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Refocusing on my writing and self-publishing experiment.




Instead of closing the blog, I've decided to focus this blog on my writing and self-publishing experiment. I had this massive plan to self-publish my novel then after going on a editing & pitching course with Curtis Brown Creative school, I decided to query. So before starting go query,  I gave the novel to another reader who wasn't too sure of the commercial market fit. So then I decided to go back to self-publishing. HOWEVER...I didn't really know how to approach it. My story just seemed too big in terms of cost. It would have cost about $1,000 upwards to publish - considering the word count and editorial support.

However Scribophile the writing site had a Q&A by a self-publishing expert, David Kadavy, https://kadavy.net/ who suggested it was best to start small and big towards the goal. At least to learn lessons along the way until one is comfortable. So I did that.  IT AN EYE OPENER!

So even though I was keeping an eye on costs, I still spend a lot more than I planned. Some were set-up costs and others were directly related to publishing the books. I also learnt about the nasty and grey side of self-publishing. But in the end, it's business. It's all about business.

The biggest takeaway was having a support network and MARKETING. And what if people you know don't what to know or you don't want to tell them?  Well.....it's difficult one, and it's something I'm struggling with now.

All I can say is that is you don't have a network who you can inform about your book, or bloggers who will review your book in advance, or even have big marketing campaigns where you offer your book at a discount...while paying a ton of cash. Well, do you get discouraged? Do you plow on? Do you look for that agent and just focus on writing?

ON the other hand, loss making or not, it's been a very positive experience. My family have stopped asking me when I will I publish. I've sold about 7 copies, and a few kindle unlimited reads. I like the kindle Unlimited reads statistics because they give me the rates of 'Did Not Finish' which has been low.

I'm about two months late with the second release, it was due out in September, but October has been very busy so I'm hoping perhaps by the end of next week.

MARKETING? I'm thinking of some campaigns but again it's about having the time and energy. Social media is pretty time consuming.  I tried Twitter and Instagram but I'm not naturally on those platform, so my interest ran out quickly. I'm also not sure how to promote on those site. Though I'm thinking of something...

However it's only one book out. So I'll give myself at least a year in this self-publishing experiment with two more planned and see what happens.

Anyway I'll up date as I go along.

Cheers


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 Check out Bigga Day's books on

Smashwords.com
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/bigga
Apple iBooks
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/bigga-day/id595585425?mt=11
Barnes and Nobles
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/bigga-day
Kobo
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/Search?query=Bigga%20Day&fcsearchfield=Author
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