Alana Melos's Blog, page 6

You Gotta Spend Money to Make Money... Right?

Oh boy. In what might be a huge mistake, I have... (drum roll, please)... paid for advertising.

Nah, not on Facebook, although I'm investigating that as well. Since my books are almost exclusively offered on Amazon, I went with them first. The first unhappy surprise: minimum hundred dollars expenditure. Second unhappy surprise: I have to wait, potentially up to 72 hours, for them to review it.

The book I chose to advertise is The Queen of Swords... of course. If I have some success here, I may...

It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Hey, y'all! I'm happy to see I was on the ball and posted that Villainess 3 was live. I was afraid I had missed that since I tend to neglect the blog here, save for when I come back to "real life" work and decide to update.

Now, in reference to my title, what I'm going to talk about today is "making it" as a independent author. I won't give out solid numbers, but I figured if I want to quit my job and do this for a living, I'd need to make about $1500 a month three months in a row. Not only wo...

Dominating Her Biker Audiobook LIVE on Audible!

Hurray, the fantastic Audrey Lusk has gotten another of the Dominating Her Men series out on audio... Dominating Her Biker! She's ahead of schedule and hungry for more... I swear she is the hardest working creative person I know, for reals. To that end, she is ALSO going to be doing the Janus Key Chronicles! I'm really excited about that. Having listened to some of her audio plays and hearing the voices she can do, I think she can bring the pulp adventure erotica to life.

In the meanwhile, che...

Villainess #3: The Princess of Wands is LIVE on Amazon!

Yes, that's right, after many months of writing, the third Villainess: The Princess of Wands, is live on Amazon! I rather liked this one, though it's different than the other two. Here, Caprice is put into a reactionary role rather than an action one. She's forced to deal with curve ball after curve ball. Check it out today!

Art is Subjective

Not the best title, but it works. Yes, this is again about Chuck Tingle's Hugo nomination (go, Chuck!) and about art and subjectivity in general.

One of the things you don't know about me (but soon will) is that Tommy Wiseau's The Room is one of my favorite movies. It's hilariously bad. It's been lampooned and reviewed so many times, and those reviews are hilarious, but the movie itself is a spectacular piece of terrible film... and I fucking adore it. It's a matter of taste. I admit to having...

Dominating Her Men: Total Domination Vol. 1 Audiobook Now LIVE on Audible and Amazon!

Slow on the uptake again! Dominating Her Men: Total Domination Vol. 1 is LIVE on both Audible and Amazon! If you've bought the other audio books, then this isn't such a deal... but if you haven't, then this would be a great time to grab the first three audio shorts in one convenient bundle, narrated by the lovely Audrey Lusk!

Ms. Lusk has also agreed to do the Janus Key Chronicles in audio book form! I think she can really bring together the different voices for Dirk & Debbie, and I can't...

Audio Book Boom

Recently, last couple of weeks, I've been toying with promotion! Gasp! I know it's hard for me, but I've certainly been trying! There's a service called Audio Book Boom which allows authors and readers to connect to help promote audio books. When ACX finishes an audio book, the author (and narrator I think? Not sure on that end) is given free promotion codes to give away to draw people to their books. Great idea, but a lot of people (myself included) were not sure how to use them exactly to t...

Chuck Tingle is Seriously My Hero

So...for those who don't know, Chuck Tingle, the author of Space Raptor Butt Invasion, has been nominated for a Hugo award for that very same story. A couple authors I know are taking it as a sign of the Apocalypse. Those who have been following the Hugos, like myself, know that it's being weighted by a group of people unhappy with how the nominations are done and votes are tallied.

Me? I think it's fucking awesome! Not only is it getting Chuck the attention he deserves... seriously, his...

Dominating Her Boyfriend Audiobook LIVE on Audible!

This is, perhaps, a touch late, but better late than never! Audrey Lusk, this most wonderful narrator I have for the Dominating Her Man series, has just finished #5 of the series of shorts: Dominating Her Boyfriend! It's live on Audible.com, and will be live on Amazon in audio book form pretty shortly (Amazon lags behind a bit). I think she's done a fantastic job with the series so far.



In other news, I have finally finished the Princess of Wands first draft! It clocked in at just over 80K wor...

In Other News....

Just to counter the harshness of the last blog post, I do have some good news! I should finish the first draft of The Princess of Wands: Villainess #3 tonight or tomorrow. I'm that close! I have a couple new audio books coming out as well. And then I shall work on the next Janus Key Chronicles and probably pretty soon have the second bundle for them out too!

After all that, then I think I may work on two projects concurrently: the next Rock Hardin book, and the next Delilah book. Delilah's eas...