What this blog is

Yeah, so I thought I would separate out my writing and self publishing thoughts from my more promotional thoughts regarding my fiction.  Basically, this blog will be for other writers while my WriterKMadison blog will be for readers.  They don't necessarily care about all of the inner workings of the publishing industry (ya know, bc I am such an insider!!) or the challenges of publishing in multiple formats to multiple different stores.

But other writers might.

And hopefully, my mistakes documented here will serve to help other fellow self pubbing authors to steer clear of this or that particular pothole into which I have so ungracefully fallen. (<-- Look ma, I totally didn't end that sentence with a preposition, even tho I really wanted to.  Oh, wait.  Darnit!!)

I write under a few different pen names.  Kate Madison is one of my newer ones.  I thought I would put the self pubbing stuff under this one because, well, I'm not sure.  I just did.

I have been self pubbing since the summer of '09 (just saying that sentence makes me sound like an old man!). I have learned a lot and changed a lot over the last couple of years.  I will write about what I have learned and why I have changed-- again, all with an eye towards helping a fellow writer in their journey.  I have been helped countless times by so many different writers.  So, this is paying it forward, I guess.

Why should you care what I even have to say?  --Well, when you say it like that?  No really, I am not a crazy successful self pubber like the many stars on Kindleboards or the superstars like JA Konrath, Amanda Hocking, or John Locke.  But I consistently sell around 1k units per month of my short stories (across a few pen names) for the past 18 months or so.  It took about 6 months to build up to that and has remained steady. I'm not quite living on my writing income alone, but I am about half way there.  Writing and selling novels is my next step.  But, I would say I am doing decently, better than many, not as good as some.

I also publish quite a few Kindle blogs which I will talk about some.  But, honestly, I'm not sure how much longer those will be around simply bc they are the red headed step child of the business units in Amazon.  The kindle blogs get no love.  And you can't even get them on the fire which tells me their days are numbered.  Which is too bad, bc I like their income.  The subscription model is pretty sweet money wise, if a little labor intensive.

More on that later.  I'll also talk about lots of nuts and bolts stuff, such as:

--My workflow for formatting, then and now
--Pricing
--My writing income broken out
--Cover Design, then and now
--Ideal Story Length for today's market
--Reader attitudes
--Author attitudes
--Marketing and PR
--Accounting
--Fiction vs Nonfiction
--POD or print run

and many others.

I hope you enjoy.

Kate