Unpublished Author, How Can I Negotiate?

Why a high five and not a typical handshake?


Remember when we were kids at the lunch table and a Twinkie traded for like two Fruit Rollups? Both kids happily eating the snack they prefer, Moms never the wiser?


True, successful negotiation is teamwork. Everyone gives a little to get something they want, all parties left generally happy. In self-publishing, negotiation skills are a must, and nobody wants a party to feel "shafted." Why? Because "So-and-so screwed me over" travels much faster in the link sharing, social networking universe we live in than the other side of the story.


When will a self-publishing or unpublished author need to negotiate? ALL THE TIME. Blog tours? Usually a quid-pro-quo situation. Advertising on reader blogs? Negotiating is the only way to get a reduced rate.


There are a number of skills an author should use in negotiating. Throw out any ideas of playing hardball. This is about bringing people on your team, and you joining theirs.

1. Be nice and professional, even when the answer is a "No." This is just a counter offer. By being courteous back, you never know when someone will say "Oh, alright." Especially if they think you are walking away. Don't be fake, but being polite makes any offer much sweeter.
2. Give a reasonable offer, not a low-ball. If you don't have much of a marketing budget, that's okay to say so, but don't expect to buy a $50 image ad on a blog that regularly charges (and gets) $300 for the same ad. Now, maybe ask for a $50 text ad, or offer to buy 2 image ads for $250 each. 
3. Only make promises you can keep. Don't say your blog has 100 visitors a day when it only gets 20. Remember how fast bad press runs? It's okay to trade for a future favor, but make sure you are 100% prepared to deliver, or go above and beyond (and most likely inequitable) if things fall through.
4. Expand beyond yourself. Becoming friends and acquaintances with people in other professions, and with other skill sets, you can help people find each other to trade services. It might help you get a discount, or bump you up in the line later on.

Negotiation is about being real with expectations, what you can deliver, and how it will help both of you. Finally, the most important part is to remain mum on the details of a negotiation, unless the other party has given you permission to disclose the terms. A reader blog might not want it widely known it will take two guaranteed ads at a discounted price (there might have been income shortfalls that month). 


"CANCELLED" arriving SEPTEMBER 2011. A robotics engineer asks his business partner to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby.

A ROUND OF WORDS in 80 DAYS

I'm going on a trip.......beginning the Fourth of July


Inspired by A ROUND OF WORDS IN 80 DAYS, I have joined Round 3 and making it my journey to self-publish CANCELLED.


The rules of my trip are simple: I have destinations. These are outlined in my ITINERARY. I must get to each destination BY the date listed. What are those small pictures? Those are my stamps, and my passport will be blog posts on Sunday and Wednesday to update. When I make a destination. BAM! Stamp goes in the post!

Now, no trip starts willy-nilly, you have to pack important documents! To make this work, I need to finish my last 4 chapters of my manuscript this weekend. This means butt-in-seat #wordmongering. But I can do it! ::in case there is a snafu getting travel documents going, I don't start editing until July 17::




What kind of trip would this be without SOUVENIRS? My souvenirs will be freedom to work on my reader website during my journey. I have a number of souvenirs I must collect, such as behind-the-scenes information, recommended reading lists for readers of other indie writers both in genre and out of genre, etc. But my luggage is rather small (see ITINERARY page), so all SOUVENIRS must ship on SEPTEMBER 14 (one week prior to book release), making my reader website ALIVE!


I do need company. Traveling alone is boring. I will be commenting and encouraging others on the list of ROUND 3 participants. I also need a few pre-readers to get my edited copy on AUGUST 18. These pre-readers will have until SEPTEMBER 8 to get me any feedback to put into my final manuscript, eternal appreciation, a thank-you with link in my THANK YOU page, and an invitation to guest chat or blog on my reader site. Plus anything else nice and spiffy I can think of between now and then.


If you are interested in being a pre-reader, please email me at EAWWRITES on gmail. 


It's real, boys and girls. My book is coming. My little heart is pitter-pattering. It's going to be grueling, and I can't do it without a little help from my friends.


"CANCELLED" arriving SEPTEMBER 2011. A robotics engineer asks his business partner to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby.

Self-Published Novel: Marketing Ideas #1 Folded Business Cards

Like most great procrastinators, I'm good at ideas. They swirl and stew and drive me nuts, thoroughly interrupting my current work. Usually, I have to write them down to get some peace and quiet in the noggin. So, without further adieu, here are some of my out-of-the-box marketing ideas I plan to use for my first self-published novel, CANCELLED.

