Joy Mutter's Blog: Joy Mutter's blog - Posts Tagged "createspace"
Happy 2016 to one and all!
1.1.2016
2015 was one of my best years on earth due to the fact that I rather surprised myself. A year ago today, I could never have guessed that I would have self-published six books in both Kindle and paperback format. I may have mentioned this before about a million times but I am still in shock!
I wrote two of the books from scratch in 2015, but the other four had been written over the past ten years. I decided not to mess around wasting any more time waiting to be discovered by a literary agent but opted instead to become my own publisher through Createspace and Kindle Direct Publishing. It was an uplifting experience and I recommend it to any writer. Before you ask, no, I do not have any shares in Amazon.
It is now a month since all of my books were self-published on Amazon. Although my book sales could have been better, I have received several four and five star reviews for each book from the people who took a leap of faith and bought one or all of my books. I have posted their wonderful reviews onto my website to encourage me further in my endeavours. Living with Postcards, my non-fiction book has sold the best out of the six, with Random Bullets also doing well, followed by Potholes and Magic Carpets, then A Slice of the Seventies. When readers have finished reading my autobiographical A Slice of the Seventies, as it is the first book in The Mug Trilogy they hopefully might consider buying the other two books, The Lying Scotsman and then Straws. I live in hope.
My plan for 2016 is to continue my disciplined but enjoyable regime of writing from 11am to 6pm each day including weekends. In the first half of 2016, I will hopefully finish writing and then publish my contemporary erotic thriller fantasy called Hostile. This will be followed by me publishing my almost completed collection of short stories. I am thinking of calling this short story collection, each written in different genres, Joy’s Shorts, but I might reconsider.
During the past few months, I have been somewhat reluctantly marketing all of my books more than I thought I would. However, I need to try even harder to spread the word about my books because the competition is so great. At least I now have my 500 printed colour postcards advertising all of my books to hand out to anyone that I meet who asks me about my books. I am also going to order new printed postcards solely for my non-fiction Living with Postcards paperback book. As it is a totally different type of book to my five fiction books, it needs different marketing and targeting. I must aim it towards anyone that is interested in looking at or collectiong old postcards, those interested in nostalgia, ephemera, history and beautiful objects in general.
If 2016 is as exciting and emotionally rewarding as 2015 has been then I will feel as happy and enthused as I am feeling today. I must resolve to try to make 2016 just as emotionally rewarding. However, I need to be realistic and also try to make it more financially rewarding by marketing better. That will be easier said than done because the skill in marketing books is very different to the skill in writing them. Having written, designed and produced the interior and covers and published all of the books myself, at least there are no costs for me to recoup.
My motivation to write more books has never been higher, so I am entering 2016 bubbling over with hope and enthusiasm. I even have an interesting idea for another thriller to write after Hostile and Joy’s Shorts are published, but more of that later.
Happy New Year to one and all!
2015 was one of my best years on earth due to the fact that I rather surprised myself. A year ago today, I could never have guessed that I would have self-published six books in both Kindle and paperback format. I may have mentioned this before about a million times but I am still in shock!
I wrote two of the books from scratch in 2015, but the other four had been written over the past ten years. I decided not to mess around wasting any more time waiting to be discovered by a literary agent but opted instead to become my own publisher through Createspace and Kindle Direct Publishing. It was an uplifting experience and I recommend it to any writer. Before you ask, no, I do not have any shares in Amazon.
It is now a month since all of my books were self-published on Amazon. Although my book sales could have been better, I have received several four and five star reviews for each book from the people who took a leap of faith and bought one or all of my books. I have posted their wonderful reviews onto my website to encourage me further in my endeavours. Living with Postcards, my non-fiction book has sold the best out of the six, with Random Bullets also doing well, followed by Potholes and Magic Carpets, then A Slice of the Seventies. When readers have finished reading my autobiographical A Slice of the Seventies, as it is the first book in The Mug Trilogy they hopefully might consider buying the other two books, The Lying Scotsman and then Straws. I live in hope.
My plan for 2016 is to continue my disciplined but enjoyable regime of writing from 11am to 6pm each day including weekends. In the first half of 2016, I will hopefully finish writing and then publish my contemporary erotic thriller fantasy called Hostile. This will be followed by me publishing my almost completed collection of short stories. I am thinking of calling this short story collection, each written in different genres, Joy’s Shorts, but I might reconsider.
During the past few months, I have been somewhat reluctantly marketing all of my books more than I thought I would. However, I need to try even harder to spread the word about my books because the competition is so great. At least I now have my 500 printed colour postcards advertising all of my books to hand out to anyone that I meet who asks me about my books. I am also going to order new printed postcards solely for my non-fiction Living with Postcards paperback book. As it is a totally different type of book to my five fiction books, it needs different marketing and targeting. I must aim it towards anyone that is interested in looking at or collectiong old postcards, those interested in nostalgia, ephemera, history and beautiful objects in general.
If 2016 is as exciting and emotionally rewarding as 2015 has been then I will feel as happy and enthused as I am feeling today. I must resolve to try to make 2016 just as emotionally rewarding. However, I need to be realistic and also try to make it more financially rewarding by marketing better. That will be easier said than done because the skill in marketing books is very different to the skill in writing them. Having written, designed and produced the interior and covers and published all of the books myself, at least there are no costs for me to recoup.
My motivation to write more books has never been higher, so I am entering 2016 bubbling over with hope and enthusiasm. I even have an interesting idea for another thriller to write after Hostile and Joy’s Shorts are published, but more of that later.
Happy New Year to one and all!
Joy Mutter's blog
My author blog is at http://www.joymutter.com.
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