I don’t know about you, but this has been a busy month for
me and that’s on top of all the holiday prep, shopping and events we always
deal with this time of year. And we’re
only half way through the month!
The third book in my series, Ties That Bind, is now out. Of
course, that’s not news to you if you follow this blog or my Facebook
page. It’s always an exciting time when
another new book is released and then…I finally get my head out of the fog so
that I can focus on the list of to-do’s I need to complete once the book is
finally out.
What kind of list?
Here’s just a sample of some of the tasks I needed to complete:
- Send out group e-mail about the new book to everyone I know
- Blog about new book release
- Update blog with new title and where to purchase the book
- Update Amazon author page
- Make new book available on Barnes & Noble as paperback & eBook
- Update Facebook cover photo
- Look into scheduling book events/signings
- Research my name and book names to see what pops up and where
- Take a peek at author rank, just because it’s fun to see that spike when sales happen
There’s more to the list, I just can’t remember all of them
right now. So how have I done with my
to-do list so far? Not too bad,
actually. The group e-mail went out, I
blogged about the new release, my blog has been updated so that my books are
now listed on a separate tab, my Amazon author page has been updated, and I finally
replaced my Facebook cover photo with a new one today.
The book event was tricky. It’s a terrible time of year to try to
schedule book signings because of how busy our schedule is between Thanksgiving
and New Year’s. I really didn’t expect
to be able to squeeze any events in this month and had planned on focusing on scheduling
a book signing sometime after January. However,
I had already signed up for a craft fair taking place the first week in
December so I was able to use that event to promote my books. Even though I didn’t have any copies of the
third book available at the time, it turned out to be a lot of fun and I was
pleased with how well the event went with regard to sales of my prior books and
with how I was able to market my new book.
I try to research my name and my books on line every few
months throughout the year, and especially after a new book is released. I do this to see how quickly someone can find
me, either by looking for my name or the titles or series name of my
books. When I ran a search for my name
and my books just after Ties That Bind
was released, I was upset to discover that the newest book in the series had
already been pirated. The digital format
was being offered for free by a company actually located in my home state and
which is subject to US copyright laws. I
immediately sent the company an e-mail regarding the copyright infringement, to
which they replied: “Thanks for your report! Links was removed. Kindly yours.”
That’s it, bad grammar and all, but I checked the site and found the
book was no longer available. The problem
here is that dealing with companies who pirate books is like playing
whack-a-mole. You can hit one over the
head and make it disappear, only to have another one pop up in a different
spot. Some authors view it as free
advertising, while others go the length of hiring attorneys to deal with the
issue. I’m just dealing with it as it
comes up but I don’t want to let the issue completely consume me.
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| Book ranking Kindle ranking |
Checking
my author ranking is something I used to do all the time when I first released No Mother of Mine – I spent too much
time watching the numbers go up and then go down, all the while trying to
figure out exactly what made them go up and down. It can give you a headache. And it’s really not a good way to spend your
time as a writer. However, I now look at
my author ranking about once every quarter, just to see when the ranking dips
and when it spikes, whether it’s after a new release, after a book event, a
holiday, cyber Monday…you name it.
Sometimes
there is no rhyme or reason but either way, it can be a good tool to use, as
long as you don’t let it completely control how you view your worth as an
author. I checked my ranking for the
first time today after months of not taking a peek and it was great to see that
a spike did occur right after Ties That
Bind had been released.
Overall,
I’ve tackled my to-do list pretty well. Based
on the list above, I’ve covered them all except for one, which is to add
the book to Barnes & Noble’s website (and I apologize to anyone out there
who uses a Nook). There are more tasks I
can add to the list, as always, but I feel good about where I am with my to-do list
at this point.
So, for the rest of December, I think I can now focus more
on my writing and also spend some time checking over my “other” list…my
Christmas shopping list. We’re at 11
days and counting – the holiday will be here soon!
Good luck if you also have your own holiday list to check
off and have a great week!
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