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Monday, February 22, 2021

The Journey to Self-Publication, Part 18: Skipping a Month or Two

  I've gotten quite a few questions about why I finally decided to delve into self-publishing and how I'm doing it, so I figured why not create a new blog series!





Every Monday, I'll be sharing a piece of the self-publishing puzzle---from how I came to this choice to writing, editing, marketing, sales, and everything in between. Please remember that this is simply my experience, how chose to do things. Others do things differently, and that's fine! So, your mileage may vary, but in the end, I hope seeing yet another way of tackling self-publishing will help you on your path. 

Need to catch up on previous posts? Find them here:



I published the first book in The Cursed Series in September 2020, and I've had a new book releasing every month for 6 months straight. Until now. I do not have a new book ready to release in March, and at first, I was panicking. I'd built all this momentum, and now I was going to lose it because I didn't have something new to promote. But then I realized, so what? Skipping a month or two without a new release is not the end of the world, nor is it the end of my Indie career. In fact, this is actually a good thing!

Every book in this series is connected. You can probably read book 2 without having read book 1 first and it will make sense, but trying to jump into this series with any other book, and you'll be lost. They were written and meant to be read in order, so even though all 6 books have released, I still very actively promote book 1 more than all the others because that's where I want readers to start. And if I can get them started with book 1, the hope is they'll become hooked and then follow through with the rest of the series. 

My next planned release is a spin off to The Cursed Series. It follows a couple of the secondary characters from the main series, but it picks up right after book 6 ends, and the events of book 6 are crucial to understanding the events in this spin off. So, once again, the series needs to be read in order. Now, I could have this new book ready to go by early April, and originally, that had been my plan.

But then it hit me!

I had no real reason to rush getting another book ready for release. Because all the books need to be read in order, I'd be essentially selling this new book to my already established readers, which is fine, but the ultimate goal is to always be finding new readers, right? And the only way to do that is by promoting the series as a whole, and that's now what I'm doing. 

I have decided to not publish this new book until May, which will give me March and April to promote the series, gain new readers, and plan and implement an effective marketing strategy for the next book. With a little luck and a lot of hard work, I'll have even more readers willing and eager to buy my newest book. So, HOW am I going to do this? I'm glad you asked ;-) 

1. Facebook Takeover Events -- I already have a few booked, and I'm actively scheduling more. These are great, fun ways to interact with readers and share information about my books. 

2. Interviews -- I'm booking interviews on blogs and podcasts that are geared toward

3. Consistent Social Media Presence -- I'll continue this blog series and sharing it on social media along with steady, consistent posts across all platforms. To be clear, these are not "buy my book" posts, but fun memes, questions, teasers, etc. Things that are interesting, fun, and of value to readers. If they get to know me as a real person (and actually like me), they'll be more apt to invest in my books.

4. Gathering More Reviews -- I've signed up to participate in a massive reader review event in March that encourages participants to not just review on Amazon, but Goodreads and Bookbub as well. When someone reviews on Goodreads, it shows up in their activity, which means their followers will see it, and that means an organic reach to other readers. And on Bookbub, if a reader reviews a book, they can recommend it to their followers, which again, is organic reach. 

5. Pricing, Freebies, and Paid Ads -- I'm not going to go into too much detail about this right now because this is the topic of next week's post, but I'm playing around with the price of the books in conjunction with a newsletter push and paid ads. 


Will any of these actually work? No idea, but I'm going to find out, and I'll share my results in a few months.


Got questions?

Drop them in the comments!

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