Mary Sisson's Blog, page 46

The paperback is up!

The paperback edition is now on sale...although I do confess that i'm a little confused that there's a "used" edition available already at a 70% markup to the normal price. Hmmmkay.....

This 'n' that

I had to take care of some tax stuff today (amazing how much more gratifying fiddly book publishing stuff is when compared to fiddly tax stuff). But I did get the near-final proof of The Weirld paperback--it's got an issue that is so teeny that I actually decided that I would change it and then approve it, sight unseen. (Risky!) Once it's up, I'm immediately going to buy copies to send to the U.S. Copyright Office, so if it's just God-awful I can change it again.

I also started up the Library Thing review copy giveaway--hopefully that will get me some reviews.

What else? I do want to start back in with Trials (and have actually had some good ideas for it), but today was not the day for it. I also don't know how the next week or so will be--I had to start antibiotics because of a root canal, and that can get a little funky. So today I spent some time trying to figure out how best to lay out the large-print edition of The Weirld--I think I'm going to have to basically copy-paste the text from Scribus into the word processor and back into Scribus....

Whoot!

I finished refreshing Trust, and that's been uploaded. Whoo! I have to say, as long as you don't have the problems I did when you convert a file to DOCX, Kindle Create is really easy to use, and I will probably be using it with the next books, since they won't have art.

Speaking of a book that does have art--I downloaded the version of The Weirld that's on sale, and ARGH. I went through a lot of trouble with the HTML editor making it so there wouldn't be spaces between the paragraphs, and lo and behold, there are spaces now. Obviously it's not worth fixing because it will just break itself again, but honestly--highly irritating.

I'm really on top of things

When I set up my free days, I wanted five in a row, but somehow I got the impression that Amazon only gave me four. Well, they did give me five, which means the book is still free today, which I guess is good because I forgot to take down the FREE FREE OMG FREE! line on the Web site until today (oops).

Anyway, no huge shock here, but remove the advertising and the number of books sold plummets. It's funny because I was just telling the older niece that people think the key to selling books is writing a good one, and that's just not true: Marketing leads to sales.

So, that wasn't bad

I got up to #16 in Sword & Sorcery and #104 in Teen & Young Adult!

Again, WAY better than I thought I would be doing with this campaign. Also got a couple of likes on my Facebook page, so that's promising. (Still no clicks on the Amazon campaign even with the higher price--I'm just not getting many impressions from them.)

I went through and finished my first pass fixing the paragraph breaks and italics for Trust. The paper copy I have smells too much like cat pee, though! I'm chucking it after this and will order a new copy when I order copies of The Weirld.

Made the front page!

Just barely, but...whoo! Like I said, I really wasn't expecting any sort of response at all, so I'm inordinately impressed!

This has been strictly due to the Facebook campaign--the Amazon one hasn't received any clicks yet. It also doesn't have many impressions, because my per-click bid was too low, so I've bumped that up for the rest of Monday--we'll see if that helps.

Writers vs. Cats

I started reformatting Trust with Kindle Create, and of course I've got that italics-and-paragraph-breaks problem, so I pulled out an old paper copy to check against. And a certain eau du chat assaulted my nostrils--yes, some member of the household (not me!) decided to use the cabinet I was stashing these things in as a urinal.

I think I can save one copy each of the really old versions of Trang, but I think every copy of Trust (and I had quite a few, with the proofs and whatnot) is going to have to be binned....

Interesting

I'm up to #24 on the Sword & Sorcery list--not quite the front page, but close. I really wasn't expecting for this campaign to have, you know, any impact--the book doesn't have any reviews!  At all! But I guess either I look more respectable now than I did back when I was first shilling Trang, or people just really like the cover! (I just started with the Amazon ad campaign and so far haven't had much response there, but the Facebook campaign is really resembling the first one I did for Trang.)

Anyway, I wasn't really planning on marketing seriously, but now.... I talked about it with my sister, and she basically gave me back the exact same pointers I gave her when she came out with a book, and I realized that, yeah, I can be a lot more efficient now because I know what's worth the effort. I feel like the next step is to get reviews, so I'm going to do a Member Giveaway on Library Thing, since that worked well last time.

If I get good reviews, maybe I'll try for BookBub again? That would entail doing another three months in KDP Select, but I think that would be worth it if I'm in a position to make BookBub work. (It still works, right? I think I read that people are still using it. God I'm out of touch....)

Hm.

So, The Weirld is up to #34 in Sword & Sorcery....

...which is excellent except for the whole "Sword & Sorcery" bit? I mean, I guess I should just roll with it, but I certainly didn't put it in that category--there are no swords in the book at all, and while there's certainly some magic, actual sorcery isn't a big part of it. I guess Atlatl & Metallic Properties as They Relate to Magic just doesn't have quite the same ring to it....

Trang is done

I finished going through Trang and fixing the hard return and italic problems, so I submitted the fancier-looking version to Amazon.

I also felt vain and impulsive and started a Facebook and Amazon ad campaign for the free days of The Weirld. Obviously that's not going to pay for itself unless people get that book for free, then get Trang for free, and then pay for Trust, but I'm hoping it will get the book some reviews and maybe get the algorithms to work for it.