Promotion, Production and Procrastinating

Hi there! I chose three p’s for the title today. I’m feeling a little Sunday morning spunky. So far on this bright day, my husband has made a delicious breakfast and built a big fort in the living room with the kids. I’ve done very little. Awesome. 🙂
(Update, since I wrote this part an hour and a half ago — since then, we’ve played a new kiddo board game that was really fun, and a couple of us have gotten dressed. I’m not one of them.)

My novella Tribute is free right now on Amazon, so that’s the promotion part. I paid $25 to James at ebookbooster.com to fill out the forms on 50+ websites that list free books. I’ve just visited, and it looks like the price for this service has gone up in the last two weeks, to $45. That’s not surprising, because ebookbooster.com was referenced on Joe Konrath’s blog (here) in a post about the KDP Select free days and getting the most out of them. I read that post the day it went live, set the date for my Tribute promotion, and got in touch with James. I’m glad I did, because it definitely increased the visibility of my promotion. I’ve had 500 plus downloads (which isn’t a ton, but I’m only halfway into the five day free stretch), and I’ve been on the top 100 free lists for fantasy and futuristic romance and paranormal romance for the past two days, meaning that more people searching for books in these genres will run across my title. I’d planned to contact James again for my next promotion, but $45 is a bit higher…I’ll have to see how the rest of my free period works out and whether it turns out to be worth it. I definitely appreciated his assistance and it was well worth the $25 I spent.

In terms of production, I’m really into my WIP right now. I gave myself permission to work on that nifty fresh project if I needed to blow off steam, but every time I open my manuscript I find it easy to make progress. Sometimes having a possible source of relief is just the ticket. This week I wrote:
Monday – 400
Wednesday – 300
Friday – 1,000
Saturday – 1,600
And on Tuesday I wrote 400 words on the fresh new WIP. So in total I hit my 3,500 word mark, but I didn’t quite get there on the book I’m supposed to be writing. But like I said, I’m feeling particularly into the groove on my main project, and I anticipate a high word count this next week because I’m eager to write the next few scenes. Yay!

And we’ve reached…procrastination. The topic here is the print version of Queen Witch. I’ve never done a print edition before, and I’m nervous about it. I’ve done an initial run at the formatting, but I need to do a bunch more reading on CreateSpace to make sure I have things correct. I definitely need to move this up my priority list. I WILL make progress this week, hopefully resulting in submitting the book so I can get a physical proof.

I also need to prioritize the revisions on my novella Flight. I want to publish this in May, so I need to get cracking.

The challenge this week will be fitting in both writing new word count and progress on revisions and formatting a print manuscript. It’s a lot to juggle, but I feel like I’m at a point where I need to make progress everywhere.

Best of luck to everyone in the coming week. Spring is on its way, I can feel it in the air! 🙂

About J.R. Pearse Nelson

J.R. Pearse Nelson is a fantasy and romance writer from Oregon, USA. She lives with her husband and two daughters among the plentiful trees and clouds of the beautiful Willamette Valley. J.R. is always searching for the magic in our world. She weaves tales rooted in mythology, bringing legend to life in modern-day and fantasy settings. J.R. is the author of the Of the Blood fantasy romance series, the Foulweather Twins fantasy series, and the Water Rites fantasy series. You can connect with J.R. and learn more about her fiction at her website. Visit jrpearsenelson.com.

8 comments on “Promotion, Production and Procrastinating

  1. So far, I’ve found that running 5 day promotions work against you. Well, at least for me. After the first couple of days, the downloads really drop off. I’ve settled into a 2-day debut free period for each part of Spinner while running previous chapters free along with whatever piece is new. I end up with way more total downloads by spacing the days out than by running them all at once.

  2. Lots of words, yay! That sucks about ebookbuster, because I had considered using them. $20 more is a lot more. I guess we’ll have to see where I’m at when I get to the point that I’m making something free. Perhaps some other service will come along.
    Good luck and hopefully not too much procrastination next week, right?

  3. I’m facing a similar dilemma with the print copy stuff, JR. I’m planning on collecting the first three of my Moonsongs novellas into a single collection and creating a print copy. I just have no idea how to do it. 🙁 I’m sure I’ll figure it out like I did with the digi, but nonetheless I’m nervous!

    • I think I found a topic for my Indie Life post next week! I’ll start putting together some resources on formatting for CreateSpace, and see how far I get with my project in the meantime. 🙂

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