Above is the image of the folded business card from Vistaprint. It is pretty easy to design them online with just about any image you want. You can also design in a different program and upload, but that's WAY too much headache for me. Now, why folded business cards? Easy. One of the downsides of e-books is the lack of a tangible product AND no one gets to flip the book over to read the back unless they are near a computer. So what if you are somewhere and there are potential readers all around you? For me, that's the hair salon, library, coffee shop, book store, toddler Mom meetings, the YMCA, and on and on. I am a very social, talkative person. Now when I tell people I'm a writer and they go "Oooooh, like books?" And I nod, I can give them my card. 

On the front will be my title, name, and personal website for my readers. Inside? Ready? The blurb for the book. That's right! the 4-5 sentences with a hook that would have been on the BACK! And on the back? All of the websites where they can buy it, or a coupon code, or other promotion as I'm running them. 

Now, as with all marketing, it is important to consider cost for effort. This is also called evaluating a channel. By placing a unique website on the back (perhaps I will make one off my reader site like www.eawestwriting.com/buy, this doesn't exist yet so don't try it) I can watch my traffic and click-thrus. So, on that page I would put the links to the various places you can buy my book, but by using the unique website name, I can tell if people came from a business card vs. a "Buy My Book" link that goes to an identical page but located at www.eawestwriting.com/buymybook. 

How much will this cost? Current quotes are $40 for 500 non glossy or $63 for glossy. I'm going to go with glossy, and with shipping that will be roughly $80. Alright. Pricing my book at $2.99, I will make roughly a $2 profit on each book. This means to recoup the cost of producing the business cards, I need to sell 40 books from the 500 cards I give out. Breaking out my sales experience, given that most of these cards will not be cold cards (meaning they are just sitting somewhere for someone to take one, or use one to wad up their chewing gum, etc) but given to qualified prospects (people I have spoken to personally, found out they like my genre of books/own an e-reader) that is not a high threshold at all. 

The uses of these types of business cards is infinite. For a little extra, you can buy the kind that are perforated, where you give a coupon or other information and on the other piece, the reader fills out an email address to join your mailing list. 

What if you are on a tighter budget? Check out the "free designs" where you could maybe do a teaser line and your website. You only pay for shipping, and the back advertises vistaprint.com. 

For cold business cards, ones you would leave out, I would suggest using single sided. On the front, maybe put something to grab someone's attention, and then on the back put the places to buy the book. 

Another promotional item I have thought about since my first novel collection is the Red Ink Collection (Cancelled, Past Due, and Served), buying limited edition pens with the "Red Ink Collection Book #1" etc. as a promotional item. These are pricier and will need to wait until after I start seeing significant sales. For example, I could wait and use these as promotional items when Book #2 comes out, perhaps a contest. I could mail these out with a personal thank-you note from me and the pen in a standard sized envelope. Since I would want the pen to write in red ink, they are a bit pricier, but I found a quote for $0.39 a piece at The Printed Pen Store. It would cost $200 plus shipping for 500 of them, but after the people who bought the book asked for them, I could pass them out to places as well. 

Enough Swag, Other Plans

Marketing is about reaching your intended audience. Most self-published novels do not have a very large marketing budget, until the author sees royalties. Every dollar counts. J.A. Konrath's recently blogged about appearances. His position is that going to conferences etc. doesn't really raise sales. I didn't comment because I planned to address this issue long ago. Traditional author appearances aren't going to work for self-published authors. First, we probably won't be invited, and secondly, we wouldn't want to go, anyway.  

For an appearance to matter, it needs to be where readers are going to be, and be receptive to hear about a new book in their favored genre. If I was writing a sci-fi, then FAN conventions and the like would be where I want to go. Not even as a "featured" person necessarily, but maybe just as another attendee and talk about my book as appropriate. For my genre, my readers are where I go everyday. The grocery store. The playground. I have a new project brewing to compromise on the $.99 issue, a serial story following three college freshman in their first year. Not idealized college, either. The real "I-am-mad-at-you-so-I'm-hogging-the-shower-for-an-hour-when-I-know-you-have-an-eight-o'clock-class-and-mine-is-at-eleven" college experience. Each "episode" will be $.99. I plan to talk to the Student Life Offices of various colleges and see if I can't offer the first episode(s) for free to the student body, perhaps as part of Freshman Orientation. If it's any group of people who can use the Internet efficiently, it's a college student! 


