I’m Self Published and Proud! Some thoughts on Amazon’s KDP

My first contemporary romance, 'The Apple Tree', was published by Inspired Romance at the end of December, while my second novel, a romantic suspense 'In Loving Hate' will be released by Muse It Up Publications in October or November.  With a yawning gap of almost a year in the literary wilderness, I wondered what I could do in the meantime.  Well, being a writer, I thought I might as well write another novel – and this one I would self-publish to bridge that empty space.  


I decided to try the Kindle Direct Publishing programme, which I’d read a good deal about – both positive and negative.  If there is anyone left in the world who is unsure about what this entails, you simply agree to market your book only through Amazon for an initial period of 90 days.  Of those 90 days, you can offer your book for free for up to five days.  My thinking was that if the public didn’t want it for free, they would be unlikely to want to pay for it.


I opted to use three of the free days at the very beginning to launch the novel.  The programme allows you to track downloads in each country so you can see how well your book is being received.  On the first day, the free downloads totalled approximately 1500.  Now, I've no doubt that’s very modest compared to some, but I thought it was a good start and felt happy.  By the end of the third day there had been almost 8,000 free downloads and the novel was soaring high in the Kindle free books ratings both in the US and in the UK.  So far, so good, I thought, but the proof of the Kindle pie will be if anyone continues to download it once they have to start paying for it.  I doubted that, but set my price low to make things easier for it, (though a writer-friend subsequently told me $1.99 was generally considered a ‘dead zone’ in terms of e-book prices), bit my nails and waited.


I was delighted to see the downloads continuing over the next couple of days and by the second day the novel had returned to the charts, this time on the paid books side.  These charts do fluctuate radically and very quickly, but by the third or fourth day, Wishful Thinking hit the number one spot in the UK Kindle charts in two categories (Romance and Contemporary Romance).  An exciting moment for me.Of course I’m realistic to know that in the e-book publishing world success like this is transient.  The number of novels being released every week is staggeringly high and once a title bows out of Kindle’s top 100, it becomes difficult for anyone to find or notice it and sales will inevitably peter out for new and relatively unknown writers.  However, what I did find was that interest in my previous novel then began to pick up.  I would love to believe the reason for this to be because some readers enjoyed 'Wishful Thinking' enough to look for my other title.  


Whether I’m right or wrong about this, my foray into self-publishing and Amazon’s KDP was an exciting experience I certainly want to repeat.  I hope to do just that with my next contemporary romance - provisionally entitled ‘Supermarket Sweep’ – which I plan to self-publish in the next month or two.  So, as they say, watch this space.


I’d love to hear your experiences of self-publishing or the KDP programme as a writer or reader.

The Painful Cost of Self-Publishing

The internet is full of people blogging about the wonders of self-publishing.  Ebooks are cutting edge and, according to many, the only way forward for writers old and new.  Most bloggers, however, acknowledge that chasing success is a very difficult race to run.  For some it’s punishingly painful.

Producing your ebook is the easy part in this almost-impossible quest for fame and fortune.  Once you’ve uploaded your precious novel to the various portals that will sell it for you, your work then begins in earnest.  Amazon won’t promote it for you, of course, and without promotion you are literally lost.  After your loyal band of friends and family has bought their copies sales will grind to a halt unless you become very active.

So what do you do?  Well you can sit on social network sites like Twitter and Facebook all day telling as many people as you can how wonderful your book is and begging them to buy it.  Some people might find that easy enough to do, but I’m not one of them.  Perhaps it’s my natural British reserve, but I never was good at blowing my own trumpet.  I want people to discover the good things about me for themselves. Fat chance!  With over 1.6 billion search queries a day, what chance does little old you stand of being noticed by the masses?  Well, unless you have 1.6 billion willing followers, that is.

Of course there are success stories, but they are the exception, not the norm.  The grim truth is, you have to put yourself out there, raise your followers up into the thousands and then, if you can bear it, spam them to death with tweets about your wonderful work in between thinking up  encouraging or witty tweets to keep them interested!  Now I can tweet like a good ‘un about other people’s achievements but when it comes to self-aggrandisement, I cringe with embarrassment.  Writers need nerves of steel, but all the ones I know are as sensitive as dormice.

Review blogs are a great solution, but by no means an easy one.  I’m an ace writer of polite - even grovelling - requests for superior bloggers to review my work of art in the hopes that a kind word from them will send readers flocking up the Amazon in their boatloads.  The fact is that attracting the attention of popular review blogs is almost as difficult as finding a literary agent, which of course, if you had in the first place, you wouldn’t be self-publishing!  Of those that do reply, some can be so abrupt, it’s like a slap in the face.

 

Of course there are some kind altruists in blogland who will accept your work, though they almost always begin with a warning about how busy they are.  I had one who informed me she would get around to reading my opus in six months’ time.  That’s genuinely how busy and in demand this wonderful and rare species of the human race is.  After all, most do it for love in their spare time and who, nowadays, has an abundance of that in their lives?

Keeping up your own blog (and persuading people to read it), responding to others, writing interviews and guest articles to generate interest in your work is time-consuming indeed.  Meanwhile your next piece of literary excellence sits on your computer neglected and reproachful.  And of course, when you do finish it, guess what?  You have to start all over again…