Sherri Cornelius

The first two stories I e-published, I didn’t do any promotion aside from tweeting and facebooking and blogging. And really, not a lot of that. They were short stories, and I intended them to be free from the beginning. This in itself ensured they would be downloaded. People like free stuff.

With SKIN AND SCALES I decided to go a different way. First of all, I decided to charge a book price for it and see what happened. (Very little, of course.) Second, I put it straight into KDP Select instead of offering it on Smashwords first. The benefit of KDP Select is that Amazon Prime members are able to borrow the book for free, but the author still gets a small royalty. I had no borrows on the short stories while they were enrolled, but I thought people would be more likely to borrow a book. (Apparently not my book.) Third, I intended to publish it quietly and just let it sit unpromoted, but I got caught up in the excitement, especially when my mom virtually shoved a couple of twenties in my hand for a Facebook ad. So I tried it, expecting nothing but an education and receiving what I expected. It was an interesting and enlightening experience. The results were definitive, and I quit before I hit $20.

So now I think what I need is some reviews. My theory is that any review is good for business. Even a solid 3-star review would indicate that people were reading it and it isn’t completely awful. A 1-star review would keep people engaged and on the page, though I presume I would need a couple of higher stars to counteract it.

TOMORROW only, April 10, SKIN AND SCALES will be free for download on Kindle. This serves a two-fold purpose: to allow the folks in my acknowledgements to get a free copy and to garner a few reviews. I hope everyone who reads it will at least throw a couple of anonymous stars up there. Don’t be shy! If one person breaks the ice, others will follow.

If you don’t read weird stuff but still want to support me, you can recommend the book to your weird-loving friends. If you don’t have a Kindle but still want to read it, you can download a reader for your computer or smart phone here.

Thanks for all your support!

BVA has been proofread by a reader with fresh-eyes. Hopefully this will be the day I finalize it and get the ball rolling on the peripherals, like the front and back matter, and make some good progress on the pesky cover. Lofty goals for a single day, especially when I have two DVDs of Downton Abbey waiting, not to mention much housekeeping.

At least I don't have Castleville to distract me anymore. It's felt like housekeeping for a long while, And I finally got the nerve to block it. I thought I would miss it, but when it pops into my head it's a relief to be able to dismiss it and move to something else. So much of this modern Internet-centered life is habit, and I've found my attention span leaving me. I have trouble reading a book or focusing on a home project long enough to get it done. How am I supposed to build back into writing if I can't think about it for more than ten minutes?

The attention span isn't the only symptom, though. It's also lazy thinking. I'm used to taking in other people's creative ideas now, and I have to remember what it's like to call up my own new ideas. Working at the library is helping a lot with that, and I wonder if I would even be considering a re-entry into writing if it weren't for the stimulation I've found there. The atmosphere nurtures open discussion of problems from all level of employees, giving me the opportunity to practice thinking of creative solutions. And looking at all those book covers has prodded my sleeping writer, the dreamer who five years ago knew she would one day see her own book on those shelves.

I think this time my approach to the business side of writing will be different. Shoot, it already has been. I'm trying new things that I wouldn't before for fear of hurting my career. But trying something new and failing doesn't hurt a career, stagnation does. Quitting does. Fear does.

But we all know this.

This time it's been a slow build, going at my own pace and trusting that I'll be at the right place at the right time for the path that is right for me.

 

 

The past couple of days have been pretty cool. Since I put my short story on Smashwords, it’s been downloaded over 60 times. I find it unbearable not knowing how many are friends and family, and how many are strangers. So far I’ve had a review on Smashwords from Allie, and several have supported me by sharing my link on Facebook and writing short reviews to go along with it. Thank you all! In a few days it’ll go into Smashwords’ Premium Catalog, which means it will be distributed to online retailers. It’s been a fun experiment.

So the next step is to get it on Kindle Direct. I uploaded it yesterday, but it’s still under review so it’s not available yet. While I’ve put it on Smashwords for free, Amazon makes you charge a dollar minimum. I’ve got to figure out if I want to charge for the Smashwords version as well, but I don’t think I want to do that yet--I might have to charge and then give a coupon to make it free, because of Amazon’s terms of service.

