Why have fun instead of rolling up your sleeves and getting serious?

How many books are you selling? A few less than Amanda Hocking? Does it even cover your power bill for the month?

Do you get any reviews?

Do you have self-doubts if you are a good (even decent) writer?

Do you have any idea how else to get your words out to a larger audience?

Do you find the more you focus on trying to get readers, buyers, reviewers or just any indication anyone is reading your books the less you feel like writing new stuff?

If you answered “NO” to any of the above, you might be better off just giving up. Or you could just give up on sales and reviews and have fun writing again.

I really have my doubts that there is anything you can do to boost your sales.

I also believe that having more books with your name on them is the best way to boost your sales. Except, no one is buying the shit you have for sale, so you don’t really have any motivation to write anymore because no one will read them either. Maybe.

The more shit you have out there, the better chance you will get discovered. By any reader.

There’s also the chance that the whole positive thoughts thing works. But the caveat to setting your intention is also letting go of your attachment to it happening. (Just saying it could be true).

Besides, isn’t focusing on what you aren’t getting making you miserable or crazy?

It’s making you crazy because it’s focusing on what you cannot control. Other people’s buying habits. Or if they even SEE your book for sale. The web has untold number of sites, books, ideas clamouring for attention. People can only see so much.

Are you willing to stop jumping up and down with vain hope? Are you willing to have some fun while you make shit up?

Not as glamorous as being discovered like Amanda Hocking, but I bet she had a lot of fun while she wrote 20-some novels in the past few years.

Learning curve

I was reading a blog about why people hate self-published and indie published. I learned there is a belief that they are no interchangeable. Indie= small press. Self is DIY.

Also, a lot of people believe self-published authors think their stuff is the greatest and can’t see their own flaws and overestimate their abilities.

I know that my stuff isn’t perfect. I’m unsure how bad, because I can’t go back and read it without wanting to do a full-scale edit. Which, maybe, I should do.

Sometimes when I read stuff like this I get anxious about my work. I shouldn’t even have my stuff out there because it’s not as good as gold. I need to pay an editor or I should not show anyone but I should be submitting it to people.

Then I log into Amazon to delete my works and find that: I sold 5 copies of Second Chance Romance and 5 copies of Summer Fling on Amazon in August.

Not huge numbers, but this is a book many people would say “should never see the light of day.”

I’m glad there are readers out there willing to take a chance on us non-publisher vetted writers.

Say what you want about my spelling and grammar (tho, spell check- how any self-published book gets out with spelling errors is odd- spell check is your friend. Tho I did once accidentally release a non-spell checked version of Colours of the Rain and didn’t notice for a few days). Where was I? My grammar might be off, but my storytelling is solid.

I keep futzing with the cover of Second Chance. I now have this vision of a heart-puck sailing for a goalie with green eyes. But I don’t have the skills to pull it off. I consider hiring a graphic designer to do my cover. But then I’d feel bad for the inside of the book and want an editor.

So I think my plan is to have a separate accounting of the pittance I make for my books and when I get some monies saved up, (I’m not working and writing is just my hobby not paying de bills), then hire someone. Not sure if for past works or upcoming works. We will see.

But either way, still waiting for complaints. Or reviews. I think they call them reviews.

So, I always manage to talk myself down from the anxiety and tell myself that I just want to be read. I don’t need to make money from it. The future is not now.

I’m doing this my way.

Okay, I’m stepping away from the delete button.

Duh!

I’m reading Purple Cow by Seth Godin. And he writes about advertising models etc.It’s a really good book.

(If those post turns out badly it’s because I’m nursing and writing on a computer that can only run one program at a time).

I was checking out places my books were a few days ago and I realized today I’ve missed an important marketing opportunity. Sure my book, Second Chance Romance is out there and it’s free. But I haven’t linked to my other books or anywhere the reader can find me.

Hello? What’s the point of giving my book away if they can’t find anything else by me. At this point, most of my sales, I believe, are impulse clicks.

Anyway, sometime I have to fix this. And a few other things. We recently changed service providers so the Shaw stuff is dead in the water.

I’m nearly done using bite size edits to rework Colours of the Rain. Which is  a total mess. Last but not least, Corey’s story which has main subplot as hockey, doesn’t have any hockey in it. How did I miss that?

Does anyone remember Doug in the stories? Would anyone be interested in his? Not sure if I would or not. I have his lady picked out though. SO I’ll probably write it anyway.

Finding proof

When you are looking for something it seems to pop-up. It was there all along and you’d probably have seen it anyway, but you wouldn’t have noticed it. Like when you buy or decide to buy a certain make and model of car and suddenly, you see them everywhere.

