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Blogs by Patrick Sills
My Education Continues...... 11/1/2005 4:57:08 PM
Yesterday,on October 31st, (or for those of you who prefer, Hallows Eve) and today, November 1, I was suddenly educated in two areas of my ongoing struggle to become a successful writer. I will try to be brief because I have to get groceries before Commander in Chief comes on. Geena Davis is superb in portraying the first President of female gender.
REUNIONS,my first novel,was published back in March by a POD company. To avoid repeating myself let's just say that I made many mistakes and am currently trying to rectify my situation. Like an oblivious comic whose jokes are received with no laughter, my effort thus far can be summed up as a dismal failure. Without a marketing plan, being listed on sites such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble is meaningless. I was made aware of this fact when the Second Quarter Sales Report came out around mid-May. My sister was the sole person who purchased my book through Amazon. Including her, my total online sales amounted to 3 copies, resulting in a royalty of $3.72. About a month after the book was released I joined Authors Den with two goals in mind: A) I wanted to get my name known, and B)I hoped to sell some copies of my book. Following the advice of those who came before me, I slowly but surely added links to and from this site to gain more recognition. This strategy seemed to work. The hits to my book increased, and I became excited. On a daily basis I eagerly logged onto My Den to check Stats, Bookstore Stats, and what I believed to be of most significant importance; Potential Sales Stats. The Bookstore Stats remained at $0.00 but I wasn't concerned. Some other authors I corresponded with in the Forums said they had received thousands of hits without a single sale. I assumed that they were merely referring to the AD Bookstore and not the links to Amazon, B&N, or FetchBook. As of this blog I have had 35 hits on Amazon, 31 on B&N,and 15 on Fetchbook. That's 81 hits in all. My Amazon Sales Ranking continued to drop, but I still held on to the hope that perhaps B&N and/or Fetchbook had better prices and hence the reason nobody was buying from Amazon. Subtracting Amazon's 35 hits still left 46 "potential" sales. I realized that it would have been quite presumptuous to think I actually sold 46 books,but from a purely mathematical standpoint I thought that a small number of people; perhaps 3 or 4; maybe 7, had actually ordered a copy. If a car salesman had 46 people take a test drive in a given week I don't think it would be unreasonable to assume that 5 of them would end up buying one. Would you? Well, books are books and cars are cars. However you slice it, I was wrong. Dead wrong. Yesterday my Third Quarter Results arrived via E-mail. My sales? Zero. Zip. Nada... The lesson learned? You can get a hit, but it won't mean shit............ As mentioned in other blogs composed by Yours Truly, REUNIONS is being considered for republication with a small trad publisher. In addition it has been re-edited and at last reviewed by someone other than one of the 31 friends, relatives, and acquaintances I managed to sell a copy to directly. I have been given much constructive advice from the said publisher that I will follow whether I'm rejected or not. My title is irrelevant. REUNIONS suggests that it is a book of memoirs when in reality it is of the supernatural genre; a story of reincarnation. My cover is horrendous. I went with one of the generic covers that the initial publisher offered. A big mistake. The story is well-written, easy to follow, and keeps the reader turning pages to find out what happens next. The conflicts of the characters are resolved too quickly and easily. These things, according to the publisher, are what separates the book from being good and great. My intention is to take the advice and make it great. From a financial standpoint I hope the publisher accepts the book for their imprint. I will fix it either way. If I'm rejected I can stay with my current POD company, but it will cost me hundreds of dollars to make the necessary changes. I view this subjectively as the price to pay to avoid rejection time and time again and worst of all, waiting for weeks or even months to get an answer. I'm not a resident of the Golden Years Nursing Home yet but I'm not a young man, either. I'll be 46 years old on Thursday and can't afford to wait long for answers. Because I have been waiting to see what happens with this trad publisher, I have put new marketing ideas on hold. If they pick it up, I won't have to worry about it, you see..and I would like to think that if I've done everything to make it great but for some reason they still reject it, the marketing will nevertheless be much easier. I guess this blog wasn't so brief after all, was it?
