http:\/\/www.kycraft.com\/detail_pages\/wildwood-dancing.html<\/p>\n
http:\/\/amandahocking.blogspot.com\/2010\/08\/epic-tale-of-how-it-all-happened.html<\/p>\n
So here I was. February 2010. I’d been determined to make 2009 the year I would get published. And I hadn’t. I said to my roommate, “I don’t think it’s going to happen. I don’t think I’m ever going to get published. I don’t know what more I can do. I’ve worked like a factory putting out the best books I possibly can. I’ve studied trends, the industry, business models.” <\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
So I had no money, and I said to my roommate, “I’m going to sell books on Amazon through Kindle, and I bet I can make at least a couple hundred bucks by the end of the summer to go to Chicago.” My roommate (who has heard my make lots of plans that I never follow-through with) said, “Yeah. Okay. I’ll see that when it happens. Have you finished the Carrie book yet?”<\/p>\n
In March, I made My Blood Approves available in paperback on Amazon through Lulu. In April, I published it to Kindle. About a week or so later, I published the second book in the series Fate. <\/p>\n
Here’s where the story picks up. The two books combined, I sold 45 books in about 2 weeks. I thought to myself, “Not too shabby. Let’s add another book to the mix.”<\/p>\n
I put out Flutter at the end of May. I distinctly remember one day in May before it came out, I sold 38 books in one day. I took a screen shot. I emailed my mom and my roommate, and I knew there was no way I was ever gonna do that. I mean, I was just a me, publishing books on the internet. There’s no way I could ever really be successful with this. <\/p>\n
In May, I sold 624 books and made $362.<\/p>\n
Then in June, something truly magical happened. I discovered book bloggers. I had no idea such people existed. They just read books and write about them. And I don’t mean “just.” These people take times out of their busy lives to talk about books and have contests and connect with followers and writers and other readers. <\/p>\n
These guys are honestly my heroes. I’m a little in love with all of them. <\/p>\n
I asked several if they would be interested in reviewing my books, and most of them said yes, even if they didn’t generally review self-published work. <\/p>\n
Then something surreal started happening. My books were selling. Like, really selling.<\/p>\n
So, thanks in large part to book bloggers, June turned into a very good month. I sold 4258 copes of all three books combined, and I made a total of $3180.<\/p>\n
…Also in July, I finally found an editor and sent her my books. I contacted a cover artist about doing the covers for future books. And I put in notice at my dayjob.<\/p>\n
For those of you reading this, you’ll realize that leaving my job seems a bit premature. Probably. I am still on-call at work, but I wanted to really focus on writing. I wanted the chance to be a full-time author for awhile, even if it only ended up being a few weeks.<\/p>\n
In July, I sold 3532 books and made $6527. <\/p>\n
In the beginning of August, a publishing house in Hungary approached me about foreign rights for their book. I emailed 5 agents then, telling them about my book, my sales (I’d just sold over 10,000 books at the time), and that I had people asking about foreign rights. <\/p>\n
Two agents asked me to email them a manuscript almost right away, and I sent it out, but I haven’t heard back from them. On Monday, a third agent emailed me asking for the book, and he emailed me Thursday, asking me to call to talk about things. <\/p>\n
Also on Monday, I released the fourth book in my vampire series. It peaked #25 in the entire Kindle store. If you”re wondering how many sales it took the book to get that high: 150 in a two hour period. Also on Monday – in one 24-hour period – I made $1200. Working at my day job full time, the most I’d ever made in a month is $1000. I just made more in a day than I used to make in a month. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Coffee Time Romance \u2013 coffeetimeromance.com<\/p>\n
Bitten By Books \u2013 bittenbybooks.com (they only review paranormal)<\/p>\n
Romance Junkies \u2013 romancejunkies.com<\/p>\n
PNR ParaNormal Romance \u2013 paranormalromance.org<\/p>\n
Romance In The Back Seat \u2013 romanceinthebackseat.com<\/p>\n
Mrs. Giggles \u2013 mrsgiggles.com (She has a special POD\/SP section \u2013 I didn\u2019t request the review from her, it just showed up one day – but she does review self-pubbed romance.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
http:\/\/www.kycraft.com\/detail_pages\/wildwood-dancing.html http:\/\/amandahocking.blogspot.com\/2010\/08\/epic-tale-of-how-it-all-happened.html So here I was. February 2010. I’d been determined to make 2009 the year I would get published. And I hadn’t. I said to my roommate, “I don’t think it’s going to happen. I don’t think I’m ever going to get published. I don’t know what more I can do. I’ve worked like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}