A Tale of Two Novels

First Thirty Days

This blog sets out the outcome of a little experiment. For those of you who haven't read last week's post, towards the end of 2014 I released two YA novels. One was called Inner Fire; the other was A Necklace of Souls. Inner Fire was released with significant publicity; A Necklace of Souls was launched with next to none. 

More details on the two novels are set out below.

Two Novels

- Inner Fire - YA - thriller/suspense - standalone - publisher: Waverley Productions, 2014
- A Necklace of Souls - YA - fantasy - #1 in series - publisher: harperCollins (Voyager) 2012-13; lately published by Waverley Productions, 2014. Winner: Tessa Duder Award, 2012; NZ Post Book Awards, 2013.

Publicity for Each Novel

1. Inner Fire: 

• Professional publicist and professional press release
• Available as on-line and print 
• Advertising and publicity:
• Newspaper article (readership 250K +)
• Radio interview
• Review in Collected, School Librarian magazine
• Advertising in self-pub section in Publishers Weekly and application for review by Publisher's Weekly
• Advanced Readers Copies to local high-volume bloggers 
• Blog tour to YA bloggers
• Goodreads giveaway

Sales channels - Inner Fire

• Kindle unlimited, kindle select and countdown deal.
• CreateSpace - print copies, including extended distribution
• NZ specialty bookstores - print copies

2. A Necklace of Souls:

• Advertising and Publicity:
• Advance reader copies to Goodreads followers
• Facebook advertisement 
• Extensive publicity in NZ 2013-14 through NZ Post Book Awards. Approx 2000+ sales in NZ 2012 - 2013 before rights returned in 2014.

Sales channels - A Necklace of Souls

• Amazon Kindle
• itunes, barnes and noble, Nook and Scribd (via Draft2Digital)
• Print in local NZ bookstores - voyager imprint only

From InkyGirl

Outcome - Caveats

1. Numbers set out below are approximate only.
2. The cost of marketing only includes giveaways, publicity and advertising. It does not include cover art, editorial, website design or formatting.
3. I don't have visibility into print sales through bookshops yet as these are not available until after 3 months. So this print sales volume includes direct print sales through my website only, not retail outlets.
4. Inner Fire was in the top 50 on Amazon for the YA/thrillers/spies for the first thirty days.
5. Although the loans look reasonably good for Inner Fire, the revenue for Kindle Unlimited is really uncertain. Greatest returns are through print sales through my website.
6. There are other rewards than sales volumes. For Inner Fire, these have included people stopping me on the street and saying how much they enjoyed my book; emails from fans; emails from reviewers saying 'it's fabulous'; a parent telling me in a cafe how thrilled they were that their daughter, not a big reader, was reading my book and loving it.

Results 

	Inner Fire	A Necklace of Souls
sales - amazon	5	9
loans (kindle unlimited)	15	-
sales - print	5	-
sales - electronic (other)		0
reviews - Goodreads	24	2
reviews - Amazon	4	0
approximate cost of marketing (NZD)	$1,000.00	$15.00

The Sales Roller-coaster

Learnings

• Formatting was a lot harder than I thought it would be; I wasted a lot of time on it.
• Using a local printer worked well (it was cheaper than CreateSpace), but the lack of print-on-demand facilities in New Zealand makes it expensive unless you do more than about 300 units.
• Print is a really effective advertising tool. People love getting free books. The Goodreads giveaway (which you can only do with a print book) was an effective promotional tool. However, sales were relatively low - although loans were higher than I'd expected.
• Using a professional formatter made life a lot easier but it's quite expensive. It is probably more cost-effective to use an outlet like Draft 2 Digital .
• Using a blog tour is good promotion (and is relatively inexpensive) but offers limited return in terms of sales. However, I gained a lot of followers on Facebook, Goodreads and Twitter following the blog tour, which was useful for the release of Necklace
• Using a professional publicist meant a high-quality press release and has gained some high-profile reviews, such as a national newspaper article, but has led to limited sales volume.

Final Conclusion

Low-key advertising seems to offer better value. So for A Skilful Warrior (the sequel to A Necklace of Souls) I will have a small blog tour, a Goodreads giveaway and, if you're a Goodreads follower, you might get offered a free advance copy. Get in quick! 

