Julia Goldhirsh's Blog, page 4

Book Launch

So because no ones Amazon reviews seem to be going through on time, I unfortunately had to launch with only 1 editorial review on day 1 of the book launch. I’m going to post the results of the book launch regarding ad spend and results for each day.

Note- As of right now I’m launching with a 4 star editorial review from Self-published reviews (a buddy site for Kirkus) and no customer reviews.

Pre-launch day–  The same day as the editorial review, I received 22 page reads and no sales.

Day 1–

Total sales- 1

Page reads- 0

Bookbub–

[image error][image error]Amazon–  No stats showing yet and no sales as far as I know.

Bknights– Looks like I might have gotten 1 sale from this newsletter promo. I spent extra for a bonus service, but for just the newsletter promo it’s about $7.

 

 

Free writing content here!

Hi everyone.

Since I’m still a new writer, and I haven’t posted my blog or short fiction on here, this is to leave you some ways to view some of my previous stories, poems, and travel blog posts.

Preview for my novella and my works in progress– https://tablo.io/jgghost

Stories from college and high school– http://www.writerscafe.org/silverlumina

Travel blog– https://hubpages.com/@wanderingteacher

Poems from middle and high school–  https://allpoetry.com/Silverlumina

Stories from middle and high school– https://allpoetry.com/stories/by/Silverlumina

Hope you enjoy the content, and let me know if there’s anything you really enjoyed.

NYC midnight Contest

お久しぶり　（Long time no see)

I’ve been busy editing away to polish my book as much as possible before the launch date. However, a big flash fiction contest caught my eye, and I couldn’t resist applying. This weekend, I will be creating and posting a flash fiction story for the NYC midnight contest.  This is my first big writing competition since high school, so I’m really excited to participate. I really hope to grow and learn as a writer from this competition!

I will be posting the stories I create as a result of the competition, so keep your eyes peeled for some flash fiction!

じやあね！　（See you later!)

Things you should know before you self-publish

1.  It’s a huge time commitment–

You have to market everything yourself, draft up legal documents for editors and artists, and seek out good people to help you. You have to learn the ropes of marketing formatting, etc. yourself and that takes time.

2. You have to be willing to put yourself out there–

You need to be willing to market your book and get the word out and that means putting yourself out there.

3. Make sure you copyright your manuscript before you start sending it out into the world.

If you don’t someone can steal it or decide to copyright your manuscript before you causing you to lose rights to the manuscript.

4. It will probably cost you more money than traditional publishing

You will have to spend time and money on marketing, a cover artist, an editor, and other services that you wouldn’t have to pay if you go through a traditional publisher. You may even have to purchase an ISBN and bar code so you can sell your books in stores and to not just have them exclusively on Amazon.

5. You may need to purchase an ISBN and bar code.

You can do this here:

Fair warning. It’s a little expensive.

Pre-order release

Hi everyone.

I just put up Pre-order sales for my e-book “Spellbound.” It’s a YA fantasy novella about a girl who is trapped in a greenhouse, bound by a curse. She’s desperate to escape captivity, but the outside world has its own dangers lurking in shadows and dreams. Her goal is to escape, but at what cost?

My publishing cost breakdown

Here is where I will let you know what artists I’ve used. I will also let you know if I used any advertising, where I advertised, and how much it’s costing me. I will give you my honest feedback on the services rendered as it happens.

Facebook advertising–  $5  (Early June)  I advertised a poll I was doing on the different covers that I had designed to find out which one looked the best. In the end I decided to take their feedback on the cover and used it towards reworking the cover design.

$30 (Late June to early August) ad to get more views on my author page and hopefully more likes. (It certainly got me more likes, but the engagement on the page is still pretty low).

$5 (June 30th) boost on my pre-order post on my author page. I got a few click throughs, but no sales so in my opinion it wasn’t really worth it.

