A Year of Writing

A year of writing was first posted in 2014

My first year of writing and publishing is complete, as I  have now completed my first year as an author. My first book An Agent’s Demise was not actually published on Kindle until the end of January 2013. Paperback and hardback versions followed via Lulu.  Even writing the words I am an author still seems strange. I prefer the term writer but that also seems pretentious. Not as pretentious as I felt when friends and family asked me to sign my first editions!

I currently have three books published and available. To The Survivors and A Persuasive Man followed in May and August respectively. To say they were all written in 2013 would be misleading. An Agent’s Demise was originally started in 2006 then disappeared until November 2012, when a change in work circumstance led to what was supposed to have been a three to six month break but turned into nearly a year. Writing filled my time, and frequently took over all my time outside of hunting for work. That is another story and not the purpose of this blog.  Then there is the joy of that first review (good) the despair at the first bad which meant that someone other than friends or family had actually ready my scribble.  Of course making number one in free downloads was fantastic however short-lived!

I wrote back in September in a blog called Advertising for the Self-Published Author of my experiences in trying to sell my books; I thought it would be worthwhile to share my sales figures, not as a way of boasting (there is little to boast about and I don’t want to discuss A Persuasive Man) but as information to my fellow new authors, I have excluded all physical copy sales (nearly all directly to me) – they don’t change anything and SmashWords sales which total less than 10 – so here goes.

I have cut off the first couple of months of An Agent’s Demise as this distorts the charts due to the number of Free Downloads and my brief number one position, using KDP Select so here it is on its own.

The impact of various advertising campaigns I have run has been disappointing to say the least. I have not been able to attribute any increase in sale to promotions through:

• Book Daily
• Project Wonderful
• GoodReads

These campaigns have cost hard earned money, which can only be recovered through higher sales. So far I would have to say they are a pointless waste of time and money.  I cannot even be bothered to list the actual statistics, number of views (allegedly hundreds of thousands) the number of clicks (tens) then the number of attributable purchases (0)

I did save money initially, by not Professionally Editing (in progress as I write) nor did I pay for cover design, promo video (I only have one) web site design or formatting. I purchased Scrivener and Aeon Timeline software after trying others.  Add in costs for ISBNs, review copies to approve physical output, then there are the library copies British library and the others.  I may never publish a physical copy again simply because of the cost.  In other words, I have to purchase 7 copies of each book version just to fulfil these requirements.

I have set up two blogs, this one and one for the forthcoming Sci-Fi series The Interplanetary Geographic Service, a Facebook page and tried Twitter as guided by my betters. For book two I created a YouTube video. I have attended one writer’s workshop but personal selling has been non-existent much like my paperback and hardback sales. I did not join GoodReads until March. I updated my LinkedIn profile to include my new status.

So after my first year what are my conclusions?

KDP Select worked (for the downloaders) for An Agent’s Demise but of course free means nothing for the author.  I am not convinced free actually leads to any reviews or even readers. Amazon knows whether someone downloaded for free but do they know if they have read it?  Does a free download lead to a greater likelihood of a review?  I left KDP Select alone for To The Survivors it has never been free except for a couple of Review Copies but remains my best seller.  For A Persuasive Man it has been very difficult.  It has had more advertising then any of the others, and KDP Select Free promotions and recently a KDP Countdown.  I recently received some personal feedback on the book, which may explain its lack of sales or at least partially explain the reason.  I shall be addressing that over the next few months.

I have several new projects underway:

• The first part of my proposed Sci-Fi tale The Observer Series – The World of Fives has had a couple of Beta readers
• An Agent’s Rise the sequel to An Agents Demise is nearly done.
• New editions of An Agent’s Demise and To The Survivors after editing will be out soon
• Adjustments on The Persuasive Man
• My collection of short stories
• A thriller on revolution
• More ideas in outline or just paragraphs
• More ideas about other genres

What have I learned:

• Building an audience takes time – if I wanted patience I’d be a doctor
• Advertising has little if any effect – If an advertiser disagrees then put your money where your mouth is.
• Marketing in any form, including writing this blog, significantly reduces available writing time
• I’ll never understand how the algorithms that Amazon uses to rank sales actually work
• Nor which Amazon search expression should be used to describe the books
• We need more books in more varied categories
• Too many writers, not enough readers, and even fewer reviewers
• I have interacted with hundreds of new people around the world making friends with many – may that continue and expand
• I love writing!
• That being ranked in the hundred thousands is OK when it’s out of several million!
• Pushing Publish is always going to be scary.

What would I do differently?

• Professional editing before launch – if only it was financially feasible for many new authors.  Payback could take several years.
• Think about a marketing plan, but don’t expect any return
• Don’t check sales everyday, write more instead
• Learn from fellow authors – thanks GoodReads – but not all advice will work and don’t pay for the advice.
• Get more Beta Readers – contact me if you would like a Kindle copy for private review.
• Blogging and commentating is OK but that is not writing
• Keep writing!