Further to the epic rant I shared last week, I listened to Mark Dawson’s interview with the mysterious Data Guy this morning. I got up at 4am, drove to the city to drop off my husband to the bus to Canberra (where he has a course this week, so has…
Last night, I spotted a Guardian article about the supposed decline of ebooks. When something like this comes up, much handrubbing ensues from the traditional industry. We’ve defeated the beast. Ebooks were a fad. People have seen sense and appreciate the real product. But what’s actually happening? Publishers won the…
When you start selling books online, one of the first things that marketing peeps will tell you is that you will need a mailing list. Even way back in the mid-90s when I sold non-fiction hard-copy books, I knew the value of a mailing list. I would buy second hand…
As I’ve said before, once you become a self-published author, there are some who will view you as a walking wallet to be divested of as much money as possible. There are a good number of reputable sources of advertising. Some will give you spectacular results, some are decent, some…
As I prepared to go to the gym this morning, I scrolled through my marketing podcasts to see which one to listen to. It struck me that they were all one of two varieties. Type 1: How to write a novel in 5 days How to write 24 novels a…
The title might be a little click-baity and just a tad misleading. I can’t tell you how to sell 11,000 books in four weeks, but seeing as that is what I’ve just done, I figured I’d have something to say about it. My annual sales report for Oct 2015 to…
A while ago, I wrote a post Why Don’t My Books Sell. It was originally written on this blog, but before I did the crash & burn to fix weird problems with this blog, I moved it to the “Self-publishing” section on my author site. That post is all (well,…
If you poke around the internet, you will find posts by various wise writers exhorting you to spend x amount or proportion of your time marketing and the rest writing. Often it comes down to 80% writing and 20% marketing. I think these sorts of enforced schedules miss a really…
In conversation. GH = Grasshopper VA = Veteran Author GH: Soooooo, I hear Bookbub is all the rage, but is that site even open to us indies, because I submitted my book once, and they didn’t want it. VA: *loud belly laugh* You submitted ONCE? Mwahahahahahahaha!!! GH: But they didn’t…
I came across this post in my Twitter feed. TL;DR: an author lamenting how much it costs to produce a book, and how little she has sold. The expenses side in her post looks fine. I tend to budget about A$1500 per book for editing, cover design and formatting. I…
