Thoughts about writing

Two weeks have passed since the free promotion of my novel "Teaching Tori". Time to re-read my previous post and reflect on this experience. Before launching into this post, I need to clarify the purpose of this promotion, which was... to increase my audience to gain new reviews to try something new in promotion my book to get myself out of a "help, nobody's buying my book!" mindset So here are my thoughts... 1. My audience has increased, but I have no idea by how much. By the end of the promotion, I had 660 downloads of my book. How many people actually read the book will remain unknown. Haven't we all done it, downloaded a free ebook, only to never read it because we forgot about it, or we had other books to read? 2. I've had one review out of 660 downloads. Needless to say that I am disappointed with this result. Is it too early to make a call on this part of the promotion? Are people just super-busy, only just now remembering that t

In a few hours, my first-ever free book promotion will be over. I must admit I was very sceptical and didn't know if this promotion would be of any benefit to me. I also was worried that nobody would download my book, even when it was free, and the effect this would have on my motivation as a new self-publisher author. This promotion was a last minute decision 24 hours before it started, so I didn't have a great lead-up to it. I listed it with as many free ebook sites as possible, but couldn't say how many of the emails and forms I filled in actually made it onto those sites. I did the same with Facebook, posting the link or asking for the link to be posted. The only thing I have a clear idea of what happened was what I did on Twitter. And I think it was the Twitter 'campaign' that was the most successful because I gained lots of new followers and retweets. It was exciting to watch the number of downloads go up over time, and to see which marketplaces they came f

My first three months with Amazon's KDP are coming to an end and I have yet to use any of the 5 free days available to me. So I have been very indecisive whether to give this a go. Part of me wants to scream and say - no way am I going to give my novel away for free. I have sweated blood and tears (and a bucket full of money) for this novel. Why should anybody be able to get it for free? But then this other voice in my head pipes up and says - what can you lose? It's not like you're selling hundreds of books at the moment, are you? In fact, the opposite is true. I am selling a few novels here and there, with long gaps in between sales, which can be quite disheartening. So after hours spent online reading about the pros and cons of free give-aways, I have decided to give it a go. The best case scenario would be to get some new reviews out of this promotion and gain some new readers who will, in time, want to read my next book. The worst case scenario would be (I can'