David Neth's Blog, page 7

It Gets Easier

The most frustrating part of accomplishing anything is waiting to see a payoff. I previously wrote about how difficult having patience was.

The great thing is when things start to turn up. I published The Blood Moon in August and saw great sales that first month. By September, sales had pretty much come to an end. I saw more sales in November, this time for my holiday short story, Snow After Christmas, but those were short-lived.

I was anxious to put out my next full-length book, The Full Moon in February. By the time that came around, though, my focus had shifted from worrying about sales to writing better books and making money. This new development was two-fold:

1.) The Full Moon is one of my favorite books I’ve ever written, but by the time it came out, I was so wrapped up in the story that won’t be out until 2017. My thinking was no longer, “I hope this sells!” but had transitioned to, “This series is going to end with a bang!” I was also gathering my ideas together for the next series that wouldn’t be released until the end of 2017. If The Full Moon didn’t sell a million copies in its first month (sales estimated), it was okay because I had a whole slew of other titles coming out.

2.) In October of last year I quit my part-time job. Previously, I had a day job and a “night job” while my writing was my weekend job. I felt like I was working so many hours and still not doing enough. I wasn’t. After quitting my second job, writing became my second job. I decided to take it a step further in the direction I wanted to go and offer my formatting services to other authors. I was lucky enough that in that first month, I got a client who wanted me to do his entire backlist. He liked my work and told a friend, who is also a loyal client of mine. I don’t have a ton of clients, but the few I have are repeaters, which means I have a nice supplemental income that can fund my other publishing expenses.

I suppose you could wrap up this post by saying, “Keep on keepin’ on.” As dumb as that sounds, it’s true. You may not be the best now. You may not be getting any attention at this moment. But keep at it. You’ll become a better writer, learn more about the industry, and finally find that audience you’ve heard about. You won’t exactly be putting a down payment on a 6-bedroom estate with an ocean view, but you won’t have to worry about if your next book will sell.

Cover Reveal: The Harvest Moon

Coming August 6, 2016, The Harvest Moon is the newest installment in the Under the Moon Series. Stay tuned on Facebook, Twitter, and my mailing list for details about the preorder.

A legacy of magic and danger.

All Danielle Bowen wants is a normal life: white picket fence, kids in the nursery, and peace and quiet with her husband Simon. But she can’t escape the fate her family has wrought for her. Born into a tradition of witchcraft, she has also inherited a deadly enemy: Toxanna, a dark witch who will stop at nothing to destroy the last of the Bowen line.

But will Danielle’s powers be enough to save her family—or even herself? And when Toxanna sets her sights on Holly, Danielle’s only daughter, will anyone have the strength to rescue the newly fledged witch? The darkness is closing around the last of the Bowens. In a world of wizards and powerful demons, how can one family of witches survive?

Get my entire audiobook catalog for FREE!

The Audiobook Reviewer is hosting a giveaway for my entire audiobook catalog (4 books). Two winners will win a copy of The Blood Moon, The Full Moon, Snow After Christmas, and the recently-released Limelight.

Follow the link to read the review for Snow After Christmas and enter the giveaway!

Have a Plan

Any successful business venture has a clear focus of what they exist to do and what they strive to accomplish. Being an author is no different, especially if you’re a self-publisher. We’re all essentially micro-publishers with one author signed to our imprint.

For every author (or publisher) the endgame is clear: sell books. But how are you going to do that? What type of author do you want to be? Do you want to write to market or do you want to potentially sacrifice sales for the freedom to write whatever you want?

More importantly, how are you going to reach your audience?  Do you even know who your readers are? Do you know how to reach them?

For a newbie indie author, it’s hard to imagine what the industry is going to be like until you’re in it. You can study all you want before, but what works for one author doesn’t necessarily work for another. Likewise, sometimes it’s an aligning of the stars. You get a good placement in an ad email. You hear about a promotional opportunity early. You write in a growing genre. Whatever it is, sometimes it takes a series of these to see any sort of payoff.

Having a plan will help. When I started, I thought I’d publish every three months, alternating between short stories and novels. I would utilize preorders so I always had something new for sale.

Well, a year after I put my first book, The Blood Moon, up for preorder, I’m changing my plan. It was a good plan to have for someone who didn’t know what he was doing, but as I got in the game, I evolved. I realized that I could put out books more frequently to help build my audience and, realistically, my income.

Later this year I’m going to do some experimenting too. The Harvest Moon will be released as a standard and deluxe edition. It might split my sales, but it’s worth a shot. Maybe adding an extra short story will become a trend?

