{"id":8793,"date":"2012-06-09T15:51:45","date_gmt":"2012-06-09T19:51:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theseasonforromance.com\/wordpress\/?p=8793"},"modified":"2012-06-09T15:51:45","modified_gmt":"2012-06-09T19:51:45","slug":"the-tale-of-two-publishing-roads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/09\/the-tale-of-two-publishing-roads\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tale of Two Publishing Roads"},"content":{"rendered":"

by<\/em> Beverley Kendall<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

My road to self-publishing wasn’t intentional by any means. I desperately wanted to get another contract with a traditional publisher. Coming into my contract with Kensington<\/a><\/strong>, which was my first contract ever and happened with the first book I’d ever completed, I knew the odds were firmly stacked against me. I discovered from other authors who had been or were in the Kensington<\/strong> debut line, that Kensington<\/strong>\u00a0re-contracted maybe 5%\u00a0of those authors. This of \u00a0course gave me pause. What the hell was I going to do to make them want to recontract me, other than writing what I considered, a great book?<\/p>\n

That’s when my sister told me that her friend, who just happens to be a psychic, told her that in order for me to succeed, I’d have to market a LOT. I had no idea what that meant. I was going to take out ads and I was going to blog. What more could I do? My advance had been a very modest $2500 per book and it was a 2-book deal.<\/p>\n

By trade, I worked with computers, did some programming and had dabbled in creating a website or two. Since I loved romance novels and was a brand spanking newbie author, I thought about doing something online. I wanted to create a website apart from my author’s site. The Season site<\/a><\/strong> was born from a combination of Kris Alice’s <\/strong>(of Germany’s Love Letters<\/a><\/strong>)\u00a0twitter wish that there was someplace she could go to get a list of debut authors and my sister’s urging that I create such a site. I didn’t think a site for just debut authors would work. Put that all together and that’s how I came up with The Seaso<\/strong>n and the site went live May 2009.<\/p>\n

The Season<\/strong> did a fabulous job of getting my name out there. I met industry professionals I would never otherwise have met. I attended romance conferences, both local and the RWA National ones. I met tons and tons of fabulous authors. Through my work with The Season<\/strong>, I managed to snag a great cover quotes for one of my Kensington books.<\/p>\n

In January 2010 (self-publishing hadn’t really taken off just yet), Sinful Surrender<\/strong> was released. In January 2011, A Taste of Desire<\/strong> was released – self-publishing has taken off with a bang and digital sales are way up. Now I’m going to break down the digital numbers by book and year:<\/p>\n

