Join us as we reflect on Month 2 of Going Wide and look at the progress made, the challenges encountered along the way, and discuss solutions to the obstacles we faced this past month.
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Resources we mentioned in this episode
- Strategic Series Author
- 100 Covers
- Writers Craft 2.0 Super Stack
- Plottr
- Atomic Habits
- Linear Tactical Boxed Set 1: Cyclone, Eagle, Shamrock
- BookSirens
- Fanship
- Draft to Digital
- The Author’s Guide to eBook Pre-orders
- Amazon Ads for Authors: Tips and Strategies to Sell Your Books
- BookSniffer
- Wide for the Win Facebook Group
Complete Episode Transcripts
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Transcript for Strategic Authorpreneur Episode 049: Going Wide Progress Report #2: February 2021
Crystal Hunt: Hey there, strategic authorpreneurs. Welcome to episode 49 of the Strategic Authorpreneur Podcast. I’m Crystal Hunt.
Michele Amitrani: And I’m Michele Amitrani and we are here to help you save time, money, and energy as you level up your writing career.
If you find this show helpful, you can help us keep the episodes coming by clicking to the buy us a coffee button on the website and the show notes.
Crystal Hunt: This week we’re doing a look back on the past month reporting on progress and challenges that we encountered during month two of our going wide adventures. And we’re also brainstorming some solutions to any of the sticky bits we came across, or the things that were a little bit challenging along the way.
But first as always, we’ll give you a quick update as to what we have been up to this past week. So Michele, what is new in your world?
What has happened since the last episode?
Michele Amitrani: Crystal, I’ve been using the last seven days to prepare my street team for the upcoming publication of Muse of Avalon, which will hit the store tomorrow, actually. So I’m preparing the soft launch team and I will be discounting this book for the first few days to 99 cents, and then the price will go up to 2.99. Just something that I’ve been doing for book one and two of the collection and just something that I do for my newsletter subscribers and for the people that have been kind enough to follow me on my authorpreneur journey. So I’m very excited, Muse of Avalon, had being the very first book that I’ve been putting on pre-order.
So that’s been up for grabs for two to three weeks. And the process I really liked and I’m going to do that, the pre-order things also for the Italian Muse of Avalon. And so that was really something good that I’ve learned how to do. The publication of Muse of Avalon means that we are so very close to releasing the box set since the first three books, well, the third book is almost out. It’s a question of hours now. We have a projected schedule publication for the box set on May 2021, which this box set in many ways is going to be the first true test of the profitability of this collection. So I’m a bit scared because for now we just, let’s say we had fun, we played, we try different things, we saw what worked and what not, but with the box set, we actually have a product. So no time to joke around anymore. And of course this will not tell me everything. But I think it will tell me something and it will give me something to ponder about as I also start assembling the next three books for the second book set.
So I’m very excited and at the same time a bit a bit scared, but it’s a good kind of scariness. I’m also about to send the fourth novella Song of Forever to my editor. I’m super looking forward to this. I already have the cover for this book. You saw it. I think you liked it too and in the next couple of weeks, I’m also going to ask to my 100 Covers designers to design the fifth, mythological fantasy book.
And finally, I have been translating Muse of Avalon in Italian. I finished a few days ago and I’m looking forward to send the first version of this translation to my Italian betas to see, and hopefully to have a finished product by the end of this month. Now I know that as always, you’ve been as busy, if not more busy than myself. So what happened in your wonderful world?
Crystal Hunt: This past week, we did all marketing all the time, pretty much we were the InfoStack went live, which is the Writer’s Craft 2.0 info stack, and a couple of our Creative Academy books were included in that this time around.
So we have been learning all about how that works and sending off emails and sharing that in all the places. I think if you’re listening to this on the day that the podcast goes live, this episode, you’ll still have about 24 hours to click the button and grab the info stack, if you haven’t got it yet.
So check the show notes for a link and make sure you grab it if you want it. It’s like $20,000 worth of stuff bundled into sort of a $50 package. So it’s a really great opportunity if you can still grab one, if not keep your eye out for future info stacks, because there’s lots of different themed ones that happen over time.
And so you might be able to find another one that is relevant for you down the road. Our AppSumo marketplace listings also went live. So we’ve been just monitoring those and answering people’s questions and figuring out how all of that works since it’s a hundred percent new platform for us and experimental as far as how we combined all the tools to make it work.
