I’ve been a self-published author for over a decade now, but I’ve only been particularly serious about it since 2022. By “serious” I don’t mean “making nontrivial revenue,” but I do mean I’m making an effort to write in a series, market in a basic way, and maintain some data about my books so I’m not relying on, e.g., logging into KDP to figure out what file’s currently published for a given book.
Heatstroke Heartbeat is coming out on 11/14. (You can preorder it!) It’s the third entry in Streets of Flame, so let’s set aside The Dandelion Knight and my short story collections and say I have three books.
They’re all available in ebook and print (no audio yet), so that’s kind of six books — certainly six ISBNs. I maintain them on four publishers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google) and a distributor (Draft2Digital) plus on IngramSpark for print and with Bowker for ISBNs. Amazon and Bowker have both formats on them, the others have one each, call it 27 rows of data. They have similar but not identical fields, maybe two dozen per platform. As I update manuscript files, I add rows; I’ve done this twice, once to add buy links for Heatstroke Heartbeat into Windburn Whiplash and once (just now) to add a temporary mention that the ebook of Windburn Whiplash is discounted to $0.99 for November. (That price should actually be live now; please, help yourself!) So that’s ten new rows of data, each with minor edits, ten uploads, and five price changes (which are actually about a dozen changes each, because you update each system with the new price in each supported currency). When Windburn Whiplash goes back up to $4.99 in December, that’ll be five reversions in the spreadsheet and five uploads.
Much of this yak-shaving comes about because I’m running a couple of newsletter promotions for Brimstone Slipstream (a free series starter novella; again, I implore you, help yourself!), so I’m hoping for a big influx of downloads. I’d like to make it as easy as possible for those folks to buy Windburn Whiplash, hence the price dip, and then hopefully that’ll give Heatstroke Heartbeat a shot in the arm during its first few weeks of life. It’s a nice theory.
And I just remembered I had a free preview of Heatstroke Heartbeat up for months on those five platforms. So that was five more rows of data, which are now inactive, as well as five uploads and five unpublishes on the different platforms. (That one at least didn’t have an ISBN or print version.)
In comparison to the work of writing, this stuff is not that time-consuming, I’ll admit. And it concentrates around releases and promotions; and I actually tend to be more proactive about it because the resistance is so much less. But it’s also easy to imagine this getting much more complex, and taking up much more of my “writing” time, as my catalog grows. I could hope my time to write will also grow… but that’s not up to me.
If you’re enjoying my writing, you can get some of my short fiction on your e-reader for the low, low cost of $0. Remembered Air is a collection of six poems and short stories not available anywhere else. Download it here.
Currently listening: Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett.