What Have I Been Doing??

Holy moley, it's been a year since I posted anything here.  What have I been doing, you ask?  Well, in the spring of this year I finished corrections and published the French translation of my WWI novella, For Two Cents, I'll Go With You.  I decided to "go wide", meaning that it would be available on as many outlets as I could find.  Direct2Digital is great for this, offering seven different e-publishers, including Kobo, iTunes, and B&N.  I did this because they also publish for the European firm Tolino.  Since the book is in French and Tolino is a strong competitor for Kindle in Europe, I thought it would be a good idea to try and tap into that market.  Unfortunately, the book has not gotten much traction anywhere, in English or in French.  I believe this is because war stories are just not very popular.  Top-selling genres are as follows (from strongest to weakest): suspense/thrillers, general fiction, classics, mystery, action/adventure, sci fi, romance, fantasy, religion, horror, graphic novels, and Westerns.  I did class it under action/adventure in choosing my key words, but since women are far and away the largest book-buying audience, it's been a hard sell.

I had already started working on a third novel on an early aviation pioneer, but having learned my lesson with Two Cents I changed direction and am currently reading and researching for a novel with a strong female lead set in the late medieval period.  It's been fun, digging into my grad school notes and texts and refreshing my knowledge of Old French.  As Stephen King advised in his memoir On Writing, write what you know.

I've also delved into audiobook production this spring, offering The Rogue Queen on ACX.  The book is currently being produced, and will hopefully be offered for sale within a month or six weeks.  I made the decision to try the audiobook market because, frankly, I ended up giving a lot of my e-book royalties from last year to the IRS.  I did plan appropriately for taxes on my royalties; I did not know I would have to shell out several grand to cover interest on savings bonds used to pay for our daughter's college tuition.  Once upon a time said interest was deductible if used for education, but no more.  We should have cashed in a few each year instead of waiting until her senior year, but live and learn.  Luckily I had the money available.  Hoping to tap into another revenue stream, I headed over to ACX (another Amazon company), where they make it easy to find producers willing to narrate in a clear step-by-step process.  As soon as school is out I'll be reviewing the recording as well as working on research, so it looks to be a busy summer.  I'll let y'all know how it goes.

On Translation, Chapitre Deux

Exciting things have been happening in my writing world this spring.  Thanks to some hometown networking by my mom I now have a booth rented and book signing scheduled at the Dairy Festival July 9-11 in Elsie, MI, which is one town over from where I grew up and where my dad and grandparents are still remembered.  I'm planning on offering paperback copies of The Rogue Queen for sale as well as giving away postcards with information on the e-book and the upcoming release of novel #2, titled For Two Cents I'll Go With You.   I was able to easily reformat TRQ's blurb to put on the back of a copy of the book cover, and I delivered the props for Two Cents' cover art to Jordan, who has again graciously agreed to help me by creating the cover.  I bought a WWI hat, a Red Cross armband, and a two cent coin on eBay to use on the cover.  The coin is going to be hard to incorporate due to its size but I have complete faith in Jordan's abilities.  She did such an awesome job with my first cover; I can't wait to see how the second one turns out!  And it'll be exciting doing some marketing for my books.

I've also been working somewhat erratically on Two Cents' translation, erratically because it's the end of the school year and life is correspondingly busy.  There's also been a learning curve.  I normally don't have too much difficulty expressing myself in French, but translation is a particular skill.  In the end the Larousse website and Linguee.com have become my go-to sites.  Still, it's a slow process.  I'm glad I didn't wait until June to start, as it's taking about an hour a page.  I hope to improve on that now that I can work on it every day.  I've also handed over the pages I've already finished to a French-speaking friend for her input.  That, too, will help me learn what I need to do because I'm sure I'm making mistakes on every page.  Still, writing is a process.  You have to get words on the page.  So, back to the desk!

On Publishing

I officially published The Rogue Queen on Amazon nearly a month ago, first as a Kindle book, then through CreateSpace print-on-demand.  Checking online today I was surprised to see that I've sold seventy-five copies!  It may not sound like a lot, but since I'm starting from scratch as an unknown author I'm well pleased.  One of the benefits of publishing digitally is there's no backlist.  In brick and mortar bookstores, if a book doesn't sell well it gets cycled back off the prime shelf spots and eventually disappears.  However anytime someone searches for historical fiction with TRQ's parameters on Amazon my book will pop up--forever, or until I take it down. So time is on my side.

Something I've had to work on since the book went live is marketing.  In my last post I mentioned searching for reviewers.  I've had two reviews on Amazon, and I'm waiting on a blogger and the Historical Novel Society to complete their reviews.  The more positive reviews I get the more often Amazon will suggest the book to people searching, so they're worth going after.  I've also looked into doing readings, one at a local independent bookstore and another at our town library.  If all of this sounds like a lot of work it really isn't, especially when you consider that I'm earning 70% royalties.  Most of it required only some searching online and a couple of emails.  If I'd gone the traditional route the publisher would've taken over the marketing while pocketing most of the royalties.  Since nobody wanted to publish the book the point is moot.  I took on the risk, so I make the money.

I was told before I published the book that it would essentially be a loss leader, an investment that would hopefully help me to build a following while not necessarily making a lot of money.  So far, thanks to the talents of my husband and a couple of generous friends, my only expense has been time.  In that regard it's been worth every moment.  I've also learned a lot, which will pay off even more when I publish my next novel, and the next.  In the meantime, The Rogue Queen is making her way into the hands of readers who seem to be enjoying her, and that is most definitely worth it.