I wish I could talk more about that, but it's still growing as we speak. ;) 


We aren't tied to just bookstores anymore. Think about where you see people use e-readers. Train stations. Airports. Coffee shops (maybe talk to the coffee shop about in exchange for them handing out your business card with a cup of coffee, you will advertise their coffee shop on your other cards?).  Gyms. Another place people forget are doctor and dentist offices (if you can provide reading material for their waiting room, many will take it!). If you write Christian fiction, talk to local churches! Maybe offer to do an e-reader demonstration one week night for the congregation and help them download a sample of your book. The possibilities are endless.... and at that, it's back to actual writing for me :)


CANCELLED arriving September 2011. A robotics engineer asks his business partner to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby.

Self-Published Authors: We're A Smaller Group Than You Think

As a relative newcomer to the fiction writing community, and self-publishing fiction writing community at that, I have made a startling observation: we're small potatoes. That's right. There aren't thousands and thousands of us seeking "professional" author status through self-publishing. By my count, there are probably a few hundred "self-published" blogs/"author platforms" out there and we're all linked together. Even me with my paltry 10 followers. 


Remember that game we played on car trips or to drink more alcohol? The Six-Degrees of Kevin Bacon? Self-publishing is like the two or three degrees of J.A. Konrath/Dean Wesley Smith/Amanda Hocking/ and the other big names. Our blogs are linked. We spend time commenting and linking to each other's blogs. Of course the big names don't really have as much time to comment on others' without running the risk of ticking off other followers for not commenting on their blogs. However, I was pleasantly shocked and honored when Lucy Kevin commented on mine ;)


And I am SO tired of reading that only crap is self-published. That's ridiculous. You want to know what I think is crap? William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Most of the Hemingway crap I had to read. Cold Sassy Tree. And so on, and so on. Then there is crap I changed my mind on. 17-year-old me forced to read Pride and Prejudice? Didn't relate to any of the characters, couldn't really understand or respect the time period. Hated it. Labeled Jane Austen as crap for many, many years. Want to know what changed my mind? Maturity. Oh, and watching the 2005 movie. Yep, THAT one loathed by Colin Firth lovers everywhere. Once I saw the nuts and bolts of the storyline, I was able to read with pleasure every one of Austen's words. 


And you know what, speaking of Austen's times and much earlier, self-publishing is NOT new. First people to invest in a Gutenberg? Pretty sure they didn't have agents. I'm not excusing work that isn't given even a cursory edit. However, I'm not 100% convinced every book I've bought, especially lately, is given a thorough look-through. I'm not talking about typos, but clunky descriptions, characters I can't stand, and pages and pages full of bleh. Yes, bleh is a technical literary critique term ;) 


At the risk of naming names, I am a huge Sophie Kinsella/Madeleine Wickham fan. Even her cheating Lexi in Remember Me? However, one book I couldn't believe was published by her was Twenties Girl. I am even such a die-hard Kinsella fan, I pre-ordered it back when it came out. A few months ago, it was donated to Goodwill. I thought it was slow. So slow, I couldn't even finish it. I tried five different times to read it, but couldn't find anything remotely redeeming about the characters, ghost or no. 


But I'm not Sophie Kinsella's editor or publisher. I am also in the minority of the review opinions for that book. But what if I WAS her editor or publisher and said "Sophie, this isn't going to work. You're going to alienate your readers and jeopardize your illustrious career." My goodness, that would have been horrible for the hundreds and hundreds of people who loved that book! People who maybe had cranky, overbearing relatives that made Sadie endearing to them (I lack such relatives).  


Thank goodness Sophie Kinsella didn't stop writing. I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED Mini-Shopaholic. I mean, I laughed so many times my husband asked me to go read upstairs! Maybe it was because I HAVE a 2-year-old. Thank goodness she doesn't say "Mine" yet, but she knows how to grab candy and put it on the conveyor belt at the grocery store when I'm not looking. And she has grabbed my credit card out of my hand to be the one to swipe it through! They learn so fast...


Here's the point. We can't make blanket statements about self-publishing vs. traditional publishing and the quality of work both produce. It's at the individual work level that critiques should be made. I have read horrible self-published works, and horrible works that were published through other means, including commercial outlets. I've played fantastic independently published video games, and seen commercially sold games riddled with spelling mistakes, bugs, and graphical catastrophes. Are we such a corporate-ocracy that we only believe quality exists when it has a company selling it? If so, then I have a Sham-wow to sell you. It's great, because it's made in Germany.... 

