Claire Ridgway

Best-selling author and blogger

Feb
23

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Taking my Book to Market

Category: Marketing your book, Self-publishing Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

The book sales in my previous post may look impressive – 323 books sold in six days, wow! And yes, I’m pleased as punch, but this success has actually taken three years, not six days.

What do I mean?

Well, I began researching and writing about Anne Boleyn and Tudor history in February 2009 – THREE YEARS AGO. I set up The Anne Boleyn Files blog on the 17th February 2009 and started blogging regularly on that, sharing my research and writing articles about Anne and the Tudors. I had always been a writer but the motivation behind The Anne Boleyn Files was to share and educate, not to use it as a platform for marketing a book. I had absolutely no idea on that day in February 2009 that anyone would ever find the site and start following it, but they did, and as a result of that I then set up a Facebook page and a Twitter account.

When “The Anne Boleyn Collection” was released on the 17th February 2012, the three year anniversary of The Anne Boleyn Files website, I had built up quite a following. Here are the figures:-

So, when The Anne Boleyn Collection was released, I could announce it on my website, Facebook and Twitter, I could publish the video trailer on YouTube and I could also email my subscribers. I had built some buzz by telling people about the book and so people were waiting for its release. I had a market and my market knew me and my work.

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Feb
23

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The Anne Boleyn Collection’s Progress

Category: Self-publishing, The Anne Boleyn Collection Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

If you have read my previous post, you will know that the Kindle version of my first book “The Anne Boleyn Collection” went live on Amazon.com on the 17th February. This was quickly followed by the paperback, although the listing kept disappearing as Amazon worked on it. It’s now the 23rd February, less than a week later, and I wanted to report back on a very successful first week. Here are the figures…

Sales

The sales in the picture below are the results taken from my Createspace and KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) dashboards first thing every morning from 18th February 2012 to 23rd February 2012.

So, by 9am this morning I had sold a total of 323 books – 260 Kindle versions and 63 paperback copies. All of the paperbacks come from Amazon.com because the paperback is not available yet on the international sites.

Amazon Rankings

Here is how my Amazon ranking looked at the end of the first full day, the 18th February:-

It was also a nice feeling when I was No.3 in Amazon’s Hot New Releases in History England, beaten only by the two versions (Kindle and paperback) of a book on Wallis Simpson.

Reviews

As of today, I have eight 5 star reviews which is a wonderful feeling. I did send out some beta versions of the e-book to some members of The Anne Boleyn Fellowship to review for me but three of the eight reviews are from other readers so that was wonderful to see. I’m bound to get some bad reviews, every writer does, so I’m enjoying these reviews at the moment!

Success

I don’t know what constitutes success in publishing but I was aiming at selling 100 books in my first month so to sell 323 in six days is wonderful. I’ve also been receiving emails and comments on my Facebook page and Anne Boleyn Files website from people who are reading the book and loving it, that’s what success is really, isn’t it? People enjoying what you write.

Feb
17

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My Kindle Book is Released!

Category: Self-publishing, The Anne Boleyn Collection Tags: , , , Leave a Comment

I’m just going to interrupt my series on self-publishing with the news that my first book, “The Anne Boleyn Collection”, has just been released as a Kindle version on Amazon.com and Amazon UK.

While Tim and I were waiting for the paperback to go live, after double-checking the second proof copy, we decided to upload the Kindle version. We expected it to take a few days to go live, but it happened within hours – a big surprise! I’d sent some e-book versions out to some of my followers, members of The Anne Boleyn Fellowship, in advance for them to “beta test”, and they’ve already started adding their review to the Amazon page. This is a great help.

While I’m waiting for the paperback to go live, I’m working on getting the buzz going about my book. I’m fortunate in that I have been running my blog, The Anne Boleyn Files, for three years and so have an established following through that site and also on Facebook and Twitter. I’ve also updated my Goodreads profile to an author profile and have been filling in extra information about the book on Shelfari – phew! Lots to do! I will be sharing everything I do in future posts.

