I'm not going to be able to do this every day, you can obviously see by the fact that I missed yesterday, but I'll try to fill in what's happened and what I've been up to in between post as best I can.
So, where were we? Oh yes. I had just self published my first book.
Because I was up for almost two days straight finishing the book, editing it, and making the cover, I went to bed some time around 7:00 AM and got up around 6:00 PM, and had been up ever since.
What did I do yesterday? Having only $40.00 on me - all of it because of a friend, whom I thank very much! - and not knowing how long I need to make it last until (my care provider's check could be here any day) I went to the carneceria on the corner owned by a Palestinian family that my dad built a mosque for several years ago and got roughly $45.00 worth of food and other things on credit since they've known me for years and I live right around the corner from them, plus we cash all of our checks there, so they know they'll get their money back.
Anyway, I kept the actual cash on hand so I can spend it today if need be, or even ration it out for a another day or two after if I have to. Desperate times lead you to find out what local businesses you frequent will let you run a tab, and who your friends are. I have a couple of restaurants in my area that will also let me do take out on credit from time to time, which also helps out in emergencies.
After that, I watched a bit of television and then got to work again, this time scouring the internet for book review blogs that I might promote my book to in the hopes of getting publicity and building a readership. I came up with over 100, and send out review requests to the first five or six after working up a nice letter explaining who I am and what I'm doing, and linking them to the free copies of the book that I posted in my first entry in this series on Sunday. Having written the first book, I'm now shifting gears into the promotional stage, looking for places and ways to get the word out about me and the book since I have no advertising budget to speak of.
I'd like to eventually be able to afford the $19.99 a month to get a site on Back My Book, where I can get an author's page, sell my stuff directly at 85% royalty instead of 70% royalty, like through Amazon. It also sends ME e-mail every time I sell a book, giving me the e-mail address of the buyer so that I can start to build a mailing list of readers rather than Amazon collecting all of that information and using it to sell other books that I didn't write and leaving me in the dark. That's especially important for me, since I'm attempting serial fiction, were keeping in regular contact with my readers to let them know when new material is out is really important to building up my readership and keeping it going.
So after sending out five or six review requests, I then went to the process of submitting my book as a Kindle Single, a special part of the kindle store that focuses on short fiction - novellas, short stories, etc. I think that's the perfect place for me to try to push the book and eventually the series. I put together all of the information and submitted that, then did a bit of idle web browsing. I've sold two copies of the book already, and much of my time consists of me obsessively hitting refresh to see if I've sold any more, or if anyone has posted a review yet.
That's about all of my work for the day, so far. I'll probably be going down to the food stamp office later today to see if I can get back on food stamps again, I only qualify for $70.00 a month in food stamps when I do, and I have to reapply every three months, so it gets tedious and I sometimes forget to renew. I also feel bad taking the food stamps when I actually do have enough money to get by, because I know there's people in even worse positions than I am.
Anyway, feel free to go download the book and read it you haven't, yet. If you like it, you can purchase a copy from Amazon, or leave a review so that others might buy it in the future. The links are all in my last post.
Today is my 14th wedding anniversary. Here's hoping that the check comes today.