The Results are In!

My first giveaway on GoodReads has completed, and twenty people will soon be receiving signed copies of Under A Broken Sun.  I'm humbled to say over one thousand people signed up, and the twenty winners hail from four different countries, as far away as Australia! 

Can you imagine?  Your book in Australia!?

Well, GoodReads Giveaway is a great way to do that.  While it's only for print copies, and usually reserved for new releases, it increased my exposure tremendously and added five hundred people to my "Want to Read" list.  Even at 10% sales rate that's an additional 50 copies sold, and the giveaway was free to post.  Ok, so shipping and handling is on me, but it's well worth it, and well worth the potential reviews (hopefully positive!)

So if you haven't checked out advertising on GoodReads yet, and possibly going for a giveaway, take a look at the results below:

NOW, I should note, that I did do supplemental advertising while the promotion was going on.  Only spent about $13 though.  GoodReads fans are avid book lovers, and can't pass up a freebie.  I do have to sign them all, but c'mon, what fledgling self-published author doesn't love signing books?  Every signature is another copy in someone's hands.

Oh, and by the way, yes I still get nervous every time I send one out.  Self-published authors have absolutely no one else to blame.  Spelling errors?  My fault.  Missing words or chapters?  My fault.  I've gone over the book a million times, but I still worry.  That'll never go away.

Anyway, take a look, and WRITE ON!

Twitter advertising - Results so far

...not good. 

Now, before I go into the results, understand that this isn't a scientific study by any stretch.  There are so many other variables to take into consideration as to whether social media marketing works, beginning with "is your book any damn good?"

Well, I like to think the nearly 4 star average review on Amazon is good, but maybe it's not enough to justify the cost of the paperback or kindle.  Then again, maybe one or two reviews turns people off and they don't buy the book.  Or the price is out of their range.  Who knows.

Regardless, here's the background.

I started a twitter campaign on March 4, with a $100 max spend, and a max bid of $3 (more on that in a minute) and a max spend per day of $5.  Right there I've listed three variables that may have an impact on both the visibility of the ad and the timing.

The objective was to get people to click over to the Amazon site listing my book.  Obviously twitter can only lead the horses to water, it's up to me to make sure the Amazon site (i.e. the book summary) gets them to drink.  Another variable.

The details of the campaign I'll leave out, suffice to say I chose to advertise people who follow or talk about post-apocalyptic topics, as well as younger demographic tv shows and writers like John Stewart or Stephen King.

A bid, by the way, is listed as "how much a visitor to your website is worth", with a higher bid increasing your chances of your ad being shown.  I chose three dollars, because one person buying a book is a $3.86 profit to me from CreateSpace, so subtracting $3.00 still yields a profit.  I know, a little business-y for a writer's taste, but if you're self-publishing, get used to it.  You need to know this stuff.

Overall results then, so far:  1 book sold in paperback (woo-hoo!), 1 kindle ebook purchased, and 9 books borrowed or bought through Kindle Prime (which netted me about $1 in profit).  So, if this all holds true, I'll spend about $100 to make roughly $15.

Hardly worth it.

HOWEVER, on the plus side, twitter does offer a lot of demographics about who is clicking on the link, meaning who is interested in your book enough to go check it out.

Right now I've got a click through rate of roughly .5%.   That means for every thousand people seeing my ad, maybe five will click on it.  That may sound really low, but that's the equivalent of spamming people, and .5% is actually pretty good, according to the stats you can find here.  

But of the 116 people who clicked to my site, only 11 of them bought a book, which means interest is at about 9%.  Not good.

I'm written too much here, so I'll carry on next with determining the best point for advertising and return on investment - finding the sweet spot so to speak.  But again, I have to stress I'm not a PR expert and this isn't a scientific study.  It's all specific to me and the variables of my work.  In other words, results may vary.

In the meantime, if you have questions you'd like to ask, feel free to comment here, or find me on Goodreads here and drop me a question there.  And most definitely, WRITE ON!

Read it outloud!!

Final phase of editing before releasing it to the public in book form, and this, my friends, is the single most important part.  Read your entire book out loud.  Pretend you're making an audio book.  Do voices if you want.  Mumble on the bus to work like I did for two weeks straight.  It's ok.  It's winter.  Throw on a tattered hoodie and forget to shower and people just think you're a crazy person.


Why is it so important?


