MaryMcDonald wrote:Yeah, mousetater. I know other authors who sold tons after being featured, but my numbers just came up (pubit reporting has been broken all month until today) and my sales weren't very good. :-(
I have the sequel coming out in a few days, but not sure that's going to be very successful here. Maybe if made Mark 17 and a vampire, it would help.
The figures may not be quite correct yet. It looks like they are slowly but surely getting things fixed. So there could be some error in what you are looking at.
In the meantime, I'm waiting for your new one to come out. (Ahem, hurry please.)
I definitely enjoyed No Good Deed! I had trouble putting it down. The book was well written and its action-packed plot kept me turning the pages. I'd put it up there with some of my favorite action-adventure-mystery authors. Not as intense, but every bit as satisfying.
Just thought I'd let you all know that the sequel to No Good Deed is now available.
Mark Taylor discovers first hand that no good deed goes unpunished when the old camera he found during a freelance job in an Afghanistan bazaar gives him more than great photos. It triggers dreams of disasters. Tragedies that happen exactly as he envisions them. He learns that not only can he see the future, he can change it.
His life takes a dark turn when his heroism becomes the subject of a newspaper article. The media attention and a harrowing encounter while saving a young woman, puts him in the sights of the ruthless cult leader who covets the secret to Mark's power.
Uncomfortable in the public spotlight, Mark suspects he's being tested by the force behind the camera's prophetic magic. Battling his own self-doubt, he must maintain the secret or risk certain death.
"
And I have a challenge for you:
Sell your new release at 7.99 and add a special authors' note about how you created the book.. basically an introduction. Compare that with how it sells. And don't advertise it.. well.. the new version.
Track that for a month and report back."
You think so? I don't know. It's hard enough to sell it at $2.99. When I had No Good Deed at 0.99 cents, I sold about 65 here on B&N, my biggest month, however I made very little in royalties, so I moved back to $2.99. I sold 20 books in January.
If I raise the price, I might not sell any. However, since I'm barely selling any anyway...hmmm.
"You are selling cashmere are cotton prices and if given a choice, I think people will pay cashmere prices. Which is a great oddity, but sometimes books sell better at a higher price (as reported by reputable publishers)"
That is very kind of you to say about No Good Deed. Thank you.
It's time to think of getting a website as well. I've run several websites, but at minimum, you need a blog to post and advertise your books. (revise your books to include this blog link as well for more information about the author and new offers)
If you want to pursue this, I can give you some tips on free cheap, easy and fanstastic solutions, like blogspot (what I use) versus wordpress which I don't but is also good.
Not only do you have your first book now.. you have a second one, that has gotten all around rave reviews.
It's time you have your own website.
People want to hear more.. maybe release snidbits about the characters that didn't make it into the books but is development you had behind the scenes.. and in movie parlance, release behind the scenes 'scenes' and let people in more than just from reading the book.
This is also a chance for you to shine as an author and let people know about you. (and we do want to know about you too.
Personal things, whimsical things, book things, and most importantly 'new release things'.
You can do anythign with this, including what your yourself are reading now.
Must have a mailing list signup (also possible thru blogger) Leverage your existing fanbase for future sales.
I'm going to send you my own websites and a preview of my publishing site in development to give you some ideas via private.
Time to step it up a bit darlin'. Serge Storms commands it... but only for those who are worthy.
I have a blog that is fairly active. It's at Mary McDonald Has the Write Stuff
I have a Blackberry Curve--but it died when I left it in the car in sub-zero weather. I need to see if I can get it replaced as it was only five months old. Right now, I'm using a generic Go phone we'd bought for my 10 year old. lol. I don't even know the phone number since I had it stored in the Blackberry.
iluv2readmynook wrote:Mary it took me awhile to find this post, but I just bought your 2nd book. And I'm proud to say that they are next on my list.
I love these blogs/boards - but sometimes they get expensive! I'm a sucker for good books, now if only I didn't need to work and I could read all day!!!!
Thanks for sharing on this, it is really nice learning about the book - from the author, and that the author cares to answer their readers comments and questions. Those books by those authors are the ones I like to read, when the author knows where and how she made it, by selling one book at a time.
Hi! Thanks for the support and I hope you the books. I am selling one book at a time. lol. Literally. I think you have about the fifth sale of March Into Hell on Barnes and Noble. 
I can probably list my readers by first name. ;-)
Thanks, Parkb5. 
For me, I feel like it's a fine line. I had my book at 99 cents for about six weeks from Nov-mid December. Prior to doing that, I was selling about 5/day, so to make at least what I was before, I needed to sell 6x as many books. I was selling well, but only about 4-5x as many and I was putting in at least as much effort. Plus, even at 99 cents, my sales at B&N were paltry. I sell 10 times as many at Amazon. So, since I can't have one price here, and another on Amazon, I put it back to $2.99 everywhere.
Financially, it was a great decision as even without the sales of the new book, I doubled my royalties from the previous month. Honestly, I think sometimes people get the 99 cent books and they go straight to the bottom of the TBR pile and many will never be read at all. At least when someone has invested a little more, they are less likely to let the money go to waste by never reading it. I feel like $2.99 is a good starting point. Mostly, I've found that on B&N, it's genre that dictates what sells and what doesn't. I can't change my genre, so I just have to be happy with what I have here--a few readers who enjoyed my first book enough to seek out the second.
