This self-publishing thing hasn’t gone exactly the way I thought it would, posting my books on CreateSpace and Smashwords. I tend to think more positively than reality affords, and I’m aware of it, so I’m not surprised very often when I am wrong. Things I was mistaken about:
1. Visibility for my book is low. For some reason I thought people would see my books. My sales numbers have been waywayway lower than I thought they’d be. I’ve been writing so much about self-promotion because I’ve been trying to fix this. You can’t just put them up and see them sold, though. You have to work to draw people toward your books even if they only cost 99 cents as an ebook.
2. Most of my Facebook friends are not interested in my book. They don’t want to read it, or comment about it, or tag it. I have a few wonderful friends who are the ultimate fans, but overall (unless I am also completely invisible on Facebook) people aren’t interested. I had thought that I could get at least 50 sales from facebook. Oh well.
3. Promotion is endless and can take up all your time. I couldn’t just put up my website and go. To promote, I have to constantly post (see these words in front of your eyes), converse in various places about my book and others, read others’ posts, and squeeze each contact out of the internet like the last of the toothpaste. I have recently said ENOUGH and I’m not looking for more promotion ideas, or joining any other communities to promote. There are too many and I do want to write and pay attention to my family occasionally.
4. I may not “pay off” my book with profits before the end of the year. I made deals with my editor and artists, as a concession to my first book status, to accept payment when I made money on the book. I can’t exactly send them checks for percentages of an $8 month’s profits. If things don’t pick up, I’ll have to dip into my household budget to pay them off at the end of the year. I also was (heh) hoping to make enough to pay up front for editing and art for the next book. Yeah, I know. Now I am wondering but not brave enough to ask my husband if we can just suck it up and pay it to get another book out. I really want to keep going, you know?
5. There is more money to be made in promoting someone’s book than in writing and selling a book. If you really want to just write and have somebody else worry about it, you can. I would love to do that, but it will cost money I can’t spare. If I could get paid to do for others what I have done for myself, that would be awesome. But again there is my whopping $8 monthly payout, which wouldn’t cut it with another author paying me to promote them. Grrrr…
6. There was another one that I thought of between 4 and 5 and if I can remember it again I’ll put it here. Yes, this is how I roll. I know. If you have kids or anything else to do in life besides read blogs, you’ll know that it gets worse, not better.
***And I remembered #6 a day later. Dur. I thought when I emailed/filled out forms to get reviews from book review blogs that I would get responses in a week or so. Nope. It’s at least 4 weeks I guess for the bigger blogs if that.***
Anyway…I’m tired of writing and I know most of you won’t read this far. I’ll pull a joke off some random website to end: I Googled “joke write” and got a bunch of tutorials for writing a joke. You know that your joke writing is going entirely the wrong direction if you need a tutorial. I’m just sayin’. So I Googled “joke writers” and found http://sites.google.com/site/writersjokes/jokesaboutwriters and picked the first joke, which was good enough to be first.
“There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire to become a great writer. When asked to define great, he said, “I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!” He now works for Microsoft writing error messages.”
(Note for the author of jokesaboutwriters: Why did you use such a tiny font and put so many spaces in your post?)
Also, I can’t see that there is any way to change font size in WordPress. If you know this vital information, please comment. I just clicked “remove formatting” to un-tiny the joke. I will write a review for your book in exchange (unless it is erotica. Women with wild imaginations like me shouldn’t mess with erotica. Bad things happen.)
If you have read all the way down
Kate Policani 