Small Changes = Small Victories (an IWSG Post)

Has it really been a month already? I must be getting old, because lately it seems like I blink and it’s the next month. Ah well, I’ve got a few things to mention today!

First off, last month I mentioned that I was extremely frustrated with the release of my first erotic fairy tale because public domain issues made it practically impossible to promote it in any way, shape, or form. It turns out that I was very wrong about this – not about the impossibility of promoting something that’s public domain, but about labeling my story as public domain in the first place.

It seems that when I saw the option for “Is this book public domain?” I completely misunderstood the concept. In my mind I was thinking, “I’ve written a story based on a pre-existing public domain story, so therefore my story is public domain,” but that’s not true. Your story is only public domain if the majority of the story is actually the original story; if the majority of your story is original, written by you, then it is not pubic domain. There are exact numbers, but the long and short of it is that if you write your own, original story that’s only based on a pre-existing one, it’s not public domain. By choosing to say that my story is public domain I was actually saying “I do not own the copyright for this story”, and that is why you’re not allowed to use the promotional tools or choose to earn the higher royalty option.

So I got that all straightened away and, yay! A few sales rolled in! And then stopped… ^_^; Okay, they haven’t stopped completely. One pops up here and there, and I see people reading pages on Kindle Unlimited as well, so that’s something. I haven’t worked out the exact numbers, but I’d say I earned about…$4 or so on this story in the past month. Which is more than I earned on “Nowhere to Hide” for about six months in a row, so there’s that.

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Speaking of “Nowhere to Hide“, it got its makeover! After a minor bit of quibbling over the finer details, a major change to the back cover summary, and the addition of an author photo and mini-bio, we are live with the new look! And honestly, I could scarcely be happier. I love the new, more dynamic cover, I love the new summary, and I love the fact that my picture is now on the back. Unfortunately I haven’t actually seen a physical copy of the book myself yet (god, shipping between the US and Canada just gets slower and slower…), but one of my lovely YouTube buddies picked it up and told me it looks great, so I’m going to take his word for it. ^_^ 

So far the changes haven’t really translated into sales, except for the few that I got from a couple of my YouTube subscribers and friends, but that’s also partially because I’m having a hard time with the promotional side of things agan. I don’t want to just spam my Twitter and Facebook accounts over and over again, but I haven’t found many better options since most promo sites are paid and I’m not looking to spend any more money on this project at the moment. Any ideas, fellow writers?

Oh, and of course, if you’d like to check out for yourself, here it is!

https://www.amazon.com/Nowhere-Hide-Tracey-Lynn-Tobin/dp/1477527923/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472642952&sr=8-1&keywords=Tracey+tobin
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Well, that’s it for me this month. Unfortunately I’m so ridiculously busy that I’m actually typing this up on my phone on the bus to work and it’s starting to burn my eyes, so I’m going to give them a break now. Cheers, fellow insecure writers!