I'm finally joining the crowd!

[Thriftypreneur]

Great, great start. Well done.

 

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[COSenior]

I've been sort of in limbo since I've been preparing this book. Like...what will I work on next? Tonight I thought about releasing a short every week (on the same day...maybe Wednesday or Saturday) each week. I could crank the short out in 2-3 days, while still working on a longer novella/novel every month. At least I hope.

Sound solid?

I've toyed with that, and as you know from past contact, I'm shaky about pricing very short works at the level where they'll earn 70%, and not willing to publish anything else for less. But, like one of your other commenters said, if you can keep it up, go for it! Now come to my thread and answer my related question.

 

[britnidanielle]

But, like one of your other commenters said, if you can keep it up, go for it! Now come to my thread and answer my related question.

Answered!

 

[britnidanielle]

HELP!

I can't stop checking the stats on my book...and it's getting me NOWHERE (but depress-ville). Ugh! Especially since Rawr mentioned he (she?) sold 300 copies of his/her first book, makes my 30 copies look like chump change ( I know, I know...don't compare...).

How do you guys manage to not obsessively login to KDP to check your sales or your rankings?

 

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[Thriftypreneur]

HELP!

I can't stop checking the stats on my book...and it's getting me NOWHERE (but depress-ville). Ugh! Especially since Rawr mentioned he (she?) sold 300 copies of his/her first book, makes my 30 copies look like chump change ( I know, I know...don't compare...).

How do you guys manage to not obsessively login to KDP to check your sales or your rankings?

www.getcoldturkey.com

There ya go.

Additionally, this is "Book as Event" mentality. I'll see if I can find the article... one moment....

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=10282

In summation, the only thing that matters is the process. Live the process, love the process (writing). The actual act of publishing means very little if you're focusing on owning the process. (Easier said than done, I know)

 

[Breaking Free]

HELP!

I can't stop checking the stats on my book...and it's getting me NOWHERE (but depress-ville). Ugh! Especially since Rawr mentioned he (she?) sold 300 copies of his/her first book, makes my 30 copies look like chump change ( I know, I know...don't compare...).

How do you guys manage to not obsessively login to KDP to check your sales or your rankings?

It will pass. And your 30 sales beats the sales for all 8 of my titles in the past six weeks, so you're ahead of the curve

 

[joanna]

It goes away after a while You realize that by looking it's not going to start to go up any faster. I usually check once a day most of my stats for books and other income.

For my first erotica so far I had less sales than that. But with a new pen name, not advertised anywhere and adult filtered to boot, there's no point dwelling on it. Just finishing the next one.

 

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[britnidanielle]

Thanks guys!

 

[britnidanielle]

www.getcoldturkey.com

There ya go.

Additionally, this is "Book as Event" mentality. I'll see if I can find the article... one moment....

Thanks Thrifty!

Coldturkey doesn't work on Macs, but us Mac users can use http://selfcontrolapp.com/. I guess it works the same way. Thanks!

 

[COSenior]

It will pass. And your 30 sales beats the sales for all 8 of my titles in the past six weeks, so you're ahead of the curve

Same here. Six titles under my pen name, five sales this month, and that includes B&N, Smashwords and Amazon. JKW

 

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[COSenior]

How do you guys manage to not obsessively login to KDP to check your sales or your rankings?

Start a new book. Makes you forget all about the old ones.

 

[Rawr]

HELP!

I can't stop checking the stats on my book...and it's getting me NOWHERE (but depress-ville). Ugh! Especially since Rawr mentioned he (she?) sold 300 copies of his/her first book, makes my 30 copies look like chump change ( I know, I know...don't compare...).

How do you guys manage to not obsessively login to KDP to check your sales or your rankings?

You sold 30 books in what, a few days? That's awesome. My goal was 6 books sold per day. Some days i had less.

Please don't compare that with a month of sales and TWO books.


I used to track everything in excel, every day writing out how much i sold per day.

This month I track like that only if I implemented something new, otherwise I check in the morning and before I go to bed, and I should check less and write MORE.

back to writing for me...


others wondering what how where.. its always the same, cover, title, blurb, first 10%. if it aint' selling, one of those things sucks, find out which one it is, start with the cover.

 

[britnidanielle]

You sold 30 books in what, a few days? That's awesome. My goal was 6 books sold per day. Some days i had less.

Please don't compare that with a month of sales and TWO books.


I used to track everything in excel, every day writing out how much i sold per day.

This month I track like that only if I implemented something new, otherwise I check in the morning and before I go to bed, and I should check less and write MORE.

back to writing for me...


others wondering what how where.. its always the same, cover, title, blurb, first 10%. if it aint' selling, one of those things sucks, find out which one it is, start with the cover.

Thanks for the reminder Rawr...you guys are right. STOP OBSESSING & start writing.

I'm on it!

 

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[britnidanielle]

Week 1 Update

I released my book a week ago & here are the stats:

• Sold 48 copies
• Currently below 40k sales rank (no top 100 listings at the moment, but I hit it a few times before)
• 6 reviews
• I previewed the print version, will be on sale in 5-7 days on Amazon.

After a week+ of not really working on anything new, I'm back at it. I'm about 2500 words into something, I want to release a weekly short, so I'm hoping to get it out the door by Saturday, which means I have a TON of work to do between now & then.

Thanks for all of the advice guys! Hopefully I can get on HfR's level soon

 

[britnidanielle]

UPDATE

So I think I'm ready to pull the trigger on the second book, a short story...basically a serial novel. It's just under 7k words and it's not SOOOO perfect, but it is what it is & I think I need to just put out SOMETHING so I can keep my creativity going.