1. Social media seems to be more effective than paid publicity. 
2. And finally - these sales volumes will not make me rich. However, other very successful self-published authors report similar sales volumes early on, and so for the time being I'm actually not that discouraged. 
3. In general, the trend is positive. Reviews are good; readers are enjoying my books. And I'm working out a more hassle-free process as I go. So I do plan to produce one or two more books in 2015. Stay tuned!

New Year, New Year's Resolutions

The hardest thing about writing is that ... it's a slow process. It takes time to craft words well; it takes persistence to string them together to make sentences. And it takes even longer for these sentences to grow into a novel, to be edited and re-edited until the novel is complete. The trick to writing is to approach the task in increments. One paragraph at a time, each paragraph growing into a scene, into a chapter and so on.

The same is true for publishing. Getting a book onto virtual or physical bookshelves is best approached as a project. Tasks accomplished sequentially, in their required order. Rather like moving house, it's a good idea to sit down and plan the steps.  I had a list of jobs that need to be done before the book is released. Some things needed to be done early, others waited until the last minute. One of the things which needed to be done early was launch preparation.

New Year, New Book

My New Year's resolution for 2015 is to get my a new book, A Skilful Warrior, out onto virtual bookshelves by April 2015. It's the sequel to A Necklace of Souls, and was written two years ago. Warrior was sitting on my publisher's in-tray for a year. Then along came a restructure, a down-sizing and two book awards later the manuscript was surplus to requirements. HarperCollins were fantastic, though; they gave my my rights back. Which has meant I have been able to re-publish A Necklace of Souls myself, with very little work, and with a brand-new cover.

Big Bang or Slow Release?

In the meantime, however, I had written Inner Fire. Partly because I wanted to learn the craft of publishing on a stand-alone novel, and partly because the story had gripped me and I wanted to just get it out.  So, rather amazingly I had two novels coming out over just a few months: Inner Fire was published in October 2014; A Necklace of Souls in December 2014. I have used two very different launch strategies for this publishing approach, as I wanted to see which offered the best value.

I've summarised these approaches below, and in my next post I'll discuss the outcome. Click on the links in the text if you want more information.

From Dilbert

Inner Fire

Novel: YA, standalone, suitable for 15 years +. Planned Release: November 2014

June 2014

- Decided to do print as well as e-copies

August 2014

- Booked a book blog tour with YA Bound for December 2014

- Engaged Lighthouse PR to do publicity

- Final proofing of print copies template for CreateSpace

- Prepared cover blurb

September 2014

- Advertising strategy planned

- Goodreads Giveaway

- Engaged a print distributor

- Engaged a local printer

- Print proof prepared for local printer

- Prepared Advance Information Sheet

October 2014

- Formatting for kindle completed by Ebook Launch

- Loaded onto kindle (but not published), decided on price and distribution channels

- Increased social media presence 

- Books arrived

- Press release prepared

- Press release sent to interested parties by publicist

- ebook released onto KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited

- Advertisement placed on Publishers Weekly

November 2014

- Advance release copies to media reviewers (I engaged my publicist to manage this)

- Talk to local bookstores about upcoming release

- Giveaway copies to friends, unofficial reviewers, bloggers

- Increased social media presence

- set up paypal on my website

- joined Amazon Affiliates programme

- sent marketing material (posters) to distributor

December 2014

- Goodreads giveaway closed

- Blog tour completed

- print and e-available for sale

- media interviews (newspaper and company magazine)

A Necklace of Souls

Novel: YA and Adult Fantasy, series, book #1, suitable age 13+. Published in 2013 by harperCollins, won a number of awards.

September 2014

- Decided to do only e-book release in 2014; print in March 2015

October 2014 

- sent pdf of manuscript to E-book Launch for formatting. They were unable to format from a pdf, so I went back to the word version. 

- Re-edited the manuscript

- Engaged a cover artist

November 2014 

- Cover design completed

- Formatting completed for Kindle and Google play 

- Blog tour booked for March 2015

mid-December 2014

- Mobi file loaded onto Kindle (not Kindle Select)

- Word file loaded onto Draft 2 Digital.

- Published to iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Nook (Kobo)

- electronic advanced reading copies distributed to Goodreads followers

- $15.00 advertisement on Facebook

Print vs E-books?

• You need to think hard about whether you'll sell print or e-books or both. This will determine your launch strategy and determines your time frame.
• The approach I used for Necklace was pretty much the same that I used when being traditionally published. People say, oh but self-publishing is a lot of work, and it is, but it's not a lot more than trad publishing if you don't do a print version. 
• There are benefits to print - people like it for giveaways, it's really really nice to touch a print book and you can sell signed copies. Print also offers you different price points on Amazon and a wider distribution.  However, doing the layout and the proofing was a lot more work. 
• Using a distributor like Draft 2 Digital was significantly easier than directly loading onto each platform. iTunes has a different platform to Nook, to Kindle, and they are none of them simple to understand. I am still trying to work my way through the Google Play platform! Next time I will just use D2D for every outlet. They are incredibly helpful, they pay monthly and there's no charge if you don't make a sale. Just remember, though, if you do decide to directly load to iTunes, Nook or Kindle later on, you may lose all the reviews that have accrued through your distributor sales.
• There is a real lack of transparency in print sales through retail outlets. I found this with traditional publishing, too; it's not my distributor's fault at all. This is partly because of the sales and return process which operates with retail. If a book doesn't sell, the retailer can return it to the distributor free of charge. This seems to operate in a 3 month timeframe, so sales volumes won't be evident for a few months. This means that if you do wish to sell through a print outlet, do NOT over-print, unless you are confident of your volumes. 
• The quality of print from CreateSpace and from Ligare Print were both excellent. Better,  I thought, than the printers used by HarperCollins.
• In the next post I'll talk a bit more about the outcome of these two strategies, so you can see which approach offered more return on my advertising investment.

Also...

If you're wanting more information, also check out David Gaughran's Let's Get Visible; it was very helpful when it came to setting pricing and deciding on which channels to use. I've also set out some links on my pinterest board.

If you have any questions on the information set out here, please do feel free to post a comment or to message me through Goodreads or Facebook.

And Happy New Year. Good luck with your New Years Resolutions, whatever they may be!

Editorials: Dos and Don'ts and Xmas Deadlines

Why is this time of the year so crazy busy? Each year I promise myself that next year will be better. And it NEVER is.  The problem is that here in New Zealand the long school holidays - a whole six weeks - coincide with the Christmas break, so not only is work closed, schools are also shut. This makes this time of the year a time of deadlines.

This post is about editing. I thought, rather than provide a long summary of What to Do, I would instead provide a list of Top Tips, in the hopes that you, dear reader, do not make the same mistakes as I. Because I am in a seasonal mood, you may find this list rather random. For this, I apologise.  If you have questions, feel free to post a question on twitter or Facebook. (Or here, if you must).

I've set this out as DIY editing - things to do yourself. Then suggestions on how to engage a professional.

DIY Manuscript Editing 

1. I roughly follow the practise set out in this earlier series of blog posts. I do my first draft, set it aside for about six weeks, take a deep breath and then read it again. I start a new folder called Draft Two_Structure. 
2. I move events and characters around to make sure the narrative flows. This is the Structural Edit and is filed in the new folder.  I set it aside for a few weeks.
3. Take another look. Check for consistency, continuity. Word repetition, sentence structure, clarity. Changes go in another folder: Draft Three_Copy. 
4. Set it aside again. After about two weeks I look at it. Now I consider at the whole thing. Is it any good? Do I like it? Characters make sense? Is it funny? Is the voice engaging? Does it read well? At that point, I find myself a critique partner. I make the changes he/she recommends. Decide on US or UK spelling. Do a spell-check. Set it aside again.

