Tag Archives: self-publishing

by | November 23, 2015 · 3:56 am

New and improved paperback cover

Hi, everyone,

Just a quick update – I finished fiddling with my cover and uploaded all files to CreateSpace! To remind you, this is what the old cover looked like:

Shizzle, Inc paperback cover 14 November

This is what I’d ended up uploading:

Shizzle paperback final for production

The main changes are:

  1. I went back to a gold leaf title – it doesn’t look flash in a thumbnail, and I will probably leave ebook cover as it is – but it makes more sense when printed, improves the illusion that it is the title embossed into the leather cover.
  2. Darkened back half – it looks more dramatic somehow. Hey, matter of preference.
  3. Fiddled endlessly with the rip – see if you can spot the change!
  4. Could not get the quotes on the back to read properly when printed in red – the only drawback of the darker version.
  5. Gave the leather “cover” a more pronounced “spine”.
  6. My photo is smaller and bio wording slightly changed.

I was all set to publish, but unfortunately CreateSpace picked up a major oops on my part – I’d left the ebook ISBNs on the copyright page, instead of the paper version ones. The problem was, I had the document formatted by somebody else and so now it would be an additional cost and a day or two of delays. I couldn’t have that, of course, so, like any old school Russian, I found a workaround. For some reason Adobe would not let me change the text, so the final solution involved extracting the pdf page into Photoshop, finding a close enough font, fixing it up in Photoshop, saving as a pdf and inserting the updated page back to the original pdf. Whew!

There’s another little bit to sort out with CreateSpace – I bought my own barcode, but there was no prompt to upload it, like I thought. I’m now not sure if I’m supposed to add it to the cover myself, or if I will just go with the CreateSpace barcode, even though I have my own ISBN. Aargh!

So now I’m waiting again for CreateSpace to review and approve the files. If I get an email thumbs up tomorrow, I’ll order a proof copy – with expedited shipping, it will be in Australia in 3 business days! This means that if all goes well, the paperback will be available for sale in just about a week! Can’t quite believe it…

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by | November 19, 2015 · 4:12 pm

No, thank you, I will do my own marketing research

Why is book marketing so hard? There are many reasons why – too many books being published, authors giving away books for free, social media noise, you name it. I won’t go into all of them, but I do want to dissect one:

Bad advice.

Again, this could be interpreted in a variety ways – and I would not claim to know what is good and what is bad. Things that have worked for someone with a romance novel may not work for an author of horror. Things change all the time, so for example it’s known fact now that if you give your book away for free and climb to the top of Top 100 Free Bestseller list on Amazon, once you switch to Paid, your rankings will fall dismally, because you have sold exactly zero paid copies during your free promotion days. Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, this post has been a winner already!

There’s lots of other advice I find questionable, such as:

  1. “Just write a good book and it will find an audience.” When? When I’m dead?
  2. “Set your price high and don’t budge.” I did that. Readers did not budge, either.
  3. “Grow your social media presence.” I did that, too – 30K + followers resulted in just a handful of sales.

So far I’ve been able to prove that one sure way to increase exposure is with paid marketing. I hope to test the theory that writing a series is a way to success very soon. Meanwhile, I would advise everyone to do their own research. Test me on my assumptions – please! And certainly, check that if you are taking advice from someone else, that they know what they are doing.

This brings me to the controversial part of this particular post. I have been following a number of author blogs, and was especially impressed by an author who has published a number of fiction books as well as a number of self-help books on the writing business. I was about to buy one, on how to market your book, when I’d decided to have a look at how the fiction books by the same author were performing, specifically the overall Amazon rankings. The answer?

150K-plus to 7-million-plus.

I was in shock. This author wrote not one, but several series of fiction books, with awesome flashy covers, lots of reviews, you name it. I would imagine a book ranking at 7 million on Amazon has not sold a copy in what, months? Years? How could someone with such dismal fiction sales record sell a book on book marketing? Oh, and what was the ranking of the marketing book?

Top 100 in it’s category.

I’m not going to reveal who it was, as I’m afraid to get eaten alive, so let me just leave you with this message: once again, do your own research, find your own way, and if some bad advice is not working for you, be brave and throw it away.

