Posted in Writing
Self-Publishing Learning Curve
This week was used almost entirely educating myself on marketing. I spent a lot of time on book blogs trying to find places to send out my book to get it reviewed. I was surprised to find a lot of blogs which refused to accept novels from self-published writers. I wonder how long before this changes. What I have found is once technology lets something new out of the bag it rarely goes back.
Are book blogs going to refuse a book by J.A. Konrath or Barry Eisler? What happens when the first really big fish jumps into the pond. I mean, seriously, you going to turn down Stephen King? This of course doesn’t help me as I wade into the brave new world of e-books. It is slow going but I am hoping over the next few weeks I will get some request to review my books. They are simply not going to sell themselves, I am going to need some help.
The sales continue to trickle in. I will take the trickle because the alternative is no sales. Let me tell you this being in charge of everything is not easy. The learning curve is steep. At least it appears I have sorted out the error in the Amazon manuscript. I also got a lot of help from my brother this week.
He spent a bunch of time this week getting the book Smashwords ready. I will probably submit it tomorrow and then wait for Smashwords to tell me if we got approved or not. With any luck I will be on the Sony e-reader and iPad soon. I am a little frustrated with Smashwords because the only reason I am using them is to get into Apple’s iBookstore and Sony’s e-bookstore. Both those companies use epub which I have already formatted. Smashwords requires a Word document so they can send it through their e-book meat grinder and spit it out in a bunch of formats. Silly because all I care about is epub and I already did this. Hopefully, Smashwords will change their policy someday.
This week I will finish up at least one comic script and hope to make some major in roads on The Dark Lands book 2. I will be turning over the book 2 manuscript to my brother as I finish chapters so that hopefully the Smashwords edition will be ready at the same time as the Kindle and Nook versions. Everything is still a go for August.
I will let my lovely readers know as I start to get reviews (both good and bad) and if for some reason you have been putting off purchasing the books do me a solid and go pick them up now. If you feel up to it post a review at Amazon or Barnes and Noble. A few more sales and I can buy the kittens some new toys (like the spoiled beasts need any new toys).
Amazon Link for A Very Zombie Holiday
Barnes & Noble Link for A Very Zombie Holiday
The Shadow Men at Barnes & Noble
