Amazon KDP Select Experiment - Non Fiction Travel Book Day 19

KDP Select

It's a little after midnight and so officially day 19 of my KDP Select Experiment. And as I mentioned before, my sales are not making me rich, but they are rising. Usually I sell about 1-3 eBooks per month on Amazon and about the same on Barnes and Noble.

Last month on Amazon I sold a total of 6 eBooks and had 200+ free downloads.

So far this month I have 8 total sales and one return for a net of 7 sales. And since it's only the 7th of the month I say I am ahead of the game in comparison to my sales the past few months.

There is so much information out there, advice about what days are good and bad days ( I did it on a Friday) to list your books for free and where and how you should advertise/promote your free days that it can make a girl crazy.

I submitted my last free day to 3 sites, freebies4mom.com and freebooksy.com, the name of the third escapes me at the moment. I checked on the 27th when my book was free and didn't see my eBook listed on either site. So I don't have any advice as far as getting traffic using listing sites except for all three were very easy to submit to.

I am sure they are flooded with entries though, so no hard feelings on my part. On the upside it makes me feel as if the posts I wrote on my blogs may have helped, which would mean that I can (prayerfully) expect a decent amount of downloads and subsequent sales for the remaining 4 free days I am allotted.

Ideas

Over the weekend I read the rest of Kindle Cash and reread Kate Harper's eArticle on selling Articles on for the Kindle. After doing a few keyword searches as suggested in Kindle Cash I have decided to write a few articles (or booklets if longer) about some of the topics I found that I am interested in writing about and that have high searches but low competition.

As always I will keep you posted.

Happy writing!

Second Broke Single Mom Travel book done...Bam!

Finally done, yayyyy! Whoo Hoo!

 I finally finished and uploaded my Traveltini on New York to both Kindle and Nook. It's live on Kindle already, has been for hours, but not on Nook, go figure. I went with the top cover here, the one with the NYC skyline which I do like, however I personally favor the sense of fun and whimsy of the second cover.

 I made my decision based on two things, the fact that my sales were (still are actually even though I changed it) sluggish on my first eBook with a similar cartoon "fun" cover and also because when you scan the list of best selling eBooks in travel barely any have vector or cartoon covers. I'd love to know which cover you guys prefer? Email me at BrokeSingleMomBooks (at) Yahoo.com or leave it in the comment sections. Thanks:)

Writing and selling the non-fiction e-book

Some people say that writing non fiction is the way to go if you want to make money fast. I haven't the slightest if this is true. What I do know is what is true for me and that is that I haven't made enough money yet to even cover my costs.

So why am I continuing to write non fiction? Especially when so many writers are caking it (making money hand over fist) with fiction?

Because I genuinely enjoy writing about shoestring budget travel, time flies when I am writing and doing research and crunching numbers. And I believe that once I get my name and books "out there" and noticed I will be helping so many people that are just like me. Single parents that believe the only way to take their kids on a vacation is to either visit family out of town or set up camp and sleep in a tent.

In this day and age there is no reason that almost everyone shouldn't be able to take a week off and have a grand old time of it without going into credit card debt. My 5 day Chicago vacation was around $400, including Amtrak tickets, parking, food and hotel and we got blessed and stayed at the amazing Embassy Suites a few blocks from the Navy Pier. Meanwhile my sister went camping near Washington DC for 4 days and spend $400 just on the camp site. A nice camp site to be sure, with a lake, pool and cafe, but at the end of the day she was still roughing it.

I do want to write a novel, most writers do. But for right now I will write my next few non fiction books to add to my virtual shelf space and take it from there.

So if you have a passion for something, gardening, cooking or playing the piano and want to share your knowledge and write about it, then do. Don't let anyone tell you there isn't a market  for it or that you are wasting your time.

Do what makes you happy and then market the heckaroni out of it! And if it works then yay for you! If it doesn't? Well at least you won't spend the next 20 or 30 years wondering "what if".

Oh wow! Slow sales, does this mean there is no hope? And my new e-book cover.

