Their Sexy Gaze ~ @oddlynn3 #LynnCrain #MySexySaturday #MySexyAuthors #MSS118

Welcome to week 118^th week of My Sexy Saturday. This week’s theme is Their Sexy Gaze and when you think about it, so easy to define. What hero or heroine doesn’t gaze lovingly at their significant other? Then again, think about all the times they send negative looks their way too. It happens. This week I have a short story that I’ve shared a few times. I am really into the paranormal aspect of things right now and this just fits me today.

Don’t forget Monday’s Austria Scoop and a Tuesday’s My So-Called Writing Life columns this week. This week I plan to tell you a little bit about my trip as well as talk about the recent happenings in Europe. This week I’ll be giving away a $5 Amazon Gift Certificate to one lucky commentor. I’ve decided to do this randomly throughout the month. Don’t forget to comment and often! I’ll announce the winner on Thursday and please leave your email address as the AGC will be sent to you immediately.

Here’s the setup of my short story, A Lover for Rachel:

Rachel Hamilton comes to Stonehenge to celebrate her birthday on Summer Solstice, only to find herself trapped beneath the massive rhyolite bluestones with sexy wizard, Dewin Kingston, who convinces her that she is the key to their escape.

Here’s my seven sentences from A Lover for Rachel:

He held up his hand to silence her questions as he put the medicine back in an ancient-looking chest. “I will tell you everything in due time. I need to know a few things about you first.”

“Why?” Their gazes locked and a moment of sizzling awareness passed between them before she pulled her eyes away.

She could tell he was impatient with her as he seemed to draw in an unhurried, calming breath. “Because you would not be here at all unless you were a really special woman.”

This story is permanently on sale for just $0.99. While you’re there check  out the sale my traditional ePublisher, eXtasy Books, is still having on some of my books at their website. Today is the time to get them at a great discount and see if I write stories you might like. Don’t forget to pick up your copies!

The Thing About Elves ~ Book 2 in the Santa’s Elves series

The Haunting of Maggie Grey ~ Award-winning Scottish Historical about a woman doctor

Captive Illusions: Iain and Kelsey ~ Story about a woman’s darkest fantasy

Fluke ~ Book 1 of the Orchid series, sci-fi romance

An Elf’s Desire ~ Book 3 in the Santa’s Elves series

A Love for Eggther ~ Book 3.5 in the Santa’s Elves series

Shopping Spree ~ Story about a very special dress shop

Please visit all the great authors at the My Sexy Saturday weekly blog hop listed below. Their sexy snippets will keep you back for more. If you do, please share via Facebook or Twitter. It helps out a lot and every author appreciates it each and every time. If you’d like to do them all at once, search for the #hashtag #MySexySaturday or #MySexyAuthors to get all tweets of the day then retweet them to your heart’s content. You can even search by the #hashtags on Facebook and share the posts there as well. Remember, we love each and every one of you!

See you all next week!

Lynn 

Sexy Me Up ~ @oddlynn3 #MySexySaturday #Saturday7 #MSSAuthors #LynnCrain

Welcome to week 84^th week of My Sexy Saturday. The week’s theme is Our Sexy Tomorrow and it was left to our discretion as to our interpretation. For me, I’m using the heroine who just doesn’t know how special she is.  Austria is gray and that’s all I can say today…Monday’s the day where I give a personal update…and this week I have a lot to say. Also, Tuesday’s is My So-Called Writing Life where you’ll get the inside scoop of what it means to be a writer. And it’s not what you think.

Again, this week’s theme is Sexy Me Up and one example they used is the one about Pygmalion. Now, my girl doesn’t need a make-over but she doesn’t believe she’s special in any way. However, the hero may have something to say about that. This story is from my backlist. It had been published previously in an anthology where one author wanted out. That means we all got our rights back. I decided to revise it and self-publish. I hope you enjoy A Lover for Rachel and here’s the setup:

Rachel Hamilton comes to Stonehenge to celebrate her birthday on Summer Solstice, only to find herself trapped beneath the massive rhyolite bluestones with sexy wizard, Dewin Kingston, who convinces her that she is the key to their escape.

