Category: Business of Writing

Gaining Newsletter Subscribers With Instafreebie

Business of Writing, Uncategorized

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig 

I’ve been using InstaFreebie since July of last year, but my use was limited to a convenient method of distributing free ebooks to readers or reviewers (and having InstaFreebie’s support to assist readers with any problems).

A short while afterward, I started using InstaFreebie as part of organized multi-author giveaways (there was an author assistant for a group of cozy writers who set it up).  I was in a couple of those and my mailing list grew to the point where I needed to get a paid account with MailChimp.

After reading numerous posts on how InstaFreebie was helpful, long-term, for growing a newsletter list, I decided to alter my approach on the account. I’m not one of those who likes to send out lots of emails to my newsletter list, so I decided to use InstaFreebie as more of a discovery tool. (And I’d like to note that I’m not affiliated with InstaFreebie in any way.)

I started their 30-day free trial, integrated InstaFreebie to my MailChimp list (they provide directions on how to do this).  Then I promptly forgot about it.Continue reading

Gathering Sales Data with Book Report

Business of Writing, Uncategorized

A laptop with an open book demonstrates the importance of gathering sales data for writers.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve recently been hearing a lot about a tool called ‘Book Report.’ It is a bookmarklet that you add to your browser (it’s easy to install) that interprets sales data for Amazon. Since I’m always looking for a better way for data to make sense to me (I was an English major), I decided to give it a go last week. Especially since they had a free trial.

I was pleased with the information I was able to pull with Book Report (and I’ve no association/affiliation with the product).

Helpful Uses for the Tool:Continue reading

Why I’m Turning Trad-Pub Deals Down

Business of Writing, Uncategorized

A Dandelion blowing in front of a blue sky demonstrates the freedom of rejecting trad-pub deals.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve been asked by writers and others if I’d ever query traditional publishers again.

As a matter of fact, I’ve gotten queried by traditional publishers a couple of times in the past year.  I’m not really sure why, since there now seem to be many cozy writers out there. I’ve politely rejected them.

It’s not that I had a bad trad-pub experience. It’s just that I’ve had a better self-pub experience.

Reasons I’ve decided to stick with self-publishing:

Continue reading

Top Time Savers for Book Production

Business of Writing, Tools for Writers

Alarm clock in foreground demonstrates that time savers are important to writers.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

This is the third post in my series on how writers can save time.  You can find the first post here (on social media), and the second post here (on saving time writing).

If you plan on having only a single book or just a couple of books, you probably can just skip the information I’m sharing today. This is more for those of us who have either multiple series or many books or both. It’s the nitty-gritty of book production–the tedious inputting of data into the retail and distributor sites.

By keeping track of the data we use over and over again, we can not only make our process go a lot quicker, we can also make sure it’s consistent. Although it does take some time to compile these lists, sometimes we have to spend time to save it.

Here are some examples:Continue reading

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