I have never been one to back down from a challenge, although there was that one time when we were considering renovating this house, only to find that half of the supporting walls were missing. Or the time when the previous owners had removed all the fireplace walls in the house, but not the chimney stacks on the roof, creating the granddaddy of all disasters, but I digress.
Just let it be said that there are some challenges you just cannot entertain.
Some challenges, however, beg to be taken on.
You know what you need to do. (more or less) Thousands of people are already doing it, so how hard can it be?
It also helps if you have already mastered stage one…
For a rank beginner, writing a book was hard enough. Then I had to learn how to edit, format and upload it to Amazon. To be fair, once I knew the basics, this turned out to be reasonably easy. Although, knowing I could change anything was a get out of jail card, as my memory has more holes than a colander.
At that time, I thought that was all I had to do. Over the years since then, the truth has gradually dawned, bit by frustrating bit, pointing out that there was a lot more to it than that if you wanted to be successful. Even now, there are days when the enormity of it all makes my head spin.
What We Have Tried
Paid Book Promotion Sites… most of these do a good job, but they are expensive and the results were disappointing.
Book Tours… fun, but a lot of work. We met many people but didn’t sell many books or get reviews.
KDP promos… very good for putting your books out there and shifting a ton of free copies and that’s about all!
We have recently pulled most of our books out of KDP and placed them with Draft2Digital. Seriously thinking about going back to Smashwords too, as being exclusively on Amazon just doesn’t sound right anymore.
Over the last five years, we have sold a few books and received several wonderful reviews. We have established a popular website/blog and a slowly growing list of followers, and the fire of determination still burns bright. Almost every week, I try something new, either to do with books or marketing, something supposedly guaranteed to make our books bestsellers.
The Future?
We are contemplating having a go at advertising, even though we don’t have much of a budget they seem to be the way to go. If anyone knows better, please let us know?
We are constantly told that the best way to make it in this business is to keep writing until you finally create a masterpiece. Apparently, the more you write the better chance you have of creating something that cannot be ignored.
Surely, there must be a little more to it than that?
Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes 
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