This is a short novella and I loved writing it because I have been to Stonehenge and wondered what would happen if I was there the summer solstice or June 21, which also happens to be my birthday. I hope you enjoy Rachel’s story with my snippet this week of seven sexy paragraphs!

She flopped down on the couch next to him. “Please tell me the whole story of how you came to be here, how I ended up here, and maybe we can find a way to get us both out.”

He smiled and lit up the whole room. “That is the spirit. I most definitely want to get out of here.”

“You do realize that the world isn’t what you remember it to be, don’t you? That is, if what you are saying is true.” She placed her hand on his forearm and appreciated the strength it held. Just touching him brought an awareness of her body that she’d missed. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, taking in his warm, woodsy scent. Her baser needs were going to take over in this small but comfortable room. Before she could allow herself to feel anything, she needed to get her mind around the facts that currently brought and held her here.

“I have told you my name is Dewin. It means wizard.” His gaze held an honesty she couldn’t deny.

“You’re a wizard?” she questioned lightly. If there is a fairy, there can certainly be a wizard.

He gazed into her eyes then and ran a gentle finger along her jaw. “You are beautiful.”

Rachel leaned into his hand, her body’s wants and needs taking over. “No, I’m not, but it’s nice to hear you say it. Still…I have to hear your story first. Please continue.”

Again, this was self-published from my back list and you can find it here at the astounding price of only $0.99. Also, my traditional ePublisher, eXtasy Books, has a lot of my books on sale at their website. If you’ve never read any of my stories, now’s the time to get them at a great discount and see if I write stories you might like. Pick up your copies today!

The Thing About Elves ~ Book 2 in the Santa’s Elves series

The Haunting of Maggie Grey ~ Award-winning Scottish Historical about a woman doctor

Iain and Kelsey ~ Story about a woman’s darkest fantasy

Fluke ~ Book 1 of the Orchid series, sci-fi romance

An Elf’s Desire ~ Book 3 in the Santa’s Elves series

A Love for Eggther ~ Book 3.5 in the Santa’s Elves series

Shopping Spree ~ Story about a very special dress shop

Please visit all the great authors at the My Sexy Saturday weekly blog hop listed below. They have even more amazing and sexy snippets to share. And when you do, share via Facebook or Twitter. It helps out a lot and we appreciate it each and every time. If you’d like to do them all at once, search for the #hashtag #MySexySaturday or #MSSAuthors to get all tweets of the day then retweet them to your heart’s content. We love each and everyone of you!

Have a great weekend...see you next week with another My Sexy Saturday edition!

Lynn 

July Sales Update or SHOW ME THE MONEY!

            It’s that time of month again where I tell you just how glorious my sales were during the month of July. Or rather should I say...NOT! No, I’m really not mad but it is making my dream of being a full time writer seem way off in a distance.

            When things like these do happen, I tend to block the Muse because I’m mad at her or maybe it’s a him...LOL! Still, writing has been bad and my next book has been pushed to the end of the month because I just can’t seem to get it out of my head and onto the page.

            Because this was such a slim month, I’m just putting the current month up and nothing else. I’ll do it by book and then you all can tell me what you think.

   

The Harvester

Amazon – 3 sales

Smashwords – 21 downloads of the preview

ARe – 2 sales

BookBaby – not yet reported as it hasn’t been 60 days. Reporting is only every 60 days for this aggregator but they do pay weekly once the reporting starts.

PubIt(B&N) – 1 sale

A Lover for Rachel

Smashwords – 18 given away free, 59 downloads of the preview

ARe – 2 sales, unknown number given away for free

BookBaby – Apparently this is zero here as well since it hasn’t been updated since April. Guess it’s not selling on Amazon or anywhere I have it.

