Being a Self Published Author means Ya Gots Ta Advertise!

(I figured I'd freak out the proper people straight away with my lame slang.)

I don't have a publishing house behind me. I hire my own editor... I do my own covers... I sell my stories (and myself) all by myself (*cue the music*). Last year my husband and I were looking at new houses. We purchased one in May, started a total renovation in August, and moved in in December. I did absolutely NOTHING to sell my books in 2015... I just left them on their various sites (Amazon, B&N, Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, etc) and whatever sold, sold. My sales ended up being only 1/3 of what they were the year before. Ugh!

So this year, I told myself that I had to get back into the habit of advertising. If I don't get my name out there... no one else will. So I let January pass by (we were still having a lot of people in and out of the house buttoning things up - and to be honest, there is still a little bit of work to be done). But I made sure that I found a place for one of my books to be featured in February. I submitted to the site http://robinreads.com and was accepted for a $20 promo spot. LUSH (a YA Dystopian novel) was featured yesterday and I have to say I was very pleased with the result.

What I didn't realize until yesterday, was that Robin Reads doesn't post on their FaceBook page on Saturday or Sunday... so my results might have been greater had I chosen a weekday. But, as I said, I was still pleased. The ad (feature) looked like this on their webpage:

By the end of the day, LUSH had risen to the top of its category (YA Dystopian) in the Top 100 Free book list on Amazon.

It also got to the low 200s in the overall list of Free books on Amazon. For a first go round, back to advertising myself and my novels, it was a great way to jump out of the gate. And so far, LUSH is still holding onto the #1 spot in YA Dystopian, but I know it'll start falling soon... because somebody else will get their book featured on a book site somewhere and get the bump that I just received. That just goes with the normal ups and down of the self pub biz.  I ended the month of February on a high note, and that makes me purrrty happy!

Now... I think I'll try to get one of my other books featured somewhere next month... and so it goes... let the advertising games begin!