One year later...

Exactly 1 year ago, I decided it was finally time to publish the first of my 6 novels. Now, many more experienced authors would say it would be insanity to publish all of them very close to eachother and seeing back I agree.

However, I made that decision mostly out of necessity because I knew for certain I had matched into a residency and knew that I was going to be unable to promote the sequel books one after another and work a 96 hour a week on average high stress job at the same time.

I have done edits here and there to try to remove any remaining typo and an author friend kindly suggested I had to add commas which I dutifully did. My first novel was initially in Kindle Unlimited but I soon realized that to this day, I don't have any KENP reads so I decided to forfeit that and the first novel is offered for free on Instafreebie. I have left the sequels on KU for the time being.

I heard many authors have oodles of daily KENP reads. I don't know if its bad luck or something else, but I only had 1 mysterious reader that hauled through books 2-6 one after another in just a little less than 15 days (whoa!) and sadly never wrote a review for any of them.

Should I withdraw from KU alltogether? I haven't made my mind yet.

An Ominous Book participated in this years SPFBO and while it was sadly eliminated, I did get a thoughtful review from an important fantasy blogger at Bookworm Blues and at least another prominent blogger named Weather Report took notice of the review and openly stated she was going to read & review the book as well. You should keep your eyes open and wait for it. She could be reading it within the next two weeks! Check that out HERE.

I haven't placed my book in a lot of award competitions, I just don't have the time to search for possible competitions and seeing if my book qualifies. I did choose to fork the sizeable amount of cash for it to participate in this years Readers Favorite awards. Mine didn't win anything, but a book I read and enjoyed known as 99 Days ended up as an honorable mention and another book that won in its category is sitting idle on my kindle waiting to be read.

I'm seriously wishing to update the covers of my novels. I know that they are a huge reason why I'm not a top notch seller yet despite the mostly positive reviews of my novels. However at 18 MXN to the USD and my salary that has been slashed to 50% to what I used to earn, I doubt I can afford a pricey artist for now. I don't even know where to look!

All in all, I am starting to have a few reviews on Amazon and have realized how insanely hard it is to get 1 dratted review at all. I feel glad that I do my part and try to review everything I read on Amazon and Goodreads. I am not always nice and have given 1 star reviews, but I have mostly given 3 and up and explained why I liked or hated the book.

If more people bothered to write a review for the novels they read, fledgling wanna be authors such as myself would write more often. I have shown some progress with the 7th novel but 30% of the story isn't written yet and I don't know when that will happen. I am really hurting to have time to write the short prequel novel I have been dying to finish from Spaulding's early npursuits as a ranger. I want it to focus on him and his relationship with Nahar that sadly only appears in the second novel.

Finally, here is the real deal, how much money have I really made as an author. People state people should never ask those things because its rude, but I'll say it in the open: I have made 60 USD this year with all of my books combined. Yes, 60 dollars.

I think I have covered the cost of the copyright of my novels in Mexico and that's it. No publicity or contest overhead costs and obviously I don't plan on buying a domain anytime soon either.

I've realized I can't quit my day job (which I also enjoy so don't worry about that). However, I do hope that I'll start to fork the cash for updating the cover of at least the first 2 novels. I dislike the artwork of Seperation but I can't find the time to even redraw a cover myself.

I hope that next year my novels will gain some more traction and I continue to learn my own writing quirks thanks to the good and bad reviews. It has been an incredible journey so far and I haven't regretted starting to write that first novel almost 3 years ago.

An Ominous Book at Amazon, Goodreads, Library Thing.