Marketing Monday

 Yes, it's Marketing Monday again.  Yes, I have a book on freebie this week - Ugly and the Beast.  No, I don't have anything planned or set up.  I had intended to get up and get it all done this morning.  Life intervened.  Let this be a lesson to procrastinators like me - do it ahead of time, so if stuff gets in the way, you can still accomplish something.  Formal marketing begins tomorrow morning, good lord willin' and the crick don't fail.  

Oh, and I lowered the price on Sleeping Ugly.  It's 99c now and for the foreseeable future.

Yes, I could still get something done today, but since I can only market to each FB group once every 24 hours, starting late today puts me even later tomorrow, and later in the day doesn't garner nearly as many downloads as first thing.  I'd rather put off 'til tomorrow what wouldn't do me much good today.  If you catch my drift.  

Now back to life.  

Monday Marketing, Etc.

It's morning and I've already been hard at Marketing.  It's the first of the freebie days for WISH HITS THE FAN, and I'm actually up early, so there you are.  I posted to 20 different Facebook Groups and to my three pages.  Now, we wait and see if any of this garnered any interest.  (The post verbiage is below the image down there.)

It's probably not the best way to market, but it's free.  All it takes is my time.  This morning, I spent about a half hour posting.  If I sell one book, that would mean I made about $2 an hour. 

But writers can't look at our time to earnings that way.  I mean, if we did, we'd drive ourselves crazy.  If any writer goes into this thinking their time is worth way more than that, they would have to price their books so high no one would buy one.  Think about it...

When I'm in my stride, a first draft takes me about 6 weeks to write.  If it's a clean copy, another 6 weeks to edit and polish.  (At about 2-3 hours a day, 6-7 days a week.  If I edit more hours than that a day, I start to froth at the mouth and twitch a lot.  If I write more, my hands fall off.)  Add another week for formatting, etc. and you're looking at 13 weeks from the start to publication.  

A conservative estimate for my time is 156 hours.  At the federal minimum wage of $7.25 a hour, I'm due $1131.00 when the book hits the store. At the cost of the below ebook ($3.99), I would need to sell about 283 books to pay for my time.  (Not including what that cover cost me or any marketing I do - or my 'wage' for the time spent marketing.)  

Since 2020, I've sold 233 copies of ALL my books. See?  That's crazy making.  Sure, our time is valuable, but we aren't normal workers.  We work for ourselves.  Sure, some writers are making enough to recoup the time/money thing.  Most aren't.  We writes the books, we publishes the books, we get paid what we get paid when we get paid, and we're damn happy.  (Or we're whiny.  Your mileage may vary.  Sometimes it depends on the day.)

I mean, I have run across writers who think readers should pay them what they think they're entitled to.  :shrug:  Umm... sorry... it don't work that way.  The market tells you what you're worth, not the other way around.  Years ago, I tried jacking the price of my books up.  I got zero sales.  I dropped the price, and the books started selling again.  I don't make much, but not much is better than nothing.  That's the load we self-published fools must bear. :shrug:

Anyway... Here's the marketing I did this morning:

For the first time ever, get the final book in the Once Upon a Djinn series - WISH HITS THE FAN - absolutely FREE. (The whole series is always free with a KU subscription.)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075C7FCXG

You’d think life as a genie would be easy-peasy. But when you’re Jo Mayweather, ain’t nothing so simple.

If you're interested, snag yourself a copy.  I know there are a bunch of people out there who read books 1-3 but not this one, so now's your chance to see how the whole story ends.  

Have a great day out there, folks.

Friday This n That

Yep, forgot to post yesterday.  Yep, forgot it was Thursday, too.  I'm all messed up in the timeline.  Derp.

In my defense, yesterday morning, I went outside to mow.  I was all prepared to get 'er done.  Mowed for like 20-30 minutes and was too pooped to continue.  I am a pathetic loser.  (And one, big, atrophied muscle.)

Night before last, I wrote 1122 words - which is the most I've done in one sitting since June of 2022.  Go, me.  Woo.  At least that muscle is recovering from its atrophy.

At my day-job, I typed a lot, but it was all short spurts - messages, emails, etc.  Every rare once in a while, I would type instructions - especially at the end there when I wanted to leave procedures for the next person who had to do my job.  I increased my typing speed by a lot, but only in short spurts.  Oh, and I can also take dictation of a sort.  They'd talk, I'd type while they were talking, and it ended up pretty much word for word.  (Sometimes, I'd edit what they were saying while I was typing because people don't always explain things in a linear fashion and they umm a lot.)