At the end of the year, I’m going to be releasing four short stories related to my series monthly. I could be wasting my time with that. I could be confusing people with the releases and why some aren’t in paperback or whatever.

My point is, I might fail with these experiments. But for right now, that’s my plan. As I start to see results, I’ll modify my plan. I’ve already modified so much and I know I will continue to modify. Eventually, these experiences will lead to a better release with each book until we’re all making decent incomes from our writing. At least, that’s the plan.

May Fantasy Giveaway

Here’s another opportunity for you to win a Kindle Fire and some free books, including The Full Moon! Take a look at the books available below and click the image to enter the giveaway.

Just a note: if you enter the giveaway, your email WILL be shared with all 30 authors participating in the giveaway. So if you don’t want to share your email, this may not be the giveaway for you.

The giveaway goes until May 14, so you have a little less than two weeks to enter.

Book Review: Golden Son

Golden Son by Pierce Brown

I’ve previously reviewed Pierce Brown’s Red Rising, which I enjoyed, but had some issues with the writing. I felt like there were moments when Brown got too caught up in the language and forgot to tell the story.

The same issues are present in Golden Son, although not to the extent of Red Rising. Maybe I just got used to Brown’s writing style? Maybe I just got more interested in the story? Maybe he just told the story and worried less about language? Either way, I think I enjoyed Golden Son more than Red Rising, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a few issues with Golden Son too.

I gave this book four stars on Goodreads too because I realized there were only certain characters I liked. Darrow is decent. He’s not my favorite character I’ve ever read, but he’s far from the worst. Sevro is probably my favorite, but still, his story alone didn’t grip me. The conflict Mustang faced was interesting, and even though her relationship with Darrow and the rest of the Howlers was confusing at times, I really enjoyed her.

That’s it, though. The other characters I didn’t care for. Octavia is smart. Augustus is manipulative. I just couldn’t get into the other characters. Pliny, Fitchner, Lorn—what is up with them? They’re with Darrow (or the people he’s with) and then they’re not and then they are again. The flip-flopping was hard to follow.

I don’t know. Maybe it all made sense, but I got caught up in the other aspects of the story. I get it, this is high-sci-fi, and while there were rules that were present throughout the two books, it seemed like new technology appeared whenever it was convenient. Some character would suddenly show up with some gadget that had never been heard of before (and not really properly explained) to save (or ruin) the day. This was minimal, though. Like I said, the rules were pretty consistent throughout.

In general, I enjoyed the story. There were certainly parts that kept me engaged, but nothing was pulling me to the next chapter. Maybe I’ve just grown pickier than I used to be about books? Maybe I’ve just been reading the same genre for too long?

I’m reading Morning Star next, so we’ll see how the series ends. I’m definitely looking forward to the movies to see the story on the big screen. I’m sure Brown had a very vivid image of the world he created, so the movies will be a perfect fit for it.

Free and Discounted Books + a Giveaway!

I’m participating in another multi-author promotion and there are a ton of discounted books and even some free ones! The Full Moon will be at a special price of $2.99!

Follow the link and peruse the options (sorted between Sci-Fi and Fantasy and then further between US and UK) and pick up any books that tickle your fancy. While you’re there, enter to win a Kindle Paperwhite or a $50 Amazon gift card.

The giveaway runs until Friday (April 29th), which is when the discounts are guaranteed (though some authors may run the sales longer).

My First Successful Promo

The first weekend in March, I participated in my first big promotion. It was actually my second multi-author promotion, but the first one I was a part of was to get mailing list subscribers, which played a huge part in the success of this promo.

I wanted to share some of my results. I wasn’t expecting much. I’m very happy with the results, though.

I submitted my latest full-length book, The Full Moon. It’s in Kindle Unlimited (KU) but I clearly didn’t understand the rules because I used Select days for the weekend instead of trying to get KU page reads  Also, my email list significantly increased on the second day because of the list I got from the promo I participated in in February. I also used a free day for my holiday short story on the second day, which got a lot more downloads than I anticipated. I was really only dropping the price to use my free days before my Select period ran out. So my results are likely a lot different than everyone else’s.

…PROMO WEEKEND…

March 5: The Full Moon – 112 free downloads, 0 page reads

March 6: The Full Moon – 171 free downloads, 0 page reads

Snow After Christmas – 70 free downloads, 0 page reads

The Blood Moon – 1 sale (*Bonus*)

I got 358 people to download my book. One person left a 5-star review and said they’d definitely read more of my stuff. For a time, The Full Moon hit #1 in a tiny subcategory. I’ve never hit #1 before! So cool!