 

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by | November 18, 2015 · 3:11 am

You’re on your own. Sorry.

Let me start yet another controversy by saying:

Winning a writing competition or landing a traditional publisher is not a guarantee of author success.

Ok, ok, stop shooting! I know, those were my goals not long ago, and they are traditionally equated to striking gold and really “making it” as an author. And yes, winning a Pulitzer, perhaps, can make a difference. Or, you know, landing a million-dollar deal which gets you a ton of publicity. However, I now know the simple fact that publishers would invest very little into promoting your book, unless you are Stephen King.

Before we get into the argy-bargy of traditional vs self-publishing, let me illustrate my point with some evidence.

Exhibit A: Pitch Week

I just found out about this competition and I was actually going to write this post about it and encourage everyone to apply. Then I’d decided to check the current sales ratings of past winners. See for yourself:

Death by Roses by Vivian Probst is currently hovering around one million overall ranking on Amazon.

Stony Kill by Marie White Small is around 300,000 with the best category ranking at 13,000-plus.

Girl Walks Out of a Bar: A Memoir by Lisa Smith is getting published in another six months.

The winner announced in July of this year is yet to be published.

“But this is probably some small potatoes award,” I hear you say. “Surely, something like Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award means publicity and big bucks?” Lemme check…

Exhibit B: Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award

Remember, winners of this award got a traditional publishing contract and a hefty advance, plus ongoing publicity through the Amazon listing of past winners. This was a HUGE competition, even though it has now been discontinued. So how did the winners fare? Yeah, ok, some of them became bestsellers, but lets examine the less fortunate ones:

Crossing by Andrew Xia Fukuda – current rank #173,062 Paid in Kindle Store. Worse than my self-published debut.

Catcher, Caught by Sarah Collins Honenberger   current rank #233,775 Paid in Kindle Store. Much worse than mine.

Stalina by Emily Rubin  – current rank #245,024 Paid in Kindle Store. Ditto.

Fresh Kills (Berkley Prime Crime Mysteries) by Bill Loehfelm current rank #1,058,230 Paid in Kindle Store. Whaaat???

Fully Involved: A Firefighter Story by Jackson Harris current rank  #1,144,996 Paid in Kindle Store. OH. MY. GOD!

I didn’t have the strength to continue. Have a look for yourself at the long list of Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award past winners. But before you go and start slashing your wrists, let me say this:

You can be a successful author.

I truly believe in the above statement, qualified by “if you are willing to work hard enough for long enough.” In a way, I felt liberated by my findings – they made me realize what I already knew – there’s no point in hoping to win an “author lottery” and spend years chasing a traditional publishing contract. I’d spent a year sending query letters to over 70 publishers and agents, and the best response I got was “it’s funny, but we don’t know if there’s a market for it.”

So don’t give your power away by believing that someone else has to judge your book worthy. Do your own research. Become a better writer. Become your own publisher, marketing guru, PR rep, and cheerleader. You are the best suited person to mange your business. Yeah, that’s right, I said it – treat it as your business, work on it, invest in it, and grow it.

Like, now would be a good time!

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by | November 3, 2015 · 2:04 pm

Bargain Booksy ain’t no bargain

Happy Melbourne Cup Day! And if you’re anywhere else in the world – sorry for rubbing in that here we have a public holiday in honor of a horse race. Only in Australia can everything stop in the middle of the week, so that everyone can get wasted and bet on horses without taking a sickie. Not only that – this year Australian government introduced another public holiday – Grand Final Day, so that everyone can get wasted and watch football without…you get the idea.

I’m however, completely sober. I’m actually at work, trying to put finishing touches on a presentation, which is proving extremely hard. Not only that my heart is no longer in systems, data, and risk management – I’m really disappointed with the results of the latest promo and just can’t get excited about presenting to a room full of senior bureaucrats.

As you may recall, I’m going through my Most Super-Duper, Exhaustive, Comprehensive, and Current Listing of Free and Paid Book Advertising Websites and Ideas. This past weekend I’ve run just one promo, to test how well Bargain Booksy performs on its own. This is because previously I’ve made a mistake to run two promos on the same day and can’t be perfectly sure whether eReader News Today was responsible for the 63 sales, or if some of it was due to Awesome Gang.

