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…
In my last post I spoke about how I spend about $1500 average on each book. That includes editing, proofreading and formatting and the cover. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes less. The biggest variable is the cover. Some covers I can make, others I leave to someone else. I find it…
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…
I came back from Melbourne last night (photos later) to find the umpteenth brouhaha having broken out about Amazon (and specifically Kindle Unlimited) scammers. What are Amazon scammers? The TL;DR version: Amazon has a program where readers in certain countries–not Australia or New Zealand–can buy a subscription for $10 per…
General warning: as soon as you decide to self-publish, a certain section of the population decides that you are a cow to be milked. Some will be blatant about it by sending you emails soliciting your business. Usually, it’s to buy into some form of marketing. Mostly, you’ll be marketed…
This morning I was listening to the Creative Penn podcast in which Joanna talks to Mark Levefre, the director of Kobo Writing Life. Kobo has a special place for me, because it was the first platform where I started selling more than coffee money. That was pure luck, but lately…
A year or so ago, someone who organises a lot of very successful book bundles for writers made a bundle of space-based science fiction. I got really pissed off with this bundle, because somehow the organisers managed to find not a single female writer of Science Fiction to be included….
When I first started writing and publishing, it used to be that you got your first reviews from a few author friends, and then you might run a giveaway at LibraryThing and you might contact some book bloggers to see if they would review the book. However, Amazon has clamped…