I’m definitely looking forward to participating in more multi-author cross-promos. I feel as though they definitely benefit everyone.

Setting the Right Category on Amazon

One of the biggest takeaways I had from David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Visible was how to put your book into a category where it won’t take as many sales to hit the top ten on Amazon. This would put you on the front page of the sub-genre and possibly give you bragging rights to a #1 book.

Now I’ve heard about the importance of choosing the right category or keywords, but I didn’t realize how powerful it was until I read Gaughran’s book. Seeing how I read it right before the launch of The Full Moon, I decided to watch to see how the new categories would play out.

The first thing is to determine how many copies you think you’re going to sell. Realistically.

Below I’ve copied Gaughran’s “Rank to Sales Estimator” that he included in the back of Let’s Get Visible. It’s a way to judge how many copies a day a book is selling on Amazon just by looking at its rank. These projections are estimates, not concrete answers. Actual sales may vary.

Rank to Sales Estimator

#1-#5 = 3,500+ books sold a day

#5-#10 = 2,000-3,500

#10-#20 = 1,100-2,000

#20-#65 = 850-1.100

#80 = 850

#90 = 750

#275 = 325

#500 = 200

#1,000 = 100

#2,000 = 50-55

#3,000 = 40-45

#4,000 = 30

#5,000 = 20-25

#7,500 = 16

#12,000 = 10

#25,000 = 5

#32,000 = 3

#42,500 = 2

#70,000-#100,000 = 1

#100,000+ = less than 1 sold per day

Think you can sell 50 copies per day? You’re going to want to find a category where the books on the first pages are ranking at #2,000 or lower. Maybe you can only sell 10 in the first day? Find a category where the #20 book ranks around #12,000 in the overall store.

It’s actually easier than you think. I put The Full Moon in the following category: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Suspense > Paranormal > Psychics. The #20 book in that sub-category ranks around #13,000 of the whole store, meaning it sells less than 10 copies a day. That’s definitely doable.

Don’t worry about missing out on competing with the big boys in the larger categories. By being in the sub-category, you’re also in the major categories, but your book gets lost because you’re not selling extraordinary amounts a day. For example, The Full Moon is not only in the Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Suspense > Paranormal > Psychics but also Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Suspense > Paranormal and Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Suspense and so on. 

So if The Full Moon suddenly becomes a bestseller and shoots to the top of the sub-category charts, it can still rank in all the larger sub-categories.

Gaughran also says that you can use keywords to go into additional categories, but keywords are still kind of a mystery to me. Also, I’ve noticed that Amazon’s categories on the store and the categories in KDP don’t line up. Sometimes you need to play around to make sure your book ends up where you want it. I’ve had to email KDP directly to get into a couple categories.

Choosing the right categories can help give you more visibility, which is very important. Obviously, Gaughran goes into more depth in Let’s Get Visible, so you’re going to want to give that a read. I’ve noticed a difference with my books. Now I just need to pay more attention to sales spikes…

Book Review: Red Rising

I’ve been looking for a good book that I could get lost in for a long time now. Last year wasn’t the best reading year for me. Not many of the fiction books I picked up seemed to capture my attention.

There were a few gems: The Silkworm and The Maze Runner stand out. As do Half Bad and Half Wild. But most of the books I read last year didn’t do it for me.

That’s why this year I’m focusing on reading what I want to read. I’ve already given up on The Magicians. It wasn’t doing it for me. Meanwhile, I’ve been eyeing up Red Rising for a long time. Now that all three books are out, it seemed like the perfect time.

From page one, Red Rising grabbed me and pulled me into the story. Pierce Brown is such a great writer that it’s hard to believe that this is his debut book. (But that doesn’t mean it was the first one he’s written.)

At the beginning of the book, Darrow seems naïve and even a little lazy. His wife is pushing him to fight their oppressors and he tells her they have everything they need. But as the book goes on, he changes. Realizes the need for change. Becomes the person his wife wants him to be.

This would be a perfect book to pair with The Hunger Games. Essentially, that’s what Darrow’s time at the Institute is. A game. A test. With a lot of blood, fighting, and death.

I gave this book four stars on Goodreads because sometimes I felt like the author got wrapped up in the pretty language and the juxtaposition he was trying to create that he forgot to tell the story. But that was only during the slow parts of the book. For the most part it was gripping.

If you’re a fan of rebellion or science fiction or even The Hunger Games, pick up this book. Lucky for us, this series is complete and Pierce Brown has even announced that he’s writing another trilogy in the same world. Give the people what they want!