To pass something along to my writer friends this week:
Originally my strategy was to go wide with my books, and I published on Amazon and Smashwords. I put my photographic short story collection, Black Cat Scribbles Vol. 1, on Kindle Unlimited (KU) since the book was too big a file to publish on Smashwords (though I tried to compress it enough. I’m still looking for a solution).
Then I saw a lot of posts and conversations that KU is where the money is at. So I unpublished on Smashwords and went exclusive on KU.
And I did get a lot of reads. Trouble is though, as I am finding out, as my reads are starting to steadily increase, I am making substantially less in royalties in those KU reads than from people just purchasing my book. In fact I am losing a lot of money because they are short reads. Your page length is something to take into account when deciding whether KU is right for you.
So new strategy: my KU subscription expires around October 18th, and they all go off (I haven’t decided about Black Cat Scribbles yet, but everything else is most likely going off). Now is a great time to check out my books for free is you’re in the KU program, because after that deadline, I am going wide again.
This was definitely a case of thinking the grass was greener on the other side. KU was a good experiment, and I have attracted a lot of readers with it that will hopefully read my other stuff coming out soon (Dark Twists Trilogy Book 2: House, Haunted, gets released next month), so in the end I think it was worth it.
In other news, I’m still pretty busy with teaching and writing. I am in the midst of editing Melody of Shrieks, my Christian sci-fi book, and am working on an outline for book 3 in the Whiskered series. I’m also shopping around for covers for book 2, Whiskered Mountains (working title) and Melody of Shrieks. I have a dark fiction book I am also working on, but I’ve hit an obstacle, plot wise, in the story and I don’t know if I will finish it now. I’m also editing and outlining stories for my next Black Cat Scribbles book.
This is a lot, but don’t think I do this all at once. A bit here on a project, a bit there on another, and soon they start to come together. This coupled with teaching is keeping me quite busy.
Sometimes I do relax though. I looove sitting on the front porch with my tea while I work—the weather is so nice right now!
Occasionally I do yoga. I find some good channels on YouTube, or I take out my yoga card deck and bust through a few poses. I find yoga relaxing—a great alternative to when I don’t feel like running.
Except when Emma, one of our labs, gets all mopey and attention driven and lays on my yoga mat. She doesn’t move, and she thinks it’s cute. I could be in the middle of downward dog and she just crawls onto the available mat space and plops herself down.
It’s especially cumbersome when the cats get involved too. Elsa is notorious for this: she will just flop her pretty self down when I am trying to do a plank or push-ups. One time I was using my treadmill and she decided to walk across when I was going about 4 mph. Her chubby legs have probably never moved so fast as when she scrambled to get off. Currently as I type she is sitting in my lap, purring and flashing me her Disney eyes.
My old cat Tiger used to sit in the futon chair next to the treadmill when I ran. I thought it was so cute him waiting for me to finish.
What funny things have your fur babies done lately?
Overall I was kinda down and burnt out a little at the beginning of the week, but things picked up for the better as the week progressed. I hope everyone is staying healthy and taking care of themselves.
Update: So I spoke with someone more into KU than I am, and I think I might re-enroll my books again for another round to keep getting discovered. I’ve got time until I have to make a decision, but it’s amazing how new information can change the perspective.