G. P. Ching recently talked about the literary bullying that goes on all the time on her blog So Write. The sad part is everyone has had someone come before them. Even those with contracts to scrutinize and a "marketing department at their disposal," had other writers that acted as inspirations or role model. We should be encouraging each other, not tearing each other down. Together, indie published, self-published, or Big 6 published, all of us are fighting to increase readership of books, period. We're competing against TV, video games, and other forms of entertainment. Not each other. And the sooner we realize that the more books in a given genre there are for a fan of that genre, the longer the reader will stay reading and not doing other leisure activities, the better off we'll be.




"CANCELLED" arriving Late Summer 2011. A robotics engineer asks his business partner to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby.

Self-Published Author: Deadlines, Making a Living, 10-year plan

Going to be close on deadline, but I can do it! Tuesday at midnight is the deadline for my first manuscript. I'm currently sitting at 48,000 words. I have about 20,000 more to go. Then let it simmer, and work on outlining second book.


Which brings me to one of my favorite activities: GENRE SNOOPING. That's right. What are people in my genre writing? What are they pricing it at? What does it read like? I've mentioned Lucy Kevin before in regards to her ebook pricing strategy, and was surprised to realize why I couldn't find a ton of information about her. She doesn't exist. Okay, she does, but her main writing name is Bella Andre. No, I'm not unmasking a superhero, she plainly lists her pseudonyms on her main site. 


Bella Andre is an indie publishing goddess! She has over 16 titles and even better, she's like me! Let's write those modern, contemporary stories about love in the real world! Melodrama? Yuck. Weak females? Double yuck. Super strong females the male must "tame?" Super double yuck. June looks like it's going to be me devouring her entire Lucy Kevin line. It might be the first series I can put in my section of books I have personally read and like for my readers waiting in between my novels (check out my Catering to the Readers post)


So there is hope for my writing style. +1. I next played with the real numbers posted by one of the wonderful brains behind The Writer's Guide to Epublishing, D.D. Scott, and also by YA author Megg Jensen, writer of Anathema. At $2.99, Megg saw sales in the range of 50-150 books per month. D.D. Scott's $2.99 offerings, with a $.99 intro (Bootscootin' Blahniks) sees monthly sales between 200-290 books per month.


Why would I forecast my own writing? After all I have 0 data for my own books. True, but I can set goals. I know I will sell at $2.99 for a royalty of roughly $2.00, to make the math easy and to account for slight variations in royalty calculations between Amazon, Nook, and Smashwords. I currently have a publication schedule of two novels per calendar year. This year is only one, but it's my first year. I have Book #2 of the Red Ink Collection, PAST DUE, slated for March 2012, and Book #3 SERVED which is a sequel to CANCELLED slated for August 2012. 


If I average 100 books per month, per title (yes, some months might see CANCELLED sell 150, but PAST DUE only 57, and vice-versa. Calculations are based on an average, so I can even have good and bad months and not panic, Hitchhiker's style). In 2012, I will make $5,400 on my three novels. That meets my second goal of writing when I began my fiction career: Make $5,000 in one calendar year from my fiction writing. 


What if I do better than that? What if my numbers are higher, say 150 books per novel per month on average for the year? That's $8,100 in 2012. 


The highest I hoped for was to average 200 books per title per month. Again, we're talking averages, so having a few outlier months that are awesome would be enough to pull the average up. This is like big dreaming. That would be a nice $10,800 for 2012. Or 5,400 books sold in the year.


Now here is where the math gets interesting. Once I have more titles, assuming I can keep the average up (which it looks like is possible given D.D. Scott's numbers on her older titles, remember just average, not every book must sell the average number each month), in 2013 I would have 5 novels (no idea what book 4 and 5 are, but I have ideas that could flesh out, too far in advance to think concretely that far. Maybe PAST DUE gets a sequel, maybe it doesn't.) Average of 100 books per month per title (5) = $10,200 for the year. Average of 150 books per month per title = $15,300. Average of 200 books per month per title = $20,400. 


That's moving from intern to entry level hire.


I continued my two books per year production schedule up to 9 novels, or 2015, which is where I think a little burn out might occur. Then I stepped down to 1 novel per year. I calculated out for the next ten years because that is the length of my husband's naval career at the moment. Here's where I'm looking at this as a career path:


2021, ten years in the game. I'm 39 years old. 15 novels in the game. 
100 books average per month per title = 17,800 books $35,600.
150 books average per month per title = 26,700 books $53,400.
200 books average per month per title = 35,600 books $71,200.


