My Self Pubbed Thoughts

I've received the rights back to my first and second Halsey brother books and have self-published Marshal in Petticoats for $.99 at Kindle and Smashwords. This is something that I thought about and with my husband wanting to see some numbers racking up in the check book, I decided to go the self pub route with the books I can get my rights back.

You might say if you want to make money why $.99. I have the first book up for that hoping to get readers who might not normally buy a western romance and hope they like it enough they will want to buy the rest in the series for $2.99. You might think that $2.99 doesn't sound like much but by pricing my books at that price I get four times the money per book I get with my publisher.

I found that once I realized what I needed to look for while formatting it goes easier than the first book, Gambling on an Angel, that I self-published. And my talented daughter has made the new book covers. The hard part is finding ways to change the story up a little as per the requirement of my publisher.

Changing things will be easy with Outlaw in Petticoats since I've had a list of things to emphasize from my oldest daughter ever since it released.

I don't think I would have jumped on the self-publishing bandwagon if I hadn't had some experience with editing. I also have to find a way to get the stories I write out to people since they always tend to be different from what the big publishers are looking for, but from my reviews and readers I know they are stories that are enjoyed.

I heard or read somewhere that painters/artists can sell their art anywhere be it on the street corner, a gallery, or a coffee shop. Writing is art and I believe a writer should have the same ability to sell their writing/art where they want to.

What do you think of the new wave of self-publishing? Is it good for the writer? Good for the Reader? Or do you think all books should be through a publisher to be legit?

I Joined the E-book Revolution

I've had several people nudging me to get the rights back to some of my first books and publish them myself on Kindle and Smashwords. After watching what happen for a couple of other authors who have, I decided to take the plunge.

My daughter who is my wonderful webmistress was up to her elbows on wedding dresses(she designs and makes custom wedding dresses)was too busy to make the new cover so I asked fellow author and the person who really talked me into doing this adventure, Delle Jacobs. Don't you think she did an awesome job on the cover?

Then I had to format the manuscript to what both Kindle and Smashwords needed. That took me a couple days because I had to go through and take out all the formatting for a usual manuscript and then put in manually all the new things. But it was worth it in the end seeing the results!

I spent yesterday uploading all the information, the manuscript, and the cover to the two sites and today, you can purchase my book for $2.99 at Smashword in several different e-book formats. It hasn't published yet at Kindle. And at Smashword you can read 20% of the book before you have to buy it. So you know if you'll like it or not. They sent me an e-mail last night that one had already been purchased. That's fun to see.

One of the reasons for this adventure was to see if by having a book available at a low price it will garner me more readers and help to drive sales of my other books.

Are you interested in the new e-book self publishing revolution?