Another Privilege of Being a Writer

As most of you already know, I simply ADORE being a writer. Yes it is really hard work and yes, sometimes I do wish I could step back and take a breather. But I have chosen the indie path and I couldn't be happier with my decision. For me I know there is so much more to come in this writing journey and I'm loving every part of it.

I feel very privileged to be in a position where my job is one I love. Writing doesn't feel like work to me and although I find marketing challenging, the fact I get to make up stories for a living takes the sting out of trying to get my books noticed. However one aspect of marketing that I really enjoy is the chance to talk about my books and writing to others...especially students.

Suzhou Singapore International School invited me to chat to some of their Literacy classes during Book Week. I had over 10 forty-minute sessions talking to high school students about my passion for writing and answering loads of questions - everything from cover design to how I go about constructing a story. Being able to rabbit on about writing this week was a privilege. Their questions were insightful and fun to answer. It made me realize that I have come to learn a lot about writing. The fact I could talk about it with such ease and no notes, means it must be ingrained. After 12 years, I still don't have the courage to call myself an expert, but I do have the courage to say I know what I'm talking about.

Another thing that occurred to me over this week is that last year, I used to tell people I was an indie author with a certain degree of shame. Like somehow because I wasn't traditionally published, I wasn't quite cutting it. I didn't feel that at all this year. As I was talking about what I had achieved in my two years as an indie author, I felt both pride and confidence. I am doing it. I am making a career out of writing and I am proud to be an indie author.

My biggest hope is that I have inspired the students. Hopefully they will realize that with a lot of hard work and persistence, they can become published authors...or whatever else they hope to be.

Thank you so much for having me SSIS. And thank you to the indie author community and my fans who have brought me to such a positive place in my writing life.

The Importance Of Chatting With Other Authors

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of hanging out with three amazing ladies - Leigh K. Hunt, Cassie Hart and T. G. Ayer. These writers have become dear friends since I met them in 2010. We formed a Facebook group first - Inklings. Through posting, sharing and leaving screeds of comments, we got to know each other.

And then in late July this year, I got to meet Leigh and Cassie face-to-face. Tee and I flew down, from Auckland to Wellington, for the night and we spent 48 hours basically talking about writing. It was awesome. I came away exhausted, yet totally inspired. It was cool to be in a room of people that didn't mind you harping on about your passion. We never tired of it. The conversation would lull for a moment or the topic might drift to something family related, but within half an hour we were right back to chatting about writing.

It made me realize how important it is to spend time with people who understand the craft, who are passionate about storyline, character development, and the intricacies of writing. We were able to discuss cover design, marketing tips...have a little moan about the challenging aspects of this job.

I guess the purpose of this post is to encourage you to get involved with other authors. Whether it be online or through face-to-face contact, make the time to share your writing journey with others who will understand it. You will get so much more out of the experience if you do.

Indie Life - It's All About the Sequel

I'm very excited to be part of The Indelibles Indie Life series. These posts run on the second Wednesday of every month and include ideas and articles from a wide variety of indie authors. Check out the links below to learn more about INDIE LIFE.

I have been published since 2011 and it has not taken me long to figure out that in this game, writing series and sequels is the way to go. I have seven books published now with another one due for release in August and looking back over my stats, my trilogy is the strongest seller by far.

It makes sense though, doesn't it? Readers invest their time in these characters, get to know them, fall in love with them. Of course they are more likely to buy another book involving these people. It's a great way to develop a lasting readership or build a fan base. Speaking as a reader, I don't like saying goodbye to characters I fall in love with and it's fun watching them grow throughout a series.

From a writers viewpoint, it's great business. You can put the first book on sale, or free, and this leads to subsequent sales for the rest of the series. I have found this to be hugely successful for me, which is why I decided to go for rapid fire releases with my second trilogy. The first two books are already out - Unknown in June and Unseen in July. The 3rd book - Unleashed - is due out in August. I am then going to spend my marketing budget in September. That's when I'll run some sales, pay for some advertising, do a blog tour, etc. Once the readers can access all three books quickly. I have never done this before and am really interested to analyze it all at the end and see how it's paid off.

If you're anything like me, you have a million stories in your database and new ideas constantly popping into your head. Writing series takes staying power. I am always tempted to keep releasing new stuff, stand alone stories, but I am curbing that desire for now. Sure, I'll still do the odd stand alone, but from the results I've seen in my own writing, they will never take off as well as my series.

Indie Life - It's All About The Release

I'm very excited to be part of The Indelibles Indie Life series. These posts run on the second Wednesday of every month and include ideas and articles from a wide variety of indie authors. Check out the links below to learn more about INDIE LIFE.

