New Book Release: 3 Things I Wish I Had Done

We all have regrets. This post is not about that. I do NOT regret publishing CANCELLED one bit. The feedback has been great, though I know the less-than-stellar feedback is going to have its own season. This is about sharing the knowledge I learned from my two-weeks of being a published author and what I wish I could have done differently for a better release.

1. I Wish I Had Trusted My Resolve

Book reviewers schedule month in advance. They have to. It takes so much work to volunteer to review book, even free ones. There's time invested in reading, writing the review, uploading the review, running the blog, and promoting the post. For this alone, even if I ever get a bad review, I will NEVER be anything less than eternally grateful to anyone who takes the time to review my book.

I didn't 100% trust myself that I would make my deadline. I wish I had. If I had known without a doubt I was going to publish in September, I would have scheduled my book reviews in August to make October. Right now I'm struggling to get dates in October and a few popular places can't review my book until January! But I'm turning that lemon into lemonade by promising to have a sneak peek at my next book for those reviews (I'm releasing PAST DUE in February). Here's the thing, I could have even scheduled my blog tour a month past my release date, giving myself a month cushion. Now I know I'm a writer that can push myself to kick a deadline's butt; I will be less fearful about making commitments.

Crippling Perfectionism Is Killing Me

I have a perfectionist streak a mile and a half long. For those with this same problem, you're nodding your heads in sympathy. For those of you without a perfectionist streak, you're raising your eyebrows and thinking "But that's a good thing!"


No. No it's not. There is a very big difference between working towards your best and settling only for perfection. The later is next to impossible to achieve, so it derails your best plans. When you CAN'T be perfect, you quit. It really doesn't help when you've been blessed with mental abilities higher than the average person in the same way some people are blessed with athletic skills higher than the average person. If I could play football as well as I can problem-solve, memorize, and complete academic work, and if I was male, I would be a millionaire. 


Here's two examples from the last two days. See the picture above? I created the gold sticker on the right side. I *almost* squashed it completely. To me, it looks awful because it's NOT perfect. See how the "e" in AVAILABLE is just a little too shadowy? Yes, I know, I'm being silly...now. Thankfully, I had a friend over just as I finished it, right before I trashed it completely in frustration. She saw it and said "Girl, that looks like a sticker on a print book. It looks good!" completely unprompted. This made me do a double-take. Maybe I was holding myself to a slightly impossible standard, especially given the fact I have never taken or studied graphic design (on my to-do list).


Another example is I was going through the first three chapters that are extremely polished. I was working on them to put them up on Scribd with the new picture up there as a sample for readers 1 month out from my publishing date. I'm STILL finding not really errors, but places to improve the writing. I'm thinking this is never going to end. I lost my patience last night and my husband was next to me thinking something was truly wrong. I let it out, how I kept finding things to change and improve and he told me I had to stop. That if I didn't let them go I'd never finish editing the rest. 


First book, Elizabeth, not last book. 


On top of all of this stress, my children are both home and we're moving in exactly two weeks from today. In 14 days I will lose about 6 days to travelling up to CT and unpacking. A week. That means I really NEED to finish editing in two weeks, 22 chapters. 


Okay enough blog posting, I need to get to work. I'm sorry if I sound offensive to anyone, it isn't meant so. This isn't false humility making light of a strength into a weakness. My strength is my intelligence, and I am very thankful for those skills. But with it came a psychological hiccough. I love to procrastinate to the last minute and this is shameful to admit why.... I love to procrastinate so that when I finish at the last minute, I can feel proud of being faster than most other people even if the work isn't perfect. You see, one way perfectionists overcome the fear of making a mistake is to artificially create a situation where mistakes are acceptable, such as a last minute project. 


You can even see it in my manuscript writing. I dragged my feet, dragged my feet until I was LATE, then jammed out 18,000 words in 3 days. What is that? I can't even say that I wish I didn't have these issues, as I said, they are a package deal with my creativity and knowledge. But just like others work with other weaknesses, these are mine that plague me and I am just feeling more aggravated about them than usual with this whole editing process. 

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

RING THE ALARM! #ROW80 ROUND 3 HALFWAY POINT

I feel like a little kid, running around shouting "WWEEEEEEWOOOOOOOO WWWEEEEEEEWOOOOO." :) I can't believe we're half way to the end of the A Round of Words in 80 Days Round 3 (#ROW80). I am so very thankful for the program of like-minded authors, with very different goals, urging and encouraging each other through blogs, tweets, and other positive messages.


