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Published First E-book and more to come

exclusives88

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Over the couple of months, I've been reading through all of the threads in this forum and trying to learn as much about self publishing. Before I get into my background and what types of e-books I will be writing, I wanted to thank everyone for sharing a wealth of information about self-publishing. This thread will document my journey!

Background
My background is in finance. I was more of a numbers type of guy. Most of my writing includes business writing, writing memos and engagement letters. You know, the slow lane type of stuff. However, as a child, I was always very creative. I was great at crafting stories, drawing and thinking outside the box. So here is my journey, hopefully a successful one.

Goals
My first goal is to create some type of passive income. I would be extremely happy to reach $500 a month. Once this goal is met, I will re-evaluate my goals. Long term goal (and just like most people here) is to substitute my slow lane income.


Niche
My niche will be in Romantic Erotica. Each e-book will have roughly 20k words and will be a 3 part series. I have published 1 book so far. This book is called Undeniable Love: A War Story Trilogy. I decided to skip the KDP Select and sell for 99 cents.

I am currently working on the 2nd part of Undeniable Love. So far, I have sold 2 e-books within the past 12 hours. They are probably mostly from friends so they don't count ;)

Mistakes from my first book
1. I went through some terrible freelancers to create my cover. I ended up just dropping the contract with them. I decided to download GIMP and made my cover that was far better than the freelancers. See the below cover and let me know what you think. To give back to the community, I would like to start a thread on DIY on creating an e-cover through GIMP or Photoshop.

2. I created a pen name that already existed – Melissa Stone. Luckily, the already existed pen name is not a famous author.

3. Many more mistakes to come!
 
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Gymjunkie

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Congrats on starting and publishing first book. Do not worry about mistakes! Only those who don't do nothing make no mistakes.

For cover work, check out premade book cover site if you can't hire a freelancer yet that's a pro (sorry for inconvenience by previous one!). www.thebookcoverdesigner.com and www.goonwrite.com

Also might want to frequent forum like romancedivas.com for some more genre specific topics ( I guess they have erotica too).

Good luck and keep it up!
 

exclusives88

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One month update.

I put Undeniable Love for a 2 day free promotion. I ended up with 93 downloads which was better than I expected. Over the course of this month, I got a whopping 2 downloads at 99 cents. I'm not giving up and I have the second part of the book that will be out by end of this month. I also am getting the cover revised for the first book to something that is more catchy.

Last week, I created a new pen name under Michelle Butler for my thriller/horror genre. The book is called "The Tenant Next Door" which will be a 3 book series. I put this book on a 5 day free promotion and ended up with 500 downloads.

I am relocating to New Jersey from Washington DC. While looking at a new home to rent, I ran into a couple of duplexes that was a little run down. This encouraged me to write this story. Here is the book description

"After a divorce, Amanda and her daughter Holly drives to the countryside to search for a new home on 35th Weston Street where she meets a real estate agent named Candice. They sign the lease and soon after, she finds out the tenant living next door is not an ordinary girl but works for the demon."

The book was rated (free kindle):

#4 in short reads for thriller,suspense
#8 in short reads for horror
#23 under literature in horror

I am now on my 3rd non promotion day.

July 17th - 1 book sold
July 18th - 5 books sold
July 19th - 4 books sold
July 20th - 1 book sold so far

Hopefully it keeps on going but my goal is to establish a readers list. I included my MailCheat(Chimp) link in each book but so far, I have not had any subscribers.

I am going to be publishing the second book for The Tenant Next Door. I'm just finalizing the cover. I plan on putting the first book for free and the second book at 99 cents. When I publish the third book, I will put them together as a bundle. Not sure about the pricing for the bundle but I was thinking around 2.99
 

exclusives88

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Update on The Tenant Next Door book

July 17th - 1 book sold
July 18th - 5 books sold
July 19th - 4 books sold
July 20th - 2 books sold
July 21th - 5 books sold so far

Ranked [HASHTAG]#137[/HASHTAG],079 on Paid in Kindle Store

I only received one review but I hope a couple of those buyers from the free downloads gives me a review..
 
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Unknown

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Nice results. My wife was the only person to purchase my first book even though I told her she could just read it on the computer :p
 

exclusives88

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exclusives88

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Here is an update on The Tenant Next Door. The second book went live this morning.

Total books sold for the first book was 23 books at 99 cents. It was published early this week. I just realized that I got my first "real" review on the 17th on the UK Amazon Store. The review was not pleasant

"Don't Bother
Poor characters and unrealistic dialogue. I didn't like the writing style at all. Read like something a 12 year old would write for a Halloween project."

I read that bad review doesn't mean anything but do you try to improve based on what the reviewer said? I didn't expect this bad of a review (1 star). Maybe I need someone to read the book to confirm that this review is something I should take seriously.
 

MJ DeMarco

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I read that bad review doesn't mean anything but do you try to improve based on what the reviewer said? I didn't expect this bad of a review (1 star). Maybe I need someone to read the book to confirm that this review is something I should take seriously.

You can't control if someone doesn't like your style.

However, you may want to take note about "poor characters" and "unrealistic dialogue." Examine how you use these and see if you can spot why a reader would possible make that notation. Then fix it.

My bad reviews (and even the good ones) talk about me being too repetitious. That's something I'd want to improve on.
 

Pure

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Congratulations on creating an e-book. Execution is key. Not everyone has it in them to take steps to progress their experiences, accomplishments, and life.
 
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DaRK9

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In writing class we always spoke our dialogue out loud. You'd be surprised how many times what you think sounds fine in your head, is actually very awkward to read or hear with a clear mind.

Most free reviewers are assholes from what I've seen.
 

red14122

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Congrats on starting and publishing first book. Do not worry about mistakes! Only those who don't do nothing make no mistakes.

For cover work, check out premade book cover site if you can't hire a freelancer yet that's a pro (sorry for inconvenience by previous one!). www.thebookcoverdesigner.com and www.goonwrite.com

Also might want to frequent forum like romancedivas.com for some more genre specific topics ( I guess they have erotica too).

Good luck and keep it up!


I used myecoverbook.com and a stock image from fotlio. Very bare bones but did the trick for my ebook.
 

exclusives88

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I used myecoverbook.com and a stock image from fotlio. Very bare bones but did the trick for my ebook.

I'll take a look. My past 2 covers were from odesk.com. She does great work at $30 a cover. Let me know if anyone wants her contact information and I will pass it along.
 

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