So that has been a huge part of what the last week has been about. We also are choosing audio book narrators currently. We got casting suggestions from find a way voices for four of our Creative Academy guides. The first one we did the test one is already most of the way through production. So that is also very exciting.
And we have wrapped up the Plottr series bible for Rivers End that my assistant has been working very diligently on for the last many weeks, inputting all of the locations and events and characters and everything into Plottr so that we have a completely accurate and up to date and complete series bible of what has been published and committed to.
So that has been a really interesting project just to see how everything fits together and which names I use too often and things like that and will be really helpful going forward. I’ve also gotten back to reading, which is a big deal cause I’ve had a really hard time this past, most of a year in actually reading things.
I normally would read almost a book a day and I think I could probably count just on my fingers the number of books I’ve read in the last year. Lots of articles, lots of things like that, but I just have not been consuming print material the way I normally would have. So I’m excited to be back at that.
I’m reading Atomic Habits by James Clear, and also in the fiction side of things, I’ve been rereading the Linear Tactical Series of romantic suspense by Janie Crouch. And I really liked that series and she released a few new books over the past year or so. I’ve just been catching up on the ones that I missed out on and watching Agents of Shield I’m getting ready to write in the romantic suspense line in Rivers End, and I’m filling my brain with fight scenes and weapon tactics and knowledge and my husband is quizzing me on, weaponry and hand to hand combat techniques since he’s better at that stuff than I am and I’ve been learning all kinds of interesting things. So on the creator side, it’s mostly been a filling up my brain kind of thing, and getting back into the zone as I get ready to tackle fiction, which I’m super excited about.
And that brings us to today’s topic, which is a bit of a summary of what this last month looked like and how did things work? Did they go well? What were some challenges? And as we did last time, we’re going to break it down a little bit into each of our hats. So creator, marketer, and manager, and then talk a little bit what the focus for this month for March is going to be before we dive forward.
So Michele in your creator world for February in your going wide adventure what kind of things happen? What did you find worked or didn’t work or was challenging? How did it go?
Creator hat updates and goals
Michele Amitrani: I love how we decided to divide this report with the creator, manager and the marketer.
Creator wise I think it’s, at least for me and at this point of my authorpreneur career, the most difficult thing to manage. Just for giving to the listener a bit of context. I just want you to tell you what were my core February objectives. I wanted to have the final manuscript of the both my fairytales reader magnets to be done, and that was achieved, but I also wanted to publish those on the Italian market, which I did not unfortunately achieved. But I also was able to put four pre-order Muse of Avalon on Amazon and wide. And that again was a first for me, as I was saying, and It was really a game changer.
It gave me so much time to focus on my writing. So I decided to do that also for my future books. And then I started translating Muse of Avalon, which was again, one of the main objective for February. One of the things I did not achieve as a creator and it’s something that I definitely need to work a bit more, is the output of words that I managed to write in a month.
So the past month I was able to write 27 hours in January. This month went slightly better. So as a creator, I’m a bit better out. So I wrote 33 hours, but if you remember, my expectation is to be able to at least write 40 hours per month, which is very low, it’s a very small amount of time compared to other people that are making this for a living, like I know of authors, they write 40 hours every week. So I wasn’t able to achieve that and the reason was because I was busy doing some admin and managing the things that I will discuss later on.
I also dedicated 14 hours to translation. I’m basically divided in two markets: English, one and Italian one. The Italian market is taking its toll in the process. It’s not something bad, but we discussed the of this before. Since I’m releasing stuff in two different markets, as a creator, I’m going to be affected by that in the medium to long term.
So this is something that you need to know. So if in January I was able to translate for 17 hours, in February I did the same for 14 hours. So I slightly, I wrote a bit more, but at the same time had to scale back the translation. So you see, it seems like I’m able to, if I want to balance the writing and the translating, but definitely translating stuff, it’s eating my writing time. That is something that I need to give on the back of my mind. Writing is super important, but at this point, as I slowly build my catalog in two different languages, I have to be aware that I need to hit that 40 hours per month. That’s a bare minimum. It’s the most important thing that I can do as a creator and it’s going to be one of the main objective for the next month. The other thing that I achieved doing as a creator was I rewrote a Song of Forever, which is my fourth novella. I added the new chapter and several new scenes and a brand new character.
