Tag Archives: ebook

Self-Publishing Update 5: Shameless Pimping and Plugs

Today, February 27, 2017, my baby launches!

In addition to

Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06X9J85VV?ref_=pe_2427780_160035660)

it will also be published through:

Smashwordshttps://www.smashwords.com/books/view/706214

Kobohttps://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/scourge-of-sheol-a-novella

…plus Barnes & Noble, Apple, Scribd, and more.

This makes me a published author of something other than featured news editorials, poetry and blog posts. Feels pretty fantastic, even if it turns out to be mostly meaningless.

Know what else feels fantastic? …and is also meaningless?

The first day Scourge of Sheol was released for pre-order, there were enough sales to wedge me between a couple C.S. Lewis books on a very, very specific Amazon category.  The uber-specificity is what made it meaningless — and I still don’t care! It then climbed up even higher to #6 in that super specific category:

My Empire of Dirt. #6 BABY!

It probably won’t get any better than this, and that’s OK.

I was expecting about 20 orders in pre-sales from people I know who seemed interested enough (in me, at least) to be sweet and toss 99 cents my way.  As of the evening of February 26th, I have 25 sales (that weren’t canceled):

Pre-Order Totals of Scourge of Sheol

Yeah, someone canceled an order. Hey, 99 cents is a big deal…mostly just to me, though.

If you’re curious what that means to my bottom line, with Amazon’s royalty structure, that’s 25 copies * $0.35 = $8.75. Of course, it takes 60+ days to get a check from Amazon, plus you need to make over $100, I believe, to have a check cut at all, so I may never see the 8 bucks. Ha!

Obviously, I needed to take a stab at more forms of advertising if this thing has a prayer of taking off. So far, I can tell you about one normal thing I did, and a couple more inventive things I’m trying.

The normal thing is applying to a bunch of sites that send out info about book deals to their readers. A lot of these lists exclude books that aren’t at least novel length, or which don’t have at least 5 stellar reviews or more. So, Scourge of Sheol was excluded from a bunch. Then, others simply cost a lot of money! As this is the first book I’m publishing, it wouldn’t make sense to spend too much ad money without other full-priced books lined up waiting in the wings. After all my research, here are the FREE lists I was able to submit my book to — with the advertising due to go out at varying times throughout this week:

  1. https://www.choosybookworm.com
  2. http://free99books.com
  3. http://ijustread.it/free-submission
  4. http://www.ebooklister.net
  5. http://discountbookman.com/book-promotion/
  6. http://ebookasaurus.com/free-book-listing/
  7. http://www.bookzio.com/
  8. http://awesomegang.com/submit-your-book/
  9. http://pretty-hot.com/submit-your-book/
  10. https://www.bookhearts.com/promote-your-book/
  11. http://crossreads.com

One of the crazier things had to do with my experiences traveling Asia last year. I had so many damn Tinder likes in Japan and Taiwan that if I had a book out for sale then and had put it on my Tinder profile, I would probably be independently wealthy now.

Dammit.

So, I thought, “oh what the hell,” and threw the link to the book’s Amazon page up on my dating profiles. “What’s the worst that could happen?” I asked myself.

Well, shortly thereafter, a real, certified, scary weirdo started following me on Twitter.

So, that could happen.

Crazy idea #2 has to do with Givling.com. Givling is a student loan crowdfunding site I signed up to years ago. They had a great idea where people pay to play trivia games and that would pay off people’s student loans. That’s now combined with significant advertising dollah bills, so the concept is certainly viable! Recently, Givling mentioned a new idea where they would put up videos people sent in telling about their student loan stories and any advertising revenue they made off the videos would go to the pile of money that pays off all the student loans.

Well, this sounded like a great opportunity! I certainly have an interesting student loan story. I created the raw content for the video from when I was at my last amazing housesit with the very attractive golden retriever. Of course, I included information about the book as it’s the latest chapter in my student loan story. Then I edited and uploaded it over the last few days and sent the permission over to Givling to use it.  I’m still not sure whether it was too shameless self-pimping-ness for them to accept, but, we’ll see! Here’s the video for your review:

https://youtu.be/fRt3ZTCWFAo

By the way, if you want to sign up yourself and get in line to have your student loans paid off, go to Givling.com and use this invite code to get a free “welcome coin”:

EM551707

Now, I’m back to searching for a roof to put over my head and trying not to vomit. The upload process of the book was pretty stomach-turning, but now people can actually read and comment on the thing!  Eep!

If you do end up reading it and liking it, please leave a review! Each sale and each high review will raise my slim chances of success dramatically. Thanks again to everyone for their support!

Self-Publishing Update 4: Amazon Pre-order is LIVE!

In the interest of this time-limited experiment, a lot of things I could have done weren’t done. A lot of times, that’s the only way you finish a project, though. If this was a fast-paced engineering project I was managing, there would be a hard deadline, a soft deadline and a lot of things that got tossed by the wayside when they were determined to not be high enough priority. That’s just how shit gets done. So often, though, when it comes to our own projects, we get too distracted with the building, the dreaming, or the details, that the finished product is never realized. You have to ask yourself — if you never bring the thing into the world, what’s the point in working so hard at making in perfect? The pursuit of perfection can be your enemy.

