Soon to be Announced

I have written 2,500 words of Goblins Versus Yetis and typed in about 1,750 words of The Gangster Brothers. Tomorrow I shall prepare the first in the Only When I Arth promotion on Amazon. This will initially include one of the Goblin Adventures short stories, a sample of one of the Arth Series books and a piece of Flash Fiction. So Only When I Arth 1 has Hunting for Squink, then a sample of The Crying Pennant and The Inky Blackness FF. I will put it on for free on Saturday for five days then I shall put the next one on after that. I am hoping to put something on free every day for three months and then start all over again with OWIA 1 etc.

Happy Burp Day!

Managed to finish typing in The Goblin Nippers, it is over 7,000 words long. finished writing Gob Goes Golfing, did 1,000 words today (did a little planning for it in the Chaplaincy Centre at Leeds University.) Finished the final 500 words at Morrisons in York at my sons Burp Day meal, while looking after grandbaby. Just Goblins V Yetis to write. that is only at 250 words. I am planning the Only When I Arth promotion to start at the beginning of December. Have developed the first 7 jokey Tweets. Might go to the Nanowrimo tomorrow and do a little of Sid and Arthur Come into Reality. I have done 12,000 words so far, we'll see.

No nanowrimo

Felt too stressed trying to keep to the 1,600 a day word count for the nanowrimo. I have managed to do two 6,000 word short stories. I wanted to keep up with the Goblin Adventures though and have managed to do an extra 1,000 words of GGG. I have done some planning for the next short story and, as long as I do at least 500 words of TGA, then I will carry on with the nanowrimo.

The Lay of the Land

So it has been on my mind to write an article about the way things work with self publishing. I have now written 7 books in the Arth Series plus two others in the same universe, Kendra book 1, two thirds of Kendra book 2, flash fiction short stories and novelettes. It is said that 80% of all Ebook sales are through Amazons Kindle or Kindle apps. Therefore this is by far the biggest market and the one that must be pandered to. I managed to get two of my books into the top 16 when I used the Kindle Select opportunity. This lasted five days. To get me into the top 16 I had about 300 downloads from America, about 45 from the UK and 15 from other countries. So that is 350ish downloads in 5 days to get me into the top 16. I found out that I did better than a local book publisher who did 320ish downloads in 5 days. I did get 15 paid for book sales after the promotion. In reality this is a sorry state of affairs. Another fact is that approximately 80% of all authors who publish on the Kindle earn less than $500 a year. So I got into the top 16, I have earned less than $100. I have 8,700 followers on Twitter, but most of these were gained by Twitter Karma, i.e. you add me and I'll add you. The biggest boost to downloads is when you give it away free and are able to add about 1,000 people a day on Twitter. About 250 people will follow you back and possibly 50 people or more will read your bio and download the book. This, along with the Twitter following you have garnered, gets you about 350 downloads or more. Ok, so if it is an excellent book and it takes hold and people start to talk about it then you might just get you your break. The thing is though that most self published books are in the sea of unnoticedness and are not making enough money to even keep their authors in coffees for more than a couple of weeks. So are we all, the good, the bad and the indifferent, just waiting for a break? 50 Shades of Grey isn't particularly well written, started off as Twilight fanfiction but got a break. Ok, so the author garnered a following on the book site she was publishing on and a Twitter and Facebook fan base but she still got a break. So what is the use, do we still keep plugging along waiting for the break, getting a few more fans and keeping our hand in or do we call a spade a spade and start digging a hole to bury us and our work in?

Went

Went to the York nanowrimo event at 44 The Shambles on Saturday and met the ten or so folks there. It was encouraging to talk to others about my and their works. Only wrote 650 words while I was there so I am down on my targets, about 1,000 words a day and not the needed 1,600 (although I have had Sunday sort of off.) So if I do manage 2,000 words tomorrow I will have finished one of the short stories. Did only 150 words of Gob Goes Golfing on Saturday, looks like that is on the back burner for now. Although this puts me behind on doing the 'Only When I Arth' promotions on Amazon the new short stories will mean that I may be able to keep the promotions up for the full three months. (However it also means I must keep to the 2,000 words a day target) [One shortfall to this is that I am not making sure I have two jokes or witticisms in each 100 words!] So it looks like I shall have to add funnies after I have written it. Will try to pop in to number 44 tomorrow but it would be nice to have written at least 1,000 words before I go there.

Nanowrimo

A DaVinci Co-Ed is now for sale on the Kindle and has had its first five start review!!! I have finished both The Goblin Nippers and The Gangster Brothers and have typed in 1,500 words of Gob Goes Golfing. I am attempting to do the nanowrimo write a book in a month thing after somebody I met suggested it. I have written about 2,000 words but need to write about another 2,000 today to keep on target. It is set after the last Arth Series book in our reality. Look out for the first 1,000 words of it on the nanowrimo website under my profile stephenjennisonsmith.