I’m going to give this to my editor in the next few days. And finally, I started writing the sixth and final novella, which is basically the third novella that is going to be featuring the second box set. Once I’m done with this, I will have the complete line of products that I need to probably test, if this mythological collection is going to go anywhere.
So I will have the six novellas in English, six novellas in Italian and two box set, two in Italian and two in English. So it’s a lot of moving pieces and I’m finding myself spread very thin. So I need to be very careful on how I manage my time and where I give my priority and I can’t lose time in, stuff that it’s not really affecting my writing.
So these are my reflection for the creator points. It was a very busy month. It was a bit more balanced respect to the previous January. I was able to generate a bit more product. I was able to generate a bit more content, but at the same time, I’m not still there. And I don’t know Crystal, if you find yourself in the same point, but it is definitely more difficult for me to create than to administer something, to be an admin or to be a manager.
What happened to your creator self?
Crystal Hunt: That’s a really good question. My creator self this month was slightly shoved under a rock as I was dealing with a ton of marketing stuff and management stuff. And this is historically how I found it works. We have this idea of balance in our minds, that balance means the same thing every day or every week and that it’s all about consistency and always doing the same things, but I try to have an idea of balance as something over a larger timescale, because I do find that there are cycles to things. There are certain times of year: November, December, I’m always releasing a ton of stuff, and in the spring I’m always releasing a ton of stuff, but certain times I’m really focused on the writing and other times I’m really focused on the business management and I find trying to spread them out equally every single month doesn’t actually work very well at all. And I do better … We’ve talked about this before that I’m what I call a binge creator, which is that I dive in and then I’ll spend 10 or 12 hours a day writing for two weeks, and then I will switch gears and go into business mode or whatever. And that is something that does work really well. So February was very much a transformational focus and you can go back and listen to previous podcast episodes where we talked about generation versus transformation when it comes to creativity.
And this was a totally focused on transformation month. I was transforming an older book and updating it for a rerelease. So Strategic Indie Author is going to be coming out in the spring, which is great. And I was working on a bit of nonfiction for the Create with Coauthors book as well. So I was able to write some words, nowhere near the output of last month was definitely a creation focus, but I found the transformation type of creativity to be easier to handle when you’re hitting a wall. And I’m finding that, it’s the anniversary of going into lockdown a year ago and it’s also for us the anniversary of the flood, which was the previous year, which destroyed our home, and I had shingles at that point. So for me, this couple week period is a rough one. Each year it comes around and I get a little twitchy and I have a really hard time concentrating. And of course we’re also in the middle of selling one place and buying another. So it’s, I’ve just had to basically embrace the transition nature of everything that’s happening right now.
And just roll with it and take every minute I can to, do those website updates to do the little admin things, to take advantage of the new marketing opportunities to read whatever article comes in my inbox about the latest promo site or whatever, and gather up intel for the next launch. And that has been really good.
So just re-immersing myself in my fiction world and working through the series bible and making sure that everything is filled out correctly and all of that prep for getting settled for the next phase. There was a really good article that David Gaughran and it centres around that was about that kind of creator block that he said he’s been going through the same thing where reading fiction is hard and writing fiction is even harder and, if the nonfiction is working, then just ride that wave, which is what I’ve been doing for the last little while, while I slowly get back into the fiction world. And I think the key is just moving forward, wherever you can and making progress so that you’re always inching towards those goals and use what you can and be a little bit gentle with yourself.
Our other piece of transformational creativity was getting all our audio books set up for the Creative Academy. And one of my main goals for this year was to have at least three or four new audio books and by the end of a couple months from now, I’m going to have all four of those done actually, and be moving on.
Manager hat updates and goals
So I should be able to meet and exceed that particular goal for this year, which is great. So that is exciting and I feel good about checking that off. Now on the manager’s side of things I’ll start off this one. I’ve mostly been re purposing my existing books because finally two days ago, the last book came out of Kindle unlimited, and I’m now able to actually start releasing wide everything.
So we’ve been working quietly in the background at reformatting ,updating, updating the back matter links, getting the newsletter onboarding sequence ready. So my author assistant tonight have been busy on that and it’s been a good manager month for getting those tasks ready. So that has been great.
And getting, of course the books all set up for sale on AppSumo for the nonfiction and the. InfoStack stuff that all kinds of alternative platforms where we’re selling the books. Once you decide to go wide, suddenly there are so many options. So there’s places like Fanship, where you can list the books and all kinds of different platforms.
