Angelina's Leg and the Writing Life

The Leg giving out screenplay Oscars

For all the press Angelina's leg got at the Oscars, right down to the fake Twitter account @Angiesleg and one of the winning screenplay writers mocking her pose, the woman has the right idea.

Too often we hide our greatest achievements behind swaths of rich, Gianni-Versace-draped black velvet, instead of sticking them out there for all the world to see. Doggone it, if you have the best legs since Tina Turner, you have a civic duty to display them!

The Leg on the Red Carpet

Like most of America, I was thinking about Angelina's leg today. In my case, it was because I finished revising The Beresfords and found myself wondering what was next, inspiration-wise--pick up the cougar cruise book again? Start a historical fiction?-- When I mentioned these ideas to a friend, she pointed out that, to date, my works were pretty scatter-shot, generically speaking. Two kinda women's fiction-y (Mourning Becomes Cassandra and The Littlest Doubts), followed by a children's picture book (Mia and the Magic Cupcakes), followed by a paranormal romance (Everliving), followed by a kinda coming-of-age/women's fiction-y/Austen update (The Beresfords). In other words, how would I ever build a consistent reader base, if sometimes I was sticking out my leg, other times an elbow, and still other times cleavage? Should I not pick my best feature and thrust it in the public eye continuously?

In my defense, I intended The Beresfords to connect tangentially with MBC and TLD. The main male character in The Beresfords is named Jonathan, simply because the senior pastor in the Cass books is named Jonathan. (I had to go back and look it up.) But by the time I finished the book, highlighting the connection felt forced. It'll probably have to wait for another story.

Which brings me back to The Leg. If I went by sales alone (not counting free Kindle downloads), MBC is probably still the leader, though Everliving isn't far behind. Yet the 19,000(!) downloads of EL on its free days haven't translated to increased sales of MBC and TLD. Increased sales of EL, yes, but not the "different" books. As my friend suspected, fans of the Elbow were not necessarily interested in the Leg.

If I'm in this to make a career (of sorts) out of it, I should clearly stick with the Leg. But if one of the reasons I chose self-publishing is to write whatever I feel like writing, and never mind the financial consequences, then anything goes.

There's a third option: the Prosthetic Leg. If no one wants to look at your real legs or elbows or any assorted body parts, you could take the time to develop a gorgeous prosthesis and learn how to use it gracefully. For a writer, this could be books published under pseudonyms. Write my historical fiction, that is, but publish it as T. Norris Coningsby or Aurora James.

Alas. Too many options. I'll probably solve it my usual way: I'll start writing several things, and whichever story makes it past Chapter Six gets the green light.

In the meantime, I'm happy to report The Beresfords has entered cover-design phase! Yippee!

Amazon...Because I'm Worthless?

Strangely, I'm not in this picture

This weekend was a perfect storm of ebook marketing research, from which I was able to draw one clear, immediate conclusion: My Books are Worthless.

Let me explain.

1. Amazon started a new program for its authors called "KDP Select." Under this program, you sell your ebook exclusively on Kindle (i.e., not on Nook) for 3 months. In return, you get to...offer your book for free five days in that 3-month period. Huh? As far as I could see, they offered no publicity for you. Just the chance to make ZERO off your book for five days. I know--you can't blame me for being tempted. I signed up Everliving and took it off Nook.


2.I've mentioned before that sales of all my books slowed to a trickle, making me think that my more-than-self-sustaining "hobby" was going to become like most hobbies, a drain on the wallet. If that was going to be the case, I wanted to see if price was an issue. Were people unwilling to try a new author (or a friend's latest book) because $2.99 was a deal-breaker??? Far be it from me to stand between people and great beach reads for the price of a cup of coffee.

3. I scheduled Everliving to be free on Kindle Saturday, January 7 and Sunday, January 8. Then I sent off emails to my favorite bargain Kindle book sites, DailyCheapReads, Pixel of Ink, and Kindle on the Cheap. It turned out only Kindle on the Cheap sent out an announcement, the other two sites perhaps being up to their necks in free ebooks and not in need of another.

4. On Saturday, January 7, Kindle on the Cheap posted about Everliving, and the "sales" started rolling in. I didn't check every hour, but the sales ranking peak I noticed at 7:09P was #160 on the Free list in Kindle/ #6 in Contemporary Fiction/ and #41 in Romance. These are stratospheric heights for a small-peanuts author like me, and the ranking translated to 2,772 copies "sold" on Saturday. (Royalties = $0)

5. On Sunday, January 8, the Kindle Nation Daily promotion I had scheduled back in June finally ran (five days after it was originally scheduled to run, which meant that, instead of getting a sales spike at $2.99, I got the sales spike at $0). The "Weekender" emailing ensured that Everliving stayed in the rankings. Again, I didn't check all the time (because I was watching the Broncos-Steelers game), but I caught a 1:11P sales ranking peak of #118 in Free in Kindle/ #4 in Contemporary Fiction/ and #30 in Romance. Yay! This translated to "sales" of 1,197 copies. Again, Royalties = $0.

What can I conclude from all this? That a few thousand people, with prompting, are happy to give my book a try for free, but far fewer are willing to do so at $2.99. I suppose some of the free-readers might so fall in love with me that they read my other books, but on the other hand, why bother, if they can just move on to the next free ebook? Who wants to fork out $2.99, if there are a bazillion free books to read?

Don't get me wrong--I love free books as much as the next person. There's a reason I'm trolling those sites and get most books at the library. But as an author, it does make me think I could do much, much better if I bagged groceries at the local market.

Oh, well. Back to Chapter 27 of the WIP...