Now, I’m not a proponent for sloppy or shoddy work, but sometimes there is minimum yield for high-effort activities. Those are the necessary things to cut, even if it’s hard.  Here are some of the things I had to sigh and force myself to let go of.

My normal editor-type editor fell ill and so I did not have another human to give punctuation/spelling/sentence structure guidance. So, Grammarly became my editor for those things. Grammarly sent me an email to tell me my writing was 97% better on its own than its other users. To me, this means only 3% of the population that give a shit about grammar will see things that bother them. I like those odds.

My editors for other things weren’t given enough time to finish their critiques before I had to finish my editing phase. They each pointed out some glaringly bad things, which were corrected, though.  I’m sure there are a lot more points they could have helped me perfect, but I’m too ill and broke and homeless to carve out that much time.

The ebook cover got to passable status, and then I forced myself to stop working on it. My time spent was 1% thinking up what should go on the cover, 2% looking at other examples of bestseller covers, 2% digging up images to play with and 95% dicking with fonts. I mentioned in an earlier update that Manga Studio should be more than capable of producing the art I need. I was wrong – its lettering options kinda suck.  Here’s where I probably would have ultimately stopped if left to my own devices:

My Shitty Ebook Cover Made In Manga Studio

Then, out of the blue, my dear friend, Dave Egly offered to check out the art I was dicking with. Then, he ended up creating multiple covers from scratch under a super tight deadline. So Mr. Egly was, in the end, my ebook cover artist!  Dave is the best. Here is the wonderfully-lettered alternative he sprinkled his magic on:

Egly’s Way Better Ebook Cover

By the way, the background photo used was one I took in Rathdrum, in Co. Wicklow, Ireland. That makes it extra special to me and gives me warm fuzzies even if no one else likes it.

In the wee hours this morning, I threw the Word file up on Amazon with the biggest Mothra-type butterflies in my stomach that you can imagine.  I was (and still am) uncharacteristically nervous. Being nervous about anything is such a strange and unfamiliar feeling these days. Still haven’t puked, though. Winning!

Lucky for me, I only had to upload it again 2 more times to fix formatting errors. The publishing date was set for February 27th and I enabled pre-orders to begin immediately. Amazon told me it could take up to 72 hours for the pre-order thing to launch. It took more like 2 hours, and it’s available for pre-sale right now!

I set the initial price at $0.99, so if you’re interested, buy it now before I jack that thing up. I intend to price test after it launches. Click the link below to order on Amazon — as with so many things, there is no more perfect time than now!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06X9J85VV?ref_=pe_2427780_160035660

The Perfect Time to Purchase Is Now

And if you buy and enjoy it, please leave an honest review! It is sooo helpful and sooo important to the potential success of this work!

Next on the list? Smashwords – a service to release to a whole bunch of other distributors. Then, advertising. I have a couple unique advertising ideas . . .

Is Erin Still Alive? + Self-Publishing Ebooks

As of this moment, as I type from my cat-sitting assignment in New York City, I am indeed still alive!  Although, in spite of many opportunities for doctors to figure out what’s wrong with me, they’re still clueless.  Once I have a dx, I’m pretty sure I can suss out a way to get myself to kick-ass status again in a physical way.  But maybe not.  All I know for sure is: I’m out of money, I’m still too weak to work, but I have 2 more weeks in which I don’t need to worry about finding a place to sleep or how to pay the minimums on my credit cards and student loans.  This, my dear friends, is a last shot opportunity.

I hear you say:

“But haven’t all your efforts been last-ditch ones?”

Yes.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve tested out several different ways to add value to the world, and put a roof over my head and money in my pocket.  I’ve gotten really damn good at the finding ways to provide myself shelter part.  And no, none of them involved shacking up.  (Shame on you!)  The money thing has been trickier.  Even commuting to do office work twice a week proved to be more exertion than my body could take.  As a result, I continually find myself scraping the bottom of my bank account.  There were times when checking my bank balances made me physically nauseous.

When I arrived in New York City in November, with a couple house sitting assignments booked, there were long gaps in the calendar where I had no idea where I would be sleeping.  I also didn’t have enough cash to cover my bare minimum expenses for the time I promised to be in the city.  So, I agreed to give God freak-out free time through the end of December.  I made a commitment to have faith in Him, and squelch any bank statement nausea at the first hints.  But come January 1st, 2017, I was giving myself permission to fully freak the fuck out.

More house sitting assignments magically popped up to fill the longer gaps in my accommodations.  The smaller gaps in between were saved by the couches of my very kind and very generous friends in the area.  You guys are the best.

I found ins talking with business owners and tried working with them to find ways to add value to their companies.  Most of them were men who turned out to only want to talk at a mildly attractive female and not actually work out any glaring snags she brought to their attention.   They completely wasted my time.  I’ve marked and underlined this fact in my mental notes.  One of them was a woman, and I was able to work well with her.  I did add value to her amazing business, but after the trial run, I didn’t bring her in enough extra revenue to justify the earnings I would need.  Bills continued rolling in, and waves of nausea continued rolling up from the bit of my pit of my stomach, but I consciously stopped them the second they started.  The flame, that fear, was instantly and habitually doused.  I learned to snap back at the inner whines with, “you think God can’t handle this? This is no big deal. He got you, relax babe.  You’re being cared for.”  And then, through logic, my faith would win, and the fear would dissolve completely away.

When 2017 came, I’d gotten so used to being at peace that I forgot to be scared.  So, I wasn’t.  But I was out of time and without any good leads on how to make money with a body that was once more completely spent.

Fuck.  So, now what?

So now, the Hail Mary pass.  Seeing the Patriots, who were so hated, and so obviously losing the Super Bowl go from zero to crushing the souls of Falcons fans everywhere gives me added hope.  Maybe even a person who’s ill-favored enough to get kicked out of Ireland (of all the friendliest places in the world) can score a moderate victory.

My current house sitting gig in Astoria got extended to right up until my next assignment in Manhattan on Valentine’s Day.  Suddenly, I had nearly a full month in which I didn’t need to frantically search for and apply to house sits.  My bare expenses were covered.  I had time.  It felt like 15 minutes of overtime was added to my clock.  How would I make the best use of it?

I could work on the novel I originally quit my engineering job to finish!  But that’s only about a third, or 150 pages in, and I’ve hit a technical snag.  In order to continue writing, I need to figure out some physics and power grid engineering details.  (The protagonist is an electrical engineer — about time for one of those, right?!)  That isn’t something I’ll have tangible results from when my OT is up.  So, it’s time to think — not bigger, but smaller.  I decided to write a short story and just put it out there as an ebook on Amazon’s Kindle.  It’s time to test and see if anyone even gives a shit about my writing.  Maybe I was wasting my time with the longer novel!  Or maybe I will find I’m onto something and be able to benefit in small, but real ways very soon.

I began writing the evening of January 27th, and the goal was to have a rough draft completed by February 14th.  I also decided that even though I was doing something short, sweet and above all quick, I would not do things half-assed.  My LLC was still alive, although comatose.  She could be woken up and used to publish my books, though.  After a lot of searching, I found a free online business checking account with good reviews that I could apply to even though I was in New York, my LLC was registered in Indiana and the place my mail goes is a third location.  That’s still in process, and I can blog more details on that later.  If you’re curious, I’m trying out the free version of Capital One Spark business checking.  This article is really helpful: http://www.carefulcents.com/capital-one-spark-business-review/

There are a lot of pieces to slide into place, but my goal is to publish and have it available for sale by the end of February — hopefully sooner.  My current game plan is to do a pre-sale for several days at $0.99 to get reviews and bump it up a day after it’s ready to read.  Unfortunately, if you have your ebook available for free for 5 days through Amazon Select to garner reviews, the reviews don’t count toward the paid rankings.  And reviews are HUGELY important.  So, if when the time comes, you can spare 99 cents, read the book, and like it, I’d be much obliged by a kind and honest review.

I assembled a team of 3 – one is an expert on the subject matter at hand.  His main job is to make sure I don’t inadvertently write something horrifyingly wrong.  The second is a man whose opinion on books and movies I hold in high regard.  He also is incapable of bullshitting or sugar-coating.  His job is to review for overall entertainment and enrichment value.  The third is my editor for spelling, grammar, word flow, conciseness — all things mechanical.  Her name is Rebecca Sutton.

When I requested Rebecca’s assistance, I learned that she does some writing, too.  I asked her if she also wanted to put out a short story just to test how it would do.  If she wrote it, I could return the editing favor and do the publishing.  After all, I had to figure out how to do all that shit for my own book anyways.  Her answer was along the lines of, “AW HELL YEAH”.  Rebecca’s story is a feelz-inducing historical romance.  When I read the short version of it, it gave me chills.  I fully expect Rebecca’s sales to CRUSH mine.

You can check out Rebecca Sutton’s site here:  http://www.rockhillreader.com/

I decided to share/document all the steps I’m taking in this process.  Maybe it will be inspirational, or at least educational for anyone thinking of self-publishing their own ebook for the first time.

What about my story?  What the hell is it?  Well, it’s no longer going to be a short story as I originally aimed for, for one thing.  I’m a little over half finished and already at > 13,500 words, which depending on your definition, will make it longer than a short story.  I’m aiming for “novella” length now.  As for the actual plot: it’s about a bloody, blinding, bone-dissolving, sinew-snapping plague taking over the world, and the boundless love of a father who will do anything to rescue his child.  The working title is: Scourge of Sheol.

At my disposal are all the tools and abilities I need to follow this test through to completion.  My basic needs are met temporarily.  I have crazy momentum – I’m hitting over 3,000 words a day now, a record high for me.   It looks like the reviving-my-LLC thing and getting-a-business-checking-account thing might work out — as long as no one asks my income from last year.  I’ve got a team of trusted people to make sure I don’t produce horseshit.  Plus, I have a bucket of discount, instant coffee, and 2 cats to keep me entertained with rousing games of “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?”  See below.

Oh hai! Sneak-attack kitteh is sneaky.

 

Well played, Kitty.  Well played.  GAME ON!