Accidental Death is now only 99c.  Have at it.

Project Hermes will be free starting July 4th for 5 days.  Have at that, too.

Just now, I was watching a doe and her itty-bitty fawn.  OMG, so tiny.  Nature is a beautiful thing, ya know.  And then you see her licking its butt and like... ew.

There's a photo being passed around on FB that supposedly shows a coyote with a deceased dog in its mouth.  Looks like a Jack Russell.  I guess the photo is some kind of warning about wildlife and your pets.  It doesn't look real to me.  Like where the coyote is holding the dog and the way the dog is hanging there, the physics are off.  Unless the dog was dead before the coyote picked it up and rigor mortis had already set in.  In which case, the coyote most likely found the dog carcass and is carrying it off, and didn't actually kill the dog.  I'm not exactly sure a coyote of that size could kill a Jack Russell of that size.  Jack Russells are pretty feisty.  Sure, it could happen, but I'm suspicious.  Anyway, look at everything you see online with a critical eye.

And yeah, be careful letting your pets out where wildlife can munch on them.  A gal who used to live here had her cat snatched right off her porch by a bobcat.  Or at least that's what she said.  I'm suspicious of that, too, because she wasn't always the most honest person.  It's believable, though.  We have bobcats and they wouldn't hesitate to much a house cat if they could.

And that's about enough out of me today.  Have you got any this n that to share today?

Sunday Update - Week 52

Time for the update on the last week of 2021.  Yay.  But I've been up since 2:30a, so bear with me.

I worked on editing five days out of seven this week.  That got me 65 more pages edited.  As of last night, I'm on page 181 of 355.  Over halfway!  Yay!

I finally got Dying Embers loaded to Draft 2 Digital.  Just a few minutes ago.  Links will be updated once a few distributors are on board and I can get a customized link.  I set it at 99c.  I also went back and changed the price of Wish in One Hand to 99c, too.  Loss leaders for the rest of the series and all that.  Trying to drum up sales, doncha know.  (I'll do a sales wrap-up sometime this coming week.)

In reading news, I had an okay week, but I missed my yearly goal by 5 books.  Derp.  Ditto on the wrap-up thing here, too.

On the baking front, I made more cookies.  Heh, like I need more cookies.  And I made more granola bars for Hubs.

Speaking of not needing cookies, I didn't hardly do anything active last week.  One day cutting limbs into firewood and two days messing around with the dirt in the front bed.  The good-ish news is that I haven't really gained too much weight.  Starting this year with 182.2 pounds.  Only .6 pounds more than I started last year with.  Woohoo.

Hmm, what else... Oh, I created 2022 versions of all my spreadsheets.  I have some formulas to add for the big one, but the rest are ready to input data to.  Yay.

Ancestry.com had a free week of searching through birth, marriage, and death records, so I did some of that.  Discovered my cousin Gerald died last year.  (Don't worry, we weren't close.  My uncle got divorced from his mom and they were estranged.  So I only saw him a couple times at the family reunion when I was a teen.  Nice guy, though.)  And that my poor little cousin William, who would've been older than my dad, only lived 13 days.  Oh, and that my great-great uncle Cecil may have been a prisoner of war in WWII.  Interesting stuffs.  I also got farther up the tree in a couple spots where the family was still in Europe and those records were translated - like to a Great-great-great grandma whose maiden name was Grodzyski.  (Already found one whose maiden name was Pruzinski.)

Oh, and I saw a big, beautiful bald eagle not far from the house.  So pretty.

Anyway, not a lot of exciting stuff for the end of 2021.  Pretty par for the course on that year.  How did your last week of the year go?

Lamentations of a Tightwad Reader

Ugh.  I saw a blog review for an awesome book and I so wanted to snag a copy so I could get lost in the world.  So I went to Amazon.  And the ebook is $9.99.  Argh.

Yeah, I know, you've heard it all before.  But I guess I'll keep repeating it until either my book budget gets loads healthier or something changes in the way traditional publishing prices their ebooks.

Come to think of it, I'll probably still bitch if I ever have loads of money.  It's the principle of the thing.  And it's driving me away from reading traditionally published books - new, anyway.  I still pick up hardcopy traditional books used.

Unfortunately, used books don't make the author a damned bit of money.  Which makes me kind of sad.

And authors really aren't making that much on the sale of the book originally.  Which is irritating, but a reality of traditional publishing.