Going Public

Well, I did it!  I published my first novel on Amazon.  Although it wasn't a simple process, I do believe anyone who uses a word processor could do it.  Amazon makes publishing for the Kindle pretty straightforward, even providing a free e-book with step-by-step instructions titled Building Your Book for Kindle.  I began by spending about three weeks doing a final edit, which the book really did need.  I've learned quite a bit since I finished The Rogue Queen, thanks in large part to a pair of friends who also write.  They very kindly read Novel #2, offering salient editing advice, which I then applied to Novel #1.  Meanwhile, Patient Husband photographed Duchess Angharad Banadaspus Drakenhefd for the cover, and I think she did a great job!  A friend from work offered to turn the photo into a cover.  The blue of the duchess's dress simply leaps off the page.  That part I doubt I could've done by myself, although there are workarounds for that as well.  You can use Amazon's cover creator, or you can find someone to do it for you via Fiverr or other sites.  I'm glad I had talented, helpful people around me to help me create a one-of-a-kind cover.

Formatting for the Kindle was also pretty easy.  The worst part was having to go through a 400-page manuscript, changing the indents one by one.  Not difficult, just tedious.  I also had to add a table of contents, but since Word can do that for you it was just a few mouse clicks.  The most important step is saving the Word doc as a Web Page, then uploading the right format.  I had a brief moment of panic when I accidentally uploaded the Word doc, but it was a quick fix.  I carefully checked the book using Amazon's online previewer, added the cover, and went on to the next step: pricing and distribution.

I spent some time thinking about how to price the book.  Some people advise giving it away for free, but I decided against that.  I worked too hard for too long to simply give it away.  In the end I priced it at $3.49; inexpensive, but at a point where I can make 70% royalties.  I also chose to participate in Amazon's KDP Select program, where readers can borrow the book through the Kindle Owners' Lending Library or buy it if they read more than 10% of the text through Kindle Unlimited.  Either way, I still make money.  There are a couple marketing tools I can use through the program, like running a promotion, and although I can't sell the book on any other digital platform I can still sell it as a paper book or an audiobook.  And I can choose not to continue with the program after 90 days.

Which brings us to the print-on-demand part of the story.  I'm a die-hard real book user, I admit it, so I knew I had to create a paper book for others who also prefer the format.  This was more complicated than the Kindle formatting.  I struggled for at least two days getting the pagination and page breaks right.  This, oddly, is one place where Amazon doesn't make it easy.  There are some idiosyncrasies about real books, such as page one beginning on a left-hand page and having all text right-justified.  The latter was simple; the former not so much.  Separating the front matter, which is not paginated, from the text, which is, proved difficult but with some help from Microsoft Office eventually I prevailed.  My front cover needs resizing and the back cover requires a headshot (!), which Patient Husband will take care of for me.  After that I think all will go smoothly.

Getting the book into the hands of readers who will enjoy it is the next step.  If I wanted to spend money it would be easy to get reviews, but with less than $100 in royalties earned so far I didn't want to go that route.  I eventually thought to Google folks who blog about historical fiction.  Some won't review books published independently, which I can understand, but it doesn't make my task any easier.  So far I've contacted half a dozen bloggers who might agree to read and review TRQ.  Once the paper copy is ready to roll I'm going to re-join the Historical Novel Society; they also review for free.  Amazon (surprise, surprise) has master reviewers who will read and review.  It's not a speedy process, but since it took more than a decade to get this far I'm willing to wait a little bit longer for the book to take off.  One of the benefits of e-publishing is that the book never goes away.  There's time!

Paradigm Shift

I've been at loose ends for quite a while, since I finished the revisions on For Two Cents in late October and sent it off to my agent.  I haven't heard anything from her, so I sent an excerpt from it to Narrative magazine's fall contest.  When that was done I had nothing else to focus on.  I fooled around with turning For Two Cents into a screenplay (and I still may) but I really found myself at an impasse.  As a result I spent most of Thanksgiving break brooding about my writing.  Isabelle never found a publisher.  I had high hopes for novel #2 but as it stands today I don't even know if my agent is willing to shop it around.  Hence the brooding.  I thought about entering Isabelle in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest until I found out it's 17,000 words over the limit.  It might be worth revising (cutting 50-odd pages...dunno) but without a specific historical fiction division I don't think much of my chances.  So back to square one.

After looking around at local agents and publishing houses, I drifted over to Amazon's e-publishing page. Hm.  They have a particularly persuasive little video that got me to thinking.  Well, why the hell not?  Isabelle's not doing anybody any good gathering digital dust in my computer--what's the worst that could happen?  And then it came to me:  I want to grab a little glory for myself.  I want people to read my stories and enjoy my characters as much as I did creating them.  So much of what I do in my day job is ephemeral.  I may never see the fruits of my labors there.  I sure would like to get something from my writing, even if it's just a few kinds words from an enthusiastic fan or two.

So today I'm exploring e-publishing.  Patient husband has agreed to help create artwork for the cover.  There's a lot to learn (Amazon's legalese runs twenty-one single-spaced pages.  Good Lord.) but I hope to have Isabelle read through again for a final buff-and-polish and ready to start formatting by the time winter break rolls around in a few weeks.   For my next post I hope to announce publication.  Wish me luck!