Twitter ads–  (July 1st and 2nd) $18 Twitter ad through TweetYourBooks for a small pre-order push. Unfortunately, I didn’t receive any sales from this advertisement either.

Instagram ads–   $5 for about 2 days of ads. Haven’t really noticed any results from it so far.

Fiver– I paid about $7 to have someone post about my novella on their blog. They put up a description and purchase link.

BMI books– $10   Standard promotion. That means it’s up on the website for 365 days.

KDP rocket– $97

It has a 30 day money back guarantee and is supposed to help you pick out marketable key words, so I’m going to give it a shot and see if it helps build more organic traffic.

Cover art–  about $360 through Sukesha Ray

My opinion on services rendered– She did an amazing job on the cover. If you aren’t happy with the design the first time be honest with her. She’s patient and more than willing to work with you. She’s also been an excellent mentor and has helped me with marketing advice and suggestions for the convention I’m doing in August. I love her art style and the cover turned out eye catching and beautiful.

IMPORTANT– Make sure for any cover art that you get a contract, so you don’t end up in legal trouble later. You need for the artist to give you their copyrights to the artwork or at least have a contract saying you have the right to use the cover art for sales of A,B, and C. This also applies to any editing.

Best Seller launch blueprint package– $27

Feedback– I will give more information on how well this works out once I’ve launched, but so far it has offered some excellent suggestions that I hadn’t even thought of.

Marketing mentorship– Free through a FB group called women helping women entrepreneurs. They also have a premium membership with additional support for about 9 dollars a month. My mentor was excellent and offered help and support on coming up with a marketing plan and making sure the cover was a good fit for my audience. My mentor was Stephanie Dolce and she was really helpful.

Blurb-  $40

Developmental editing– is $135.73

I’m currently having both of these services done through Charlotte Blowe Stanley (Aka N-D-Scribable services on their Facebook page). She’s done an amazing job on both services so far and has been a pleasure to work with. She’s also really well experienced in her field, she edited for a best selling novel, and she was very professional.

Feedback-Overall, she did an excellent job with developmental editing. She fixed a ton of plot holes and helped me really flesh out my characters and setting.

Substantial editing/proofreading–   $12 per 1000 words (Overall cost for my 32k word manuscript was $385.

Feedback– I did this through Annie Morgan who I found through the recommendation of another author, and she did a good job on making the work flow nicer and caught some clarity errors where I’d gone through and changed something developmentally and the sentence or phrasing just didn’t make sense.

Formatting–   $276.95 for print and e-book formatting, e-book cover formatting, and a beta reading copy.

$50 (Additional charge for a 3 business day rush fee) The normal speed is 5-7 business days.

This was much more expensive than I’d anticipated.  I went through Ebooklaunch, but I also was recommended to words-2-kindle and their quote was also pretty reasonable. I will let you know how this turns out.

1 ISBN– $99   (I got a discount through Amazon).

Anime con booth– $100 (I’m going to Otakufest on August 31st)

Decorations/ odds and ends for the booth–

Bookmarks-$50.39 (with the cost of design services on Vistaprint)

Business cards– 200 free business cards through 4over4.com

$35– 500 more business cards on Vista Print with updated information.

$10-Re-design for business card.

Banner- $78.59- Custom pop-up banner for my anime con booth from Vista Print

$20– Banner design

Tablecloth–   $13  for a blue ombre table cloth.  If you want something nice or custom, order a couple months in advance. I ended up running into this problem because the cloth I wanted wouldn’t arrive until 1 month after the event I wanted it for.

Book stands– $28.03  with shipping. I went through a website called DisplayStands4You

 

My first Event-Otakufest

I’m currently working on finishing up my first novella for publication, “Spellbound.”

It just got sent off to the editor this week, and I have a deadline coming up fast. It’s Otakufest on August 31st.

I’ve booked a booth there, and I look forward to bringing coupons for my e-books, business cards, and physical copies of my debut novella to the con.

It will be taking place in Miami, and I hope to see plenty of people there.

