Friday, August 30, 2013

The Big Dreams Blog Hop

Misha Gericke and I are co-hosting the big dreams bloghop. It all started when Misha announced in five years time she wanted to be making $90,000 a year in royalties ($7500/month). I then got the courage to post what I'd been thinking for a while. I want to be a millionaire. Misha and I decided that we should have monthly check-ins to encourage each other and let others join in so we could keep perspective along the way.

And so here it is. The update: It's been a month already. I can't believe a whole month has passed, and I don't feel any closer. I'd like to tell you I'm so close. But that would be a lie. Here's where I'm at: The Other Marlowe Girl is continuing to sell but not as well as it did last month. (The Fate Of A Marlowe Girl is permafree).A Mi ssing Peace comes out this Sunday. The reviews have been overwhelmingly positive with people thanking me for writing it. This is a huge compliment but something I have no idea how to respond to! I guess the polite reply would be, "Your welcome," but that feels weird because I didn't write it with anyone in mind. Except maybe myself and writing my way through what I believe was postpartum depression. I'm still in lala land on the draft of Perfect Harmony. I've missed every deadline I've set for it which is rare. I used to work in a law office. I'm good at meeting deadlines. But I will be done by October. I'll have to be. I still need to write another book this year.

The Action Plan: So here's the action plan for September. I'll add The Other Marlowe Girl to Smashwords. It hasn't been there because it was originally part of the Kindle Select program. I wanted to see what the benefit of that was. In my opinion, there isn't one. I'm not adding it to B&N because with no clear way to track sales, it's not worth my time. (If you know an easy way to track B&N sales please let me know in the comments). I'll finish and polish Perfect Harmony, and hopefully when we check in next month I can say it's been sent to my agent. With A Missing Peace being published by Escape there is no way for me to track sales. It's hard to set a goal for that. I can tell you I've arranged for a two week blog tour and offered to gift The Other Marlowe Girl to any blogger who copies their review to Amazon. I guess next month we'll see how much closer I am.

12 comments:

  1. In Nook Press, the first tab it takes you too is Projects. The tab next to that one is Sales. It shows you your monthly sales data and even has a little bar graph. No reason not to use B&N. I don't have nearly as many sales there, but I have some, so why not???

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    1. Thanks Jessie. I'll try this. I've only ever been able to see today's and yesterday's sales.

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  2. What did you think of Kindle Select's performance? I'm torn as to whether to do that or not with Ruby.

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    1. Catherine, I don't think Kindle Select is worth it. The only benefit I can see is that you can make something available for free whereas Amazon won't price match new books for 90 days. Making it free sells others books in the series but does nothing to sell that book once it's not free. I won't use it again, if that helps.

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  3. I think you're closer just for having those books out there. Hopefully you'll feel that way soon. :-)

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  4. This is great, Beht! Love your BIG plan and love that you're getting encouraging reviews.

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  5. Onward and onward, I say. Every step takes us closer. I need to get writing something new... today is my last day off... must get more serious. Anyway, YOU CAN DO IT!

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  6. Hang in there Beth. You can do it. Remember the old saying: It's always darkest before the dawn. You're getting there. The reviews prove it.

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  7. Awesome about the reviews!! Let me know if I can feature it on my blog. Good luck with the millionaire thing. lol. It's great to have goals. I'd be happy with simply being able to write full time, but then I'd lose all my flight benefits, so I should be careful what i wish for. ;)

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  8. Good luck for the next month - sounds like you have a plan for where to go from here!

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  9. Oh, and my post for this is here (scroll to the bottom).

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