Mirage makes her Kindle Debut!

So I have myself in a very frustrating (but no doubt common) situation...bear with me as I explain.

6 years ago, I began the process of writing my first novel, and it became "Mirage - The First of the Nascentian Chronicles".

What started as a 10-page children's book about monsters under the bed has now become a 5-part saga with a 20-story "mini-series" in the middle.

Book 1 (Mirage) was self-published to 100 copies to family and friends, with the intent of getting feedback from everyone who read it. What needed changing? What didn't work? What did you love, and what did you think sucked? That kinda thing.

The feedback came through, the opening chapters completely re-written to better fit a younger audience (make the main character more relatable), and the ending had an additional chapter and a half added to it for better closure.

A week and a half ago, I decided to put the final product on amazon for digital-release. It is a KDP Select item, which is supposed to help. In her first week, Mirage was in the top 5 Mythology Best-Sellers list and was constantly competing with Lord of the Rings for the #1 spot. But now...Mirage isn't even in the top-400,000. I have a distinct feeling that the only sales I have made are from friends, and not a single sale has come from a 'stranger'. The book is selling for $2.99 (If you type "Nascentian" into amazon's search, it'll pop up) so it certainly isn't the price but...

...NOW what?! Aside from spending 90% of my day writing countless emails, spamming my facebook friends (who are probably rolling their eyes at me by now) and signing up on forum after forum after forum, just to get the word out and try to get my numbers up (I kinda want to work on book 2!), what more can I do?

I have followers on Twitter, Facebook, on Deviantart, and on Google+. My sales should be in the hundred's, but my report shows 18 total.

So how do you keep your book from sinking into the Abyss of obscurity...without spending a ton of money? There is all this talk online about the awesomeness of being an indie author, but they DONT tell you how difficult it is to self-market.

Suggestions? What has worked for you?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AY7G2AG

Hi David,

I'll try to answer your questions in the order you put them. Firstly, Amazon rankings change every hour. If your family/friends bought the book as soon as it was released in a short space of time, the ranking would shoot up. The algorithms assume that if a book sold five copies within an hour, it is selling five copies/hour. Consequently the ranking is very high (#1,000 - #3,000 or even higher). The next hour, if no sales are made, the ranking starts to drop because only five copies were sold in two hours (#3,000 - #5,000). After three hours and only five sales, the ranking has dropped even further. A day later the ranking may have dropped to #60,000 - #80,000 and with no subsequent sales, a week later will be #300,000 - #500,00.

Secondly, you are promoting one novel and trying to build an author platform. It's tough; we've all been there. We've visited other authors' websites and seen several books listed, and then returned to our own website with just one book. It looks so lonely and unappealing even to ourselves! I set up a poetry page, an artwork page and a music page to try to attract visitors. I posted poems written by teenagers I met on forums, artwork by other artists, and music by friends and family. Over a period of four years, I built up a friendship base of 733 friends on Myspace and asked them to read my poems and short stories. You can see the blog posts here: http://www.myspace.com/shelaghwatkins/blog

Thirdly, why should your sales be in the hundreds? On what evidence do you base that? When I first uploaded to KDP in 2009, my sales figures were less than your eighteen. I had a total of $30+ dollars sitting for months and not being added to. I thought I would never make it to the $100 required for UK authors before they received anything from Amazon. Yes, it was soul destroying, but I held in there, I wrote more, published more and eventually started to make sales. Those making money out of the KDP program are not first-time authors with just one book.

Lastly, you turn things around by writing another book ... and another ... and another. Or you give up. Your choice.

Wow. That was...blunt.

As you went over my post step-by-step, allow me to do so in-kind

Your explanation of the algorithms: thanks for that. That is kind of what I assumed was going on, but wasn't sure as to the specificity of it all, so that's an enlightening explanation. Thank you.

Secondly: I have an art page, a site dedicated to just the Nascentian Chronicles, as well as a Facebook Page, a Google-Plus group, a twitter feed, and a deviantart account that features poetry, short stories, and artwork. My main problem is that I started as an animator and this really is my first major "no holds barred" attempt at writing, instead of dabbling in the writing field.

As to why it should be in the hundreds, between Facebook, Twitter, Google, and DeviantArt, I have nearly 400 people that are following the book specifically. They aren't following ME, but the book series. My assumption (and perhaps my blind ignorance) is that if they are following the book and not me...and there are THAT many of them...then I should have more than 18 sales (20 now) maybe not in the HUNDREDS...but...more than 20.

And I am certainly going to keep writing. IN the end, Im writing it for me and for no one else, but it would be nice to be able to share it with the world.

I have sold hundreds of books, not enough to pay for the promotion. It takes thousands. I have tried all the promotional gambits and continue to receive steady royalties so long as I steadily beat the bushes. One slip (as I have slipped lately) and its the abyss.

There is only one sure-fire way to sell thousands of books - a celebrity endorsement, preferable on the Good Morning America, Oprah Winfrey, Today or other talk shows. Even that will be short-lived unless a great book followed.

Good luck. Shelagh is wise - better to have it blunt than a fairy tale.

Nascentian wrote:

As to why it should be in the hundreds, between Facebook, Twitter, Google, and DeviantArt, I have nearly 400 people that are following the book specifically. They aren't following ME, but the book series. My assumption (and perhaps my blind ignorance) is that if they are following the book and not me...and there are THAT many of them...then I should have more than 18 sales (20 now) maybe not in the HUNDREDS...but...more than 20.

They are following it because it is free. I linked to my MySpace blog so that you could read the responses to the things I asked my friends to read. All of it was free. It's different altogether asking readers to buy. It takes time and effort out of all proportion to the number of sales, which is why DK said that she had slipped and I have decided not to write anything new. The rewards are too low for the amount of time invested. By that I don't necessarily mean monetary rewards; I include feedback and acknowledgement.