I have been away for about two weeks because my family's move to Connecticut from South Carolina just jumped up the timetable by 2 months! No worries, I'm not letting it derail me! :)


So where am I in regards to publishing my first novel, CANCELLED? Am I about half-way there? Yes. Yes, I think so. 


Whoa. That's pretty cool, isn't it? I did have a few changes to the itinerary along the way. I am still editing, but it's finally going really well. I now have two chapters I'm very proud of, and now that I know what that takes, it will be easier with the other 26. My reader website has most of the major components I wanted, and just need the outlines filled in. 


How am I still going to make it by September 22? Well, one time saver is I am formatting for an e book as I edit, stripping each chapter of all formatting before pasting it into the final document. Another is rather than give my pre-readers a month to read, I'll just give them the book when it comes out. That way they can leave a review on Amazon etc. if they so choose. 


There is still a big unknown and that is my move to Connecticut. I will lose regular Internet on September 2, and probably won't regain it until the middle of September. Yikes! I am going to need to plan around that, but I can do it. I'm hoping to make a final print of the manuscript for a last look for typos and the like. That will be very good to do, unplugged. :)


What about you? How is your mid-point in the #ROW80 process going?


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


Other FANTASTIC A ROUND OF WORDS IN 80 DAYS PARTICIPANTS! Check out their blogs and leave them some encouragement!

Self-Published Author: Making Tough Calls Like Moving a Publishing Date

Self-publishing is all about you. You the author; you the publisher; you the marketer. When the tough calls come, the pressure and decision stops with you. This is the predicament I find myself in, trying to publish my first book.


My husband is in the military and we have two children. My oldest is my super-stepson and he lives with us. Unfortunately, the reason he lives with us is because the other home is not very stable at the moment. Poor kiddo has seen too much. He is starting the 6th grade, and originally our move this year from Charleston, SC to Groton, CT was going to happen in October after he finished a 9 weeks here. Well, Navy housing completely let us down, and we have to rent out in town. I didn't want to risk waiting until the end of October for something decent to be on the market, and keep my oldest out of school for 2-3 weeks while we found something and moved in. So, I jetted up last weekend to CT to house hunt, and the hunt was fruitful.


We have the perfect house, and I love the little town and schools. We're going to live in Niantic, CT. The downside is me and the kids are moving Labor Day weekend now, and my husband can't follow us until the middle of October. Yep. Me, alone, with the kids, moving 900 miles. Good news is the Navy moves us, but I'm not 100% confident in them putting the bed back together, me hooking up the washer and dryer, etc. Other good news is my mother is coming with to help and just flying home to Virginia after staying with us a week or so. We're picking her up on the drive up. 


But that's all personal life stuff. The real question is how will this affect my publishing schedule. I admit, I was tempted to just move my publishing date to October. That's the easy answer, right? But let's think about this. I have a few irons in the fire that this will mess up. First, I gave my word to an editor with a small indie press that I would be published by the end of September so that I could recommend his author's book for October. If I publish in October too, then it becomes a competition thing. This relationship is important to me, too, and I want to be as good as my word. Second, my poor cover artist is waiting in the wings to finish the POD cover. She just needs a final page count. I can't get that to her until I format for the print book, and I can't format for the print book until I format for the ebook. 


And this is the big issue. I need to publish in September to get my writing career rolling. This is my first book. That's all. Not my last book, my first of many. I just need to get it out there, take my punches, and work on Book 2. I am getting caught up in this idea of perfect, perfect, perfect. I am human, far from perfect, last time I checked. This move is a bigger burden financially than we expected since we have to rent out our Charleston house. I would help my family out a great deal just by bringing in an extra $100-$200 a month. That's what I wanted when I started this, and then my eyes got bigger and bigger the more I learned about others' successes. You know, it's great that others sell hundreds, or even thousands of their books. I hope one day to have that success. But for me, I need to remember, even if it means telling myself over and over again, I only need small success. Yep. Small success for each book and keep writing. That's all.


So I'm going to keep pushing myself to publish by September 22. I'm not going to take the easy excuse out and miss my deadline. That isn't how a professional behaves. A professional keeps her head down, plugging away, even if it doesn't look like she'll make the deadline. A professional keeps working to deliver even if the deadline comes and goes, because that's what she said she would deliver. And I want to be that professional author.


