So What’s Next?

My latest book has been on sale for a couple of weeks now, and while I’m hardly setting any sales records, I’m not disappointed either. This year has been, for me, a miserable sales year, but I’m looking at it as a learning experience, not as a disappointment.

I got some feedback last year that the covers of my books made them look like Young Adult, which they are not. While I’m not writing erotica, there is a scene at the end of Reincarnated Lover that would probably upset a few parents if they saw their teens and tweens reading it.

I also made a discovery when Scribd severely cut back the romance titles in their catalog. My books had been categorized as romances. The relationship between Paul and Dafydd is an important part of the Warlock Case Files series, but they are not romances. My sales drop suddenly made sense. I had been selling fairly steadily prior to the introduction of Kindle Unlimited. As soon as Amazon introduced the subscription service, my sales plummeted. It took me almost a year to figure out why.

Romance readers are voracious, and many of them flocked to Kindle Unlimited. As far as I can tell, from reading other blogs, sales of romance books were severely cannibalized by Kindle Unlimited. I’ve chosen to go wide, so my books aren’t available in KU. I knew romance readers were borrowing more than buying, but my books weren’t romances, so why did my sales drop?

It wasn’t until my books disappeared from Scribd that I figured it out. Back when I published Haunted Vampire, I selected “Gay” as a category, thinking, why not? Dafydd is gay. Oops. Gay is a romance sub-category (which was not and still isn’t obvious from the category structure).

So I finally figured out why my sales had dropped. I’ve deleted the Gay category, but it will take a while for the classification to go away. When you look at the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” recommendations, the “Also Boughts” are still almost exclusively gay romance.

So what to do about the situation? Changing my categories was step one. Step two is going to be a complete rebranding. I took the WMG Publishing Cover Design class earlier this year, and I’m going to create new covers for the Warlock Case Files books. I’ll brand them so they have a similar look and feel to Buried But Not Gone, which, I hope, doesn’t look at all like a romance cover!

I’m hoping new covers will help, along with changing the category. I’m also hard at work on the next Paul and Dafydd book. Having a new release in that series should also help.

So 2015 has been the year of learning, which I’m okay with. I’m here for the long haul, so I still have plenty of time to figure out all the moving pieces of indie publishing!

Buried But Not Gone On Sale Now

Buried But Not Gone coverI’m excited to announce the release of Buried But Not Gone, my latest book!

Here’s the blurb

Denise Evans thought she could move on with her life after the horrific suicide of her husband. Until someone started killing her students. A local warlock, Jim Novik, suspects someone or some thing may be using her husband from beyond the grave. Some things are

Buried But Not Gone

A new urban fantasy in the same magical universe as
The Warlock Case Files

Available on [easyazon_link identifier=”B016OVSJKG” locale=”US” tag=”warloc-20″]Amazon[/easyazon_link], SmashwordsBarnes & Noble and Kobo

Buried But Not Gone Cover Reveal

My next book is almost ready to be published. It’s in final editing, and I’m sure I’ll need to make some changes before sending it off to be converted into a ebook and laid out for print on demand, but we’re getting close now. I’m estimating before the end of this month, which is appropriate because doesn’t this cover look appropriate for Halloween?

Buried But Not Gone cover

I’m excited for you all to read it.

Here’s the back cover blurb to whet your appetite

Denise Evans thought she could move on with her life after the horrific suicide of her husband. Until someone started killing her students. A local warlock, Jim Novik, suspects someone or some thing may be using her husband from beyond the grave. Some things are

Buried But Not Gone

A new urban fantasy in the same magical universe as
The Warlock Case Files

What do you think? Ready to read it?

And We’re Up and Running

As I said in my previous post, I wanted to try creating a website from scratch, and since I needed an author site, it seemed the logical one to create.

As with almost anything new, it took longer than I had anticipated, but here it is. It has all the pages I wanted, including a New Release Mailing List sign-up page, which I will be adding to the back matter of all my books.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I plan to migrate some of the posts from my old Blogger site, so you’ll be able to read about some of my journey to becoming an indie published author. Plus, if I remember correctly, there’s an interview with one of my main characters. Look for all that soon!

Until then, keep reading.