If you want to check out my book, then please go to:-

Here’s a video Tim made for the Anne Boleyn Files birthday and The Anne Boleyn Collection launch:-

Feb
13

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Proof Copy – What to Do with It

Category: Print on demand, Self-publishing Tags: , 1 Comment

The moment UPS knocked on the door was an amazing moment. I knew that the package the delivery guy was holding contained my book and I could have quite happily snatched it off him and slammed the door in his face, rather than waste time signing for it! It was even more amazing actually seeing my book ‘in the flesh’, incredible!

Although you may be tempted to kiss it and stroke it forever, what you actually need to do now is examine it carefully and proofread it. Here’s a checklist:-

  • Drink copious amounts of bubbly to celebrate being an author.
  • Get a photo taken of you holding your book and bombard friends and family with it. Also keep it to put on your blog/website.
  • Front cover – Is it how you wanted it? Is the wording correct? Does it all line up? Does it look fabulous?
  • Spine – Does it have your title and last name? Is it readable? Is it correct?
  • Back cover – Check the blurb for errors. Does it say what you want it to say? Does it sell your book? Is it honest? Is it enough of a teaser? Does it look good?
  • Size – Is the size right for the amount of pages? A shorter book may be too ‘floppy’ in a larger trim size
  • Inside – This is the hard bit. You need to read every page carefully and highlight any typos, grammar/punctuation/spelling mistakes, any formatting issues etc. For example, I noticed errors like a space before a comma, pages which were meant to be blank between chapters but which had chapter headings/page numbers at the top etc. Be harsh, you want your book to be perfect.
  • Make changes to your file, saving it as “revised” so you know which one to upload on to Createspace.
  • Upload the revised version and order another proof. If you’ve been thorough enough then this will be the last proof you will have to order.
  • Wait patiently for it to come.
  • Repeat above steps with second prove and approve it if you’re happy with it.
  • Wait for Createspace to release your book!

Of course, if you’re going to be selling any copies of your book, you won’t be twiddling your thumbs while waiting for the proof to arrive, will you? I’ll be talking about this in another post.

Feb
13

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Using Createspace

Category: Print on demand, Self-publishing Tags: , , , Leave a Comment

As I said in my previous post, Print on Demand, I decided to use Amazon’s POD service Createspace for my book “The Anne Boleyn Collection”. Here is a brief overview of the steps that Tim and I followed for the paperback version:-

  • Wrote the book using Word (or OpenOffice, which is free) – It’s essential to do this using built-in styles for formatting. Don’t be tempted to do any formatting, such as using fancy fonts etc. at this stage.
  • Read, and then re-read the book – Do this until you are completely happy with the words you have written.
  • Proofread and edited the book – For this book, I didn’t pay to get it copy-edited as this was a collection of articles. I will definitely be using a copyeditor for future book projects as required. It’s so hard to spot your own mistakes, isn’t it?
  • Spent some time looking at books that I liked the look of, taking into account the color of the paper, the size and thickness of the book etc.
  • Went to Createspace and chose an industry standard trim size for the book (in this case 5.5″ by 8.5″) and downloaded their template – This template tells you about the page size and margins etc.

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Feb
7

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Print on Demand

Category: Print on demand, Self-publishing, The Anne Boleyn Collection Tags: , , , 6 Comments

Boxes of unsold books - not what you want!

I’m definitely not the world expert on publishing and this post is based on my own personal experience and the decisions I made with regards to my self-publishing book project, The Anne Boleyn Collection.

I knew that I had to go for POD (print on demand) rather than vanity publishing because I knew people who had gone down the vanity publishing route and lost out big time. They paid to have their books printed and bound and had to order a stack of them upfront, which, of course, cost them a lot of money. They then had to store the boxes of books in their garage or attic and then find buyers for them. Financial stress, emotional stress and marriage problems caused by one’s spouse tripping over and then cursing the boxes of books preventing them from getting to the freezer. I think that the people I knew managed to get rid of the books in the end but it cost them financially and put them off self-publishing for life.