But, as a self-employed, self-publisher who is also an avid reader, I have to get my reading fix where I can.  Which leaves out new trad-pub books in any format unless I can find them in the thrift shops.  (I smooth over my conscience by writing reviews where I can.)

Surely, I can't be the only one.  Readers have a limited amount of money to spend, for the most part.  So, I'm guessing, they either buy traditional and read less, or they eschew traditional and surf the waves looking for bargains.  Or maybe they do a mix of both.

I picked up six books last week for a grand total of 99c.  Five freebies and one 99center.  One was a dud, sure, but it wasn't the one I paid for, so it's all good.  Paying for duds pisses me off, but I can get over it quicker when they're 99c than if they were $9.99.  If I accidentally drop a $1 bill through a hole in my pocket, I'm way less irritated than if it had been a $10.

Anyway, the book I mentioned originally lost a sale.  And they lost a review.  I'm sure no one cares about one little reader and one little review.  But like I said, I can't be the only one who feels this way.  Ten readers lost?  A hundred?  It starts to add up when you think about it.  But I guess they aren't thinking about it.  So sad.

Do you stick to a book budget?  How do you choose where to spend your limited funds? 

Overpriced Ebooks

Yesterday on FB, I saw someone I respect posting about how much they're enjoying a series of books I've been interested in reading.  Since I don't have anything new on my Kindle, I thought it would be a good time to pick up the first in that series.  Hopped on over to Amazon.  Looked up the first in the series...

$9.99 for the ebook.  $10.37 for the paperback.

Gah.

And I am once again reminded of why I don't buy traditionally published books.  (Except for the occasional Harlequin by a certain author I know).   The total screwing of the American reader really pisses me off.  Especially since it's me they're screwing.  Without even a kiss on the cheek or a twenty on the nightstand. 

Right now, I am in the position to buy a $10 book here and there.  (Not too often, though.  I have an editor to pay.)  If I really want to.  It's the principle of the thing, though. 

Putting out an ebook costs way less than putting out a paperback.  And if you're putting out both, some of the costs are spread over both - cover art, editing, etc. - so the cost of the ebook is actually less than if you were only putting out an ebook. 

Traditional publishers are using their ebook sales to prop up their dwindling paperback sales.  But not everyone who wants to buy books can afford $10 a pop, so fewer people buy the books at all.  And then the publishers bitch that ebook sales are down.  They're cutting off their noses to spite their faces.  One person buys a $10 book, they get $10.  Three people buy a $5 book, they get $15.  Why can't they see this?

Paperback sales are down, regardless of how they spin the numbers.  Fewer and fewer people want to buy and hang onto all that mass.  Shelves are overflowing as it is.  Luggage is no longer filled with books for vacations because one ereader can carry hundreds of books for a fraction of the weight.  Headed for an appointment?  Slide the ereader into your purse instead of a hardcopy so you don't have to lug around a heavy purse. 

Don't get me wrong.  I love paperbacks.  Old paperbacks.  They're cheap and they're made better to boot.  New paperbacks?  Not so much.  And don't get me started on hardcovers.  I love them, too, but I can no longer handle holding something that big for as long as it takes me to read one.  (Craptastic wrists, doncha know.)  Hell, sometimes a big paperback is too much and I need Aspercreme to finish the book.

Most of my books are available in paperback.  I almost never sell one.  Mostly, I have paperbacks available so I can hand them out as promotional things or occasionally hand sell one.  I haven't created paperbacks for my last two books because I'm beginning to wonder what the point of them is.  And all of my paperbacks are priced as low as I can make them and still make a tiny profit.

My ebooks are all still priced at $2.99.  I've been playing with the idea of raising the prices.  Not a lot.  Certainly nowhere near $9.99.  Maybe a dollar hike for most of them, with a $2 hike for a couple.  I haven't done it yet.  I might not do it at all.  And every time I see a $9.99 ebook, it makes me not want to raise my prices at all.  Just to stand my ground against overpriced ebooks. 

Like the stand I make refusing to buy overpriced ebooks.  Not that anyone notices.  I don't spend enough to hit anyone in the pocketbook by refusing to purchase their stuff.  Maybe if we all put our foot down and said 'No way am I paying $10 for an ebook', the powers that be would notice.

Eh, probably not.  They'd just use it as further evidence that ebook sales are down so ebooks are just a fad.  Meh.

And so, my money will be spent on reasonably priced independent authors for the foreseeable future.  There are loads of them to choose from.  Or I'll buy used paperbacks for super cheap.  Either way, I'm reading and I'm winning.

What about you?