Over my ten year career:
At 100 books avg. I would have sold 114,000 books, made $228,000.
At 150 books avg. I would have sold 170,900 books made $341,800.
At 200 books avg. I would have sold 228,000 books and made $456,000


What's The Point? My writing, while keeping me sane, doesn't come without trade-offs. For every 30 minutes of wordmongering, that's 30 minutes I'm not hanging with my family or doing something else. Some things, my writing is way more productive over, like over me playing video games. Other things, like playing with my daughter or playing a family game I wouldn't necessarily put my writing down as more important in comparison. For the record, doing laundry does not override writing time. :)


I've been writing for 4 years (non-fiction articles). I took off considerable time when I became pregnant and had my daughter. About 14 months of maternity leave :) I made $4,000 my first year writing, $2,000 my second (I became pregnant that year after struggling for over a year with fertility issues), and $1100 my third (didn't start writing again until daughter was 6 months old). Last year I claimed a $500 profit, because as she learned to walk, I got busy. Very busy. Now that she's almost 2, there is more time she is independent. 


I have to look at the monetary value of my writing and decide if it matches up with the qualitative value of my life. Does the money I make for the hours I work add to my family's well-being by giving us money to take vacations, by keeping Mommy from feeling restless/worthless, by growing a retirement fund for me to perhaps lessen the financial burden later? I think it does. 


Why forecast 10 years? In ten years, my daughter will be 12. With 15 novels, I could easily take a long hiatus and still see some money come in. There's no telling what life will be like between now and then, or even after that date. I do know most likely my husband will be leaving the Navy and that will be a big transition. That extra money will probably come in handy in reducing the stress between military and civilian job. 


10 years is also a good length of time to plan a career path. No one goes from grunt to manager level in one year. It's important as indie writers we seriously sit down and look at expectations. We're not all going to be Amanda Hocking, J.A. Konrath, and Dean Wesley Smith. In fact, this year, I'm the equivalent of the girl getting the coffee. I'm writing my first novel, and politely talking to those ahead of me already published. Next year, I'll be the new girl in the cubicle farthest from a window, only part-time until a full-time position opens up. :)


But, we're in a growing industry. Who knows? Maybe I sell an average of 300 novels per title in 2012, breaking my highest expectations. Maybe I go from intern to full-time employee, with benefits. It's entirely possible with the double digit growth in ebooks. Of course, that also means more competition. So maybe I won't break an average of 75 books per month per title and spend more time in the windowless corner, still being asked to make the coffee once in awhile. 


I urge all of you to sit down and crunch some numbers. Have a goal. Have a realistic goal (100 books per month), a fantastic goal (150 books per month), and a super-awesome screaming from the top of the mountain goal (200 books per month). Reassess every year. 


For now, my 10 year plan is going in the front of my writing notebook (a three-ring binder with sheet protectors for my goals, current project, and next project). I will see it everyday. And work towards it every time I jump in my role as a writer and publisher.




"CANCELLED" arriving Late Summer 2011. A robotics engineer asks his business partner to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby.

Day 15: Self-Publishing Genres, Marketing, and Who On Earth Is Going to Read My Book?

On Friday, my day 12, I spun-off about a post on BigAl's Books and Friends about the debate continuing between chick-lit and romance genres. Turns out I wasn't the only one moved about the subject. A fellow BigAl's reader, Cookie's Mom, the author of Cookie's Book Club also continued the discussion in defense of the genre. 


After my interesting run-in this weekend with very vocal readers of romance, and the sacred HEA, one of my voices of reason (acquaintance who reads my raw material and keeps me motivated to keep writing, if only just for her) asked me "Why does it even matter?" That's a very good question, because she pointed out if I don't have a publisher telling me I don't quite fit in either genre, it shouldn't matter. But it does. I have to sell my novel to readers in both of these audiences, and try to make sure they don't get pissed off because their expectations were not met by my story.


One of the exercises I completed in preparation for this novel was to make lists of my favorite books, least favorite, and books that influenced me the most. The most eye opening was my least favorites and why. Here's a sample:

• The Scarlett Letter I hate narrative and smack-in-the-face morality.
• Wheel of Time Series Blah, blah in woods, too many characters to keep up with, WAY too much narrative
• House of Night Series  I liked the fist few, but then typos and mistakes took me out of the story and the plot has been dragged on to the point of insanity in the last 3 books. First series I won't finish, and I hung in until Book 6 or 7

After analyzing what I like to read, both the love and the hate, I came up with this statement: "The kind of book that I love to read most in all the world is any genre with a tangible world and characters where love plays a part in an engaging storyline." This may seem like a self-serving exercise, but trust me, for a self-published author, it helps to put yourself in a reader's shoes. Knowing my own "reading statement" let's me stay true to myself and what's in my heart. Anything less will come off as artificial in my writing. 

Now to really get in your novel's readers' shoes: Before I can even think about building a marketing platform, I need to know who my reader is. Try it. Make a list of your reader's life, religious ideas, economic goals, etc. This is what I came up with.

1. Primarily female, potentially male.
2. Experienced in family drama, but feels she has risen above it (whether she actually has or not).
3. Holds a diploma (HS, or college), most importantly she feels sufficiently educated.
4. Seriously thinks about career and family planning.
5. Lives independently.
6. Has had a relationship that resulted in marriage, or nearly did so.
7. Pragmatic or highly compartmentalized religious views.
8. Isn't sure how far she'd go to protect a family member.

Now, thinking about my reader, I don't think she would ever buy into a sappy, happily ever after ending because she doesn't really believe in fairy tales. What she wants is an ending where everyone is going to be okay. And part of this might be the generation I am a part of, Gen X/Y (I'm right on the cusp of them by my birth year). For my mother's generation, marriage was the penultimate happy ending. Ultimate was marriage AND a baby. :) Motherhood was the end all, be all for a woman's life goals.

Oh, how things have changed! I'm a stay at home mother myself and struggle with my identity because my original plan was to be an international jet-setter, corporate lawyer with a boyfriend in every major international city. Granted, I don't want multiple boyfriends NOW, I'm very happy with my husband, but the fact that I ever saw that as a happy existence screams something important. My generation judges love and success in love not just by the result, but also the journey to get there. In other words, a marriage that results from a tumultuous relationship isn't as prized as a couple who have a happy journey and decide to just live with one another. Not happily ever after, but happy for now.  

Writing a novel for self-publication, or indie publication makes it easy for an author to go in too many directions, and end up stuck in one spot. My reader is a sub-set of both the chick-lit and romance genres. I'm going to have to find them and at the same time, warn off readers who probably won't like my book. They will likely be older, more rigid in their ideas of what romance is, or jaded by life experience. Does this mean every person my age will love my book and everyone my mother's age will hate it? No way. My mother better love my book! So that's one. But seriously, no, when making these sweeping generalizations, it's just to keep a focus point for marketing, and shaping my product description. Not to exclude any potential reader.

I'm officially half way finished with my first draft. I am excited. June is my marketing month, and I will be sure to post how I make these points about my genre and reader into real-life marketing endeavors. 

"Imperfect Timing" arriving Fall 2011. Johnathan Michaels, a robotics engineer, jeopardizes his engagement with his business partner when a previous one-night stand surfaces, carrying his child.

Day 10 - Cover Concept Complete and Writing, Writing, Writing

There it is. That's the concept. The photo of the wedding invitation still has the Dreamstime watermark because I haven't 100% chosen the specific wedding invitation I want to use. But the gist is there. I am still toying with the idea of making my own wedding invitation for Johnathan and Alexis, and slapping the cancelled stamp on it. 


I am relieved. I think the cover concept works and once finished, it will be eye catching. Cancelled? What's cancelled? 


Now to get back to writing. Chapter 7, here we go!

"Imperfect Timing" arriving Fall 2011. Johnathan Michaels, a robotics engineer, jeopardizes his engagement with his business partner when a previous one-night stand surfaces, carrying his child.

Day 7 Self-Published Novel Writing Extreme

Sleeping tiger...ready to ROAR!

Technically, Day 7 was yesterday, and I managed 1500 words. Roughly 47% of Chapter 5. In two days, I've clocked 5200 words. This brings me to 8 chapters written out of 24. That means I am a third of the way there! I keep pushing, because as Joe Konrath says, the longer an ebook sits off the market, the more money you lose. 

Every once in awhile the little voice in the back of my mind, Ms. Naysayer, says "This sucks. No one is going to want to read this." I show her the middle finger and smile, in true heavy metal fashion. I know people will like the story because *I* like the story. And, this is my first novel. It's always going to be one of my worst. But, as long as I keep pushing ahead, keep writing and publishing, I have complete control. Nothing says 5 years from now I can't revamp "Imperfect Timing" and re-release it as a second edition.