February Writing Update

Hi! I'm new here, so I'm reposting something I just posted to my substack as a way to learn about how it all works. This is a behind the scenes look at my writing life, so I hope it's enjoyable for people to read here too!

Whew, what a month! It’s now been a little over a month since my debut novel Salt and Ice was released, and it’s been… slow. And because I believe in transparency, I want to share some numbers here.

On Amazon, I have sold 1 ebook, 6 paperbacks, and 50 page reads on Kindle Unlimited.

On Draft2Digital (they are handling library distribution of ebooks), I have made 2 sales.

On IngramSparks I have made 0 sales. This isn’t surprising since I have set the lowest possible wholesale discount and I don’t accept returns, which makes me very unappealing to stores. This will probably change in the future when I have enough of an income to risk the returns.

And on my personal website, I have sold 8 books.

It’s not yet enough to be a return on what I’ve invested in the book, but if we discount the author copies stock that I haven’t yet sold, it comes pretty close, so that’s still a win in my book (ha! gettit?)

I have also decided that Kindle Unlimited is not for me. I was always leaning towards wide being the way I wanted to sell, partially because I hate having all my eggs in the Amazon basket, especially with how fickle Amazon is, but I had to at least try it for the three months lock-in period so that I would have the data to prove that wide would be better. I am paid a maximum of $0.004 (that’s not a typo, that’s under half a cent) per page read, which means if someone actually finishes my book (which it seems they are not), I am paid 1/4 of my ebook price. I would have to have 4 people completely finish my book in KU to earn the same as a single ebook sale. I feel I would do better going wide and having sales, especially to tie them in with big figure skating events.

Speaking of tying in with figure skating events, publishing in time for the Winter Olympics doesn’t seem to have made any difference, not the least because the figure skating groups I posted about my book, advertising it as a great read to have to tie into the Olympics, still have my posts sitting on pending with no admin acceptance or denial in sight. Frustrating, but what can I do?

All that leads me to what I think will likely be my “marketing strategy” going forward. I don’t really like the idea of paying for ads, and most people use ad blockers anyway. And since KU really doesn’t seem to work, at least for this book, my plan at the moment is to go wide and build a backlist. I feel like this will be the most beneficial way to build trust and a readership. Add to that, I will want to do in person selling at markets and the like, especially once I have a few more books out. And Substack, Facebook, and Instagram will be my main social medias (with some dip into threads as I feel inclined).

As for the social media side, I am doing an experiment next month. I haven’t had the best results on Instagram, so next month I’m trying to be consistent in both how often I post and the style I post in. Up until now, it’s just been once or twice a week, when I feel like it, and using whatever I feel is pretty on Canva. For next month, I’ve created several images, videos, sounds, fonts and logos to add a consistent imagery throughout, and I’ll be scheduling all my posts to post on set days at set times. Today I went through the last 30 days on both Facebook and Instagram and collated all the data I could into a spreadsheet so that, come the end of next month, I’ll be able to do the same and see where (if) I’ve improved.

Now, in my last update I was working on zero drafting the sequel to Salt and Ice. I have since… abandoned that project. I got halfway through chapter two before deciding that I just wasn’t in love with it the same way I was its predecessor. I was only really writing the sequel because that’s what you’re supposed to do. So I stopped. That’s not to say I’ll never go back to it, I certainly didn’t delete it and I have an entire outline planned out, but for now I’ve decided to let Salt and Ice be a stand-alone like I originally planned.

So what now? I’m glad you asked!

Introducing my new project, Legacy of Ash and Smoke! This will be a new five-book series (yes, an actual series this time, I’ve planned out all five books) that is a hybrid urban fantasy crossed science fiction genre. It is dark. And it’s so much fun! Here’s the tagline for book 1:

When a fugitive prince spares the enemy sniper sent to execute him, he gains a deadly ally — and a walking liability. In a war-torn world where magic burns the user's life force, breaking the soldier’s conditioning might save the kingdom, or hand the enemy the perfect weapon to destroy them from within.

Cool, huh! It has themes of brotherhood, what it means to be human, and definitely some strong found family notes (because I don’t think I could write a book without that at least a little bit).

I have so many awesome pictures that I found on Pinterest that I am using for personal inspiration. I can’t actually use them in marketing, but I figure I can show you a screenshot of my Lore Forge and you can see how excited I am!

Yeah, I know some of them are recognisable from other medias, but it’s more that it gives me an idea or a vibe that the pictures capture.

I have so many big plans for this series that I seriously cannot wait to share more, but I have to be selective about what I share. Even this, sharing character names and images (fake copyrighted images though they are), is probably something I may regret, but so what! It’s done!

I have completely finished zero drafting book 1 (at about 20,000 words), and by this weekend I’ll have finished zero drafting book 2. I then need to go back and thread through something I forgot, then I’ll do a developmental edit on book 2 on its own, and as the sequel to book 1. Once I’m happy with that, I’ll then move on to book 3! It’s taking me about three weeks to zero draft a book, so that means I’m on track for hoping to release book 1 by the end of the year. Also, want to know more about what I mean by zero drafting? I wrote an article about it, which you can read here:

The Sculptor Method: Writing Your Novel One Layer at a Time (with sneak peeks from my novel)

So that’s it! I hope you enjoyed this little sneak peak behind the curtains of my writing life. Until next month, keep writing!