From Inky Girl.com

Professional Editing

1. Use as good an editor as you can afford. Do not try and do it yourself; do not try and cut corners. Smashwords says 'spend money on your editor before your cover'. Basically, if you're self publishing, you'll need an even better editor than a trad publishing house. That's partly because traditional publishers do a lot of vetting at the acquisitions stage, so there's less editorial requirements. It's also because reviewers do look very critically at indie books. You want as good a review as possible.
2. With traditional publishing, you don't have to pay an editor - the publishing house does. But if you're self publishing you're now a quasi-employer. This comes with complications. Especially money ones. My editor lives in Australia; I do not. A small business-person who likes books, she doesn't have a paypal account. I can't pay her by credit card. This meant I had to figure out how to do an international transaction. Allow for foreign exchange and transaction fees in your budgeting.
3. Stipulate your deadline to your editor. They need to know your urgency factor so they can juggle other jobs. If it is actually urgent, tell them. Publishing houses often have contracts and so on that enforce compliance. Usually, you won't, so you need to be very clear on your requirements. 
4. Speaking of contracts: You can ask a lawyer to draw up an agreement, heck, you can draw one up yourself using an on line template. But even when I worked for a large government agency our editorial contracting was fairly adhoc. Common practise seems to be basically an email saying 'Can you do job X by time Y and I will pay you this much'. Technically, this is probably okay, although personally I think it's risky. But you don't want to alienate your amazing editor by insisting he/she signs an ten page agreement for a three hundred dollar job. Plus, it will cost you more than that in legal fees for the drafting. So just be aware that with editorial services it's probably wise to spell out your expectations, your time frame, your payment rates in advance and make sure your editor agrees to this in a return email. Editors usually appreciate this, too, as it offers them just as much protection as you.
5. Most editors seem to charge per hour, although some charge per word count. If you have an editor on an hourly rate you might want to say 'I'll pay you up to a maximum of say ten hours and then if you need more than that, please let me know first.' That way you'll know in advance how much you'll have to spend.
6. This might be obvious, but be POLITE to your editor. Apart from this being just ordinary human courtesy, remember you may wish to use their services again. In the self-employed sector, reputation is extremely important. If you develop a name for being hard to work with it's very possible you'll find it difficult to source good editors. 
7. Good editors get booked up real fast. One way of finding a great editor is to keep an ear to the grapevine: which publishing houses are disestablishing their in-house editors? That way you may be able to grab an amazing editor who's just starting out as freelance, so is looking for clients. Fortunately for us indie authors, there's an awful lot of publishing houses doing just that. Failing that, ask your writing buddies. Usually they'll have a few people that they would recommend. (Sometimes, they won't. Sometimes they want to keep the good editors to themselves :))
8. You might want to consider two editors. With Inner Fire I used a structural editor first, then used a copy editor to check for spelling errors/typos. I found this helpful, as after I'd looked at the manuscript so many times I couldn't spot the mistakes, but a fresh pair of eyes did. Alternatively, you can give the final(ish) manuscript to someone who's a really, really slow, critical, reader.  Although this can be problematic, especially if you don't appreciate their feedback, because at this stage in the game it is a little late to be making major changes.
9. Then, BEFORE THE MANUSCRIPT IS FORMATTED FOR PRINT, do a final proofing. (I say this in capitals is because I never listen to myself.) The reason I emphasise this is because editing after the manuscript is formatted into a print-ready proof is expensive.  I ended up paying an extra $200.00 for CreateSpace to do exactly that. Check chapter headings are formatted consistently, that they are spelt correctly. Write your back matter (the bits after the book is finished, like 'About the Author') and your back cover description.
10. You'll find things that need to be changed at each step in the process. There are always typos, always sentences that aren't right, often spelling mistakes. My editor at harperCollins told me once that it's impossible to be a hundred-percent error free. But ideally, you want to have as few mistakes as you can.

Getting Social

In my post, Steps to Self-Publishing, I set out a list of the key things I'd done prior to putting Inner Fire on the virtual book shelves.

This post covers the second item on that list: Social Media.

Writers seem to either love social media and embrace it wildly, or they run from it, only interacting when they have to.

Do you need to have a social media presence as a writer? No. Of course not.  Does it help you be a better writer? Probably not. Does it help you sell more books. Ah, well. Yes. Probably, it does. Note the probably.  This is because measuring Return on Investment (ROI) in social media is always an approximation.  Even large companies struggle with calculation of investment return. That's why it's really helpful to have a website with google analytics; you have a tool that allows you to see the outcome of any social media presence. (Funnily enough just as I type this I'm also listening to a pod-cast by Joanna Penn exactly on this point).

Most people know how to use twitter, Facebook and so on so I won't do a huge post on how to do posts, because I am so definitely not an expert on this. However, I thought I'd note a few things I've found that have worked well - unlike my kids I'm not in a native child of the internet, so social media is not a space I play in naturally.

Tips for Using (and Enjoying) Social Media

1. Stop focusing on the 'likes'. I don't know why people get so obsessed by how many followers they have. I hate to say it, but most of your followers are probably not going to buy your books. Actually, probably a lot of your followers are not even real. You can usually tell the non-real ones; they offer you a 'good time', food that contains strawberries (for some reason instagram bots seem to have a thing for strawberries. Maybe the red shows up well or something), and generally, they are young women wearing bikinis.  
2. Focus on engagement. I like social media because it allows me to talk to people. I like it because it helps other people to find out about me; it allows me to find out about other lives. I'm way more interested in how many people comment on a post (except my blog. I don't ask people to comment here, because I'm too lazy to reply).
3. Cross-post and save time. If I post on instagram I can put the same image on twitter, tumblr and Facebook. I pin images from this blog onto pinterest; this allows other people to find this content. I tweet about my new blog post; I tweet about my old blog posts. One day I might turn this blog into a book. Who knows? 
4. Content is king. Maybe I'm old, but I kind of hope that real content is way more useful and interesting to readers than cat memes. And personally, I feel more comfortable sharing things that are actually useful. So hence this series of blog posts on Things that I Have Learnt. Besides, if you provide good content it can re-purposed (thanks, Joanna Penn, for your podcast!).
5. Social Media is not about advertising - it's about sharing. Social media is a very valuable tool. For example, I use pinterest a lot because it's a very easy way to provide content that readers, librarians and teachers love.  I have boards that I've pinned background research to. This includes videos or books, and readers seem to enjoy being able to watch sword fighting and stuff. I can add this link to my website, so students reading my book can easily access the research that sits behind it. As an example, here's the link to the pinterest board for Inner Fire
6. Social media is exciting. The use of hashtags and the ability to comment allows really creative play on words, which as a writer I find fascinating. Social media is really innovative. At the moment, I'm very interested in instagram and how instagrammers see the world. The novel I'm currently planning has an instagram hashtag as a title.

The trick with social media is not to let it overwhelm your life, to spend a little bit of time on-line regularly and to content check with your (real-life) friends and relatives. It's always alarming when people I actually know comment on my blog or my Facebook page, but it's also a relief, because then I have confidence that what I'm saying is interesting! And quite often, people I've met through social media have become real-life friends. (Much to my teenagers' amusement - 'you are meeting someone you met online'?)

Through social media, the separation between virtual and physical is becoming increasingly blurred.

Writing: Creation of an Art

I just watched an amazing video: Ursula Le Guin's acceptance speech at the National Book Foundation. "We need writers who know the difference between the production of a commodity and the creation of an art."

So, as I embark on this next series of posts - the steps to bringing your book into the world, it seemed apposite to remember - writing is, first and foremost, an art. Words have power; words can change a world.

Neil Gaiman - Fragile Things

In an earlier post 'Steps to Self Publishing' I listed the things I did before Inner Fire hit the Amazon shelves. I'm going to cover them sequentially, in detail. The purpose of these posts, dear reader, is help you in the creation of your art.

Step One: Tax Number

Witholding tax is tax that is deducted from your earnings ('withheld') by the vendor you have listed your book with. If your book is on Smashwords, Smashwords have to deduct tax on behalf of the US government. Amazon does the same, as does Draft to Digital.  These witholding tax rates vary depending on your country of origin and the country of earnings, however it can be quite significant. (You can find a lot of information here.)

However, if your country has a tax treaty with the US you can be eligible for the standard US withholding tax rate, which is currently only about 5 percent. New Zealand has a tax treaty, and it's definitely worth the tax deduction it allows. To access these lower tax rates you need to have a number.  Amazon will now accept your domestic tax number - for New Zealanders this would be the IRD number - but other vendors are a little less flexible, and seem to still require a US tax number.

Therefore, if you want to sell on a number of platforms currently it's way simpler if you have a US tax number. Basically, there's two types of numbers - a number for an individual (ITIN) or a number for an entity (EIN). Writers are both: an entity (i.e. we write for generating profit so therefore we are a business) and an individual. Therefore, we have a choice of number types.

Well, dear reader, following my own long and bitter experience over the ITIN, I can tell you now - it's a lot lot easier to get the EIN. Here's a brilliant blog post which explains it much better than I can. Amazon also has useful information.

From Dilbert

I do recommend getting your tax number early in the process. As any interaction with the IRS is fraught with complexity, its a wise idea to get it out of the way soon as possible. Besides, the rest of the steps of getting your book to market are pretty much under your control. So, once you've got your tax number you can proceed with a fairly good idea of when your book will hit the virtual shelves.

Tangled in the World Wide Web

In the last post I set out a list of things I found I needed to do in the process of getting Inner Fire out to market. However, there's one thing I left out.

The major thing I'd left off my Get-your-book-to-market list is your website.

