The Halfway Point

So tonight is June 30th and we are technically halfway through the year. I've accomplished a lot of my writing goals (not so many of my marketing goals). At this point in my career, however, I have so many ideas that I just want to get written down that I don't feel bad concentrating more on writing than marketing. This is what I have done so far this year:
Published:
Shadows of St. Louis
Priscilla the Great 4
Priscilla the Great 5
Priscilla the Great versus the World
Priscilla the Great Omnibus 1

Writing:
Two short stories for different anthologies
The Saint Of Petersburg
Dark Marco vol 1

There are 184 days left in the year. My goal for the second part of the year is to keep on a strict 1,000 words a day schedule. That means I plan to write 184,000 more words this year. I've even decided how to allocate those words. I want three 50k word novels and then the other 34k words will be split between two short stories and Dark Marco Vol 2. I'm not saying that all of these will be published in 2012 since they would still need to go through editing and everything. But I am planning on publishing at least two more novels and two more short stories in 2012. With what has already been published and written, that would give me seven books published and four separate anthologies. Not bad. For 2013, of course, I will try to raise the bar even higher.

I have definitely found that I prefer writing to marketing. I think having more available content will eventually boost my sales organically. Sometime in August I will go back to pushing my public speaking career, but for right now, all I want to do is write.

Tip #58: The Other Amazons

Every once in a while I will have a giveaway and the winner will be international. It is always a hassle sending things overseas and it costs extra. So with my last giveaway winner who was in the UK, I decided to try something new. I logged on to Amazon.co.uk, order the books she won and sent them directly to her. I have Amazon prime so I didn't have to pay shipping and I didn't have to do any shipping myself. It worked out perfectly.

Tip #57: Radio Interviews

So I just had my first live radio interview yesterday. I was so nervous that I spent hours researching how to have a successful radio interview and then took notes on all the suggestions. When the interview started, I ended up not using a single one of them. I just went with the flow and did what came naturally. The interview took a completely different turn that I hadn't even prepared for, but since I naturally like to talk, I was able to just speak to the topics that were asked. There are a few tips that may prove useful in the future so I'll share.

Almost every source I found said to not use a cell phone for fear of the call getting dropped. But I was in Florida in a hotel room and I didn't want to pay long distance fees for a call to California. My husband noticed that we had great reception in the hotel room. I also noticed that on the very program I would be on, many people were calling on their cell phones so I decided to give it a try as well. There were no problems. Reception was great and the call wasn't dropped. So if you have great reception and are not moving around, I suggest going ahead and using your cell phone if you have to.

I made copious notes about the topic I was supposed speak on which was about working mothers and their relationships with their children. I ended up only using one note as the conversation took a completely different turn about integration in schools. Thankfully, it was a topic I was completely comfortable speaking about and I was able to plug one of  my other books.

I was able to get the host's email address and I plan on sending him a really nice thank you note for the interview. I suggest always doing things like this as it will help you the next time you need an interview or may even get you recommended to someone else.

Now without further ado, here is my interview:

Fire up the Future

In honor of the release of Priscilla the Great book five, I'm having yet another giveaway. The premise is that you have to name three things that are going to happen twenty-five years from now. Here are my thoughts:
 1. Flying cars - In my opinion, we are about 10 years to late on this. Come on, smart science people. Get to work on my flying cars. I want flying cars.
2. DNA based shopping - Instead of credit cards, we will be able to just swipe our fingers to make purchase. The good thing is that there will be no more identity theft. That bad news, I bet finger theft will go through the roof.
3. Smartphone implants - Our brains will become like human smart phones. We will be able to answer calls with a blink and post on facebook by twinkling our noses.

 What do you think? Visit Priscilla's blog and enter to win a Kindle Fire!

Authors in Bloom Giveaway Hop/Enter to win a Kindle/Enter to win a Nook

Traveling story phrase:

Line 40: We all want to be “picked,” cherished as the most beautiful creation of all.

