Countdown to the New Year

Back in August when I had amazing sales, I set a goal to have 10 sales by the end of 2011. Well, since then my sales have slowed considerably. Now I will be ecstatic if I can get 8500 by Dec. 31. Only 236 sales to go!

I recently read a post on a forum by an author who reached 20k sales in just four months. Yes, four months. Amazingly, I wasn't super jealous. I think that is an important step in this business. You can't be jealous of other author's success. There are enough readers for all of us. This is a big step for me. When I first started this publishing game, I used to despise Stefanie Meyer for creating this whole vampire craze and making it so incredibly difficult for any non-vampire stories to see the light of day. Now, I realize that her success has nothing to do with mine.

Anyway, after I congratulated that author, she made a good point. She writes erotica, I write Middle Grade. Two very different animals. My sales number is pretty good for Middle Grade. It is ridiculously difficult to sell Middle Grade books online because you first have to appeal to the parents. I also have the problem of having MG and YA books and under two different names. That means I have twice the marketing work.

So for 2012, I'm really going to have to differentiate my marketing. I have to have clear goals for my Leslie DuBois name and my Sybil Nelson name. We'll see how it goes.