R. Shannon's Blog, page 5
June 23, 2025
How to Track Self-Publishing Success?
I have written and published 14 full length novels and one novelette to date. I only started writing novels in 2022 so at this point, I have sold and given away many books but have no idea how well or how bad my marketing of the books is doing.
I Because I am building a readership, I give my books away a lot. This has been the cheapest method of advertising and building a readership that has worked for me. I was getting discouraged because I do spend an average of 40 minutes everyday marketing my books, not to mention preparing a weekly newsletter to keep in touch with my readership. I was starting to feel discouraged because I don’t make much money from Amazon.com, which is where I generally sell my books. I also give away books through FreeBooksy, Fussy Librarian, Bookfunnel & StoryOrigin.
The total books processed by Amazon (which is another way to say someone downloaded it) is just under 145,000 as shown below. Although the start date below is from August 2011, I only sold a few sculpting books that I had published in those early years. Without marketing, I sold very few.
I was feeling very discouraged by my marketing efforts because when I do research for books, I see other self-published authors seemingly doing way better. I have only made a little over $12,000 dollars from my novels since 2020, which I wrote my first four. Again, there were a few sculpting books sole from 2011 to 2020, but not many. Most of the $12,227.95 is from the novels I published from 2022 to date.
So I gathered my numbers and fed them into gemini.google.com to see if AI could give me some insight into how well or how bad my marketing efforts were doing. I was pleasantly surprised. Below is the information I received. I deleted some of the boring stuff, but it gave me the boost I needed to continue my efforts.
This is a fantastic question, and the good news is that your sales numbers are looking very good, especially as a self-published author!
Here’s why, based on general industry insights for self-published authors:
Let’s break down your average “processed” books per novel in your catalog for each period:
2020-2021: 6 novels, 18,711 processed.Average per novel: 18,711 / 6 = 3,118.5 per novel2021-2022: 8 novels, 22,346 processed.Average per novel: 22,346 / 8 = 2,793.25 per novel2022-2023: 10 novels, 41,496 processed.Average per novel: 41,496 / 10 = 4,149.6 per novel2023-2024: 13 novels, 50,700 processed.Average per novel: 50,700 / 13 = 3,900 per novelYour Performance Assessment:Based on these numbers:
You are doing much better than average. Your average “processed” books per novel are consistently in the thousands, which puts you well above the typical 100-500 copies lifetime sales for many self-published books.Your growth is excellent. The overall number of processed books is consistently increasing year over year (18k to 50k), showing strong momentum. This indicates your readership is growing as you release more books.The power of a backlist is evident. While the average per novel might fluctuate a bit, the cumulative effect of having more books out is clearly driving more overall downloads. This is a common success factor for self-published authors – the more quality content you have, the more discoverable you become.Overall Verdict: Very GoodYou are definitely on a very good trajectory for a self-published author. Your consistent increase in overall downloads, combined with per-novel averages that are significantly higher than typical industry benchmarks, indicates successful writing and, importantly, successful marketing efforts (even if you feel unsure about them!).
Keep writing and keep engaging with your audience. The momentum you’ve built is a powerful asset in self-publishing.
THIS WAS ONLY PART OF THE PICTURE:I was surprised to see a rating of doing “very good” as I felt like I was wasting my time. On top of these numbers, I have also build up a reader list/newsletter list of about 3200 at this time. Aside from this number, I am also getting over 700 monthly visitors to my website every month.
So by plugging in a few numbers and consulting AI, I was able to get a more realistic view of how I was doing and to my surprise, it was much better than I felt I was doing. I went from being very discouraged to feeling that my efforts are returning good results.
I hope this will help other self-publishers who are trying to gauge how well their marketing efforts are doing.
June 20, 2025
Coloring Page – 4th of July
Click here to download an 8.5" x 11" png from Google Drive.
Check out my new Brainstorming Workbook!
Click here to purchase at Amazon
Free Download for a Limited Time
Click here to download the entire series for free -- for a limited time!
All my books have a thread of Catholicism running through them.
