2018 Wrap-up

As I've done in the past, I thought I'd take a moment to tally up my book sales and marketing progress and share the results with you. My sales are always modest, with income that can buy me a few pairs of shoes and not much else. That said, as an author hoping to grow her platform, my biggest concern has always been distribution--getting my books to as many readers as possible. In that regard, this...

BookBub Promotion Takeaways

Last Sunday, my most recent novel, What She Inherits, was up on BookBub's list of Featured Deals in the Women's Fiction category. I have used BookBub once before for my first novel, Watch Me Disappear, and it was my most successful promotion. That time I discounted the book to $0.99.  In fact, I was quite happy to have enough downloads during that promo to fully pay for the rather steep cost...

Looking Back at 2017: Lessons from Launching Novel #3

I'm not much of a math person--as my students who are constantly correcting my math errors on their tests and quizzes will tell you--but being an indie author has turned me into a person who crunches numbers. Each month, I sit down and tally up my book sales on the various platforms I use for distribution and keep detailed spreadsheets. Even when the numbers are a little depressing, it feels productive...

Self-publishing Tips: Lessons from My Best Month Yet

In this post, some sales-boosting strategies I used in March 2017 to grow my readership. In January, I launched my third novel, What She Inherits. Unlike my first two books, I actually had a real plan for sending this one into the world. My plan had two parts: First, generate excitement, rally book reviewers, and spread the word about my book before its release through the following methods: I...

ICYMI -- The Little Details that Matter for Book Layout

This essay was originally published in The Grub Daily and also appears in The Sane Person's Guide to Self-publishing. Both in my work at The Worcester Review and as a freelance book designer, I regularly receive manuscripts for publication that require serious attention before they can even be imported into InDesign for layout, not because they’re poorly written, but because they are full of sloppy...

Planning a Book Launch

In this post, some lessons learned from the release of my third novel, What She Inherits. After a lengthy break from updating this blog, I'm back with some tips and suggestions based on my recent experience in the self-pub world. Between November of 2013, when I published The Latecomers Fan Club, and January 2017, when I published What She Inherits, my attitude about self-publishing and thoughts...

A Few Dollars Well Spent to Fix Up Your Blog

"It's a bit of a fixer-upper." Looking to update your blog? Want it to be sleek and modern without having to learn all sorts of coding languages? Me, too. I just created a new blog for a road trip my hubby and I are taking this summer, and to make it look as pretty on the screen as I envisioned in my head, I enlisted some very affordable help. I purchased a template over at creativemarket.com,...