The really there’s a lot of different sales platforms, as well as considering and getting ready to sell direct from my websites as well. So that all of that has been wrapped up in the manager side of things this month. How about for you?
Michele Amitrani: I was mentioning that I was very happy to try out this wide thing with Muse of Avalon. At the beginning, Crystal, I have to admit it was a bit daunting. I’ve never done it before, so I’m wide and I’m wide with direct with Google Play and I’m direct on Kobo and Amazon, and then all the rest at Draft to Digital.
So it’s basically four venues that I have to, do stuff with and at the beginning was a bit difficult because first I had to learn how to do pre-order there. It wasn’t that difficult, but at the same time, I never did it before. So there were a couple of things that didn’t go right the first time.
So I needed to republish the book a couple of times, but that was the beautiful thing because now that I know how the process works, I can basically set up the books that I already have 95% prepared and I don’t have to think about that anymore, which is very good. It makes me feel better because I did that.
All the admin works that I used to do a few days before the launch, because I didn’t really know how to deal with pre-orders are now in the back of my mind, I’m already working, and I know when I will have to do the pre order of the box set for example, which is not scheduled to be released until May.
So I’m already thinking a couple of months in the future. The experiment that we made with Muse of Avalon was great. It gave me a lot more time to dedicate to my writing. So I’m definitely going to repeat that. I also was able as a manager to revamp a bit my website. I found thanks to also your feedback a way to display my books a bit better.
I basically put together some of the sections and I updated some of the links. So now website is basically a bit more sleek and a bit more easier to navigate, which is great and I think it’s going to make the readers experience better and possibly is going to let them have a sneak peek of my books in an easier and faster way.
I’m also very happy that I’ve commissioned the cover for Song of Forever and that’s done. And again, it’s a thing that I don’t have to worry about. And finally, as a manager, I was also able to get two new covers from Fiverr, which is a service that I haven’t been used seeing in the past, but I was very happy with the outcome. I was able to get a couple of book covers that are very nice, I have to say and they were very professionally done for under 20 Canadian dollars. So that’s something unheard of and it’s something that I’m definitely going to use probably in the future, if I have something else to think about.
So these were the four things I did as a manager. I’m still learning. I will not lie to you. I still have to learn a lot about strategies on how to release pre-orders and how to make a bit more of a buzz around those.
But at least I know a bit more than I knew a month ago. And regarding the marketer, which might be one of the, I think, favorite points of at least you, you like marketing stuff.
Resource for pre-order
Crystal Hunt: Just a great resource for you and anybody else out there who is wondering about how to set up pre-orders and how do you do it on the different platforms and what are the benefits? All that stuff Written Word Media today at the day of taping released at a great article that summarizes exactly how you do pre-orders on all of the platforms so we’ll put the link in the show notes for you, and you can check that out. And of course, if you are signed up for our newsletter are just one thing this week coming we’ll feature that article. So you’ll be able to track it down that way as well. If you’re not already on our mailing list, make sure you get on our mailing list now, marketing.
Put your marketer hat on Mr. Michele and what’s up with that?
Marketer hat updates and goals
Michele Amitrani: Okay. So for the marketer, which is the most let’s say difficult part for me and a million more authors. Stuff happened on this regard to first thing first. Following what I’ve learned a month ago, I’ve tweaked a bit, my Amazon answer for my Italian science fiction box set.
So what I basically did, I took an afternoon away and I decided to study the amazon reports, which is something I never did before. And it was something that was strongly suggested by Deb Potter, if I’m not mistaken, that’s the name from her 2021 Amazon Ads for Authors. I never did something like this.
I basically studied the report so that I was able to keep the keywords that were bleeding money. I didn’t even know that you should do that, I’ve learned something new and the results were really encouraging. I was very surprised. What happened is the following. I was able to lower my ACOS that went from 56 point 40 on January to 50 point 20 in February.
And what is great Crystal is that I spent the money to get there. So I spent 49 point 27 euros in January. And I spent 26 point 99 euros in February, but I got more or less the same revenue. So I was really impressed on what you can do by just tweaking a bit some ads. And I didn’t know that I have that power.
I completely did not know. So I guess the study that I did in the past couple of months really helped. And I will study more because it seems that it’s working. And I also on this line started my first auto ad, which is basically an ad that Amazon is running in the background. I never did something like this. Deb suggested to start in on automate ads only when you have some data and Amazon can work on some ads that you’ve been already running.
