I’m an author. I never thought I would really be able to say it. But I’m published. I used to say, “Well, I’m only self published.” Now, the word “only” is a dirty word. Self-publishing is empowering. No one can tell you what to write or to change what you wrote. I’ve learned a lot from Zoe Winters. She has been an inspiration to me for years, first to pursue my writing, and second, to be proud to be an indie author. Thanks, Zoe, for all you’ve done for me and many other independents. You rock!

Why is it that I only write paranormal books and novellas when I’m such a skeptic in real life? I don’t believe in ghosts, vampires, elves, or sorcerers. I think it’s because sometimes we need to go somewhere different…somewhere you can’t go in real life. That’s where paranormal and fantasy books can take you.

So what’s up with the Apple store??? On most book sites, you can search by title or author. In the iBook store, you have to search through pages and pages to find what you want. You can’t search at all, just scroll through alphabetically to find a title. And there’s over 1600 pages! You would think that Apple would be sophisticated enough to have a decent search within the bookstore. If there’s some way to do it, I sure can’t find it. You can search Apple in general, but not books specifically. At least not that I can see.

My books were supposed to be sent from Smashwords to the Apple store. How can I even tell if it’s there or not?

I finally made a website. www.wix.com/suitecat59/lauralynn-elliott Yay! Now to get people to look at it. After all, only one person seems to ever look at this blog. :0(

Books sales are ok, but still not what I want.

Busy, busy, busy at my full time job. I barely have time to breathe.

I now have one novel and two novellas in the Amazon Kindle store. I’m pretty pleased with the sales of one of them and disappointed with the sales of the other. I think it just proves that vampires are still a hot item right now, and ghosts are…well…not. I don’t regret choosing e-publishing for my books. I think e-books will eventually outsell print books as proven by the Christmas sales at amazon.com. But since it’s so easy for just anyone to self-publish this way, it’s up to the reader to choose what’s good and what’s crap. And they are perfectly capable of doing that.

On another note, I’m still in the editing process of my fantasy romance. This book is dear to my heart, so I want it to be just right. There are a few parts in the first few chapters that are a little happy, happy, joy, joy that don’t mesh extremely well with the later chapters which are darker. But I haven’t figured out how to fix it. The things that happen early on are kind of necessary to set up why the MC is there and what she is doing. Maybe it’s not as far off as I think it is, but I’m going to get one of my best critics to read it again and see what she thinks.

After I put “Club Blood” in the Amazon Kindle store, I was amazed at how many I was selling. I’ve been averaging more than a book a day in sales. It could be better, but I’m not complaining about that average. However, I haven’t sold a single one in about three days. I can’t explain the sudden difference. People should still be using the same key words to search out certain types of books. Why this sudden change? And it comes on the heels of a “surge” of three per day. Who knows?

The sales of “See Me” have been a huge disappointment. I only sold one. And the sales on Smashwords of both books have been discouraging. I’ve only sold one “Club Blood”. It wouldn’t be so bad except that I know that 10 free excerpts were downloaded for “Club Blood” and 9 for “See Me”. Does that mean the book doesn’t hold interest enough for someone to want to buy it after reading half of it? Or have people downloaded a bunch of free excerpts and they haven’t had time to read them all? Or do some people download only free excerpts and never buy the books? There’s no way to tell.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop writing or stop publishing e-books. I just need to figure out a marketing strategy. I can’t just sit back and let it happen. I have to MAKE it happen.