            Well, there you have it...a total of 6 sales of The Harvester and 2 sales of A Lover for Rachel. Total sales so far are The Havester has 16 total sales, approximately $33, A Lover for Rachel has a total of 66 sales, approximately $22. This is not going to make me rich or even pay a bill or for a nice dinner anytime soon.

            Yes, yes, I know that I need to get more books out there but obviously something is missing. I’m hitting the promo trail as hard as I can without being offensive. Or at least I think I am. I’m sharing news and tidbits and other things but my books...well...they just don’t seem to be catching on. Yes, this is frustrating and yes, this is not going to get me my new house with a pool. Hey, everyone has to have goals. LOL!

            Still, I can’t not write and I’ve just got to do it better with a topic that everyone loves. I have it in me, I know I do but getting from here to there sometimes seems to be a long tunnel with no lights. The next few books I’ll be working on with be a variety of genres with a variety of subjects. There’s another sci-fi story, two new series introductions and more.

            I hope that all of you are still taking this journey with me...one painful step at a time...LOL!

            More next month and maybe the numbers will be even better.

            Catch you on the flip side!

Lynn

The First Six Months

I'd made a promise when I started the self-publishing thing I’d let everyone know how much I made. I had thought to provide the information monthly but to be honest, there wasn’t much to tell. I know there are tons, and I mean tons, of authors out there making money but right now, I’m not one of those.

There are a variety of reasons for my lack of income. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve received from all my indie author websites and groups is to go out there and write another book. This is so very, very true and during the six months between the first release in December 2011 and my second release in June 2012, I had a bumpy ride. The original plan had been to have my second book out in March or April.

In mid-March of 2012, I got sick. Not just a little sick but really sick as in I-suppose-I-could-have-died sick. High fever, lethargy and a stay in the hospital that resulted in dialysis and me not wanting to do much of nothing. So, as a result, my second book did not come out until mid-June 2012. This is not optimum. The best thing is to get that next book out there and to do it over and over again. I plan to have another out in August if the stars line up the way they are supposed to that month.

Therefore, my results are puny but I do imagine that they will go up now that I’m back to writing, promoting and everything else a writer is supposed to do. And yes, that means, there will be more blogs and social interaction. I’ve been quite for way too long. LOL!

So here’s the money, broken down in the best way I can do. First, let me explain, my first book, A Lover for Rachel, was put out for me by BookBaby, who is a book aggregator, to all the different venues. They are an excellent group but I’m an impatient person and when I realized it took 60 days to get real-time data from them, I decided a different strategy the second time around. The Harvester went up via Smashwords, BookBaby and I placed it myself on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and All Romance eBooks where I could check my numbers daily, evil thing that they are.

FREE Giveaways: Rachel was given away free for one weekend. During that time, 3 were sold and 14 were given away free via Smashwords and there were 72 downloaded samples. Also in that time period, 17 free downloads of the 1st chapter of Harvester were downloaded as well. Why didn’t the people just take the free book? That’s a mystery. Although, Rachel ended up in three libraries. Go figure. I’m not sure just how many free copies were given away at ARe as the report didn’t tell me at all. Sorry about the data being in a JPG but it was the only way to preserve the formatting.

* All data for Rachel is BB sales through BookBaby’s various venues
** No Data Available yet
N/A = Not Applicable

Now, I am not heating up the internet but the fact remains that I sold more books in six months than I had for any one book in a year in recent history. Another good point is that The Harvester has only been out for two weeks and it’s already sold eleven books. That’s almost one a day and one that I hadn't sold before. I’ve been asked to sell on a couple more sites from groups well thought of and they sought me out, which made me very happy. So more venues are coming. Also, review requests have been submitted and providing I get some decent ones, I never know as I never try to guess opinions, that may also improve sales. 


Rachel sold for $0.99 while The Harvester is at the higher price point of $2.99, meaning 35% versus 70% return. For each copy of Rachel, I'm making around $0.35 and The Harvester over a dollar. There were instances where Rachel only got a 30% and I’m still trying to figure that one out. Rachel will more than likely be my freebie book for a while but we’ll evaluate that later in the month of July. The surprising one is Smashwords...not one sale...I can’t figure out why at all. I've done everything correct there and am in the Premium Catalog, so I don't understand.