But publishing your book doesn’t have to be like that. Obviously, you can go down the traditional route and put together a book proposal, try and get a literary agent and then a publisher. I’m actually going down this route at the moment for family saga of the Boleyns. I have an agent who is interested and I have put together a book proposal for him to give me feedback on. But, sometimes a project just isn’t suitable for traditional mainstream publishing and that’s where POD comes in.

The main POD options are Lulu and Amazon’s Createspace. Both will allow you to print on demand, i.e. print a book when a customer orders one. No large upfront costs, no boxes of books filling your garage and no financial ruin. They also guide you through every step of the process – phew! I chose Createspace because I’ve always had good experiences with Amazon and because I knew people who had used them and I knew what the finished product was like, and I was impressed with the results. Obviously do your own research into the pros and cons of each service and choose what works best for you and your book.

I’m still in the process of self-publishing – I only finished the finished manuscript at the weekend – so I can only tell you my experience so far, but in my next post I’ll share the steps that Tim and I went through to get The Anne Boleyn Collection on to Createspace.

Feb
7

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From Idea to Draft

Category: Print on demand, Self-publishing, The Anne Boleyn Collection Tags: , Leave a Comment

Action has to follow an idea, don’t you think? It’s no good having that lightbulb moment and then not doing anything about it, that gets you nowhere.

If you’ve read my last post, The Anne Boleyn Collection Idea, you’ll know that we had the idea of producing a book of our most popular Anne Boleyn Files articles to celebrate our 3 year anniversary. “Easy”, you say; “not really”, I say.

OK, I had over 800 articles to play with, so I had the content and my wonderful husband Tim, hero, web designer and techie wizard – yes, I’m sucking up to him here as I will need him again! – made me a wonderful spreadsheet of the most ‘commented on’ articles. I then I set about copying and pasting them into one big file. That was the easy part. As I read them, I started to think that this was not going to work. Many of them had things like “Today, I’m going to”, links to other posts, quotes from history books and biographies… They just couldn’t be used as they were. Rewriting was needed and this also called for more research, actually depending on primary sources rather than what other historians said. If I needed to discuss an historian’s opinion, then I needed to do it in my own words, not their’s, and reference them properly. Headache.

Fortunately, I always reference my articles anyway, but there was still stacks of work to do and grey hairs started sprouting rapidly.

The rewriting obviously took time (I’m mad so I actually managed to do it in a weekend, I just didn’t eat, sleep or talk) and then I had to proof read and edit them. I was eventually able to give Tim a document with all of the articles in, one after the other, and we then discussed their order. We put them into groups according to subject, and then Tim started to format them ready for self-publishing. The decision to self-publish the book was a no-brainer. The book was a celebration of the three year anniversary of The Anne Boleyn Files (17th February 2012) and so needed to be out quickly, plus it wasn’t really commercially viable for a publisher. Publishers look for books, not collections of articles. We needed to self-publish, and by that I mean POD (print on demand) rather than Vanity Press. There was no way that I was going to spend a stack of money getting 1000s of books printed to then have to ship out from Spain, no way José. I needed a print on demand service, a service where there was no upfront cost, or a minimal one, and a service which would give a quality end product that I’d be proud of. Hmmm…

Feb
7

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The Anne Boleyn Collection Idea

Category: The Anne Boleyn Collection Tags: , , Leave a Comment

One of the regular visitors to The Anne Boleyn Files contacted me just before Christmas (2011) to share an idea she had about site and my writing. “Why don’t you collate some of the most popular Anne Boleyn Files articles and publish them?”, Linda said, “That way we’d have easy access to them and we’d be able to share them with friends and family. It would be a wonderful way to celebrate the three year anniversary of the site.”

Now, I was already working on a book on the Boleyn family but Linda got me thinking. I had three years’ worth of articles on the site, over 800 posts – yes, I’ve been a busy girl! – and the site was very popular and interactive, with people commenting on posts and discussing things. It would be easy to find out which were the most popular and then collate them in a book format, or so I thought!

Lightbulb moment. What a great way to celebrate our three year anniversary, use my hard work and share my research. The Anne Boleyn Collection was born, in my head anyway.