You can find more information on Otakufest here:

https://www.otakufest.com/

Hope to see you there!

Weekend Trip to Beppu

Hi everyone. On the long weekend I went over and stayed in Beppu and visited the Hells of Beppu and part of Yufuin. I just wanted to offer some words of advice for traveling there and where I stayed.

I decided to get there on a Saturday, but I had missed the early bus so I arrived after the hot springs closed. I would advise taking the early bus to get there especially if you’re going during November like I did because it gets dark early.

A word of warning the buses to and from the Hells of Beppu much like on Yakushima stop running pretty early and they only run every 30 minutes to an hour depending on where you want to go.

Getting to Beppu or Yufuin is the easy part. There’s a sightseeing train that runs from Kokura to Yufuin although that can be expensive. You can view the details on that here.

From what I saw it can be a bit expensive at roughly 5000-7000 yen each way. You have to reserve your seat in advance for the train and the spots tend to fill up fast.

Your other option if you tend to last minute travel like I do is you can take the bus is 1500-2000 yen each way.

Accommodations can get expensive quickly if you plan last minute. The place I picked is a very old building. It’s a no frills hospital, but like most places in Beppu they have an onsen. It’s called Guest House Matsukiso. The accomodation was about 3000 yen a night plus a 300 yen a night charge for the onsen.

I mostly just got my bearings and relaxed the first night and went to the nearby Kushi Katsu (串カツ) restaurant. Think fried and skewered food. 

Once you’re out and traveling I’d recommend getting up early enough to catch the 8:00am bus so you can explore as much as possible. There’s a bus pass you can get that’s 1600 yen for one day or 2400 yen for two days that will take you the Hells of Beppu and all over Yufuin. The buses can get expensive so it’s well worth it.

If you’re just going to Yufuin you may just want to pay as you go because it’s not as worth while. However, there’s a smaller pass just for the Beppu Hells that’s only 900 yen which is less than the round trip fair of going there and back one time.

Word of Warning to solo travelers (especially other women). Please be extra careful of suspicious people at the Kintetsu Ropeway on the Yufuin route as I had an unpleasant experience being harassed by someone there and had a hard time getting help due to the language barrier and no one stepping in to help. 

That’s all on this trip for now, but I hope to add more later. See you next time.

 

Traveling in Japan

Thankfully, getting around in Japan has been a fairly easy experience overall. However, my first few weeks arriving in Japan involved some trial and error.

While the buses can sometimes be confusing if you don’t know Kanji, having google maps and the data SIM cards they sell at Best Denki and at the airport are very  helpful for getting around.  Most of the bus routes can be viewed on your GPS which helps with the language barrier.

However, my favorite methods of transportation are the trains and the subways because they both typically have multiple language options and notifications for a lot of the different lines including English, Chinese, and Korean.

My favorite resource to use aside from google maps is called Hyperdia. It’s excellent for when you want to save money by taking the local train instead of the expensive Shinkansen and has saved me many times when getting from place to place.

Last but not least, the main websites you may want to check out for information on transportation are the JR website for the train and the Nishitetsu website for the bus.

Please let me know if you have any other questions about transportation in Japan.

Goodbye for now!

 

Japan Here I Come

After spending an immense amount of time learning the difference between skis and catering to sometimes demanding clientele, I decided to apply for my dream job as an ALT abroad. I wanted to go out searching for my next big adventure. My preference was Japan and, after a brief phone interview and a nerve-racking in-person interview, I got a job teaching English in Japan.

I haven’t received my placement yet, so my time has been consisting of trying to learn Japanese and deciding where I want to visit: the hotel where you can sleep in a bookshelf, the array of cat cafes, and an amazing view of the cherry blossoms when they are in bloom. Hopefully, I will have some good news soon. Sometimes I worry if maybe the job isn’t real after all.

For now, I will be trying to have some final adventures in the states while writing and posting some of my fiction work. Goodbye until next time.