So here's the biggie for each book. The total spent includes things like advertising, formatting, editing and such. 


A Lover for Rachel - Total Spent: $500; Total Earned: $22.18

The Harvester - Total Spent $639; Total Earned: $23.03

I so hope that these numbers are on the rise. It's obvious that Harvester will eventually earn out what I spent for it. How much remains to be seen. Let's hope it starts selling leaps and bounds. Then again, remember, it's only been on the shelves for about two weeks, which makes that a stellar first two weeks.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email me at lynncrain@cox.net and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Lynn

The Hard Numbers

Hi everyone!

Hope I'm starting the new year right by telling all of you about this article. http://kriswrites.com/2012/01/04/the-business-rusch-writers-will-work-for-cheap/

You must read it as it is a good kick in the pants in regards of our writing careers. It does talk about one thing here that I do want to address and that is the cost of being an indie published author. The big thing Kris talks about is how we price our work. Now, just so you know here's how I'm going to price most of my work and I'll explain at the end.

1. $0.99 ~ 0-10,000 words
2. $1.49 ~ 10,001 to 20,000 words
3. $1.99 ~ 20,001 to 30,000 words
4. $2.49 ~ 30,001 to 40,000 words
5. $2.99 ~ 40,001 to 80,000 words
6. $3.99 ~ 80,001 to 95,000 words
7. $4.99 ~ 95,001+ words

At Amazon you'll get 35% for anything under $2.99, anything $2.99 and over 70%. B&N you get 40% under $2.99 and 65% over, at Kobo you get 60% on US and 38% on foreign sales, at Apple you get 70%, at Sony you get 60%, at Diesel you get 60% and I'm not sure yet what it is at ARe as I haven't signed up with yet. It's on the to-do list this week. At Smashwords you get 85% of whatever the rate is at the market you're selling to i.e. if you choose them to do Amazon, you'd get 85% of either the 35% or the 70% rate plus they will give you 85% if you sell it directly with them. Sony and Apple must go through aggregators as they have special software and requirements that most people don’t have. I knew long ago that I wasn’t going to attempt to do them myself.

So let's look at what you'll actually make at each of those rates. I'll start lowest to highest. These numbers are public knowledge and anyone with a calculator can figure them out. Also, it doesn’t hurt to let readers know we aren’t making that much per book even when we self-publish. For verification, as we all know, it’s even less when we do the traditional publishing route, advance or not. All my numbers have been rounded up to the next cent.

Amazon (35%)    Kobo Foreign (38%)    B&N (40%)         Kobo, Sony, Diesel (60%)
1.    0.35                        0.36                              0.40                         0.59
2.    0.52                        0.57                              0.60                         0.89
3.    0.69                        0.76                              0.80                         1.19
4.    0.87                        0.95                              1.00                         1.49
5.    N/A                        1.14                               N/A                         1.79
6.    N/A                        1.52                               N/A                         2.39
7.    N/A                        1.90                               N/A                         2.99

B&N(65%)           Amazon (70%)              Apple(70%)        Smashwords(85%)
1.    N/A                        N/A                               0.69                         0.84
2.    N/A                        N/A                               1.04                         1.27
3.    N/A                        N/A                               1.39                         1.69
4.    N/A                        N/A                               1.74                         2.12
5.    1.94                        2.09                               2.09                        2.54
6.    2.59                        2.79                               2.79                         3.39
7.    3.24                        3.49                               3.49                         4.24

The N/A indicates a price point that doesn’t get royalties in that category. This means that if you’re book is $0.99, you’ll never get an Amazon royalty rate of 70% because the book is priced too low.