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

Making Up Time #ROW80

I'm NOT as behind as I thought I was!


I know I'm a day late in checking in and I missed two check ins this last week. I had dental work go awry (way too much pain) and traveled to Virginia Beach to visit family. I'm still in Virginia until next Sunday. 


In my race to publish by September 22, I was late out of the starting block. My manuscript was 9 days late. It was a relief to finish that first draft, but it was a little demoralizing to begin off pace. Now, that said, the race is just a metaphor. If CANCELLED is not the absolute best book I can put out at this moment in time and 9/22 rolls around, I will delay the release. Period. I will not publish a book I think is below my standards just to make an arbitrary publishing date. That said, it won't be good to miss that deadline as I will have various marketing plans in place around that date.


Today, I checked my progress against where I had hoped to be. I set aside roughly 1 day per chapter for first round edits. The overhaul. And believe me, it has been an overhaul. I've cut entire chapters, killed anything extra that isn't necessary, and struck anywhere I jumped into another character's head who isn't the POV character for the chapter. I can edit 2-3 chapters per day, I've learned. After that, I notice I"m not making as many red markings. Not because the mistake aren't there, but because I'm not seeing them. I should be on chapter 14 by today, and I'm on chapter 8. NOT terrible. 


I've narrowed a 9 day lag behind the schedule to a 4-5 day lag!!!!! 


I am also working on an awesome marketing avenue for indie authors, but I can't say anything more right now until I get a little more clarification. 

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


Check out some of my fellow A Round of Words in 80 Days participants and their awesome blogs!

#ROW80 #6 Chug-a-chug-a-choo-choo!

"I think I can. I think I can. I think I can."


Okay' here's the recap:


I took Sunday and Monday OFF. Yep. I needed a break from work. And my husband suddenly started pitching in around the house. The man mowed the lawn, cleaned up our bedroom, tidied our bathroom, and made our kitchen sparkle. 


On Tuesday, wife guilt put housework first. I managed to wash and fold three loads of laundry, scrubbed our bathroom and the other upstairs bathroom clean, and kept the kitchen sparkling. Today, I am meeting a friend from out of town and we are hitting the local water park with my daughter. 


However, I am okay. My #ROW80 goals are not daily goals but destinations. I like spontaneity too much for daily word count goals, but I might try a weekly total for Round 4. 

• I began learning how to format my word doc for ebook conversion. 
• I am up to Chapter 4 glance editing, and middle of Chapter 3 for in-depth, over haul revising. I need to be up to Chapter 10 by NEXT Wednesday.
• I am doing very well at balancing my writing work with real-life. This post is a case in point. I made sure to make time for it this morning even though I have a jam-packed day ahead of me. 

I wrote down all of my deadlines in my planner yesterday and felt a little daunted. The path from today to publishing at the end of September is a very steep climb. I felt overwhelmed. However, I simply put down my planner and worked on housework a bit, thinking. Yes, it is still a great deal of work to get done. However, as long as I keep plugging away at it, it will get done. It' the whole "I think I can, I think I can." Staying positive is very important, as negative thoughts are crippling. 


I can't worry about pre-readers until I get my second draft polished. I am VERY afraid of reader reception. I am VERY afraid my writing is horrible, and I will be the last to know. However, I suspect every author feels that way, and if they don't, they probably shouldn't be writing anymore. I don't mean it paralyzes every writer, it shouldn't. But we should all care about he quality of our writing, to a degree, even if you've been validated by millions of sales. 


So I'm also working hard to not let those fears build up in my head. I hope to publish Chapter 2 (my new Chapter 1) as a #SampleSunday this week, and we'll see what happens. 


"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.

Take That Tuesday! Writing, Cleaning, and Thankful

It is inherent in the human condition that we complain. No one can be Little Miss Sunshine all of the time. I don't know why it is easier to count up our miseries rather than count up our blessings (not necessarily religiously provided, just good things in general). 



I am a very big culprit of this myself. I am SO very lucky. My husband makes enough that I get to stay home with my daughter and stepson when he's here for school. I HATE housecleaning, I mean hate it. I have a completely irrational attitude that I am above it. Yep. I'm vain like that. I have a college degree, why should *I* clean toilets? Of course, I can't throw it on my husband with that argument. Man has a Master's. Damn. I never thought of it that way...


