One Tough Business

After finally finishing and posting my latest novel to Amazon and Barnes and Noble last week, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  The revisions alone took me roughly twelve months to complete.  It's not like it is a long book, either, I'm just a bit on the slow side...

But in any case, Natalia is finally out there!  To let the world know, I posted about it on my personal Facebook page, my author page, the Author's on the Cheap FB page, I tweeted it, created a thread to announce it on the Kindle Boards forum, blogged about it here, updated my website, listed it on Goodreads, added it to some Goodreads group bookshelves, etc., etc., etc.  I also started sending out review requests to some of the book blogs.

So how is it going so far, you ask?  With all of this feverish promotion?  Well, in six days I have now sold three copies.  One to my brother-in-law (thanks Dan!), one to the husband of an old college friend (thanks Andy!), and one to a friend and fellow indie writer (thanks Janice!).

Whew....  That means I've made six dollars in six days, but I also bought a copy myself, so subtract the dollar that cost me and I'm at less than a dollar a day.  Not to bemoan the fact.  I'm proud of the book, and thrilled that I finished it to my satisfaction, but I just thought I'd make a comment about how tough a business this can really be.

When I finished my first book, No Cure for the Broken Hearted, in December 2010, it seems that it was quite a bit easier to get noticed.  I think that has to do with the flood of self-published titles brought on by the stories of success that some authors have had.

Two years ago I was able to contact numerous book blogs and they were often happy to review my book.  This time around I'm finding that many of the blogs are so swamped with requests that they no longer accept self-published titles.  Some don't accept submissions at all.

So what is a budding (not-so-young) author to do at this point?  To be honest, I'm not really sure.  I'll keep on trying to promote it and hope for the best.  I think that once a few people start reading it, good word of mouth might help it move along.  That's what I'll tell myself anyway.  All it takes is one enthusiastic reader to get the ball rolling...