Still on the bumpy road

I have been neglecting all of my readers. I had to make a trip to Montana last week, and I literally had no time to even peek at my computer. I have made it back home in Washington, and it feels so good to be sleeping in my own bed again. I have a ton of work to get done though, now that I'm back. I have a few books that need to be polished up and put in to your hands. I also, have some more of my publishing journey to share. So, I will do a little sharing before I get to work on my novels.

It continues:
I had hit publish. Now, I am supposed to see tons of books selling, right? HA. Not right. I had announced to friends and family that my book had become available and I did receive a few sells. To be exact ... I sold 8 books via Amazon.com and 4 via Kindle (for the month of January). Not the exact numbers I had wished for. When I started this little project, I had told myself that I would be grateful if I could sell 100 books in a years time. So, 12 books was at least something, but I was still a bit disappointed. After all, my book was going to be a best-seller. The realization of my book being lost in the sea of hundreds-of-thousands of other books hit home. I am a no-name Author. I have no other published works, and I have a long, long journey for my name to actually come alive.

How the heck do you get your book in the limelight? I'm still working on that, but I know a lot more about this industry now than I did when I first started. So, maybe with giving and sharing my experiences  we can grow together.

Advertising ... After my book was first released, I set up a Facebook page for me ; A personal page and an Author page. I knew I had to be more involved with social media. I am not the greatest with social media, but I try. The world has changed and if you're not up with the scene then trying to forge a name for yourself will be almost impossible. I had no idea how advertising worked on Facebook. I thought the only way you did ads was to just hit that button that says... boost this post. So, in January that's what I did. I had announced my book release and boosted the post, that way everyone could see my book release. Honestly, I don't think that it helped in sales, however, getting people to see your name is a plus. I spent five dollars on that first boost. My book sales were still low.

I researched how to get my book sold and I read that I needed to set up a website and blog. Blog, blog, blog. I had no interest in blogging.  Why would anyone want to read me babbling about nonsense? I created the website. I did figure at least that one was important. I set up a twitter account. I was all set ... Facebook ... check, Twitter ... check, Website ... check. Now what?

February was a new month ...

RJ Heaton