So now I’ve been running the box set of my science fiction series in Italian for almost a year and I just started it a couple of weeks ago. And I gave it a very small budget and the bid is almost non-existent. So it’s really, I’m trying stuff that is new. It’s just for example, to give you the dimension of how small is this project for this moment is to be these 3 cents and still I’m getting some clicks so I can clearly see that the Italian market is not saturated for sure. The budget is just 10 euros per day, so very small. But again, I was surprised to see that there are people that click still. This is another indication of how not the talent market is saturated the compare with the US and maybe the UK. So that was something I was very happy to do these other things.
The other thing that happened on my marketer side was as a result that we have both been working on in the last month, which was trying to get more reviews for Soul of Stone. Soul of Stone is going to be my entering product for my mythological fantasy collection. And I’m happy to report that one of my main core objective for January was to increase the number of reviews on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. And when I started this, I had less than 10 reviews on amazon.com and two reviews on amazon.co.uk. Now, it’s not like I got a lot more, but I was able to achieve from less than 10 to 19 reviews on amazon.com and from 2 reviews to 7 reviews on amazon.co.uk is not a lot, but it just been, 30 days.
So I think in the long run, if I keep this going a bit more I can achieve that, my objective will be at least 20 reviews on the US front and 10 reviews in the UK before I start running any kind of ads or doing any kind of free promotion and stuff. So I was very happy that happened. It was not something easy.
It’s something that I had to use ARC teams, my newsletter, BookSirens to pull it off. But I think it’s paying a dividend now and it will pay even more dividends in the future. And the very last thing that I did as a marketer, if you remember, Crystal, in January I submitted the Bringer of Fire and Soul of Stone to Kobo for promotion, and they accepted these books.
And I did the same this month and I just got a reply a few hours ago, actually and so Kobo also accepted for the month of the March another couple of promotions. One is called the 500 books under $5 sale, which I think is awesome, and it’s going to be featured in Australia and New Zealand.
And then there is another one that it’s going to be featured on Canada and the US which is called science fiction and fantasy sales. I just know that I’m enrolled. I am not sure what’s going to happen, but I will keep you updated. This is what happened to me as a marketer. I will tell you later on what happened on the revenue and sales side of things, but before I’m really looking forward to know what happened to you world as a marketer, Crystal.
Crystal Hunt: We got our ads running for the Full-time author book, which is a pretty recent addition. So February was the first month for that. So we got those to actually kick in. And so we’re spending some money on Amazon and seeing some sales and that is great. We also did, as I said before, the InfoStack experiments.
So along with having that as an Ella for the books, it also means a whole bunch of marketing and promotion. So we’ve been working along on that. I signed up for BookSniffer, which I hadn’t used before. That’s a new platform and it’s an author platform that you can use to connect with readers and people use it to help find what they’re going to read next.
There’s all kinds of interesting things there. So if you’ve, haven’t seen it before. You can go check it out. I’m still learning my way around and getting stuff set up. So I will have more to report back next month, hopefully on that. And the other thing is I’ve had an author’s XP Campaign running in the background for the last six weeks.
I’ve been trying to get to a thousand BookBub followers. And I had about 600 when I started and I’m up to 850, so I’m almost there. I need another 150 or so to go. And the reason why that’s important is because once you hit a thousand, your pre-order announcements start going out to your followers on BookBub as well as your new release announcements and it unlocks some other functionality. So that is definitely a goal for the next little while. Hopefully next month I can report back that I hit it. Okay. So in summary, let’s just do a quick look at what was the biggest challenge you faced this past month do you think?
Biggest challenges from the past month
Michele Amitrani: 100% as I was mentioning, not writing enough. So from 27 hours to January, to 33 it’s an improvement, but it’s not enough. So I need to hit that 40 hours for sure and even more if I want to be serious about that. So I’m very unhappy with that
I have to say. And again, it can’t be an excuse that I’m just using the time to translate and do admin stuff. Everything else starts as a foundation on the writing. So I need to find a way either to sleep less and write more, or just to be able to do more of productive writing, maybe setting some alarm, doing something because 33 hours per month is nothing.
Definitely I’m an unhappy with that and I would see that a failure. So I am going to I need to level that up. Look forward for March is definitely going to be 40 or 41. If not something bad is going to happen. I’m just …
Crystal Hunt: Do you need me to hold you accountable and make you pay money to a charity if you don’t hit the goal? Is that what is going to take?