The reason for this brain fade is that Inner Fire is actually my second novel - my first to be self-published, though - so I had already organised a site at the time my first novel, A Necklace of Souls, was published. This post contains some of the many Things I Wish I'd Known about websites. This is pretty basic information and you can find out a lot more technical material on the web. If you're a designer or someone who works in IT you won't need all the information below. But since I'm neither of these things, I thought other folk as ignorant as I may find all this interesting.

Do I Need a Website?

Of course you don't. You're writing books, not selling furniture. Stories are art, not commodities, and  a website is not required to write a book. Time, persistence and talent maybe, but not a website.

But. Here's the thing. If you want to sell your books, well then, a website is a wise idea. Again, it's not mandatory; some writers I love do not have a web presence. Which is immensely frustrating, because I would really like to know what else they've written and what they're working on now. The hallmark of these writers is that they're pre-world wide web and/or they're all immensely famous so they don't really need the presence. Fair play to them.

But for me, a website has been a great investment. Why? Because a website isn't only about having your photo on the internet. A website offers you:

• Discoverability
• Analytics
• Communication
• Income

Set out below are my main learnings from my web building experience.

from Dilbert

What do I Need?

You need to have a thought about what you want in a site. Do you want one page or multiple page? Do you want a 'contact me' form? An FAQ section? Here's a link to a couple of sites with quite diverse looks and feels to give you ideas:

1. Mary Winston Photography
2. Rachael Craw 
3. T K Roxburgh

Websites are not cheap. You can build one yourself, but if you're not a website person (and lots of writers aren't) chances are it will look and feel horrible. So personally, I suggest get a web designer to do it for you. Who? Look at websites of other creatives you like and see who their designer is. There will be a link somewhere in the footer of the page. Make contact with the designer and ask for a quote. You'll find they'll vary a lot and it will be dependant on what your requirements are. Here's the link to my web designer.

Don't forget that the website needs a domain name. www.RLStedman.com is my domain name. Your domain name could be the title of your book, or your name or something totally random. Popular domain names trade hands for thousands; a domain name has a value. If you think you've got a best seller on your hands, register its title as a domain name before anyone else does!

Your website will need to be hosted. Hosting is where the software for your site sits.  Your designer can help you find hosting, or you can sort it yourself. Hosting isn't something we need to get too worried about as authors, but large companies do need to consider these hosting arrangements carefully, as they cannot afford for their hosting company to go out of business, or to be damaged in a fire or earthquake and take their data with them.

So the cost of your site will probably be development + hosting + domain name. I say 'probably' as the web world is always changing, so who knows what technology will bring. Currently, the usual process seems to be domain name and hosting is an annual fee; development is usually a one off cost, often a per hour charge. You may need additional development services if you want to modify your site.

Benefits of a Website

Discoverability

Search engine optimization (SEO) means how easily a site is found by search engines. Most people, if they're looking for me, will type 'Rachel Stedman' or 'A Necklace of Souls' or 'RLStedman' into their Google browser. Usually, my website is the first option on the list presented by Google. The idea of SEO means that people can find me easily. When you get your site, search yourself on Google, and check your site comes up. If it doesn't, the keywords may need to be changed.

Apart from SEO, your website needs to be kept current. Google can tell if the website's old, and if it's old it's not presented as a first choice to the searcher.  Therefore, to keep your website fresh, it's wise to tweak your content probably every 3 months. Some people have a blog attached to their site (I don't), which acts the same way.

If you're not particularly technical you can get your web designer to make regular tweaks to your site,  but then you'll probably have to pay them, so for me, I've learnt to do it myself. On a wordpress platform it's no harder than writing this blog. (Actually, it's easier, the blogspot software is very clunky).

Analytics

Ask your designer to set you up with analytics to your site.  Analytics measure who is clicking on your site, where they're based and even, if they're linked up to google +, their demographics - age, sex and so on.  I can drill down into time periods, or country or referral patterns. This is useful because it helps me tell if say a campaign of Facebook ad has lead to any extra activity.

Analytics are the most valuable part of a website. They're the reason I wouldn't use a low cost alternative, like a tumblr page. I love knowing that readers in China and Russia and Brazil are interested in me. It's also encouraging; writing is a long term plan and I can tell, just from my analytics, that my presence and interest in my writing is slowly, slowly increasing. 

I find the analytics more useful than sales figures. Why? Because most people discover a book by reading it for free. Someone lends it to them, or they get it from the library, or they get a free download.  (Probably, this is why Scott Adams allows his awesome Dilbert cartoons to be used on blogs like mine).

