Going Forward

While I have officially retired from writing, I'm going to keep my hand in the publishing biz, but now as more of a gatherer of information than an active participant. So, if you're here to learn more about publishing and marketing, this is still the place. For my thousands of Chinese bot followers, I don't know what you hope to glean from constantly pinging this blog, and I really don't care. You do what you do and I'll do what I do.

I'm certainly not a trained investigative reporter, or a trained anything, but I plan to delve into book advertising/promotion sites to learn their backgrounds, business models, reader reach; and to isolate the ones that an author may find useful, while steering you away from those that are money sucks. Likewise, I'll be exploring the other oft-cited ways an author can purportedly gain followers and sales. 

Like many indie authors, I operate on a shoestring budget, a really short shoestring at that, and I need my expenditures and time to amount to something. I've over-extended myself with my current novel, to no avail whatsoever, and I want to save others from making the same mistakes.

That's not to say I won't continue to improve on my own products, and yes, I'm still going to write about those efforts. This blog is half "tips" and half sounding board for myself, and that second part isn't useless to fellow authors. Just the other day, I finally pounced on the answer to creating my own book covers for free--one that actually results in good ones--and that's gotta be helpful to anyone who doesn't want to or can't spend hundreds on a professional design. I also recently posted about my blurb revision process, using Jessie Cunniffe's tips, which really do work--and I'm as big a skeptic as you can find. I'm big on examples, as you may have read, and laying out my revision process is a far better way of demonstrating how to write a blurb than just talking about it would be.

To say that my publishing journey has been a big pile of failure is the understatement of the decade. Most of that is probably my own fault. I've been known to make impulsive decisions. I'd get excited about a new (to me) idea for marketing and I'd go for it. (That no longer happens.) I wrote for my own enjoyment, without an eye toward the market, blithely assuming that good work would be discovered. It won't.  

A lot of my failure, however, was out of my hands. I chose the wrong genre to write in, one that does not sell well unless one is a trade-published author with a big marketing push behind her. (If a tree falls in the forest...)

My failures can now be your learning tools. Nope, I'm not going to tell you which genre to write in, because I firmly believe in being true to oneself. I will try to show you how to get the most out of whatever you write and publish.

On a more self-serving note, if you're reading this blog and you're a real person, I really wish you'd hit the subscribe button to let me know you're out there and that I'm not just talking to myself. Comments are great, too. Contrary to my reputation as a cloistered writer, I do like talking to people, and I'm actually pretty nice.

I will have a bitchy post coming up, but you gotta cut me some slack. Sometimes I just need to get things off my chest.