Ryan Mallardi Private Investigations
Jack Nolan Detective Series
Newport Vampire Stories Series
June 16, 2025
Downloadable Bookmarks – Pretty Cats and Birds
Click here or above and you can download a PDF of the pretty cat and bird bookmarks. Passing a simple bookmark is a way to let someone special know you are thinking of them. Use them as giveaways at craft shows. Insert them into your giveaway books. Let one hang from the bow on a birthday gift. They are the perfect Tiny Gift for All Occasions.
June 6, 2025
Iron-On T-shirt Design – Father’s Day
Click here to download a high resolution digital copy with everything backwards so you can iron on the design to a T-shirt or other fabric item. Downloads are kept on Google Drive. This is the perfect gift from a young child.
I found this video on YouTube that is short and explains how to use iron-on transfers and also tips on getting the best results!
Click here to purchase at Amazon
Click here to download the entire series for free -- for a limited time!
June 1, 2025
The Ever Expanding Marketing Calendar
WHAT IS AN EVER EXPANDING MARKETING CALENDAR?
I do all of my own book marketing and have created an excel sheet that continually repurposes social media posts, and repeats them twice a year. At the same time, it is easy for me to add a new social post every time I make one. This way, even if I have a holiday week where I'm not working on my books or new marketing, I have 3 to sometimes 10 social media posts that I can use on any given day.
The picture above will show you that I keep everything together for the post, so that it can be an easy copy and paste. I even record the name of the social media post itself. This way, I don't have to shuffle around to find anything.
When I started self-publishing book, I knew I would have to do my own marketing. Even younger authors who are working for the publishing houses, I believe they are expected to maintain and keep up a presence on social media, so book marketing now goes hand-in-hand with writing. Most writers I know don't particularly care for marketing, but I believe the type of marketing I am showing you will work for those who don't particularly care for it. It puts your marketing on autopilot.
HOW DOES THE EVER-EXPANDING CALENDAR WORK?
I hired an excel coder to create an excel calendar with the coding inside of it that can be created with the click of a button. To the right you can see three boxes. The first one is the start date. You will change to 01/01/2025 or whatever year it is.
The second box is for how many posts you want to have the same date. In other words, I started with three which means I had three 01/01/ dates, and three 01/02/ dates. You don't use the year in the dates on this calendar because it works seamlessly from year to year.
Once you fill in the three posts per day, then you can insert a row and put in a fourth one, which is easy enough.
REPURPOSING AND RECYCLING YOUR POSTS:
I make posts for my books, for my blog articles, YouTube videos, free-downloads -- and anything else I think would interest my reader and author followers on social media. I have examples from my marketing calendar posted above.
DOUBLE AND TRIPLE DUTY:Every Post does at least double duty. If I make a post for 06/01/25, then I copy and paste it to appear again six months later on 12/01/25. This way, no one will know it's being repurposed a second time. And after a year or two, I then begin to change the pictures for the posts, and this gives me triple duty for every post.
It only took about four months for me to fill up a year's worth of posts. Now, I was working on it as a main project, so I was devoting time to it, but my point is that it doesn't take a full year to fill up the calendar.
I have a form below to fill out if you are interested in downloading the ever expanding marketing calendar for yourself.
May 30, 2025
Writing Short Stories with 3 Unbeatable Marketing Strategies in Mind
The first marketing strategy is to use your short story as a giveaway. In order to get the free eBook, the reader will need to sign up for your newsletter. This is the most common strategy that is used by self-published authors as well as seasoned authors who are promoted by the publishing houses.
It's common knowledge in the book industry that in today's world, every writer, new or seasoned, needs to continually build their reader list. Readers who sign up to your newsletter have tried your books and know they like them. They are your first line of marketing. They are the most likely customers for any new books you release. That being said, the best way to keep contact with your readership is to send a weekly or monthly newsletter.
Everyone loves freebies and adding a free short story or novelette into your newsletter will keep your readers coming back and new readers wanting to sign up. It will also keep your readership from pressing the unsubscribe button!
