Friday, July 15, 2011

WHICH IDIOT SAID THAT SELF-PUBLISHING DIDN'T COST ANYTHING?

...........In pursuit of my "craft" I am now almost 300 Euros worse off (in one day).

So here's the story. My most avid readers, who live and breath for this blog, may have noticed that yesterday, I was blogless? unblogged? Whatever. I didn't convey my world-changing message to the world. The reason. I ran out of credit on my satellite connection. (I use a pay-as-you go system for certain legal reasons. Interpol being one.) So, last night, as I was preparing to update aforesaid blog, I received an SMS in Espanol from my service provider which went something along the lines of "you need to buy mucho more euros for your experimenta to continue."

Herein lay the problem. Normally I send a text to a man who buys me the top ups, he then sends me the code and Hey Presto! Problem solved. Alas, last night, the top-up magician was unavailable. So I decided to resort to something I rarely do nowadays. Drive.

First problem: The shop is almost 20 kms away.
Second problem: The Ferrari is low on fuel.
Third problem: The fuel station is almost 20 kms away.
Fourth problem: It is in the opposite direction to the shop.
Fifth problem: I had drunk two glasses of red wine.
Sixth problem: To reach the fuel station, you have to drive past the police station.

To cut a long story short, I put 100 Euros of fuel in the car, paid a bribe of 100 Euros when I failed the breath-test by a trillionth of a percent (let a fat Spanish policeman sit in the car while his mate took a photograph of him and then vice versa), bought 50 euros worth of top-ups, received a 40 euro parking ticket whilst trying to negotiate the latter in my finest Spanglish, drove home 290 Euros worse off and decided not to bother blogging after all.

But fear not! Here I am with 40 euros worth of ammunition to set things right. The top-up magician called me back with his apologies and I am seriously thinking about buying a mountain bike.

Well, I sent an email to most of the UK newspapers, outlining my experiment and giving them the blog address. Now I know at this point that the more experienced authors reading this blog will probably change their underwear once the hysterical laughter eventually subsides. Do I seriously expect any newspaper in the world to report on my little experiment? Well, no, but that's not the point. The point is that someone on almost every UK newspaper now knows about me, probably their editors too. I don't expect someone to run a story but when I checked my web stats, 80% of web traffic was from UK newspapers internal servers. Maybe one washed-up journalist with nothing better to do will read one of the books and like it. He may be having a drink with an old friend who happens to be the friend of a friend of a .........catch my drift? Get your name out there.

Now I don't honestly believe that anything concrete will come out of this but you have to admit that I am persistent and my blog is probably logged in a few media databases somewhere by now. Who knows?

Current readership after 14 days: 222

ACTION
RESULT
SALES
TOTAL
Full or discounted
READERS
DAY 1
Published Sunday Club on Kindle and opened an Author Central account.
Crap
1
1
DAY 2
Created my Blog & advertised it on Kindle Self-Publishing Forum
Gained 4 blog- followers
1
2
DAY 3
Advertised the blog on forums.
Gained 1 blog-follower
2
4
DAY 4
Published The Sunday Club on Smashwords
One immediate sale
1
5
DAY 5
Published Facebok Killer on Smashwords (FREE)
45 downloads of The Facebook Killer
0
50
DAY 6
Posted on Kindle US & UK forums
33 downloads of The Facebook Killer
0
83
DAY 7
Joined www.mobileread.com. Promoted the blog.
17 downloads of The Facebook Killer. Gained one more blog-follower
0
100
DAY 8
Joined www.epublishingconsortium.com. Promoted the blog.
23 downloads of The Facebook Killer. Gained one more blog-follower
0
123
DAY 9
Changed & added new tags to both books
17 downloads of The Facebook Killer.
0
140
DAY 10
Revised subtitles and descriptions on both Kindle & Smashwords
11 downloads of The Facebook Killer. 2 sales of The Sunday Club.
3
154
DAY 11
Posted further promotion on UK & US Kindle forums, linking to blog.
13 downloads of The Facebook Killer. Gained one more blog-follower
14
181
DAY 12
18 downloads of The Facebook Killer.
0
199
DAY 13
Received IBNS for both books via Smashwords.
10 downloads of The Facebook Killer. One sale of The Sunday Club.
1
210
DAY 14
6 downloads of The Facebook Killer. Six sales of The Sunday Club.
6
222

2 comments:

SBJones said...

I am over $1,400 into my self published book. Most of it was getting the paperback created.

Getting your name out there is important. If you can reach a lot of people easily with emails then do it. However if you start to spend any money or a lot of time. Target people who have influence. A radio host, a local tv news person, celebrities. These people reach a lot more people than others.

You could tell 1000 people and maybe 1% (10 people) buy it. Get the guy on tv/raido to tell 100,000 people and maybe 8% (8,000 people) buy it.

Emerging Writer said...

I am following your progress with interest. I do wonder how it would change if the book wasn't free from the start.