I was poking around Jacinda Wilder's books and noticed all of her series are like 32-50 pages each. Mine should clock in around 30, so let's hope it works. There's no sex (which...might be a problem), just the basic build-up, introducing some characters, my heroine goes on a horrible date & decides to give up men...that's the basis for the rest of the series. Sort of recounting her dates + throwing her for a few loops (with some men and sex) mixed in. And it's sort of humorous (I hope lol).

I spent the evening trying to come up with a cover. After some horrible ones, I think this is it...



The first novella is still selling a few copies...maybe 4 or 5 a day. To date I've sold 69 (with one return--I wish I knew why they wanted a refund, but I'm trying not to dwell on it. Ugh).

I'm going to include a link to the first novella in this short, and also links to my Amazon, GoodReads, and Twitter/FB like I did in the first book.

Novella # 2...a continuation of the first one will be out on Black Friday (at least that's the plan). I figured that's a good day to put out a book to capitalize on the shoppers.

That's it for now. Let me know what you think of the cover on the new book.

Thanks for all your help & encouragement guys!

 

[COSenior]

The first novella is still selling a few copies...maybe 4 or 5 a day. To date I've sold 69 (with one return--I wish I knew why they wanted a refund, but I'm trying not to dwell on it. Ugh).

I would kill for those numbers, seriously! Congratulations! The title alone of your new one would make me buy it if I read romances for pleasure. May have to anyway, just so I can say 'I knew her when...' You go, girl!

 

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[britnidanielle]

The title alone of your new one would make me buy it if I read romances for pleasure.

Thanks!

I wasn't going to put this in the "romance" category because it's not the typical boy meets girl, boy ends up with girl thing. There will be a lot of bad dates & maybe a good one toward the end....so should I categorize it as romance AND women's fiction (I was sticking w/ just women's fiction)?

 

[COSenior]

should I categorize it as romance AND women's fiction (I was sticking w/ just women's fiction)?

I would, just because the title screams Romance. But I didn't do the research, so do as you think best.

 

[Thriftypreneur]

That's it for now. Let me know what you think of the cover on the new book.

I like it. Especially like the title for a series of shorts/novellas. Seems like a good fit for romance/women's fiction.

 

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[britnidanielle]

I would, just because the title screams Romance. But I didn't do the research, so do as you think best.

Taking your advice. Going to put it in Women's Fiction & Romance. I don't like this first one as much as I did my novella which is giving me second thoughts about even releasing it, but ehhh...that's just procrastination talking. I'll put it out, then when I put out the next one I'll drop this one to perma-free (I think...maybe...or .99c, which I'm typically anti.). The second one better make me feel better than the first lol.

The second novella...a continuation of my first book, Turn It Loose, will be out end of November.

 

[COSenior]

Taking your advice. Going to put it in Women's Fiction & Romance.

I was looking at some ranking reports at Author Central that I hadn't seen before. Well, I had, but it was when I first started, so there was nothing to report. You can get ranking reports for different genres. Give it a few weeks and see where it ranks best. Inquiring minds want to know!

 

[britnidanielle]

Mini-update:

After wondering why my book wasn't showing up either via search OR the link Amazon sent, it's finally live (and I bought one lol, so I hope that gets me a rank). I'll publicize it tomorrow (I uploaded it again after cleaning up some errors) & we'll see. I need to get the next one out (in the series) by next Saturday. So I have some work to do, namely figuring out what will happen.

I took your advice, COSenior, and listed it in both Women's fiction & Romance. I also used keywords (effectively this time) and have a bunch of sub-genres. Take a look:

 

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[COSenior]

I also used keywords (effectively this time) and have a bunch of sub-genres. Take a look:

Fantastic! So glad it helped. Now if I could only do that for mine, lol.

 

[britnidanielle]

Mini-mini Update:

I raised the price on my first novella to $3.99. I figured I needed to justify the $2.99 price point on volume 1 of the series (about 7k words & 30 pages), so I raised the other one (109 pages, 30k+ words). Already sold 3 copies at the new, higher price.

I took Dean Wesley Smith (and HfR's) advice on the $2.99 price for the short. We'll see how it works.

 

[Held for Ransom]

Good stuff BD. I'd be curious how well you do at $3.99. That price (strangely enough) has always been my poorest performer. I have no clue why that is. $2.99, $4.99, $5.99, etc., no problem but $3.99, crummy.

Maybe it's just me.

As an aside, here's H.M. Ward's take on pricing...

Generally speaking, the 99 cent crowd is harder than the $2.99 peeps, & the free folks are more critical than them all. Perception/ expectation is shaped by price. It is a documented phenomenon. One of the early examples in business relates to Nathan's hot dogs. He couldn't move them when they were cheap, and it wasn't a product issue-it was price. Price shapes perception. Since then there have been many other case studies with similar findings.

 

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[santa]

Fantastic sub-category lost britnidanielle!

Interesting quote there by HM Ward (in above post). There's some that suggest this also effects the type of reviews you get. i.e. some .99 buyers being harsher reviewers then 2.99 buyers etc. YMMV tho

 

[britnidanielle]

Great quote, HfR....interesting indeed.

I dunno how $3.99 will work. I sold a few copies, but I also had a return lol (and I HATE returns because you don't know why they wanted a refund. So far I've had 2. Ugh).

 

[Rawr]

399 failed me too

 

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[britnidanielle]

Decided to publish the short on Nook. Uploaded it yesterday and it's STILL processing. How long does it take them to make it live?

 

[Thriftypreneur]

Decided to publish the short on Nook. Uploaded it yesterday and it's STILL processing. How long does it take them to make it live?

Not sure, I haven't branched out onto any other networks yet. Are you going to make any of your work perma-free? If so, I'd love to hear how that process goes for you.

Edit: Also, great work on the keyword usage. That's an optimized listing for sure!