Both of my new releases have been launched. Vile and Deadly-Go-Round both went live on March 28th. I decided to do a very small ARC for Vile and only reached out to people who left reviews for Origin of Violet and VioleNt. Offering the first five people to sign up a physical paperback copy limited my costs and gave me an easy out for not offering more copies. It’s so expensive to print and ship a book, especially one that’s over 500 pages, like Vile.
Thankfully, Deadly-Go-Round has gotten some interest just from the attractive cover and I’m hoping to get some organic reviews soon. There have been some sales through Amazon and on my website, which is awesome. Despite the thirteen people who signed up for the ARC of Vile, at this moment I only have two reviews, but they’re both five stars and very well written enticing comments which I’m using to market, so fingers crossed I'll have more soon.
I’m still trying to break 100 reviews on any of my books, with Haunted Hunting Camp in the lead at 85. Some of my others like Force of Corruption have more than 45, so one day I will probably reach my intended goal. With these new releases I have a total of 8 books published and I will have 10 or 11 before this year is up.
I’m working on my final book in the Forces of Nature Series, this one is Force of Attraction. Chapter five is in progress and it’s going okay. The tense has been an issue, I can’t decide if I want to make it present or past and as a result it’s been a little mixed which isn’t good. I’ve gone back and changed it twice now, but I’m done with that. For now, I’m just going to write it how it comes out and fix it in editing. If you ask a group of readers their preferences, you’ll get half who love present and half like past better so it’s a no win on that front.
Either way, I’m excited to be working on this story, Force of Attraction will have some big moves in it and it’s a temporary finish of the series making it a total of three books. I’m sticking with trilogy style for now. It just seems like a logical stopping point even though I definitely have more ideas to continue it in the future, I’m going to branch off to the MC series next which will have a few crossover guest appearances from Forces of Nature.
I’m also writing a standalone, The Profit, and another one called VioleNt Night, a Christmas tale starring my favorite stabby FMC, Violet. This year also holds some in person visits to book signings/conferences. This summer in July and August I'll be in person at Feel the Heat Tampa and Flirty in Tampa, both are Romance Conventions. Nerves and apprehension are bugging me about in person appearances, I may have a bit of social anxiety.
There are one or two more online appearances coming up this month, I’ve done two so far and they went well, got a few sales on my website which is ideal as far as sales go. Yes, any sales are awesome, but if you make a sale on your website, you make a bigger profit. Not that it’s huge but here’s a breakdown:
EXAMPLE Title Vile:
Cost to print for author: $7.50
Cost to ship to author: $1.00 (this is the total cost divided by the amount of copies ordered)
Cost of packaging to author: $ .50 (the cost per padded envelope author ships to reader)
Cost of shipping to reader: $6.00 (this is an average for Vile in the USA)
Cost of SWAG author sends to reader: $2.00 (an average)
TOTAL COST TO AUTHOR: $ 17.00
Reader buys book: $25.00
Reader pays shipping: $6.50
TOTAL PAID BY READER: $31.50
TOTAL AUTHOR EARNS: $31.50-$17.00= $14.00* and pays taxes on this amount
*This doesn’t include gas to the post office or the author's time to package and ship the book.
The same book on Amazon earns the author: $8.81 (author owes taxes on this amount)
The author earns approximately $5.19 more per sale of this book on their website than Amazon.
FYI this is the most expensive book this author has at this time and the amounts were rounded up or down for ease of calculation. On some books the difference is only pennies or even a loss, which only makes sense when you consider it as a way to interact with readers and hopefully gain a fan who will purchase other books in the future. None of this is close to making an author self-sustained career, but it’s the first steps towards that goal.
The idea is to build up enough interest and sales to earn enough by sales volume to allow for the author to have a steady income to live on. My personal plan involves writing all the books I want to write and hoping to reach a point where my author expenses are covered and anything over that will be towards my living expenses. Now some authors employ a strategy involving a lot of advertising and expenses up front for audio books and trailers, I can’t do that stuff yet, and ads have not helped increase my sales to an equal level of the expense. I haven’t used any ads since last summer at least and thankfully my sales and page reads have increased at a fairly steady pace, although it’s the pace of a snail.
Each author or future author needs to establish their own goals, preferably before setting out to become an author, it’s a business despite the appearance of a fun hobby. If you want to sell your works of art, you must embrace the business side and be prepared to work hard on this side. There’s no magical potion to get your books to the top of a best seller list and become wealthy with no effort on your part. You may luck out and get a best seller or publishing contract with hard work, but even the smallest author can survive on their books if they put in the effort so don’t think you’ve failed if you don’t become a household name. Not everyone can become Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, and that’s okay! You be you, write what you feel, and don’t give up!
The links to my new books are below along with my website. Please check them out and say hello, even if you don’t buy anything I’d love to hear from you. Readers, even if only of this blog, are the best and any talk we have makes my day!
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Feel the Heat July 12th pre-order form: https://beventi.co/orderform/wcvdxakosr
Flirty in Tampa August 9th Tickets: Www.anytimeauthorpromotionsevents.com
https://books2read.com/Deadly-Go-Round
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2168181030058548/?ref=share