Shameless Self-Appreciation Thread

[Sheilawisz]

Hello everyone!

I have finished my story Something Weird Happens in Querétaro yesterday, and I feel really happy with it. This story was started April 13 2016, and it was completed June 24 with a total of 26.3 thousand words.

You can find it at my What the Hell Challenge here: What the Hell.

Something Weird is just a crazy story, and I did it mostly for fun... Anyway it demonstrated to have potential, and there have been many nice and memorable moments that took place through the story. After literally swimming in craziness, now I am ready to move forward and start my new project as soon as possible.

Alice into Darkness coming soon! =)

 

[Chessie]

Congratulations, Sheila! It always feels like you're on top of the world when a story is finally finished.

 

[ThinkerX]

Congrats, Sheila!

 

[Sheilawisz]

Thank you very much, Chessie and Thinker.

Indeed, it's a great feeling to finish a story even if it was just a crazy one like Something Weird has been. The impact on me was nothing like the moment when I finished Winter Hollow and crashed down in tears, but it was intense and enjoyable anyway.

Now, I'll have some rest before my meeting with Alice Layttel =)

I am a little afraid of her, to be honest. What I have seen of Alice and her journey so far is quite eerie, but I am sure that it's a very powerful and intriguing story to tell.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Finished Faerie Rising today!!! I'm a bit stunned. O.O

 

[Chessie]

This is the only place I can post this sort of stuff in...no one else besides my husband cares LOL!

My historical romance Kiss Me Again is holding strong rank in its category. Right now, it's in the 500s, which is good for ME considering I've only done a couple of promotions. Basically this means I'm selling a combination of 1-2 actual sales + KENP page reads daily of organic discovery. Before Valentine's Day, it held strong at 169....69 points away from the Best Seller's list in the 20th century category! Agh! *breathe* Exciting, no?

 

[Malik]

Dragon's Trail hit #18 yesterday on the Amazon Best Seller list for Fantasy > Military.

Edit: Here's how it happened, from what I can figure.

A whole bunch of things went right on Monday, including a wonderful review on GoodReads that I can only figure got posted to the reader's group or social media, because it kicked off a huge sales run after a six-month slow burn. I had no other promos going.

At some point Monday night, Amazon moved Dragon's Trail from Fantasy > Epic to the much smaller Fantasy > Military (which makes me think that the reviewer socialized it to a fresh readership whose also-boughts are in that subgenre), where it spent most of the day on the first page. It's still running on the second page this morning.

The first few pages of this subgenre are dominated by three writers, so the readers might be viewing me as new blood into a niche market. On the other hand, it's a very small market, with only 900 titles, and I've been trying to get listed in it for months, now, tweaking keywords and even contacting Amazon directly. It has been a slog.

But I literally woke up yesterday as a best-selling author. Anyone who tells you it doesn't happen overnight is full of shit. It does happen overnight. It just takes a few years.

 

[skip.knox]

> It does happen overnight. It just takes a few years.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

I might be able to publish my first book [The Mythaven Unity] very, very soon. The only thing holding me back is myself.

 

[Ban]

That's great news Malik!

On a much more minor note, I finally wrote an actual paragraph for my book. Given a few years I can hopefully have an "overnight" success as well.

 

[Russ]

Nice work Malik. Amazon is a funky place but it is always good to see success.

Now that you are dragging in those super loyal fans, you should be putting out more works to keep them hooked.

At the moment I am finding tracking Amazon sales rankings rather addictive.

 

[Chessie]

@Malik: congratulations that's super awesome! And you know what? It kind of makes me giggle a bit too since I recall the discussion elsewhere (place going nameless ahem) about how your book wasn't going to "make it" because you only had the one. So, bullshit, and high five, and keep stoking those emails baby by the way scoot over because I'm coming into the epic fantasy category this summer mw hahaha!

J.K. I do not write epic fantasy lol!


At the moment I am finding tracking Amazon sales rankings rather addictive.
^Once you get the hang of it, a whole new world opens.

> It does happen overnight. It just takes a few years.

Yeah, just overnight for years and years trying to figure out how to properly write a book people will pay money for. Years of research into the book selling market: what the heck do I have to write in order to get people to pay me for my work? Then there's the publishing process. There certainly are no shortcuts.

 

[Malik]

It kind of makes me giggle a bit too since I recall the discussion elsewhere (place going nameless ahem) about how your book wasn't going to "make it" because you only had the one.

To be fair, they're doing it differently. And I have five more; they're just not fully written, yet.

Continued in Marketing so as not to derail this.

 

[Chessie]

I got my first 5 star review on Amazon. Um...it was the sweetest most beautiful review ever in the whole world and I'm so grateful to this sweet reader. I mean, she GOT IT...the book...got it like 100%. She's the kind of reader I'm looking for far as those historical romance books go. And...she put the rest of my books in her Goodreads library and also signed up for my newsletter. Win win!

*punches the air*

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

^Hooray for you!

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

I got my first 5 star review on Amazon. Um...it was the sweetest most beautiful review ever in the whole world and I'm so grateful to this sweet reader. I mean, she GOT IT...the book...got it like 100%. She's the kind of reader I'm looking for far as those historical romance books go. And...she put the rest of my books in her Goodreads library and also signed up for my newsletter. Win win!

*punches the air*

Must feel amazing

 

[Chessie]

Must feel amazing

It's just nice knowing a real person received benefit from the story. I like to think of it as providing a service.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

I made it through today! Also I finished reading a book last night, and it was a good book, and I got my exercise even though I didn't feel like it. Also I have the best dog ever. My dog is the bestest.

 

[skip.knox]

I made it through today! Also I finished reading a book last night, and it was a good book, and I got my exercise even though I didn't feel like it. Also I have the best dog ever. My dog is the bestest.

Next to mine, of course.

Srsly, good job getting through.

 

[Malik]

So, I just got back from Norwescon, where I spent four days as a panelist and moderator on the military and writing tracks. I booked an autograph session for Dragon's Trail, because why not? I had a hole in my panel schedule, and hey, what could happen?

I fully expected to spend the session sitting by myself surrounded by stacks of my books. Worst case, it was a chance to decompress.

The con started on Thursday; my signing session was on Saturday afternoon. And when I got there on Saturday, this happened:

That's me, in the blazer and tie (don't judge me), arriving for my signing session. And that's a line of people waiting in front of my empty chair, clutching hardcopies of Dragon's Trail. Between Thursday afternoon and Saturday afternoon, University Bookstore had sold out of every copy I'd brought, and ended up taking orders for more, which my imprint, Oxblood Books, now gets to figure out how to fulfill. (Recommendations on a printer that drop-ships, anyone?)

As of the close of business today (Sunday), I was told that, best the store could figure, I outsold every local author they carried, even the ones with major house contracts. University Bookstore now wants to stock Dragon's Trail, and the manager running their booth asked if I'd be interested in future author appearances.

A whole bunch of writers on another board that shall remain nameless apparently forgot to tell my fans that self-publishing a decades-encompassing "masterpiece" work that got passed over multiple times -- and then only writing one book per year -- is stupid because no one will ever buy it.

They also forgot to tell the University Bookstore that it's idiotic for an indie author to buy his own ISBNs and start his own imprint just in case. I am really, really, glad I had at least a skeleton of a plan in place. There's a lot to be said for showing up with your paperwork ready just in case something goes startlingly right.

TL;DR: I had a hell of a weekend.