What do you want?

This was not the original direction that I was going to go with this post, but I think it might be time to get back to the start of SPE and those very first frightening steps as a new indie author. Go back to the very reason you wanted to become an author. For me it was the want to share my stories with everyone. (Well that was the realistic one....the others were just fantasies.) Do you want this as a hobby? Do you want this to be your career? Pocket change? Make a living? We all go in this entertaining fantasies of becoming famous, making 100k+ a year on just our writing, but that doesn't happen to everyone and rarely does it happen without a lot of hard work.

Have I broken your spirits yet? No? Good.

Writing is my passion and I would do it with or without publishing. It's something I cannot not do. It's in my soul and I'm pretty sure my head would explode if I didn't write. It's how I deal with stress, it's how I cope with depression, and it's part of my life. I knew when I started this I wanted to make a living off my writing. When I first pressed published on Amazon, I had NO idea how much work was included in this.

I know authors who made a living by their third book. I always felt that I was far behind because of that. Then I realized that they had other funds to dedicate to this, dropping $300 on ads wasn't an issue for them. I have a minimal budge and though I've come a long way in two years, I'm not where they are. It's a slow climb and I'm okay with that. I'm only 27 and I have time to get where I want to go. I'm lucky enough that I work from home, so I'm able to work on writing throughout the day and at night. I treat it as another job. Why? Because if I didn't, I'd never get things done and published.

I mentioned marketing. This goes back to what do you want from your writing? I know people who publish on amazon for the simple reason of being able to say "I am published." I know others who publish and want to "hit it big." It goes back to hobby or career? It's a passion, yes, but what do you want to do with it? Where do you want it to take you? Just a hobby? Okay, don't worry about marketing. Career? You better start working on marketing, contacting people for reviews, figuring out how to run contest. Oh and write another book. This is a number game, having just one book won't cut it.

Indie-publishing is an uphill battle. Before you hit that publish button, ask yourself....what do you want from your writing? Think about it. Write down those goals....and then get to work.

Tip and tricks: Track your Numbers

So I'm once again speaking as my other personality here, because well I don't really have numbers to track yet as Alexandra. This is one place that indie authors have the advantage, we get to see and track all of our own numbers, which means we get to see what is working and what isn't working. Why is this important? Which numbers should you track? Well this is what I'm going to cover today, and hopefully not forget anything.

Let's start with why. There are many reasons why you want to track numbers, some are going to tell you your rank on amazon, some are going to give you the obvious, like sales, and some is going to let you know what marketing tactics are working for you. Like I stated above, this is going to help tell you what is working and what isn't. Everyone has their own way of doing it, so you need to find yours, but do it.

I'm going to start with the most obvious first: Sales. Most authors, especially newer ones check their sales daily, I record them at the end of the month. I like the good old pen and paper way. I have a printed sheet that has the categories (print, ebook) and distributors listed, it also has a spot for last month's sales, and a running total for the year. On top of that it has a spot for how much money I made, because hey...who doesn't like royalties?

What this allows me to do: After a while it'll give me an overview, if I see one month is better than another I can see what I did that helped my sales. Was I more active on a certain social media? Did I run a sale? Did I have an ad going? Was there a new release? Did I have any reviews come out? All of those can play factors in my sales. Keeping track of the money allows me to see my finances, how much I made (I also have a way to track expenses.)

Next number? Amazon Ranking: I hate this one because Amazon doesn't lay out exactly what affects it and that drives me nuts. This one, because Author Central will give me an overview, I check once a week (unless I've had high sales) if your author rank is super high, check the best seller ranks and see if you've made it the (by high, I of course mean low #100's or so not the 100,000's).

What this allows me to do: See what I'm doing on Amazon. My goal is to hit best seller status, checking these numbers is a lot easier than hunting myself down on Amazon. Most days anyways. If my number jumped I can try and correlate that to a particular thing I did in marketing.

So those are the main numbers you want to keep track of, other authors keep track of different ones, but really I want to make it as simple as I can. If I can find a connection between those numbers and my marketing, than I can figure out what is working. Some months it may be different than others. Find a tracking system that works for you, it may be different than mine. Just do it.