Nevermind. The point is I hate to clean, but I do it. I am trying to get better at cleaning, I have a list of items that must be done daily vs. weekly. And today's experiment involves #wordmongering. 


Today, I will #wordmonger for the 30 minutes, and then do a cleaning task(s) in the other 30 minutes of the hour. I know, great idea, huh?


9:00-9:30 #wordmongering           9:30-10 Start laundry, load dishwasher
10-10:30 #wordmongering            10:30-11 Swap laundry, sweep kitchen, bedroom
11:00-11:30 #wordmongering        11:30-12 Lunch, put daughter down for nap, fold 1 load
Break
1:00-1:30 #wordmongering            1:30-2:00 Fold next load of laundry
2-2:30   #wordmongering               2:30-3:00 Tidy up living room (my table), start pasta salad


If the list is accomplished, I should have about 5,000 words to show for it, a cleaner house, and I get to play an hour of Rune Factory :)


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

Professional Author Photos!!

Today was one of those days where I love that I am a writer. A good friend of mine, and absolute genius behind the camera lens, Kristen Channel played in Downtown Summerville and at the Stony Landing House to get my author photos! If you live in the Charleston area, I HIGHLY recommend you hire her for your author photos.


Below is just an awesome sampling:


After a few wardrobe issues, I finally settled on a simple black top and gray slacks. Those shoes killed my feet! So no one can say I don't suffer for my art! :)

We started at 7:30 in the morning and were finished by 9. The temperature in balmy South Carolina raised from 80 degrees to the low 90s by the time we were done. Don't ask me how my hair held up, I haven't a clue!

I feel like a real writer now that I have professional photos to stick in my "media kit"/ promote my books with! Kristen was great, letting me make funny poses and ridiculous faces to help loosen up. It was tough to try to remember "suck in the Mommy pouch, neck long, chin down, SMIZE, keep eyes open, don't be just straight up and down, etc. But we did it, and it was not just a great morning with NO kids, but a great morning of feeling like a beautiful woman again.


"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.

I Want to Self-Publish Because of the Cerulean Sweater

I have not read The Devil Wear Prada but I've read Everyone Worth Knowing by Laura Wesiburger. I tried recently to get through Last Night at Chateau Marmont, but it wasn't a good time for me reading-wise, I was more focused on writing energies. Okay, I have no idea if this scene is in the book, but I loved it in the movie version with Meryl Streep. The famous cerulean sweater.

In the movie scene, Meryl Streep's character as the editor-in-chief of New York's hottest fashion magazine, nay, bible, informs Anne Hathaway's character that she didn't choose that sweater, but a fashion line two seasons ago featured cerulean as a color. Then the next season other designers featured cerulean in their collections and that made it's way down the fashion lines to the bargain-bin sweater she was now wearing. 


Here's why I'm self-publishing: I want to be the person putting out the new cerulean line two seasons before everyone else wears it. Come again? Elizabeth, you're writing a book not designing clothes. I know that. My point is that I know my story isn't typical. I don't want to be typical. Craft wise, yes we should all be well-read in our genre and know the rules. Then break them. If you are writing a book just like another story already published, you're not going to make it out of the bargain bin. 


I know there will be readers who are annoyed my ending isn't perfect and I follow the hero's trip down Cupid's Path, and not his fiancée or the mother of his baby. And I do get flashes of scenes from the women's point-of-views. Such as Alexis calling her sorority sister from undergrad and talking about wedding dresses. You want to know what Johnathan's concerns about the wedding dress is? Is it in budget? Yes? Okay, then I can't wait to see you in it on our wedding day. That's it. He doesn't care about the fabrics used, the length, the line of the skirt. But if this was a traditional chick-lit, I would absolutely throw in a gushy, trying on the wedding dress scene. Shoot, chick-lit Hall-of-Famer Becky Bloomwood (Kinsella's Shopaholic) has TWO wedding dresses, and the drama of choosing between the two lasted nearly the entire novel! 


But so much about the publishing world is about what other books is your book like? As if your book must be similar in details, with just minor permutations or the silly, ignorant reader won't know what to do. In my opinion, there is wearable couture, and then there is the ready-to-wear lines. Wearable couture? Dan Brown's conspiracy thriller making secret societies cool and stuffy academia suddenly equips the hero physically and mentally for a life-or-death chase across countries, with no military involved. A spy type thriller with no military? And you're replacing the Establishment with the Vatican? Stephenie Meyer's vegetarian vampires. Vegetarian vampires? Whoever heard of a friendly vampire? Even Rice's Louis killed. 


With indie publishing, there aren't editors deciding which plot lines and story constructs are hot at the moment. I'm not arguing we don't need editors, we most certainly do. In fact, I am not proud of the way book releases are handled by many self-published novelists, with first drafts going to print. Editors welcome there! What the book world doesn't need is the bandwagon approach to publishing. Don't chase a reader trend, make one. Write to make people pause and decide if they like it. Be prepared to hear more from the people who don't like it than from the people who do. 


Forgive my constant pep-talk posts. They help me get excited all over again about my book as I'm currently stuck in the middle doldrums. Here's an excerpt from what I wrote yesterday in the dentist's waiting room and finished this morning, there's 1,000 words total to this scene:

     “Didn't you wear that same tie yesterday?” Eric gestured to the slate blue accessory with a satin geometric design around Johnathan's neck. Johnathan grabbed the tale and looked at it. 
     “A gray one like it.” Of course it was the same tie. He forgot to pack a different tie in his overnight bag. Yesterday's became today's recycling after he and Alex woke up at her place that morning. The last two weeks were a blur of dinning out, sleeping over, and alternating who packed an overnight bag.

    “No, I don't believe so. I believe that is exactly the same tie you wore yesterday.” Eric thumbed screens on his smart phone and showed the impromptu pictures from yesterday with the Claw, the mechanical hand at the end of the Hedis armature. It wasn't operational yet. He zipped through the scenes of showing what most men would do with a sudden third hand. Finally, he found Johnathan's poses. There was the CEO, struggling against the inactive Claw around his neck, and a slate blue tie with a satin geometric design dangling underneath.

    Johnathan hung his head. The cement floor of the work cave was a piece of abstract art. Various oil and lubrication stains made a random pattern of darkened splotches. Rainbow bits of electrical wire hid here and there, temporary visitors until their heavily modified Roomba was released. Neon drops of epoxy and other unidentifiable materials held permanent positions. At least until a good floor scraping.

     “And I also believe...” Eric held his pointer finger in the air, as if testing the wind, then brought it down and pointed it back to his best friend.  “You are in love with Alex.”

     No shock. No shame. Johnathan faced his oldest friend with a sheepish smile and eyes full of defiance. “She loves me back. I was going to tell you, but she had all of these rules at the beginning and I just tried...it was a miracle I didn't screw things up.”

     Eric played with an actuator on the work bench in front of them. He flicked the toggle switch back and forth. Click. Click. Click. Johnathan waited.

    “I'm not stupid. You two sucked at hiding.”

"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 Novel: Investigate Your Genre

Courtesy of Dmitry Maslov from Dreamstime.com

KNOW THY ENEMY....
Okay, okay enough fightin' words. Recently I was part of a good-natured debate about the pricing of ebooks, especially indie books. It pays to research your genre before deciding on a firm pricing structure...


It's easy, really. Go to Amazon, search in your genre. For example, my book will be labeled a contemporary romance. The main storyline is about who the main character will or will not end up with, his fiancee or the mother of his baby. It has a happy-for-now ending like most chick-lit/women's fiction titles, but deals with love and romance in an urban and contemporary context.  


My awesome news is that my genre has strong showings by indie authors in the top 10 and top 20 downloads. Also, pricing varies from $0.99 to $9.99 (traditionally published). There are many indie authors in the $3-$5 range. I plan to price my first book at $3.25. I have a couple of reasons for this:

• It's my birthday (A gimmick I will use and abuse)
• It will grab attention in a list of prices all ending with $.99 (don't believe me, check yourself, read down the list of prices and see if you aren't paused by $4.67 or some other ending...)
• It's good price point to offer sales from without dramatically impacting my profit, at first.
• It's the earliest full price of a movie ticket I can remember buying with my own money.

The biggest things that seem to set the indie/self published titles vs. traditionally published titles are the prices, cover art, and author photograph. Professionalism doesn't seem to be a deciding factor since the traditional romance genre is well-known for quantity over quality (publication wise, most books are NOT error free, as least not the ones I've read), there are even comments on a few traditional offerings complaining about crappy formatting. 


