keir books.
So thank you for buying Keir. I hope you'll be happy to know you've helped hugely toward publishing the rest of the books in the series and made a lot of the recent traumas far less likely to leave me with nightmares. ^_^
While I make no promises for anything else - one thing this year has taught me is that any far advanced planning needs to come with caveats for potential disasters - is there something else you'd like to see from me in the next year? I'm open for suggestions as to what to work on for my November NaNoWriMo project...
Happenings
The first week of the SFR Brigade Summer Cafe kicked off yesterday with the Space Opera group! As well as recipes, excerpts and a grand prize giveaway each week, there are also a few prizes up for grabs on the individual blogs, so well worth visiting them all to see if you can pick up some bonus goodies. This week's offering is:
You can find out more by visiting the Brigade blog HERE.
Tomorrow is the second book birthday for my YA scifi adventure Gethyon. In those two years he's been a SFR Galaxy Award winner for Best Psychic Talent, and a 2015 EPIC eBook Award finalist in the science fiction category. ^-^
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| YA Scifi Novel GOODREADS | Available from... BURST | Omnilit | B&N Amazon | Smashwords |
Lastly, Keir is also available to request for review on NetGalley HERE. This is my first tine using NG, so I'm really nervous about it.
Next week I'm hosting a guest post here by the lovely Sofia Grey, and I'll be trading days with Laurie Green for the 22nd June, when I'm part of the Androids and Aliens menu for the SFR Brigade's Summer Cafe. Woo hoo!
I think part of the reason Keir is doing so well is that time travel is hot right now. The second half of season one of Outlander is airing right now, so it has a higher profile than it ever has before.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, that could be one reason. I've seen a couple of other time travel books doing well, but I didn't expect it to work with Keir.
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