My Second Year as an Indie Author: Even Sweeter Success
In December 2010, a year after I had self-published my first historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, I wrote a piece evaluating my experience in my first year as an indie author. This December it seemed fitting to see how my second year as an indie author compared to the first. First the Numbers: Last December, I wrote that “…there is every reason for me to think that I will do even better next year than I did this year with Maids of Misfortune…” and I was entirely right. In my first year as a self-published author (December 2009-November 2010), I sold 2693 books, most of them $2.99 ebooks, and I made slightly more than $5000. In my second year (December 2010-November 2011) I sold an additional 12,245 copies of Maids of Misfortune and 943 copies of my second book, Uneasy Read more…
My Alternative to Blog Tours: Two Week Vacations
One of the reasons I was hesitant go the traditional route in publishing was the horror stories I had heard about book tours, from my friends who were published authors and from authors’ blogs. (You know, the headaches of organizing tours, the long car rides, bad hotels, bad food, and hard-to-find venues, and the embarrassing book signings where no one shows up or those who show don’t buy any books.) However, when I decided to self-publish, which meant that my books would be sold primarily as ebooks, on line, I discovered that a new method of marketing had emerged, called the Virtual Book Tour, or the Blog Tour. I first read about this in an informative piece on Publetariat in 2009 called What’s A Book Blog Tour? In the past few years, doing a blog tour when you launch your Read more…
Podcast Review and Interview on Maids of Misfortune and Self-Publishing
Jane and Mark Kalmes have done a lovely Podcast Review of Maids of Misfortune and then followed up with an Podcast Interview with me that discusses the writing of this book and my experiences with self-publishing. The review can be heard at http://www.indiebookpodcast.com/2011/11/02/mystery-maids-of-misfortune/ The interview comes in the second half of a podcast found at http://www.indiebookpodcast.com/2011/11/14/thriller-this-is-life/ Hope you find these podcasts of interest. M. Louisa
Categories, Key Words, and Tags, Oh My: Why should an Author Care?
Two weeks ago I published my second historical mystery, Uneasy Spirits, and in the process I was reminded of how confusing it can be to determine the best category and key words I should use on Amazon to describe my book. Since there are several other authors who have been wrestling with the same question in the Historical Fiction Authors Cooperative (HFAC) that I belong to, I decided to write this post on how to use categories and keywords to maximize ebook sales. For the purpose of this post I am focusing on ebooks on Amazon, in part because that is where I have the most experience, but also because Amazon is definitely ahead of the other ebook stores in its sophisticated approaches to helping readers find books. My understanding of these issues is based on my experience as a Read more…
Why Self-Published Authors Know Best
I ran across this quote today, from a post that historical romance novelist Courtney Milan wrote this week as an open letter to agents. The traditional information storehouse has been inverted. Right now, the people who know the most about self-publishing are authors, and trust me, the vast majority of authors are aware of that. For the first time, authors are having questions about their careers, and their agents are not their go-to people. While not having an agent, in fact having decided in the fall of 2009 not to look for an agent for my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, I can’t really speak to this group’s effectiveness in this new publishing climate. Neither to I want to go into whether or not I think that the decision on the part of some agents to begin to publish their Read more…
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