Because our brilliant mind can auto-translate and buzz over misspelled words without us even knowing it.  Reading your book isn't good enough, because the mind works too well and efficiently:  you need to slow yourself down, and reading out loud does that.  It forces you to go line by line.


Take, for example, this little beauty I picked up in my own book after reading it to myself, oh, seven or eight times:
 

I pulled Bill back a bit.  “What the hell are you doing?”

“Giving you a chance,” Bill said.

“Yeah, but this isn’t really a ‘giving you a chance’ kinda moment.  This is serious stuff.”

“Do you honestly think there’s anything out there you can’t handle?  Worse than the lake?  Worse than what you told me about in Pittsburgh?  You’ve seen the worst nature has to offer, and you’re still here.  Anyone who can cover the ground you’ve covered, keeping his team intact, is ok with me.”

I stood there, frozen and confused.  Me?   I looked around the room.  Ashley didn’t smile, she just put her two pistols into her jeans.  “He’s right,” she said.

Louie looked down at his shoes.  “I don’t want to go with anyone else.”

Tommy hoisted his sniper rifled on his shoulder and gave me a nod. 

The general shook his head.  “Not these three.  Bill - for chrissakes, they’re just kids.”

“Not anymore sir.  They stopped being kids a long time ago.”

No argument from anyone.  The room grew quiet.  “Fine.  Bill, you’re in charge, Dawson’s second in command.  Get those people organized and get ‘em ready.  Let’s move.”

Did you catch it?  Don't feel bad if you didn't, like I said I buzzed over it seven or eight times.  Spell check accepted it because it's a real word (although it doesn't make any sense in context), and my mind saw it and instantly dismissed it because it knew what it should've said.


If you read it out loud, you go line by line.  Slowly.  And then you catch it:


Tommy hoisted his sniper rifled on his shoulder and gave me a nod. 


RIfled.  A d.  One simple letter that doesn't belong. 


There were plenty of other examples that I caught by reading the book out loud.  It does take time, it slows you down to a crawl and burns inside your "get this thing out as quickly as you can" center, but it's well worth it.  Trust me.


So read it out loud, and WRITE ON!

5 Things I've Learned About CreateSpace

After a lengthy sabbatical, I've picked up the blog pen again to keep you abreast of my adventures in self-publishing land.


To catch everyone up:  I was offered two eBook agreements by small time post-apocalyptic eBook publishers, and after wrestling with my indecision, I chose not to do either.  Stupid, perhaps, but some part of me felt that this was something I had to do alone.


Fast forward to today - I'm in the midst of editing the printed version of my book, after getting it to CreateSpace via Amazon.  It's print-on-demand, so there's no cost, just a percentage of your sales.  As opposed to publishing houses like AuthorHouse, I think this is totally worth it.  Sure other places like AuthorHouse offer a lot of perks, but they're also expensive.


So, without further ado:  5 things I've learned about CreateSpace:

1. It's pretty easy to use, but the layout must be exactly to their specs.  Don't mess with it, or your book will look amateurish. 
2. It does require an ISBN number.  If you're self published and don't have one yet, get one.  It's about $129, and if you go through CreateSpace to get it they'll add it to their distribution list for libraries.  Not really relevant for an R-rated book such as Under a Broken Sun, but definitely something I'm going to do with The Timepiece Chronicles.
1. NOTE:  Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing does NOT require an ISBN - they assign an Amazon number regardless.  So if you're not planning on printing, don't worry about it.
2. However, if you want to protect your work thoroughly, it does help ;)
3. I pretty much just added 2 because my teacher always said when outlining every 1 must have at least a 2.
3. The cover can be a bit tricky, but if you have the cover for your eBook already prepared, it's not too hard to get it into the format and size CreateSpace requires.  Just don't expect a "slam it in" or as the old infomercial used to say, "set it and forget it".  It'll take some tweaking.
4. The site overall does a good job of walking you through what you need, and letting you know if something doesn't fit or doesn't work.
5. Finally, when you get it all complete, for about $12 you can send yourself a PROOF copy to review and edit.  I HIGHLY recommend this, one because it's TOTALLY COOL to see your book in soft cover for the first time, and two, it's a lot easier to edit when it's in book form, because you read it like a real book.  And if you're like me, you'll find a lot of errors you would've caught in any real book.

That's it for now.  In the interest of keeping blogs short, I'll sign off.

Coming up:  trouble with my inner child, and how that stopped me from writing, and 10 reasons why I left Apple and switched to Surface Pro 3.

Later on, my writing family!