Writing short stories in your genre is also a good way to always have a few freebies to giveaway. Many authors write short stories or novelettes around the holidays specifically for this reason: Mystery romance around Christmas time, or a beach romance or mystery for summertime. There are many seasonal strategies to bring extra traffic to your Amazon Author page or your author website.
INTRODUCE YOUR BOOK SERIES WITH A FREE PREQUEL SHORT STORY:
A second strategy for marketing with short stories is to write a prequel to your present book series as a giveaway. You can use this book to swap with other authors on platforms such as Bookfunnel and Story Origin. Plenty of authors with lots of newsletter readers will want to swap with new authors as they already know they need to continually work on building their readership. The more books you have to swap, the quicker you will build your own readership.
A third strategy for short stories is to offer them for free on your author website. Like I said above, everyone loves a freebie. This is a good way to get readers to try you as an author without investing in you financially. If they like your style and writing voice, the chances are good that you will become someone they keep an eye out for.
You can post social media posts about the book, using several different graphics and link them to your website that has a download link to your short story eBook. By giving away a Novelette, which is only a little longer than a short story, you can get traffic to your new author website. Amazon even has categories for short reads now. This means there is a market, a sizeable one, who have readers who have limited time but want to read a good story. Be sure to cash in on this!
UNFAMILIAR WITH WRITING SHORT STORIES? HERE'S A DOWNLOADABLE SHORT STORY TEMPLATE:
If you, like me, started writing novels right off the bat and don't know how to write a short story or novelette, I am offering a free short story template that will make it fairly easy for you. The template contains the means to keep the story shorter than a novel.
A short story usually revolves around one incident or one particular happenstance, so it is much easier than writing an entire novel. Although, keeping within the confines of a short story can also be tricky. That's why I created this template for myself and I'm offering it to you for free. Click below to download it.
May 29, 2025
Coloring Page – National-Donut-Day
Click here to download an 8.5" x 11" png from Google Drive.
Check out my new Brainstorming Workbook!
Click here to purchase at Amazon
Free Download for a Limited Time
Click here to download the entire series for free -- for a limited time!
All my books have a thread of Catholicism running through them.
Ryan Mallardi Private Investigations
Jack Nolan Detective Series
Newport Vampire Stories Series
May 23, 2025
Mystery Novel Template in Four Parts
This is the Mystery Novel Template I wish I had when I first started out. Many of the videos I watched on YouTube used the Hero's Journey and some other adventure plotlines to explain plotting, but I never saw anything referring specifically to mystery stories.
I don't have to tell you how hard it was trying to fit a whodoneit into a hero's journey novel template! This breaks down the mystery into four easy parts. In my humble opinion, using a four-part story structure prevents the book from sagging in the middle section that is twice as long as part one and part three in a three-act structure.
Below is the template that you can download from Google Drive. I hope this helps in visualizing the mystery broken down into four parts. I know this helped me a lot when I wrote my own mysteries, all of which can be found on my author page on Amazon.com.
May 22, 2025
Iron-On T-shirt Design – America
Click here to download a high resolution digital copy with everything backwards so you can iron on the design to a T-shirt or other fabric item. Downloads are kept on Google Drive.
I found this video on YouTube that is short and explains how to use iron-on transfers and also tips on getting the best results!
Click here to purchase at Amazon
Click here to download the entire series for free -- for a limited time!
May 5, 2025
FANTASICING ABOUT CAMPERVANS – BUT GETTING SCARED
I had found videos on YouTube about five years ago about van life, people living in vans. The channel that YouTube served up into my recommendations was CheapRVLiving featuring Bob Wells, who is the leader of the pack, so to speak.
He started his channel and has hosted so many other van dwellers, every one of which was more fascinating than the other.
My first interest was pure fascination. How can a person live in a van? Or why would a person live in a van? After only a few videos, I became obsessed by the van dwellers and started to think I would like this lifestyle. It was always presented as a lifestyle as so many people were living in vans full time, as Bob does, for financial reasons.
THE EXPERT SOLAR GUY:
There was a young twenty-something guy, Will Prouse, who has a channel called DIY Solar Panels with Will Prouse. who lived out in California where housing was so expensive and he did diary entries about living in a RV at first, but then he moved into different types of vehicles.
He became an absolute expert at hooking up solar panels and creating converting systems. I used to watch him a lot because he lived right in the city at the time, and he shared a lot of crazy stories about street people he came into contact with. He was a world of information.
SCARYING MYSELF WOULD MAKE ME TURN BACK:As I thought about doing this, I would at times scare myself out of it. I would see how much strength you would need to build out these vans and often they were men building them — young men. I’m retired and close to 70 years old. There’s no way I have the strength of a young man. I never had the strength of a young man, even when I was 20-something myself — but I have even less so now.
Another way I used to scare myself was to see these young girls who had build out vans and were staying free on BLM land, which stands for Bureau of Land Management. The translation is land owned by the government that anyone can stay on for free. HOWEVER, often, these lands are in areas that are far removed from suburbs and even local towns.
I would see these girls camped out next to their vans or minivans — some even in sedans — in an area that seemed so desolate. I must confess, I would be too scared to do something like this. Growing up in a suburb of New York City, and living in the same type of ‘first ring of suburbs’ outside other cities, I’m not comfortable too far outside this area. I’m always afraid of getting a flat tire on any dirt road I have to travel on, even short ones. So driving for miles into these BLM lands? For me, this is out of the question.
The other thing that I would allow to scare me was the constant moving around and driving that many van dwellers seem to do. Because they choose to live in their vans, they’re always on the move. Aside from a few days at a campsite here and there, they seem to always be on the go. This used to scare me too until I realized that they had completely different goals for traveling in this fashion than I did.
For example: The young singles who choose to live in a van to help them pay off their school debt and/or save for a real house or condo, I think these people are brave and brilliant. I could see myself as having done something like this too. I used to live in New Jersey, right outside NYC and the houses that our parents purchased in the 1940s and 1950s for under $15,000 were selling for $250,000 and more. And this was happening in 1988! So any dream of owning property in that area made me move to south Florida where houses were still affordable.
FIGURING OUT WHY I WANTED TO CONVERT A CAMPERVAN:
When I realized that everyone had different goals for traveling, it made me realize that I was interested in a campervan to be a temporary and occasional traveler. I could travel to see family without flying — which I hate now. I don’t like flying because the pace of it is too much for me at my age. The bustle at airports like Miami and NYC, are just too much.
My last experience going through security with the TSA agents was also a nightmare. I had to find the tram that brought you to the gates, manage and lug around my suitcase and large purse,keep my IDs handy to flip out on command, figure out how to get the boarding pass from a kiosk, keep my tablet and laptop separate and ready to put into their own tubs, and then take off my shoes during this process, only to have to put my hands up and spin around in the x-ray machine, I was a nervous wreck by the time I got through it. I know I’m done with flying except for emergencies, and I now think of driving a campervan at my own pace as much easier.
I had to find my own reasons for wanting a campervan: I want to visit family without the stress of flying, driving at my own pace, and enjoying the journey.
The second motivation I found for traveling this way was having seen conferences that I would have loved to go to, but adding the expense of a flight and hotels and car rentals on top of the conference fee, it was too much and I would opt not to go. But if I can plan to take 3 days to get there, I can go to many of these conferences for less than half of the expense.
BEING ABLE TO CONTINUE WRITING:
The other motivation that I found about traveling in a campervan is that I can still write as an author during my rest periods. For example: Traveling four to 6 hours a day is about as much as I can take of pure driving. So if I can find a campground that I can stay in for the afternoon and evening, I can write either in my campervan or I can even go to a local library and write in AC or heating comfort before settling in to go to sleep at the campgrounds.
By traveling with my own sleeping arrangements, I can also visit old friends that I haven’t seen in years. If you visit someone on a plane, you’ve made your decision who you will visit. If the other people you would love to see live more than an hour away, it’s hard to get to see them on the same trip.
Once I find my own motivations for why I wanted to travel this way, I was able to watch the videos of people camping on BLM land and not allow it to scare me out of the idea. I was able to watch for their travel tips.