I wrote about positive thinking and failure. Then I stumbled upon (not through Stumble Upon, but through Twitter and linking around, I don’t have the exact log) a video post from Ridiculously Extraordinary about failure. Or rather, how there is no failure.

Watching it reinforced my own ideas. Having something not work out isn’t failure. There is no failure, if you use it as a learning step. If you use it to reframe your attempts. Also, there is no need to get things perfect.

What’s perfect anyway?

I have this desire to go back and re-edit Second Chance Romance and Summer Fling. Most second Chance because I love it so much and I know it can be better. I can’t even look at the copy that my mom has because I start making notes.

I haven’t done so yet. I need to finish Corey’s story first and then maybe. Then again, no. No. NO!

It’s not perfect, but that’s okay. It was my first attempt and I succeeded I finished the story. It could be better. A lot of things could, but it is good enough. I learned a lot from that book and no one has asked for their money back or written to tell me how much I suck. Too me that’s something.

I’m going to leave Second Chance Romance as is. It is perfect as it is. I’m never going to have perfect grammar in my writing. Someday, maybe I’ll hire an editor. Or not.

Do I need to get publisher perfect? What makes that the ultimate goal? Newspapers, probably the most widely read medium, are written at a grade nine level.

I’m going to move on and make the next thing better and bigger. Not dwell on the past.

Why independent publishing is working for yourself

Ditchwalk wrote about the new money flow.  I wrote about independent authors being the little sister to traditional publishing, still in it’s infancy but will surpass her big sister someday.

A second analogy: traditional publishing is to independent authors as being a paid employee is to entrepreneurship.

What are most people striving for?

Working for themselves.

Why are authors so keen to let a publishing house have most of their profits? Because they make their books pretty?

Thanks to the internet, stock photography and creative commons licences, you can have your pick of images and create your own cover. It takes a few hours work, but I think that might worth a few percentages of income.

Formatting takes a little more work, but well worth the effort.

Editing isn’t so hard. A few hundred dollars to the right people can get your book edited now days. Actually, if you are willing to put in the time, you can get your book edited for free, so long as you are willing to do the same for someone else. Editing is little more than basic spelling and grammar knowledge and a fresh set of eyes looking at the text. Bite sized edits is proving to be a valuable tool.

There is marketing. And traditional publishers have a bit of advantage on this. They can get a book into every book store in the US and Canada (or the UK- depending on where you publish).

Getting them into bookstores is only a piece of the challenge. Most books end up being sold less than cost or eventually sent back to the publisher and destroyed.

There are many advantages to self-publishing.

Right now I have to edit my book some more.

Bite Size Edits

I am a horrible editor. I hate reading my work because I’m plagued by self-doubt. I sit there staring at my words thinking, THIS is the WORST thing anyone has EVER written. No one will want to read it.

More or less.

I’ve learned that part of my past hatred of editing was that my work really wasn’t worth editing. Then I wrote Second Chance Romance. And I loved it. I loved Mandy. I loved Kip and Colton and Corey.  I loved it all.

So I edited the story. But I didn’t really do a good grammar and language edit. It’s hard to edit a story because one gets bogged down with the story. I don’t notice an errant comma or run on sentence or too many ‘ands’. I use way too many ‘ands’.

I’ve thought about submitting Second Chance to some epubs for sometime. I put it off because it really did need a grammar and punctuation edit. And I’m horrible with that.

I don’t know Where I came across Bookoven. but I started following the site on Twitter. Then Bookoven started a new project site called Bite Size Edits.

I put the first chapter of Second Chance Romance up there and started editing. I post the link a few times and a few people did some edits. Mostly I did them.

It’s amazing. The first Chapter is beautiful. I’ve got a new project up there.

How it works is you copy and paste a text and submit it. You can optionally invite people to edit your text. Copyright on all edits you do is free to the original author.

As you or other’s edit the text it’s shown to you in random bite sized pieces. You type in what you believe the text should say and click “submit changes”. If you think the text is good as is, click “No Changes”.

You can also attach notes to the author. I use this often for myself because the lines are offered more or less out of context and I can’t recall what I was trying to say or if this piece of information was explained before or after.

After all the lines are seen by someone twice, the edits are offered to the author. The author reads each one and rejects, accepts or changes each edit.

It’s an easy way to edit where I don’t get mired in the story line. I can see check each line individually.

If you follow my link to my current project and do some edits, please let me know here or on twitter. If you put up any text that need editing, I’d gladly lend my hand.