Even if I don’t make a dime from online publishing, I’m glad I did it once. I’m now more secure in my knowledge of how publishing works, and the thrill of having work out there has erased most of my concerns about imperfection. And the thing is, I’ve found you can’t truly understand epublishing from just studying it or reading blogs—you have to dig in. I’m surprised at how not scary it is on this side of clicking “publish,” and while I thought I would feel more pressure afterwards, it’s actually been quite freeing.

I have a couple of books that couldn’t find homes with traditional big publishers (and a couple of small presses), so I’d been considering going with a small-but-successful online publisher like Damnation Books and others.(You might remember I edited for DB’s sister company, Eternal Press.) After all, they have a customer base all ready, free editing and cover design (free for me), and they pay for the ISBN. On the other side, self-publishing lets me keep a bigger chunk of the profits, and while I can’t afford to buy ISBNs right now, I could probably trade editing services with some trusted friends. And after making the cover for Mon Petit Ami myself, I think I might enjoy making others.

But I don’t have to decide right now. I’m not very good at taking incremental steps—a stumbling block to my writing career up to this point—so it’s time I learned. I’m slowly making a plan.

So what’s your experience with self-publishing?

Or possibly just dipping a toe. I took one of my old, beloved stories and published it on Smashwords. For those who've never heard of it, Smashwords is a website that automates the self-epublishing process. You upload your story, and their machine converts your file into all the popular e-reading formats. Very easy.

I have lots of friends who’ve published with Smashwords, but I haven’t been interested in doing it. My writing career was up in the air, so far that I didn’t know where it would come down, or even if it would. I needed things to settle--in particular, my feelings about writing. I’ve been hiding from the world while I sort things out.

Then a lot of things happened all at once. I had a birthday (41). We ran out of money and had to eat beans and hamburger stew for a week, which put me in action mode real quick as I started looking for a job. Putting myself out there flipped the switch, and suddenly I’m ready to start blogging again, Facebooking with purpose, discussing writing and publishing.

Now as this switch was being flipped, my friend Allie had a pretty awesome experience. She’s been self-epublishing on Smashwords and Kindle, and I don’t know where else, and she’s much more prolific than I, so she has lots of titles available. One day, Amazon started offering one of her titles for free and downloads went through the roof--like, 10,000 in a couple of days. She didn’t get a penny for these downloads, but thousands of people were reading her work.

It was eye-opening for me, watching this unfold. I had thought of epublishing as another career direction, with all that entailed: marketing and money and business and blah, blah, blah. I knew I didn’t want to do all that stuff myself. Allie’s exhilarating experience reminded me that writing is also fun, with an element of chance. The wheel of fortune can’t turn if you’ve stuck a stick in the spokes. The past couple of weeks has unstuck the wheel.

So. The story’s not perfect, but I’ve been waiting for perfection to grace me and I can’t wait any longer. The story’s good; some have told me it’s funny and/or creepy. It’s also free, so you don’t have to have a Smashwords account to read it. If you do read it, I’d appreciate a short and honest review. I promise I’ll still love ya.

Cheers!

Well. So here I am again. These long absences of mine stem from having nothing good to say, nor any pressing news to share. If I have one or the other it seems worth it to post, but otherwise I won't bother.

Today I have something good to say, and the news, while not pressing, is at least news. I had a rare phone conversation with Sara, my agent, in which she said she loved my newest book, BVA. That's the news, that somebody loved my work. Lame, I know. But she's never said how she feels about my work one way or the other, so although the assumption is that of course she likes it or she wouldn't have represented me, it's nice to hear, out loud, that she kept sneaking away to read it, even though she was on vacation.

I wasn't sure she'd like it because it's so different from EG, the one that caught her eye in the first place. I was absolutely sure she'd tell me she couldn't represent it, but of course that was just my writer's neurosis kicking in. Or as Marta puts it, Melodramatic Mind.

So as soon as I correct all the typos she found, it'll be going to the editors who've requested it. *sighs in relief*

Speaking of EG, I've thought about publishing it through a small e-publisher to gain some traction, if only in my mind. It's basically done, because even if a publisher buys BVA, EG is so different it's unlikely the same person would pick it up. Sara's advice was to go for it, but not to sign any rights away. This eliminates any publishing company, small or not, because they will want to have a contract for 2-3 years or forever. If EG caught a big publisher's interest while the electronic rights were tied up, they probably wouldn't touch it no matter how much they loved it.

So that leaves self-epublishing, as Dane just did with his short story collection. I just don't know if I want to work that hard.