I had big, delicious hopes for this promo – after all Free Booksy and Bargain Booksy seem to be very popular and have a great reputation. They got crushed, big time. How many sales did I get?

12.

Yep, that’s all. Not only that, two of them appear to be due to social media marketing, so the grand total made from the promo is about $3. I’ve paid $25, so I’m $22 in the hole. Not that it’s a lot of money, but I guess my expectations were not met, and it seems that all the unhappiness in the whole entire world stems from crushed expectations.

Anywho, I’m not giving up – still huge hopes for the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend, with multiple promos over four days. I guess this latest experiment did exactly what I’d set out to do – separate the “worth it” promo sites from “nah” ones. I have to say that the audience may have been wrong – I chose the YA sub-group. I may still try Romance/Chicklit one, at a separate date, to really test this service. It’s $70, though –  more than Book Gorilla.

So there you go – Bargain Booksy for now goes to the “nah” pile. Of course, the results may have been different with a different novel or even on a different day – I don’t yet know if a major weekend is a good or a bad idea. I’m here to share my very personal experience – you get to make your own decision. Now I have to go work on this presentation. Anyone knows how to make risk mitigation “sexy”?

 

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by | November 1, 2015 · 3:18 am

Another experiment with marketing, a $0.99 sale, and alcohol-induced pledging.

Happy Haloween!

I hope you’re looking forward to tonight’s festivities, but a word of warning from Australia, where we’d already been there and done that – try not to drink too much! You’ll just end up where I am now, and where you’ve probably been yourself – regretting that last glass and swearing off the alcohol forever. For once, I’m dead serious. Here’s my new pledge:

During the six months I plan to spend as a full-time writer, I will not drink at all.

I have not been drinking much since I’ve met Josh, who (unlike most Australians) doesn’t really drink. We have a glass of wine with dinner probably once or twice a month. So you can imagine how three glasses of wine from last night have ruined my day today. I’d still made it to the gym, but that was the only thing I’d managed all day – no writing yet. Needless to say, incompatible with what I am setting out to achieve.

Don’t get me wrong, it was fun! My sister managed to take a long enough break from her two little kids so that we could talk about our writing dreams. Yes, she’s a writer too, almost finished with the first draft of her YA novel. We kept drinking, talking, and laughing till just after midnight. We talked about why it feels so wrong to take half a year off work, and why it feels so absurd to attempt yet another career switch, this time to a profession where the odds of “making it” are about as good as they are in the lottery jackpot.

Then we started going through our memories and remembering when we’d “won the lottery” before. Like when I’ve announced back in Ukraine that I was going to win a scholarship to study abroad and was ridiculed by everyone for a year, until I left on a full scholarship to the US. Or when my sister said that she was going to move to Australia and even I did not believe her, until she got into the second selection round. We came up with a long list and they all had something in common – a vision, a plan, and a lot of hard work. There was also something else – not giving up, no matter how hopeless things looked. It’s all too easy to swear off dating, once you’ve been on about fifty first dates, but I got my prize, and he still makes me breakfast in bed almost every day, even after all these fifteen months…

Anyway, I still have a lot of work to do in terms of arranging such a long leave – I’ve already talked to my immediate manager, but now I have to convince his boss, who can be a tough nut. He’s back next week and I’m going to bring it up on Friday, after he’s had a chance to settle in and is less likely to shoot from the hip. Wish me luck.

Meanwhile, there’s some excitement on the marketing front – Shizzle, Inc is on sale again this weekend, and I have a Bargain Booksy promo scheduled – will update in a few days on the sales numbers. The paper version formatting is almost finished, the first draft of the paper cover is done, and I have even purchased a bar code! There will be Goodreads promotions and bugging all the local bookshops with free review copies. Also, I’m up to 14,000 words on the sequel draft.

Enjoy your candy. I’m off to add another thousand to my word pile.

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by | October 28, 2015 · 10:45 am

Why dream about tomorrow, when you can live it today?

I’m about to do something completely insane. I can’t believe it, but here it is:

I’m going to take six months off work.

It’s only seems insane, of course, because of my Soviet childhood (constant poverty) and American young adulthood (poverty during student years, replaced with “work like hell till retirement” mentality). Australians actually tend to take a gap year almost as a rite of passage into adulthood – travel the world and all that.