Book \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Year \u00a0<\/span> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 # copies sold \u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sinful Surrender (avg price $3.13) \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 2010 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 3033
\nA Taste of Desire (avg price $4.76) \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a02011 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 26,467
\nSinful Surrender (avg price $3.09) \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 2011 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a017,088<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Total # digital books sold<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a046,588<\/strong><\/p>\n

~~~<\/p>\n

There you have it. The total number of digital books sold with Kensington<\/strong>, a traditional NY publisher in the past 2 years, the bulk, 43,555, in 2011<\/strong>. It’s not a bad number at all. I was quite thrilled with it. Did I make a ton of money? I guess it may be considered a decent amount of money by New York standards for a new author with that particular publisher and given the modesty of the contract. After the first year’s earnings for Sinful Surrender<\/strong>, it did feel like I’d won some sort of lottery when I received the cheque for the first six month’s earnings of 2011.<\/p>\n

Now let’s step back just a moment. Just before A Taste of Desire<\/strong> came out, my agent had shopped An Heir of Deception<\/strong>. I think we came close in several cases to selling it but in the end, all the publishing houses turned it down. But we were still waiting on Kensington. \u00a0They ended up turning it down about 2 weeks after A Taste of Desire<\/strong> was released. I was disappointed but I knew I wasn’t going to let the book go. Come hell or high water, I was determined to publish that book. I didn’t exactly know how or when, but I thought it was the best out of the three books in the series, so I wasn’t giving up on it.<\/p>\n

Until that happened, I continued to write. I came up with the idea for a connecting series called The Temptresses<\/em> and my agent, Kevan Lyon<\/a>,<\/strong> shopped that. In the end, it didn’t sell. \u00a0At this point, my friend Lori Brighton<\/a><\/strong> had started to self-publish. I remember thinking, I will never self-publish because that would be like giving my book away for free. I just couldn’t see readers buying books not from NY or an established epublisher. Even when she told how much others “said” they were making self-publishing (this is the end of 2010), I was skeptical. Then Lori sent me the link to Amanda Hocking’s<\/strong> blog where she actually had images of the remittance advice and it showed she sold approx 100,000 books in December of 2010 between 8 books. Okay, I said to myself, maybe self-published authors weren’t exaggerating about their earnings. That was the moment I actually saw self-publishing as a viable option for me.<\/p>\n

At that point, I finished the novella I’d been working on the prior year. It was a 30k story that came between A Taste of Desire<\/strong> and An Heir of Deception<\/strong>. I thought it would be a nice story to hold my fans over until An Heir was finished. I put it out in April\/May 2011 and I sold a modest 3200 copies until I decided it was worth more to the series if I made it a loss leader. So I made it free. Click here<\/a><\/strong> to read \u00a0the post I wrote on How Free Worked For Me<\/a><\/strong>. Needless to say it worked. More than anything, I included the first three chapters of An Heir of Deception<\/strong> at the end of the book and interest in An Heir skyrocketed. I received emails daily asking when it was coming out. My personal newsletter subscription list grew from 373 to 3155 subscribers in 4 months when I instructed visitors to sign up if they wanted to be informed when An Heir would be coming out.<\/p>\n

The last time I counted, there have been over 400,000 free downloads<\/strong> of the novella ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE & SEDUCTION<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

On May 23 (late at night), An Heir of Deception<\/strong> went live on Amazon<\/a><\/strong>. In the wee hours of the morning of the 24th \u00a0(I think), it went live on Barnes & Noble<\/a><\/strong>. It wasn’t available on Apple<\/a><\/strong> until May 3rd. It’s been exactly 6 weeks weeks and 5 (five) days \u00a0since it was released and here are the results.<\/p>\n

Book<\/span> \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Year<\/span> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0# copies sold \u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

An Heir of Deception \u00a0($4.99) \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Apr 23 – Jun 8\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 15,283<\/p>\n

~~~<\/p>\n

It’s hard to draw sales comparison to my NY books since I don’t get month-by-month sales figures, but I think An Heir of Deception<\/strong> is performing very close or better than A Taste of Desire<\/strong> did when it was released. Especially given it wasn’t available for pre-order or is not available on as many etailer sites. What I can say is that in a little over three weeks of sales, I’ve out earned what I made from 2 books in 2 years with a traditional publishing. I estimate in another month, I will have doubled those earnings.<\/p>\n

And when I say what I’ve earned with my original contract with Kensington<\/strong>, I’m including all the foreign deals, which includes:<\/p>\n

Thailand<\/strong> (Sinful Surrender, A Taste of Desire)
\nRussian<\/strong> (A Taste of Desire)
\nFrench<\/strong> (Sinful Surrender)
\nGerman<\/strong>\u00a0(Sinful Surrender, A Taste of Desire)
\nIndonesia\u00a0<\/strong>(Sinful Surrender, A Taste of Desire)
\nJapan<\/strong> (Sinful Surrender)<\/p>\n

~~~<\/p>\n

The German copy of Sinful Surrender<\/strong> came out December 2011. A Taste of Desire<\/strong> will be out June 18, 2012. To help spur sales of my German books, I had the novella All’s Fair in Love & Seduction<\/strong> translated into German and that went up for sale May 15th. Here are the results:<\/p>\n

Book<\/span> \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Year<\/span> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0# copies sold \u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Der Unwillige Br\u00e4utigam (.89\u00a0\u20ac)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0May 15 – present \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0983<\/p>\n

\u00a0~~~<\/p>\n

The German novella is doing really well in Germany, which surprises me. It’s been in the Top #100 Kindle ebooks for 12 days now<\/strong>. While it’s free in English, I put it at the lowest price I could on both Amazon and Apple to try to recoup some of the cost of translation, which was not insignificant. Most important, it has absolutely helped the sales of Kensington German books. Sales for Sinful Surrender<\/strong> and pre-orders for A Taste of Desire<\/strong> are way up!!!<\/p>\n

Marketing – What worked and what didn’t<\/h2>\n

So when it comes to marketing, here’s what I know or think really worked for me:<\/p>\n