Come check out my updated website
In December of 2009, I had just put out my first book, Maids of Misfortune, when I published my first blog on my newly created website. Except for a little tweaking here and there, I haven’t changed the look of that website since then. However, I recently did a major update, and I would love some feedback from you all about what you think of the new look. First, a Little History: It is hard to believe, but in 2009, the whole indie author movement was in its infancy. The explosion of ebooks and audiobooks as alternatives to print and the expansion of the online market place as an alternative to physical bookstores hadn’t happened yet. And there certainly wasn’t a vibrant industry devoted to helping indie authors achieve success. In fact, most of the advice that was out there for authors Read more…
Marketing Strategy for 2016: There I go, Pivoting Again
Apropos of one of my 2016 resolutions—to stay nimble when it comes to marketing—I have once again changed my primary marketing strategy for the first part of 2016. In 2014, my main strategy rested on having my series of Victorian San Francisco mysteries in KDP Select and doing monthly 99 cent promotions of each book through the Kindle Countdown tool provided for books in KDP Select. With no new book out that year, this strategy did a great job at keeping the three books in my series visible and selling. Then, in the summer of 2014, when Amazon introduced the subscription service Kindle Unlimited, I found this strategy no longer served my books as well as it had. That was when I decided to switch strategies for 2015. See Time for a Pivot: Kindle Unlimited and Marketing in 2015 for Read more…
Looking forward to 2016
2016 Resolutions: Spend a greater percentage of my time writing: This seems to be a common theme among fiction writers this year. For me, this means putting the writing first, being more efficient with the time I spend marketing, and continuing to use the strategy I developed last year to increase my productivity. This strategy (which consists of alternating between my historical fiction and my new science fiction series so I am writing on one series during the times when I am researching, plotting, and publishing work in the other series) enabled me to actually double the number of words I wrote last year. Write more but shorter blog posts: I have neglected my blog this year. On one hand, I felt increasingly like I had nothing new to say in the rapidly evolving self-publishing/ebook environment. On the other hand, Read more…
Deadly Proof–anatomy of a book launch
I am proud to announce that Deadly Proof, the fourth book in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery Series, is now available for sale (see links below). As with the other three novels in this series, Deadly Proof finds Annie Fuller and her beau, Nate Dawson, investigating a crime that will lead them (and the reader) into an exploration of the lives of working women in the late 19th century—in this case women who held jobs in the printing industry. If you read my last two posts on my marketing strategy for 2015, you will know that I decided to take all my full-length books out of KDP Select and upload them everywhere and make the first book perma-free. My hope was that this strategy would provide a fertile field for this newly published book. So far, my hopes have been Read more…
Day in a Life of an Indie Author
In the countdown to publication of Bloody Lessons, my days are filled with the work of getting the final draft formatted, proofed, and ready to upload for both print and ebook. At the same time I am also working on lining up various promotional activities, including writing more frequently for my blog. Yesterday, as I thought about the various tasks I had to do, it occurred to me that some of you who aren’t self-published authors might find it interesting to get a glimpse into what a the day in the life of an indie author is like. You will notice that no writing (except for this blog) went on, but I did put in an 8 hour day. (And it is days like this that make it clear to me that I didn’t retire, I just launched a new Read more…
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