Mike’s Comments (group member since Mar 15, 2017)

Mike’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

i agree with all the positive comments from everyone above - thanks to all the Mods of this group, it's a great resource and place to share ideas.

Alex wrote: "Mike wrote: "Alex I'm sure I remember reading on your blog that your epub career is your job now?

If so, you could write off the expense of hiring someone to market the book as tax deductible as ..."

aye fair enough - i'm sure you will get there!

Alex I'm sure I remember reading on your blog that your epub career is your job now?

If so, you could write off the expense of hiring someone to market the book as tax deductible as it's a legitimate business expense.

Just a thought.

yeah I must admit that it was a very odd sensation to send so much money to someone over the internet from a forum for a service that is hard to quantify, but i just got a rebate for something that almost hit the 1k mark, so thought f**k it and went for it. :)

Hi all - i thought I'd just give a quick update on how opening weekend went.

I hired a guy that i know to be a successful self pub fantasy author (my genre is sci fi/fantasy) from the self pub sub reddit to arrange the launch for me after reading his extensive series of blogposts on how to do it, i was convinced he knew his stuff.

http://www.stuartthamanbooks.com/mark...

Here are the numbers - I paid US$1k.

It's steep but the guy comes with a guarantee that if you don't make that back in the first month, he will refund you the difference. Obvs that's a leap of faith.

As of 9am UK time on Monday June 5, I've had 34,720 page reads on Kindle, and 25 book downloads.

My existing book went to number 3 in the relevant sub category and in the top 3k of all kindle books and the latest book opened in the top 100 of the relevant sub category and is now at 88 in that category.

Email communications have been good throughout, with the guy asking relatively little from me to get the ball rolling. I think he does some pre-checks to make sure your book has a decent cover and has been edited etc before he agrees to take you on.

So do i think it was worth it? well, there's still some time left on the service to go, but I am pretty certain that I wouldn't have been able to hit those sorts of numbers unaided.

If you can afford it (and 1k is expensive!!!) then I would say it is definitely worth it.

shared

Chris wrote: "Hi Mike,

Just putting this out there just in case, but I advise having an ad to your first book to your second book, and vice versa. As in, you may want to resubmit your first book with the ad bef..."

thanks Chris, been putting off resubbing first book because it is just such a faff getting the layout right purely add one line but will do it this weekend :)

Ember wrote: "Thanks Nat! I saw a video series about how to have the perfect year releasing books from JA Huss and she gave the advice that an author should release as often as they can. 6 books a year and keep ..."

woweee, that is some serious dedication. Good luck and let us know how it goes!

Sam (Rescue Dog Mom, Writer, Hugger) wrote: "Congratulations and good luck, Mike. Hugs"

thanks Sam :)

Thanks Carole, I'm leaning towards getting it out there sooner rather than later. I'm thinking of putting together a launch package (or more likely, paying someone else to do it for me), will update on what difference it makes this time around vs the first book that i just pushed out without any fanfare, or even a professional cover!

Hi all,

I've got my second book ready and I'm trying to work out the best time to put it out there - should i wait for my first book to come off of its current KU run so I can put the first book on instafreebie to try and drum up interest, or should I just whack my second book out there ASAP because building up my library of published work is what will drive sales?

Any views, as ever, greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Carrie wrote: "Hi! I can't remember where I came across this link, probably Twitter, but thought I'd share it with you. It's a long list of folks offering free reviews.

http://www.tweetyourbooks.com/p/free-......"

Thanks for this - though sadly a lot of the links seem to lead to dead websites :(

So would people say instafreebie is worth it or not? I'm very keen to grow my newsletter list, and trying to work out where best to allocate funding. $20/m doesnt seem like loads if it works....

thanks !

thanks Kay and to everyone else for sharing.

My interview with Amy has been published!

https://miketurnerauthorblog.wordpres...

shared - agree with how awesome that picture is. Rock n'roll!

thanks CL - will look into it!

Hi gang,
I'm looking to give people who join my mailing list a free story as an incentive. Anyone else who does this - how do you deliver the story?
Do you include it in the body of the email? Attach it as a PDF? Provide a link to a website that has the story?

Thanks

had more visits to my site, more sign ups to my mailing list, though not more downloads.

all in all, I'd say this was definitely worthwhile.

Great questions from both of my interviewers by the way. Thanks very much.