I am not a big fan of the $.99 pricing while a title is in what I call "first-run." First-run meaning it's the newest ebook offering an author has. I'm not terribly crazy about the $.99 pricing forever, either. I am interested by the strategy author Lucy Kevin is employing. She has one book offered for free, "Spark Fly." Then the next two in the series "Falling Fast" and "Seattle Girl" are both priced at $2.99. Her "box set" of all three is priced at $4.99. 


This is very smart to me, and I love the idea of packaging my books together. People can buy books individually, or for less than the price of two, can get all three! I might try to contact her and see how that pricing strategy is going, maybe after I have a few more followers here.


Regardless of what you price your self-published novel at, make sure it is a price that falls well in your genre. I noticed most of the books at the $.99 price point in my genre listing were published over a year ago. 


"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 13: Got My Tough Skin On!!!

I do know better than to expect logic, humor, and rational thought to rule an internet forum. So in my first experience of approaching a reader forum, some vital lessons learned.

• Most people won't agree with you, and aren't inclined to do so.
• A handful of members feel a need to swing a big you-know-what around online.

But I am surprised, at myself. I had some very irrational insults slung at me. How dare I challenge the sacred happily ever after by suggesting a romance novel can end with just a happy ending that shows the reader the characters will still have to push to maintain that happiness? Anyway, it didn't upset me. Not in the least. How could I be upset at someone who said "I didn't even read your entire post and I don't like you already?" Wow. What was really funny, from an illogical stance, is one person stating that my book is not in this genre and he or she will never read it. Well which is it? If is a romance book, then I would be worried about you threatening to never read it because you only read romance novels. But if it isn't a romance novel, then you wouldn't read it anyway, so I didn't lose anything.


It amazes me the people who will say things online that they wouldn't say in real life. Could you imagine being in a conversation with someone and they hold up a hand and say "Let me stop you right there, I don't like you so :shrug: just go away now." But I pulled out my Southern upbringing and killed them with kindness. I thanked them for their advice, even the mean spirited, and believe me, I *am* learning from it, and moved on. Now the will power will be to not respond to any replies. But I can do it, I'm too busy! :)


UPDATE: Proof that you must always respond with kindness, the responses are now somewhat apologetic for labeling me a spammer, and more reasonable towards the idea of a degree to the happily ever after ending.


Speaking of busy, this morning I wrote 932 words in about an hour and a half. This scene is near the end of the novel, and I cried my eyes out writing it. I loved when I read it aloud to my stepson, he sucked in a loud breath "Heeeeehhhhhhh" right the moment I wanted. I figure if he gets it, my readers will too. It was painful. I had to write about a mother who gave birth 12 hours earlier and wasn't allowed to ever hold her baby. Yeah, talk about some serious pain! 

The closest I can come to that heartache is how I felt after I woke up from my own C-section. I was groggy and still coming to, when my husband dashed into the door frame. I remember concentrating to focus on him and he was antsy. Why was he antsy? I asked how is our baby and he said "I don't know, I haven't seen her yet." I pushed myself up, while the nurse fixing my IVs urged me to lay back down. "What? Why not?" And then the nurse's face blanched. She had forgotten to tell my husband he could go to the nursery and see our daughter when my surgery was done. My daughter laid, parentless, for the first hour and a half of her life under a warmer. 

Writing about giving birth from the emotional side of things is fun, even if it is exhausting and impacts your tissue supply. Not the classic "Push, push, push" scenes, which I never experienced first-hand, but the million, billion questions and concerns that fly through your head and heart in the first few hours of the baby's arrival. Before you're too sleep-deprived and dirty to even care about the outside world.


Here's a little sample of what I wrote this morning, it's the end of the scene.



Returning his phone to his pocket, Johnathan finally made good on his initial intention to return to his daughter. Scrubbing his hands and forearms in the sink between the nursery's double door entry, he smiled. Once inside, Anna handed Charlotte to her father and he eased himself into the rocking chair next to her plastic bin.
“Daddy has everything under control,” he cooed. Charlotte squinted her little eyes open in recognition of her father's voice before making a newborn yawn and turning her head further into his chest. Johnathan's mouth remained fixed in a smile. He kissed his daughter's forehead and relaxed his own head back to rest.



"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.