I’ve done the calculations – I can afford the bills, because I have a month of vacation and two months of “long service leave” accumulated. (Again, apologies to my hard-working American friends – I never knew of the long service leave concept until I moved down under). The plan is to turn three months of paid leave into six months of half-pay. There will be just a bit of travel, with already booked pre-honeymoon in December and a “proper” honeymoon in May, but otherwise it will be a 40-hour a week writing dream. The plan is to “try out” this writing gig full-time – write two sequels to Shizzle, Inc and really see what it would be like to work as an author.

I don’t know what will happen at the end – maybe I’d find that I miss the office and will come back with a vengeance, ready to climb the corporate ladder. Or I’d learn to appreciate the financial peace of mind my current job provides. Of course, I secretly hope that with two more books under the belt I might get the fuel necessary to make the dream I committed to on 16 October actually possible. Regardless, it will be the longest ever break from office and an adventure into a parallel reality all of my own making.

My mind is made up. Now I just have to convince my manager that it’s a good idea…

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by | October 27, 2015 · 3:22 am

Grammarly is not that grammar-worthy

Ok, so it’s not entirely true. I don’t regret buying a subscription, but I’m not perfectly happy either. It is better than Word’s  built-in grammar checker, but it won’t replace the proofreader. What can I say, it’s complicated.

It started during the last-minute jitters of finishing endless editing rounds of Shizzle, Inc. I was oscillating between the highs of being happy with my copyeditor to the lows of stressing over the proofread.  Thanks to one of you, who suggested trying Grammarly, I decided to have one last go at proofread myself.

Originally, I was going to get a year-long subscription, but when the time came to pay up, I got second thoughts. What if I tried it and it turned out to be worthless? Grammarly warns you everywhere that charges are not refundable. In the end, I’d decided to do a $29 trial month, and I’m glad I did. Short story is that I won’t subscribe for a whole year, although I will probably do another “trial month” to check my second manuscript. Here’s why:

The good:

  1. I downloaded it as an add-in to my Word, so I could do all editing without the need to upload the file to Internet. This means you can use Grammarly as you write and not get confused with multiple versions. Just watch out – autosave is disabled when Grammarly is enabled, so you have to remember and save manually. Good thing I’m paranoid and do it every five minutes anyway.
  2. Grammarly caught a few embarrassing misspellings (did I mention I’ve had three independent, highly qualified editors look at this thing?). It’s “cozy homes”, not cosy. Isa avoided going outside altogether, not “all together.”
  3. It agreed with me that a comma is not necessary  before “and” in sentences such as “she said and asked for my license”. Of course, you may hate it for that same reason.
  4. It caught British spellings in what was supposed to be an American text (I would kiss it for that alone). Again, after a bazillion rewrites, there were “spiralling”, “dialled”, and “wolly” with two “l”s, as well as monologue, criticising, realising, and moustaches.
  5. It’s consistent. Human editors missed the same bits that they previously highlighted elsewhere in the document. Grammarly was often wrong, but at least it was 100% consistent in doing so.
  6. It gives you explanations for all its decisions. That helps making the final call on whether or not to accept a change.

The bad:

  1. Grammarly is not a writer. It constantly complains that my sentences are too long and that I use a passive voice.
  2. It doesn’t have a sense of humor and therefore doesn’t get that redundant and inappropriate words are part of the comedy.
  3. It is annoyingly politically correct. I mean, it suggests “undocumented migrants” instead of illegal aliens. Really, Grammarly? Wait, Grammarly hates every occurrence of “really”, too.
  4. It highlighted about 1,200 potential errors in my manuscript. About a thousand of them were dead wrong, and it took me a whole day to get through all of them.
  5. It needs an Internet connection at all times, otherwise it falls out.
  6. It did not pick on that many verb tenses, even though I suspect I have a few errors here and there. This was the main drive behind buying the subscription, because I find verb tenses so difficult.
  7. It constantly thinks that I’m addressing people and demands more commas. For example, in “we need a grinder guard” it thinks someone is asking Guard for a grinder.
  8. Some of the comma suggestions just did not make any sense and would have changed the meaning of the sentences. In the end, I’ve ended up going with my gut on the comma suggestions – if it felt right, I put one in, and if it didn’t, well – don’t judge me too hard on it!