Michele Amitrani: Yeah, because the last time, if you remember, it worked very well super well. So I’m just telling you Crystal, I want you to be my accountability partner for 40 hours or more, no excuses,
Crystal Hunt: All right? We’re a quarter of the way through already. You better get going!
Michele Amitrani: Yeah, that means that I really have to work hard on that. And the other thing that I definitely want to mention is that compared to January, I had way less expenses. And that, I have to say, helped a lot closing the month in the black. So although in the past month, if you remember, I was down $38 … so it’s not like I’m going to buy anytime soon, a house in Hawaii.
But I was up 41 bucks and it was better than January and I didn’t even get Amazon royalties because as you know, it’s every couple of months, so I’m waiting for that for the next month. So March, should be a month, even more in the black, because I’m really keeping track of every single expenditure, and I’m really powering up for getting a bit more revenue. So in this month, as my authorpreneur revenue, this month came 99% for my freelancing and only 1% for my fiction royalties. Again, there are two months gap from Amazon and Kobo, they don’t pay immediately if you don’t reach a threshold, same for Draft to Digital. Google is the only one that is different. So they pay every single month. Even if you have for one or last time, I was $1 and 47 cents. If you remember, that was my height of the month and they paid, but the other stores, although I have some sales there, I have to wait to hit the threshold. I’m going to wait before saying the height of the month for me, because I want to know if you have some consideration that you did as marketer, as admin and as a creator on this month, Crystal?
Crystal Hunt: I think just the biggest challenge that I faced this month was definitely focusing on anything generative. Anything that was making something out of nothing was very challenging. Trying to be gentle with myself and also trying to find a new normal in terms of what the daily and weekly flow looks like and what my routines are.
I’m trying to make some changes, be a little more balanced, not work quite so many hours in a day, which does mean making some adjustments to the expectations of output that I have as well. And so just thinking about what is realistic, given those adjustments and trying to be less goal driven, which sounds weird because I know I’m all about the goals, but more focusing on the process of doing, rather than the checking off of certain things.
So that I, like I said earlier, things are always been moving forward, but you’re focused on what your actions are and not what the outcomes are. And so I think that was the biggest challenge is that goes against all the training I have and all of the brainwashing that happened to me as a young person, was all about the goals and so I have to unlearn that as a way of being, and reintroduce things like fun and leisure time and make sure there’s enough family and fresh air and all of those things worked into the day as well. So that is the biggest challenge is undoing the programming. What do you feel was your biggest win from this month Michele?
Biggest win this month
Michele Amitrani: It was small, but it was precious. And it’s related to the Kobo promotion that I did. Again, nothing to sing about, but I sold those three copies because of the promotion, which made me 4 euros and 62 cents, which translates into $6 and 95 cents, which, it didn’t happen if I didn’t participate in this promotion and it didn’t happen if I wasn’t a wide author. That’s what I’m trying to strike here. That’s I think very important because it’s, I’m making it as a joke, okay? But actually it’s not. I’m making some of this money because I have the freedom to be part of this other ecosystem, which is the Kobo ecosystem. And I was lucky enough that the greater found value on my books and they decided to submit it to the reader.
So I think it’s a very powerful projection of what might happen when I have four, five, six, twelve different products in twelve different stores, instead of all my eggs in one basket. And I don’t know what you think of that Crystal, but I do believe that you also are going to see with your nonfiction side, but also fiction side that small changes like this, I think really add up in a months and then years.
So that’s why I’m flaunting this. It’s not just because it’s cute. It’s just because I think it really has potential.
Crystal Hunt: Yeah. And that is something that people don’t really talk about is when you switch from being exclusive to being wide, there’s a whole lot of zeros at the beginning. You don’t have any reviews on those other platforms and you don’t have any sales and it takes a couple of months, like you said, before you generate enough revenue and sales to even get paid. Anything, even if there’s some money in there. So there is a major accomplishment piece in there of also staying the course and not just panicking and pulling your books back out. I know lots of people who have said: ‘Oh, I’m going to go wide’. And they put their books out there for one month and they don’t do any platform specific marketing and then they’re like nothing happened. So they pulled the books out and then they go back to what they were doing before. And I think it’s really important to latch onto those wins, no matter how small they seem and keep going in that direction. As you said, it adds up each book you add, it adds up each new review that you get on different platforms.