I have talked about a variety of things over the past five months - from attitude about writing to getting the exposure we need in order to make our writing a success.

Following along that line, I want to talk about "The Release." That moment you work so hard to obtain. Weeks and months of hard work have been poured into your book, it looks fabulous, it reads well, your beta readers love it and now it's time to share it with the world.

I have always struggled with this moment in my book's life. It's nice to let it go and pass it on to the world, but I also find it really challenging. How do I get the world as excited as me and then how do I turn that excitement into actual sales?

I have read articles that say it's all about the pre-buzz. Getting people so excited about the book that when you do finally release it, they're so desperate they buy it straight away. I have done this a little, not much. I probably should have started months earlier and maybe I will with my next book. For now, let's focus on the actual day of release.

I am learning as I go and there are plenty of things you can do with the release of a book:
- Facebook release parties
- Blog Tours
- Giveaways
- Paid advertising
- Asking people to spread the word for you
- Book signings

These seem to be the most popular that I know of, but which are the most effective and what can you afford to do? You have no doubt spent money on editing and cover design, how much is left to throw at marketing?

Because my funds are tight and I want to produce quality, I tend to put most of my money towards editing and cover design, but I have quickly learned that spending money on marketing is just as important. In an attempt to use my funds wisely, I have decided, with the release of my trilogy, to save up most of my funds and spend it once the third book is released.

Unknown - Book 1 - came out yesterday. So far I have asked people to spread the word and have gathered up a few reviews. I'm also running a giveaway on my blog. All very low cost things. I will be doing the same for Unseen - Book 2 - when it comes out in July.

However in August, when Unleashed - Book 3 - comes out, I will be pulling out all the stops. I have an FB event planned for shortly after the release. I have a blog tour running in September and shortly after that I will be paying for advertising on the first book. I'm really hoping that combining the marketing funds for all three books will help me gain the trilogy some decent momentum. I will hopefully see a flow on effect from sales, because all three books will be available at once.

It will be interesting to see and I can't wait to come back in October and let you know how I got on.

So what do you do when releasing a book? How do you turn your enthusiasm into book sales?

A Little Help Required

Being an author is hard work, whether you are traditionally published or flying indie style, it takes energy and perseverance to get your work out there. Rather than blasting everyone with sale-sy tweets and Facebook comments, I really prefer for readers to hear about my work from other people. For some reason it seems to have more impact, don't you think?

That's why it's awesome if you can ask your fellow writers, bloggers and friends for a little help.

But how much help should you be asking for?

Knowing that everyone seems ridiculously busy, I tend to stick to small requests that will only take about 2 minutes of their time, like...

- voting for my books on Goodreads lists
- liking and tagging my books on Amazon
- sharing a Facebook post
- retweeting an important tweet for me

... stuff like that.

I've been trying to get Betwixt off the ground and have been e-mailing and messaging people with little requests for help and the other day, I suddenly felt really bad. Was I asking too much? Would I be putting people off by constantly requesting their help?

I guess it all comes down to this... I will never ask anyone to do something for me that I wouldn't be willing to do for them.

Sometimes it takes courage to ask, but I am always pleasantly surprised by how willing people are to help out.

What do you think about asking for help?
When does it become too much?

Indies Unlimited Is Worth Checking Out

I have a post on Indies Unlimited today. You can check it out here. "What Makes A Good YA Novel by Melissa Pearl."

I am actually lucky enough to be a monthly contributor.

I know I have posted about these guys before, but their 1st birthday is coming up on October 6th, so I thought I'd take a moment to highlight Indies Unlimited again. I think it is an awesome site that indie authors should check out. Here are my reasons why...

- There are so many ways you can highlight your work on there - guest posts, book trailers, excerpts and announcing your latest releases.

- Every day there are five posts and usually one or two of them is a really helpful article about writing or marketing. The others are new releases or snippets from books. I have discovered some great reads.

- They also do Like-fests and Twitter-fests. I have gained some great followers by participating in these and I've also stumbled across some very cool people.

- They have a large following of a variety of authors, bloggers and readers. You never know what you might learn or who you might meet.

If you haven't flittered over to their site yet, then you may want to take a moment now. I hope it can help you as much as it's helped me.

The Best Thing About Marketing

I'm sure I'm not alone when I hear the word marketing and cringe. It's so not my thing. Frankly, marketing is just something that gets in the way of my writing.

Unfortunately, marketing is an essential part of being an indie author - any author for that matter. I have come to realize that as much as I don't like it, good marketing can make any book sell pretty well, no matter how good it is... or isn't. People may disagree with me on this, but I have read some super sellers that I've felt pretty blase about, but also stumbled across some of the most brilliant reads that are currently ranked in the 300,000 on Amazon.