Hey all, I am in a pretty iffy place right now. So I'll give you the rundown.

-I have decided to shut down the blog that I created just for my readers
-My job is getting me down
-My sales suck, big time!
-Editing my second book, waiting for new cover

I have now asked anyone that visits my Broke Single Mom blog to come on over here and check me out. I've only gotten 5 visits on that blog in the past 4 months, so I doubt it will be a problem.

My job? Well it's a job and my biggest professional desire is to be able to support myself and my family with my writing so no matter what, it's not where I want to be 5 days a week.

My sales? Well over the past 4 months I have only had about 20 sales and yes, that is counting both Nook and Kindle. Have a done much promoting? Er, no. Why? Er, cuz I'm a dumb ass that's why.

It is so overwhelming and frustrating and not a little scary to try and follow all of the advice out there for e-book writers when it comes to marketing. If I were to follow even just the top 10 I would have no time to sleep. It seems my fellow e-book authors spend just as much, if not more time on marketing than they do writing. Where do they find the energy and time?

I have to just pick one and try it for a while. I have decided to utilize Yahoo Answers and use my signature to try and attract interested topical readers to purchase my book. I will answer budget vacation questions, no spamming, I will give them thoughtful answers pertaining to what they need. It helped me get eyes on my blogs in previous years, let's see if it helps me this time around.

I am not a social networking person, I do not have a Face book or Twitter account. I may have to soon if sales don't pick up though.

As for my second book, I am in the middle of editing and also waiting for my designer to implement a few changes to the mock up he sent me. He actually got my ideas almost right on the money but when I saw the finished product the bottle bothered me.

As you can see from the mock up it's a book on a New York City vacation on a shoestring budget of $600. I will post the updated cover as soon as I get it.

Honestly, some days it feels like I am destined to be a worker bee in someone else's hive for the rest of my life. But I push through it, what other choice do I have? I let life happen and did not start going after my dream until recently. I can't keep doing that to myself. I just bought an inspirational mini plaque, it reads;

DREAM YOUR LIFE....LIVE YOUR DREAM

I like it, it spoke to me, as they say.

Here's to dreaming!

Sales Numbers for my first non fiction ebook

So, it has been a few weeks since I put up my first ebook for sale on Barnes and Noble and Amazon. According to the numbers on my sales reports I've only sold 3 total so far. Kinda sad, but I have hope. I've gotten really good feedback on the actual content of my book, so I am considering taking a leap (of faith and money) and redoing the cover. Since it is the first thing people will see I am thinking that a more colorful and fun cover might help me with sales. I'll be working on that this week. Here's to hoping that it works, or I'll never get out of my 8-5. whaaaaaaa!

So, anyone else out there in Cyber Land trying their hand at selling their non fiction books as ebooks? I'd love to hear from you :)

Until next time.

Working the Kinks out of posting my ebook on PubIt and Kindle

It's done. My book is now officially available for sale on both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. After the upload I realized that there were a few mistakes that I needed to change and I found out that fixing them takes a while.

I uploaded the proper file to Barnes and Noble but not to Amazon, dag-na-bit! The result is that if anyone buys the Amazon copy today there will be two chapter 11 headings in the index and though there is a chapter 7 it got skewed in the conversion which makes it look like a mere continuation of Chapter 6. I have gone in and replaced that version with the correct file. But like I said, it takes a while...24 hours is what the Kindle site is saying.*

*Update; the correct version is now live and for sale replacing my flawed first try:) Kudos to Amazon's Kindle program, it was no where near 24 hours more like 5 hours.

But aside from this hiccup I have to tell you how wonderful it feels to have finished and posted my book for sale so soon after changing my business focus.

I've also decided to have this first book be part of a series, the "Broke Single Mom" series. And I am already researching and working on my next book.

I am new to all of this in the self publishing ebook world, but I am willing to learn and if you are thinking of testing the water, I say jump in! So we make mistakes, at least we're trying. and those can always be rectified :)