Each thing that you learn, and there are so many more things to learn when you’re wide and you’re in all the places and you do have to learn the quirks and the opportunities of each platform. It is definitely challenging. In a couple of weeks, we are going to have Aaron from Wide for the Win Facebook group, come and talk to us all about how to make it wide.
And that is going to be fantastic. So for now, though, you’re stuck with us in our learnings. My biggest win from this month … two things actually, I think on the more personal side and the less measurable side was getting my reading back because for somebody who, for 40 years has read every day, large amounts, like large amounts, like I can read while walking and that’s fine. I would read at least a book a day, my whole life pretty much. And so for somebody to lose that and then get it back, it’s a really big deal. And the other win is that one of my main goals from January was to try and even out my revenue a little bit, because in January I had 60% of my income from my non-fiction books, 30% from teaching and affiliate income and other stuff and about 10% from my fiction royalties. And I did manage to do that. I did a bunch of rejuvenation stuff in my fiction world and got everything figured out for that. And so this month is 50% for non-fiction, 30% for writing related stuff, and that extra 10% went into my fiction. So I actually got up to 20% from my fiction instead of 10.
So that’s feels like a pretty major. I did not release a new book that was only tweaking existing products and making little changes in various places to the fiction stuff. So that’s a pretty major win for not actually putting out anything new as yet. And I’m excited to see what those small changes can lead to over the course of these next few months, because my goal for March is I’m doing … we’re calling it a March make-over. So in rereleasing all those books wide that have not been wide, some of them have never been wide and a couple of them that are my older titles were wide several years ago, but they haven’t been since like 2015, I think. So it’ll be exciting to see how they do out there in the big wide world again.
But that’s the March make-over is updating all the profiles and all the author, places, all the, everything to reflect that widely available titles for all my stuff. So how about you? What are you going to tackle?
Michele Amitrani: I have three things that I need to make happen. The first one is I need to finish the first rough draft of the six mythological fantasy story.
I need that completed so I can finally see the end of at least an arc. Phase one. Let’s call it as the Avenger would call it: Phase one of my mythological fantasy collection needs to be done at least on the first draft by the end of this month, then I also really want to publish both my fairytale reader magnets in Italy.
The first one is going to be free wide and the second is going to be an exclusive book for my newsletter subscribers. This also means that I need to prepare my automation sequence because these people that are interested in reading the second book needs to be welcomed. So I need to work very hard on that.
And then third and last thing is I need to start submitting Muse of Avalon in Italian to my beta readers, so very important things. I will report the next month on how it goes but definitely I need to get the ball going because it’s going too slow for my liking.
Your homework
Crystal Hunt: All right, folks. So you’ve heard from us looking at what our wins were from this past month and what we want to tackle going forward and what was challenging. Now, we’re going to give you a little homework this episode. We would love for you to think about what was your win from the last month, from February, and what was the challenge that you encountered as well? And if you are willing to share those, hopefully by now you’ve joined us in the Creative Academy for Writers and you can add to your post, the hashtag celebrate and tell us what awesome thing happened to you so that we can celebrate right along with you. And if you hit a challenge or a roadblock or an obstacle, you can post that too and you can ask for ideas or suggestions, or just generally let people commiserate with the challenges, because guaranteed, you’re not the only one who’s going through a bit of a challenging patch. There’s plenty of that out there. So, come. Find your people tell us what’s going on in your world we would love to catch up with you. And if you’re not a member of the Creative Academy, of course you can always join us. And if not, you can always hit reply to the newsletter that we send out to you. When we send you an email we’re on the other end of that, just hit reply and tell us what’s going on in your world.We do love to hear from readers.
The other thing you can send us is if you have questions you’d like us to answer on the show. You can email them to crystal@strategicauthorpreneur.com or hit reply anytime we email you with the next episode link. You can also feel free to buy us a coffee. If you find the show helpful, it’ll keep it ad free and keep us fuelled up and delivering fresh content for you every week.
Michele Amitrani: We really hope that you enjoy today’s show. Remember to hit that subscribe button whenever you’re listening to the podcast and also to visit us at strategicauthorpreneur.com for the show notes and the links to all the resources and the tools that we love and that we mentioned. Until next week. Happy writing.
Crystal Hunt: Bye everybody.