Sales Continue

It is nearly a year since I reported that building a platform for a new book via blogging before publishing worked for me. I can now add that this approach results in continuing sales, at least it has for my book. I continue to get good traffic to my blog and sales continue steadily.
I am now trying something else. I am posting my first book, which I didn't build a platform for before publishing, on my blog.  I'll report later if this results in a pickup of sales for the first book.

Second Book is Selling

My second book is selling. This supports building a customer base while the book is being written via a blog and web site. Some of the buyers have favorably commented on this approach. It is also interesting that almost all of the buyers make their purchase at Amazon.com even though I market the e book store of Create Space equally with Amazon.

Second book published

My second non fiction book was submitted for publishing at the end of November. I used Create Space,the Amazon subsidiary.The Create Space web site made it so easy it wasn't necessary to talk to a person. The web site walks users step by step through the process. I downloaded their Word template and pasted my material into it. I also used one of their cover templates. This site is also more generous with royalties than the company I used previously. Best of all it's free unless you want to sell on channels other than Create Space's e-store and Amazon.

Second Book

I am writing a second non-fiction book. This time I started a web site and a blog a year before I expected to publish. I am hoping the blog and web site traffic will build a market for the book when it's published. So far the blog traffic has build up over time as I had hoped. I am doing more of the book design myself this time. I plan to publish with Create Space and am using their free templates. This is working fine so far.

Library Workshop and Book Signing

I finally got around to doing a book signing at our local library. Since there are not a lot of traditional working people in our area I could not expect a large audience. The librarian came up with a great idea. I held a workshop for managers; especially managers of volunteer organizations. The library publicized it it and the attendance was pretty good. I enjoy doing work shops so it worked well for me. Sold only a couple of books but that is what I expected. I am thinking about offering to do a similar workshop in a neighboring community.

First E-Book Sale

Authorhouse.com, the publisher of my book, offers an E-book version as well as hard cover and soft cover version. The E-book sells for less than half of the cost of a soft cover so I expected people would buy more E books than conventional books.  I was wrong. For months no one bought an E book. I finally had the first E book sale recently. I guess people would rather have books in hand than read them on a computer screen. I would prefer to have people buy the E book as I get twice the royalty compared to conventional book sales.

First Royalty Check

An exciting day. I received my first royalty check. It was for the first quarter of book sales and, while not a significant amount of money, it was exciting to get a check. I have downscoped my book marketing as I found I just don't like doing it. I missed my art. At my age I don't have to spend time doing things I don't like at the expense of not doing things I like. So I have gone back to drawing and painting and am just maintaining an active blog related to my book. Also decided that a second book that I am thinking about will be done as a series of blogs or ezine articles. That way I do the writing, which I enjoy, and I avoid the hassle and expense of publication plus I don't have to think about marketing.