I am in the pre-marketing phase of Betwixt, getting ready to launch the book in November. I'm trawling through all these amazing articles on how to market well and learning what I can. It doesn't take away the groan factor though and if anything I find it overwhelming. I am a very small fish in the world's biggest ocean :)

However, since I am one of those people that always has to find a positive in everything (I grew up in an attitude of gratitude household), I am sitting here searching for the best things about marketing and this is number one...

Connections.

I have spent hours drumming up reviewers, making connections through Facebook and Twitter and I have to say, it's been awesome. There are so many amazing people out there in the writing/blogging world. I have made some great friends through social networking and even if my book fizzles (which hopefully it won't!), I can at least look back and be super happy that I've made some excellent contacts I can keep in touch with.

So - if you're like me and marketing is something you struggle with, I encourage you to look on the bright side.

What do you think is the best thing about book marketing?

Book Trailers

I LOVE watching previews. I'm actually a little ridiculous about it. Usually, once a week, I'll pop over to Apple Trailers and download anything new and just watch my little heart out.

So - as you can imagine, to me - the idea of BOOK trailers totally rocks!

I decided I wanted to make one for Golden Blood. It had been suggested to me a while ago, but I wasn't sure I could pull it off, so popped it into the 'too hard' box until I was ready.

Well, the other day I sat down and decided to stop being stupid and just make one. I spent a good half hour on youtube looking at a whole bunch of other book trailers and deciding what I liked about each of them. After that, I decided I could pull it off without creating something mega lame :)

First things first, I needed music, clips, photos and some good little lines running throughout it. I wanted to try and do this for free, so all the components needed to be royalty free and still useable legally.

It was much easier than I thought it would be. Google images was a great place to start, plus the following sites...

http://www.videoblocks.com/ These guys offer a free download trial. I went to town and got a bunch of stuff I could use for future trailers as well.

http://www.stockfootageforfree.com/ These guys have a bunch of free music that is awesome for backing tracks.

http://www.footagefirm.com/ I didn't end up using this site, but I saw the link and thought I'd share. Looks quite good.

Once I had all my material tucked away in a folder, it was time to start construction. I'm a mac girl so I opened up imovie and got to work. imovie is a very easy program to use, so in the end putting the clip together did not take long.

Once I had finished it, got my friends to give me a little feedback and tweaked it some more, I uploaded it to youtube then linked it to all the sites I am associated with. It's had some good responses, so that's great.

The best part about this - I had so much fun doing it. I was really happy with the end result too.

You can have a little look see on this blog - up in the left hand corner. I hope you enjoy it :)

Have any of you made book trailers or had them made for you?
What do you look for in a book trailer?
Do they entice you to read a book?
What's the best book trailer you've seen so far?

Is that too much?

As you can imagine, I have been swimming in a sea of marketing for the last week. In spite of how difficult it's been, I'm actually really enjoying it. I've never done anything like this before and new challenges are good for the personality :)

I was doing some research while I was away this weekend and I stumbled across an article about Amanda Hocking. She's done pretty well for herself, so I read through it to try and get some ideas. One thing she did, that would be very easy to implement, was to charge 99c for her first book then any subsequent books in the series were $2.99.

It's a smart move. Get people hooked, then move the price of your book up to the 70% royalty rate on Amazon.

I can't decide how I feel about this. I think it's a very clever move, but do I want to do it?
It's more important to me, that my work is out there and enjoyed. But, I would love to earn enough money so that when my youngest boy starts school, I don't have to go back to full time work. I want to stay home and write. In order to that, I need to be intelligent in my marketing strategies.

However, I am a brand new author and I almost feel as though I don't have the right to charge more than 99c until I make a bit of a name for myself.

Amanda Hocking did it though, and people still bought her stuff.

If I were a reader, I don't think I'd be offended if an author did that. If I liked the first book enough, I'd happily pay $2.99 to get the second and third books in the series.

But I'm interested in what you guys think.
What's your opinion?
If you were me, what would you do?
And as a reader, how do you feel about paying more for subsequent books in a series.

A new face on Facebook

I was strongly encouraged to set up a fan page on Facebook. I guess it's just another chance to get yourself out there and make more of those important connections.

So, Melissa Pearl - Author, is now on Facebook and I have 17 likes already. Small fry, I know, but still really fun :)

Do any of you have Facebook pages?
How do you utilize them effectively?

I've been trying to think of what sorts of things I will post on my Facebook wall. I have some ideas, but more are always welcome.

If you do have a FB fan page, let me know, I'd love to check you out :)