I have been working so hard on promoting The
Hunter’s Son that I forgot the most important part of being an author:
Writing. Writing has become a bit of an afterthought in my life and it is
starting to stress me out. I’m not sure I will ever be at the Stephen
King level of production (read “On Writing”, it will make you want to be an
author even if you don’t right now) , but I try to put down at least 5000 words
a week plus blogging, Facebook and Twitter. All this plus my full-time job is
starting to wear me down. I am battling the voices in my head that scream for
sleep when I’m writing and scream for writing when I should be sleeping. I
definitely need to find a bit of balance in my personal life, writing life and
career. That should be easy, right?
I have taken a few days off from writing The Hunter’s
Vengeance (currently about a quarter of the way finished) and am considering
pumping out some short stories over the next week to get up on Amazon in the
near future. I have some ideas for some short story collections I may try to
put up for free or 99 cents to get some buzz going for The Hunter’s Son and
because I think I have some pretty good ideas. I figure the more I have online
for readers to stumble across the better off I will be.
I know I need to get my priorities straight with my writing.
I decided to become an author so I could share my love of storytelling with the
world, not so I could be Don King behind a keyboard. The land of promotion for
self-published authors appears to be uncharted at times. That being said, I
have run into some really great people out there who are more than willing to
share their ideas, experiences and tricks. I figured self-publishing would be
like anything else; a cutthroat competition to see who can move the most units
the quickest. I have seen over the last few weeks that I was totally wrong.
All the self-published authors I have run into have been
friendly, gracious and helpful. It truly is one of the nicest communities of
people I have been a part of online. Everyone seems to have the same goal in
mind and they are plenty happy to see other authors succeed. I have tried to
pass this on to some of the people I have met recently and have had the
opportunity to share what I have learned. Heck, maybe my next book should be
about self-publishing. Someone has to write the next 99 cent bestseller on how
to sell 99 cent bestsellers.
Where did all the sales go?
The Hunter’s Son was doing pretty well on Amazon for a few
weeks. I figure this is because my family, friends and Facebook acquaintances
were busy snatching up my book as soon as it came out (mostly because I bugged
them like crazy until the submitted). Then things started to dry up. I did a
free promotion through KDP Select without much outside promotion to get the
book in the hands of a few hundred people, which is exactly what happened. For a
few days, I was #13 on Amazon’s list of Teen Horror books. That was pretty
cool, but I did not enjoy the post giveaway bump (something most authors have
been saying has disappeared without further promotion).
At first I was pretty upset about this, but was talked back
down to Earth by my editor. Did I really expect to sell 10,000 books because I
gave away 400? Part of me answered yes to that question. I mean, my book is
pretty awesome so it should just sell. Those crazy ideas are gone and have been
replaced by my first Orangeberry Book tour. I am going to hit 10 blogs over the
next 15 days and will get some promotion on Twitter. It was a pretty cost
effective way to get some promotion and I will update on how things go as it
progresses. Hopefully, I will sell a few books, get some more good reviews on
Amazon and start getting back to writing.
That’s what this is all about for me after all. I want my
life to be about family and writing. I just hope I have the time for both. We
shall see.
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