Therefore, it's highly reasonable to assume that sales will lag significantly behind website analytics. It's the trend, though that interests me, and for me the trend is looking good. Not great, not amazing, but in the right direction.

Website Analytics: Number of hits per month

Communication

If I'm giving a talk about my book, often the convener will introduce me with the blurb from my website. 'Hello,' I think, 'I've heard that before.' Last year, when A Necklace of Souls was shortlisted in the New Zealand Post Book Awards, school children were looking at my site. Teachers also are interested. As are media outlets - if someone's doing an interview with you they'll definitely check out your site first. I have a page that's just for readers/media/teachers, and people can contact me through my site. You can add newsletter sign-ups to your site.

Income

This is something I've only just realised - your blog or website can generate income for you. Not a lot, but still. You can put google adsense on your site (personally, i haven't because I think it looks tacky), but I have here on my blog. Look to the right, under the 'about me' section. You'll see an advert for something, probably self-publishing. Dear reader, if you click on that advertisement, I receive a small payment. Something like a dollar. Thus far, I have made TWO DOLLARS. So not retirement material. 

Also on my website is a link to a 'buy now' for Inner Fire. This will take you to the amazon entry for the book. This is an affiliate link - if someone clicks on this link and purchases something from amazon over the next several hours (I forget the timeframe), a receive a small renumeration. Thus far, I have made ZERO DOLLARS.  However, large book buying sites such as BookBub, can receive serious money from their affiliate links.  

And of course, you can attach a paypal to your site, and people can purchase your work online. Do put this in. True story: I heard a wonderful singer/songwriter on the radio, an audience of probably 50,000. When asked 'Where can people buy your music?' she said, 'Oh they can send me a letter.' A letter! Don't make it hard for people to find your work. I've only just added the paypal function and I haven't used it yet, but it seems crazy that I didn't have it up earlier. It isn't hard and doesn't cost you anything unless you make a sale.

From Dilbert

Creative

When A Necklace of Souls was published in 2013 I was nervous about having an online presence. I thought people would stalk me or something. I was so wrong. A website allows people who are interested in you to contact you (I love getting emails through my site) but also, and I really had not anticipated this, a website allows you to be creative. 

You can have a website page for a character, or a page for a story, or a page for the pictures you've drawn for your story. Some writers have whole websites devoted to their worlds (check out Ben Aaronvitch's site). In a very strange way your site reflects your personality; the colours, the layout, the images. A well designed website feels, rather weirdly, like an extension of yourself.

My Site

Steps to Self-Publishing

Steps to Self-Pub

In my last post I warned about driving while under the influence of writing. Now, I'm going to talk about the steps I followed in to getting a book onto book shelves.

A little disclaimer: these are the steps, and the order, I've used. It isn't necessarily the only correct sequence, and it's not necessarily what I would recommend. It's just how things have played out. And my book, while on virtual shelves is not yet on physical, so there may be learnings yet to come.

Because I'm also using bricks and mortar stores to distribute my book, I have encountered more complexity than other self-pub writers. However, I wanted to use real bookshops because:

• I wanted to see how the process worked
• I really like seeing my book for sale!

Set out below are the steps I took. I will go through these in more detail in the next series of blog posts, as some are quite involved.  But in the meantime if you're wanting more content, try Head or Heart by Nina Harrington. There is also a lot of information on the web - provided you have the time to search for it.  To make it easier for me (and for you) I have pinned a lot of self-pub resources to my pinterest board. Feel free to have a rummage.

from wikimedia commons

Pre Release

1. Get a tax number - an EIN or ITIN
2. Increase social media presence
3. Source editor
4. Purchase or design the cover art
5. Complete the editing
6. Plan marketing strategy
7. Copy edit
8. Proofing
9. Format print proofs (if doing a print book)
10. Source distributor and printer (if selling to bookstores)
11. Source marketer/publicist
12. Develop the Advance Information Sheet (AIS). An AIS is a summary of your book. Here is the AIS for Inner Fire and here is a brief summary of what it should contain.
13. Formatting for e-book
14. Finalise on pricing, distribution and platforms for e-books
15. Build pre-release buzz. Finalise which platforms you'll use. Begin pre-release advertising.
16. Release

Post Release

1. Quality check your product
2. Advertising
3. Press release
4. Interviews
5. Enter competitions/blog tours
6. Special offers or further advertising
7. Prepare for next book

And that's it! So far, anyway. I might add more steps as I get further into the process.