Oh, my God, Tomely.

They’re sort of like someone said, “Hey, what’s your fantasy in a book selling site?” and I drew a map.

I drop an epub onto their image and suddenly, an epub and a mobi exist, with the meta data updated to the book description. I set the price and then set discounts for people who tweet or FB-mention the book. I get 80% of the sale price, delivered via Paypal the moment the reader buys. Okay, doesn’t this sound insane?

It does sound insane.

I’m waiting for the catch.

But meanwhile, I’m taking full advantage of the promo codes that let me send readers a link to download ebooks in whatever format they choose.

And within the week, all the book links on all of my sites are going to be updated to Tomely only. Sure, it’s nice to link to Amazon and B&N and Apple and Kobo–but reality check, every Tomely sale gets me more money, plus provides my readers with both formats so that they can read on any device they like. I’m not going to discourage readers from buying anywhere they like, but why should I send them anywhere else? And the joy of managing one link on all those pages instead of an endless and ever-growing number is worth something to me.

There might be a catch. I’m always a skeptic. I won’t be surprised if something goes dramatically wrong and Tomely disappears. But since they’re paying *immediately* (did I mention that before? IMMEDIATELY!!), I won’t have too much at stake if they do. And meanwhile, I get to send people codes instead of waiting patiently for five minutes while files upload. Woo-hoo!

Tomely.com. Go check them out. Buy books from them. I can’t imagine a better way to support indie publishers and an innovative marketplace. Thanks, Tomely!

The increase in sales from the BookBub ad was across the board. Google Play downloads skyrocketed with reviews indicating readers found it from the BookBub ad. I don’t know what Apple downloads of Ghosts were like, because it’s posted through Smashwords and they deliver numbers slowly, but Apple downloads of the later books (via Draft2Digital) went from a grand total of 7 units in April to 127 in May. And B&N was lovely–I earned over $1000 on B&N for the first time.

Today, though, marks a Kobo milestone: sales yesterday mean that my lifetime Kobo income broke $100. It’s a small success, but exciting nonetheless.

With the covers for the Tassamara series complete, I decided it was time to tackle promotion.

My first move was to join a NetGalley co-op. NetGalley is a site that distributes digital galleys of books to influential readers–librarians, booksellers, bloggers, and reviewers. People join (for free) and submit requests for books and publishers decide whether or not to approve the requests based on their info. NetGalley handles the book distribution.

It’s not an inexpensive service. For an independent publisher, a single book posted for six months costs $500, I believe. With the co-op, however, I get one slot in a bookshelf for 12 months and can rotate books in and out at will. It’s still not cheap: at $270, it’s the biggest investment I’ve made in marketing.

A Gift of Ghosts was available through NetGalley for one month. During that time, it received 1175 impressions, with 237 clicks to read. End result, 21 reviews on the site, with 8 five-stars, 3 four-stars, 7 three-stars, and 3 two-stars. For Ghosts, those numbers are basically irrelevant. The book has plenty of reviews already. But if it had been a new release, I would have been pleased. I’m hoping to post an ARC of A Lonely Magic on the site, in order to get reviews before the book releases, so I’m looking forward to seeing how that works.

(Currently, A Gift of Time is on the shelf. It’s received 82 requests, of which I’ve declined 4, but no feedback as of yet.)

Next step: advertising.

I started by applying for a BookBub spot. I’d been turned down twice when applying to the Fantasy list, so I started watching the books they selected and realized that their Fantasy list leaned toward epic and serious. I decided Ghosts fit better on the paranormal romance list, applied for that list, and was selected for a May 19th run. Cost: $130. Results: Way beyond my expectations. Something like 35,000 downloads across multiple sites (including Amazon, B&N, Apple, and Google Play), followed by selling more than 1000 units of the other books. Ten days later, Ghosts is still in the top twenty of the Fantasy free list and although sales are slowing, they remain higher than usual.

Around the same time, I paid $30 to Digital Book Today for a featured spot on their list. It wound up running well in advance of the BookBub ad. Downloads increased for a day or two, from about 20 a day to 180 the first day, 55 the next, but with no change in sales for the other books. That said, it may have had longer-tail results that got lost in the BookBub sales. Still, at best it was break-even, if downloads to sales followed my typical conversion rates.

I also submitted Ghosts to E-Reader News Today, and they chose to post-it several days before the BookBub ad ran. Results: Solid. Because it’s a free book, it cost nothing to submit and the book was downloaded about 1000 times followed by a slight but noticeable uptick in sales. I’d been averaging 2-3 books sold every day and the day after the ENT mention, sold 17 followed by 9 the next day.

Finally, I submitted to Freebooksy. Although they ran their mention in the middle of the Bookbub swing, it looks as if I may have gotten an additional 800 or so downloads from that, but with no way of measuring sales.

I’ve been taking promotion slowly, trying to put a few hours into discovery every week, and using Ghosts as the experimental product, but I’m definitely satisfied with my results so far.

I’m actually rather charmed by the Hello world! title. I think I’ll leave it.

So, yeah, welcome to Rozelle Press. I’ll probably delete this blog post eventually, but for now, I will think aloud. (Or, you know, in pixels as it happens.)

Things to do: update all the books so that Rozelle Press is the official publisher, on all sites, including Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, & B&N.

Write some content for this site. Possibly decide what my goal is? Definitely do an editorial services page. Also a books page, of course. A contact page. An About Us page? Maybe set the goal of getting a page done a day. Browse some other small publishers and see what sorts of pages are typical.

Continue to research marketing sites and promotional opportunities. Set an ad budget and prioritize?

And write every day, of course. Time to go do that for a while!