Kindle Unlimited

One of the frustrating things about being a self-published author is seeing your sales fluctuate and not knowing why. We have data that tells us how many books we've sold and when, but not data that tells us why these facts are true. That part is a guess.

This month has been the worse month of sales for me thus far. Parts of July were pretty bad, too, but not as bad as this month. In total, I have sold exactly one book this entire month. It's better than nothing, but only slightly better.

I'm not going to tell you what I usually sell, but I have a free book and people download that a lot. Pretty consistently, I've been selling about 10% of the amount of free downloads I get. But for this month, for some reason, I sold a lot less than that.

I am working on writing my novels daily and I know part of the problem is that I haven't released anything new in over a year. But part of the reason for that is because when I release my next book, I will be releasing two books at once (or at least in a relatively short period of time.)

I'm not very good at writing book series. With the Greek myth books, they are stand alones that only mildly effect one another, so I can release them as I write them, but with most books, I need to write the entire series before I release any of the books or I will write myself into plot holes.

I thought I was done writing these books about 8 months ago, but then I showed the novels to my critique partners and their advice basically equated to "rewrite both of them", so now, here I am, starting from scratch with these two novels. I also plan to go through another round of critiques before I publish and send the stories to my editor. All in all, it will take me at least a few more months before they are done.

Anyway, it might be a coincidence, but I noticed that my drop in sales occurred around the same time as Kindle Unlimited happened. I get that if it's what caused it. Who wants to buy a book that costs 1/3 of their subscription, when they can get many more books than that with their subscription!

So after weeks of thought, I have decided to take down Medusa's Desire from everywhere except for Amazon and enroll it in Kindle Unlimited. You can officially download it for "free" with kindle unlimited, in fact, as of yesterday. (Thank you Smashwords for being so quick to take my books down from all those sites! It makes me sad to do this to you because you were so cooperative!) I was selling virtually nothing at the other sites anyway.

But I did it with a heavy heart, I will admit. Part of being a self-published author is enjoying the fact that you are free and in control of what happens to your novels. So therefore, I'm going to be pretty reluctant about throwing all my eggs in one (Amazon) basket. It feels like I am giving the reins of my career over to them. Because as they showed with Kindle Unlimited, they can change everything in a short period of time.

I don't even know for sure if Kindle Unlimited caused this. I don't know how many people are using Kindle Unlimited. (I know that as a reader it sounds like a wonderful deal to me and I am thinking about using it, which is weird and gives me conflicting feelings inside.) I also don't know how many people are actually going to read ten percent of my book.

It's kind of hard on the ego, worrying about that. When I make a sale, that's all I have to worry about. Someone bought my book and even though I'd like them to read it, even if they don't, at least they gave me money for it!

Are they going to treat my book like a lot of them treat my Pandora's Mistake novel? It doesn't bother me, but I know a lot of people download Pandora's Mistake just because it's free and never read it.

But when it's my paid book and the only way I can get income, it sort of does bother me. Will people even be motivated to read it if they don't feel like they had to spend that much money on it? Will they get bored before they reach 10% and I'll never see any of the money?

On Amazon's part, I think they're being genius by doing this. I think they're going to make a lot of money with Kindle Unlimited.

But what will it do to me? Will it help to enroll at all? Will it hurt me because my book is no longer available on Barnes and Noble or Itunes?

And it makes me want to write more short stories. After all, if you write a short enough story, then pretty much they only have to turn one page and they've already read 10% of your book.

Being a self-published author is a lot about experimentation. This is my latest experiment in publishing.

I know a lot of you don't want to try this, but seeing how bad my sales were this month, I am willing to be the guinea pig.

And I hope to tell you how it's going later. (But I might not mention it again if things go bad. That's not exactly what you look forward to admitting to in a blog.) I won't have maps and charts and numbers the way some authors do, but I will have a general idea of whether or not it's helping anything.

So how do you feel about Kindle Unlimited?

When You First Started Writing Versus Now

The more you write and publish, the more you improve as an author and the more your viewpoints on things change. Here's some examples:

1. When you finish the first draft of a novel...

The First Time: "Oh my God, you guys! Let's celebrate with some champagne! I just finished writing my first novel!"

Later Times: "Oh my God, you guys! Do you want to grab a beer? I just started writing this novel and I have a headache thinking about how much work it will still need before it's finished."

2. When you think of your strengths...

At First: "I'm such a wonderful writer! People will be amazed at my vocabulary and grammar! I will be on every bestselling list as people bow down and worship me!"

After Many Query Letter Rejections And One Star Reviews: "People hate my writing, but I love their hatred! Your mean words can't hurt me because I'm used to rejection, Neener-neener-neener! I dare you to write a one star review with more curse words than that last one. It's like jumping off a cliff, it gives me an adrenaline rush!"

3. When you get critiques back...

The First Time: "Everything is marked in red! Does this mean I'm terrible at writing?"

Later Times: "Wait, what? There's a whole page of my novel with no critiques on it?! You have to rip my story to shreds or I'll look terrible in front of my readers."

4. When you start selling books...

The First Time: "I am going to make thousands of dollars a month!"

Later Times: "Yes! I made $20 this month! That's a dollar better than last month!"

5. When you talk about your muse...

The First Time: "I sit down and try to write, but my muse doesn't come to me. I have to be in the right mood. She's so fickle."

Later Times: "The muse is my bitch! I hold a gun to her head and make her work with me every day or we don't get paid."

6.  Regarding Social Media...

The First Time: "You mean, I have to actually get online and talk to people sometimes? *gulp* I just want to write and not bother with that stuff!"

Later Times: "You mean, I actually have to get off social media and write sometimes? *frown* But I love talking to people and they need to see more of my cat pictures!"

7. Talking About Characters...

The First Time: "I created this character. She's so cool! Let me tell you about her."

Later Times: "I'm writing about this character and she keeps changing the story in ways that she's not supposed to. I'm the writer, but it feels like sometimes she's the one writing through me. Wait, don't go. I swear I'm not crazy! I only argue with my characters sometimes!"

Memory And Writing

Something that frustrates me is that when I watch movies and television shows, I forget a lot of the details soon afterwards. I have a terrible memory when it comes to these things, especially if I only watch them through one time.

I have seen all the episodes of Bob's Burgers, for instance, and I have a friend who is obsessed with that show and quotes it all the time. I laugh and pretend I know what she is saying, but in my head, I go,"What episode was that again?"

This extends to my writing as well. It's a gift on one hand. If I take a long break from writing a certain story, I can come at it with fresher eyes than many authors can because I've already forgotten most of what I was saying. But it's bad when I'm trying to write a book series because while I am writing it, I easily forget details sometimes from previous books (and have to re-read those) or my stories get riddled with plot holes.

Last night, I drank a caffeinated beverage. I never drink caffeine because I have anxiety problems, but I couldn't seem to help myself. I also decided to do this at midnight, which is a wonderful idea, especially since I'm not used to caffeine anymore and should have been going to sleep.

So I sat in my living room, wide awake and jittery, in the dark, with my kindle.

I was going to re-download my books. I keep hoping that re-downloading them will somehow update them on my device (but it never does), so that I can read what you guys are reading and make sure that the formatting is going well. I always preview the formatting, but I don't trust the preview for whatever reason. I make little changes on the formatting sometimes and I need to make sure those are translating the right way.

So I start rifling through Pandora's Mistake and instead of just glancing at every page, I start re-reading the story. And pretty soon, I am engrossed in reading it because I can't remember anything that I wrote the first time around.

I start laughing hysterically and going,"Pandora's so naive!" And I feel like a crazy person because I wrote this book and I can't even remember anything that I wrote. And people would probably think I was crazy if they were reading it outloud and I was going over and over again,"Oh yeah! I forgot that I had written that!" Because I finished writing it a little over a year ago, so how have I already forgotten the entire thing?

To me it's like looking through one of those old photo albums with your family while you nudge each other and say,"Remember when we did that!" And you go,"Oh yeah! I forgot about that!"

So I finished re-reading Pandora and will likely have to re-read Medusa as well. Because I am hoping that as soon as I finish writing these "God Of Light" books, that I can start working on my Sisyphus novel. (I wrote one chapter for it one time and that made me excited.)

 But I'm also trying to finish up critiquing two things and have a lot more work to do on the "God Of Light" books, so it might be awhile before that happens.