Sunday, April 3, 2011

What to do, what to do....

I am currently experiencing a milestone in life.  Tomorrow Amazon.com or whoever their actually fiduciary douches are will begin the process of direct depositing my first royalty check!  It's for January sales on both my self-published Kindle books (Saving Alexandria and Guardian of Dreams... hint hint hint) and it's a whopping $20.93... but yet it's MY $20.93 earned in royalties on something I wrote and published and people cared enough to buy. 

This, like the publishing process itself, is exciting and at the same time terrifying.  Where do I go from here?  There are more books to come, some finished, some nearly finished, some barely begun, and without a publisher I can make them available at my leisure.  So again I ask, where do I go from here?  I have someone who has offered to help me develop a "web presence" which sounds extremely intriguing and yet terrifying at the same time. 

The ultimate question is how far do I want to put myself out there?  On the one hand I have had very modest, yet fairly consistent sales over the past three months with absolutely no marketing whatsoever.  I periodically post the links to the e-books on my Facebook page and I've put them here in my blog a couple of times.  On the other hand is the idea that if I take a chance and get my name out there not only will it generate sales, but could ultimately make my writing more appealing to conventional agents and publishers.

So the elephant in the room is the question of whether or not I want to put myself out there full Monty and undertake the lofty goal of actually marketing myself and advertising my books.  That's the elephant... the gigantic steaming pile of elephant poop is the idea that I will put myself out there, advertise, market, all in all make a spectical of myself and end up with the same modest sales I have had all along... or even better no more sales.

So speak to me great advisors and speakers of wisdom...  I can't be who I'm not, and most people don't have a clue how to take me... do I really want to throw that out there for the whole world to see??  Or for the whole world to point, laugh at and ultimately shun?? LOL

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