Recipe:

INGREDIENTS:

1 pound lean ground beef 1 egg 2 tablespoons water 1/2 cup bread crumbs 3 tablespoons minced onion

1 (8 ounce) can jellied cranberry sauce 3/4 cup chili sauce 1 tablespoon brown sugar 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2.	In a large bowl, mix together the ground beef, egg, water, bread crumbs, and minced onion. Roll into small meatballs.
3.	Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, turning once.
4.	In a slow cooker or large saucepan over low heat, blend the cranberry sauce, chili sauce, brown sugar, and lemon juice. Add meatballs, and simmer for 1 hour before serving.

Now you can win a copy of The Queen Bee of Bridgeton by Leslie DuBois!



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Don’t forget to visit the other authors involved in the hop,
conveniently located on the linky below:

My Sales So Far

I am 68 sales away from 15k overall sales for all of my books. For some reason, I decided to graph my progress over my Indie Publishing journey.

As you can see from the graph, I sold 0 books my first two months of this process. I wasn't even savvy enough to buy my own books! Then in October and November I sold a couple of books. I think I wised up by then and at least bought myself a couple of books. In December there is a leap because that is when Priscilla the Great was published and my father-in-law bought about 50 copies himself. After that, I went right back down around the zero line. But from January 2011 on, you can see a steady growth. What changed? I joined the Writer's Cafe of the Kindle Board community. This is a place where many Indie Authors gather to share their experiences. I learned so much just from hanging around that forum and taking note of what others were doing. After that, the three biggest things that helped my growth was.

• Writing more books
• Offering books for free
• Purchasing sponsorships at Pixel of Ink and Kindle Nation Daily.

Before you go running off to buy ads with those two places, let me just say that Pixel of Ink is sold out for a while. I think they are opening back up this summer. Also, Kindle Nation Daily isn't quite packing the punch that it used to. I also recommend Ereader News Today. They are responsible for that spike in Feb. 2012. Unfortunately, they are sold out for the rest of the year. Two more places that I'm trying out is Kindle Fire Department and eReader News IQ. I've already purchased sponsorships from them and I'll let you know how they turn out.

There are a couple of things to learn from my above graph. First, this takes time. Most people don't come out of the gate selling 1000 books a month. It took me a year before I had sold 1000 books in one month. It takes some people longer. But with patience and hard work, it can happen eventually.

Secondly, if you think of this from a numbers perspective, you absolutely have to write more books if you expect to increase sales. If a reader likes your writing, they will go and see what else you've written and buy that as well. Then when they tell their friends about you, they'll be recommending two or three or four books instead of just one. The books you have written the more they can recommend. I do not recommend just throwing out poorly crafted books just so you can have something to sell. This is easier to do when you have a backlist of books that have already been written and have just been sitting around your hard drive. When I started Indie publishing, I had already written seven or eight books and self publishing was my last resort after being rejected by every other publisher. So I was able publish ten books in the span of a year. If you are just starting out, put yourself on a publishing schedule. Try to write and publish two or three well-crafted and well-edited books a year.

Thirdly, you have to keep a consistent measure of marketing. In August of 2011 and in February of 2012 I had huge increases in sales. After both of those months, my sales dropped dramatically. This was mostly due to slacking in my marketing efforts. I was exhausted and tired of blogging and networking and stuff so I did very little of it in September of 2011 and March of 2012. It showed in my sales. So, instead of killing myself in certain months, I'm going to go for a more balanced approach.

Kindle Fire Giveaway!

I'm having another huge giveaway in order to celebrate my 15k sales! Yes, I know I'm still 200 away, but I thought I'd start the celebration a little early.

Anyway, Little Prince Publishing is giving away a Kindle Fire, $50 in LPP books, and a $25 Amazon gift card. There are many ways to enter. You can earn extra entries by purchasing LPP books or leaving reviews for them. The giveaway starts April 16th so you might want to start getting books now so that you can leave reviews later!

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