Price Experiment--Final Results

It is early (9 AM) on June 29th as I write this. As many of you know, I have 4 books available for sale on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords (which sells to Sony, Apple, Kobo, Diesel and other retail outlets). So far this month I have sold over 6,000 books in Amazon's Kindle store alone. I have also received my first check from Create Space (Amazon's POD service) for the sale of paperbacks. Granted, it was a small check, but I have high hopes of things to come. *bright, beaming smile*

I believe I have found the perfect price point for my books. Priced at 99 cents, the books are a good value for my readers and they're profitable for me. It's taken me months of fiddling with pricing to finally arrive at this conclusion. But the fact that I've had all the control (over the product, the packaging, the marketing, the pricing, etc) has been freeing and fun.

So I think this will be the end of experimenting for me. At least for the time being. I hope these blog posts have been helpful to those authors who are selling their own work, whether that work has been previously traditionally published or original fiction.

Oh, I'd love for everyone to stop by Fiction for Dessert where Karen Cantwell is featuring my book, Return of the Runaway Bride.

Procrastination

Dawdling, dabbling, delaying, dilly-dallying, frittering, frivoling, idling, loafing, loitering, playing, postponing, stalling. They all mean the same thing: to put off. I am good at it. Too good, I fear.

And when I am questioned about my progress (the project matters not--could be anything from cooking dinner to editing my next novel), I have perfected the hemming and hawing answer that is sure to baffle the interrogator into a frustrated fit (90% of the time the interrogator is my husband who has learned over the years that it's safer not to do too much questioning unless he wants to end up walking away, scratching his head and muttering, "What the hell did she just say?"). 

Just this week, I was interviewed by an editor of a popular romance novel review magazine and I told the woman, "There's nothing better than being your own boss." And here I sit this morning, blogging, reading e-mail and tweets, checking facebook, pacing, eating, doing anything and everything beside what I should be doing: editing my book. One negative about being your own boss is that there's no one to light a fire under you when there's work to be done.

I read an article on overcoming procrastination which suggested:
Just do it!
Break the larger task into smaller tasks.
Complete the most difficult task first.
Reward yourself.

Now THERE'S advice I can follow! I'll send one more tweet as a reward...and then I'll get to work. I promise.

More Bits and Pieces

Wow, if cookbook editors can't agree, what hope do the rest of us have? Editors of 401 Best Soups Cookbook Still Fighting

Ringo Starr nearly offed by Nazis? The author of Liverpool Blitzed says so.

The woman can belt out a song and she's gorgeous too. Now Jennifer Hudson is writing a book? Some people can do just about anything.

A huge congrats sent out to Julia Donaldson, named U.K. Children's Laureate. She's the author of more than 120 books and plays for children.

Final bit...the picture below made me grin. It also made me thankful that I'm a law-abiding citizen. Found the picture at AllWeirdNews.com.

Happy Re-Birthday!

Sorry! This has nothing to do with enlightenment or spiritual re-birth. <g> This is an announcement about my latest romance novel. With it's gorgeous new cover and a spicier story, RETURN OF THE RUNAWAY BRIDE is my favorite backlist release so far. (Shhhh, don't tell the other releases. Ha!)
The book is currently available at Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes & Noble (Nook) and Smashwords, and it will soon be available in the Apple iBook Store, at Kobo, Diesel, and Scrollmotion.