I was going to have “The ugly” section, but I’m feeling a lot more accepting and zen about it all now. If you are interested in a second opinion, here’s a much more thorough and almost scientific post from Grammarist.

The bottom line is that I think $29 was worth catching a few embarrassments and giving me a bit more assurance in comma placement.  So there you go – although we’re taking a break now, I have a feeling I will be getting back together with Grammarly for the next book. Even if it’s just a one-month stand.

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by | October 20, 2015 · 12:27 pm

Marketing gimmick #4: submit your book to contests

Shizzle, Inc has been featured in The Book Designer’s ebook cover design awards! Ok, so I have not actually won anything, but the design was complimented as “striking” and “great attention grabber”! Not bad for the first attempt at a self-designed cover, aye?

ebook cover design awards

As a marketing gimmick, it has not worked – no impact on sales in its first day of being posted. But I did get some valuable feedback, which I will pass onto my paperback cover designer. Yes – I have started throwing more money at the problem. With the work getting crazy over the last couple of weeks, I have enlisted help in getting my book to the printed stage. Fingers crossed it goes well – I will post more details in just a couple of weeks.

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by | October 17, 2015 · 1:35 am

The best way to predict your future

The best way to predict your future is to create it.

Abraham Lincoln said that. Dude was a genius and a visionary. Today I was reminded just how important it is to follow this motto.

It’s been two years since I’ve started this blog. On a whim, I’ve decided to have a look at my very first post. I had to read it twice, and I was completely overcome by the complex emotions that could only be expressed by “OMG!” and “no way!”

My dream two years ago was for someone to read my not-yet-written book, close it, and want to read more. This is exactly what has happened: I’ve finished a novel, I’ve published it, and, according to Amazon reviews and comments on this blog, people want to read the next installment. Exactly as I have wished for/predicted in that very first post.

Be still, my heart, I have another wish to make:

By 16 October 2017, I want to quit my corporate job and become a full-time writer.

There. The power of intent, and all that. Thank you all for helping make my first dream come true – I gotta go start working on this next one.

Big, big hugs.

 

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by | October 13, 2015 · 4:21 am

Finally! A paid advertising site that actually works!

Well, actually it’s two sites – I accidentally scheduled two promos for the same day (10 October), and so I will never know which business to thank for catapulting Shizzle, Inc back to the bestseller lists. Yeah, baby, guess who’s back? Isa was back in top 100s – in Humor, Adventure, and General Humor! She’s slipping back down as I write this, but the proof is in the pudding. I mean, this screenshot:

Screenshot (20)

As mentioned in the previous post, I’ve paid $25 to eReader News Today to promote a $0.99 sale on Shizzle, Inc. I have also paid $10 to Awesome Gang – you can get details of both websites on my Most Super-Duper, Exhaustive, Comprehensive, and Current Listing of Free and Paid Book Advertising Websites and Ideas. So what did I get for my $35USD investment?

  1. 47 copies sold in the first day – more than in the entire previous month!
  2. Total of 61 copies sold over the promo weekend – this equates to about $20-$21USD, depending on exchange rate. A couple of these were due to my usual efforts – people were nice enough to write and let me know. Thank you!
  3. Shizzle, Inc ranking going from worse than a 1,000 to #76 on an Amazon Bestseller list.
  4. 850 KENP pages read, which is about another $5USD. KENP pages are the payment basis for books borrowed through Kindle Unlimited – I am assuming about 0.57 cents per page.
  5. Hopefully more reviews! If 10% of buyers leave a review, I should get 6-7 new ones in the next couple of weeks – and in this game, reviews are priceless.

I didn’t quite make my money back, although there could be a few late sales at a regular price and more KENP pages read, I will review the results again in a week. Who am I kidding, I will be checking stats every five minutes…

I’m so inspired by this result, that I am staging an all-out assault over the Thanksgiving weekend. The plan is to have 1-2 promos every day on 26-29 November, with a goal of reaching a #1 spot. Can I do it? I think I can – look out for another race in six weeks or so!

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