Now let’s look at the book budget itself. This is the money that you put out to get the book into the different markets. We’ll use my short story A Lover for Rachel as the guinea pig here since it’s the first I’ve done and I’m sure others have or will have a similar experience. It sells for $0.99 and I won’t know for months if it will even make what I spent on it to get it into the market.

I have set a book budget of $500 per book. This is high for most people but I wanted to include advertising bucks in there. Here’s my outlay so far on this short story:

1) Formatting ~ I pay someone to put it into the proper format (epub, Smashwords, PDF, and more) for everywhere. This is priceless to me as it would take me days to figure it out and I’d rather be writing. Total cost $55.

2) Editing ~ I found an editor that does things per word and very inexpensively at $0.006 per word. That is a little lower than the going rate but she’s a wonderful editor. This included at least 5 rounds of revision and passing the story back and forth until we got it as perfect as possible. Total cost $65.

3) Final Round Copyedits ~ This is done once the book is in proper formats. My person calls it ‘Oops Detection’ and it was invaluable. Total cost $32.

4)Book Aggregator ~ I chose Book Baby to get me into Amazon, Apple, B&N as well as Sony. They give you 100% of what you earn and you pay an upfront fee of $99 and a small yearly fee for them to maintain the book after the initial year. There are definitely good and bad aspects about this. Matter of fact, even though I love the service they provide, I may not use them for Amazon and B&N after this first book. The reason why is simple: once you hit the publish key, you can change nothing. Most of the time, this is good BUT there are things such as sales and giveaways that need price adjusting. I’ve asked because I don’t think a price adjustment justifies a $50 change fee since I’m NOT changing the book. We’ll see how this one pans out and I’ll keep you updated. Still, I will need them for both Sony and Apple as I don’t have the means to get those formats into place. One final negative is that I can’t see my sales numbers in real time for at least the first 45-60 days. They say they need to wait until they get the data from the distributors. I question this as the distributors do it in real time, so I just don’t get it. Total cost $99.

5) Cover Art ~ I won’t skimp on cover art and I’ve found someone who is very good. She has a reasonable price and I will use her for most of my work. There are a few fantasy things that I’ll be commissioning special art pieces but those will come later. Total cost $65.

6) Advertising ~ My ad budget is whatever I have left over from the original $500. This time, it’s $184 and I plan to use every penny of it. In later posts, I’ll let you know what works and what doesn’t. Total cost $184.

So you can see that I plan to spend the whole $500 for this first book, which is a short story in reality. I plan to do this for any book I publish. The costs that aren’t static in those numbers would be the editing and the final round copyedits. Non-static numbers might also include the formatting for larger books. Frankly, I won’t know those costs until I do a book at each level. Next time, I might overextend myself in some areas, thus making the advertising budget sparse and that is one thing you shouldn’t skimp on either. I’ll leave that for another day’s discussion.

The final item I want to look at is just how many sales I need to recoup my investment. Looking at each of the six royalty points for a book priced in this manner: Amazon(35%), Kobo Foreign (38%), B&N(40%), Kobo-Sony-Diesel (60%), Apple (70%) and Smashwords (85%). At each of the percentage points, here are the number of books I’d need to sell:

Amazon(35%) at $0.35 per book, I would need to sell 1429 copies.
Kobo Foreign(38%) at $0.36 per book, I would need to sell 1389 copies.
B&N(40%) at $0.40 per book, I would need to sell 1250 copies.
Kobo-Sony-Diesel(60%) at $0.59 per book, I would need to sell 848 copies.
Apple(70%) at $0.69 per book, I would need to sell to sell 725 copies.
Smashwords(85%) at $0.84 per book, I would need to sell 596 copies.

We all know that in reality our royalties will be spread across all those markets but this does give an author or a reader some perspective as to the real numbers and why long time authors like Kristine Rusch thinks that the indie price points are underselling us as writers. In some ways, she is very correct while in others not so much.

My price points are based upon word count of the book for one and only one reason: that is what I feel I would pay as a reader for those word counts. I have always felt that books overall were overpriced in some areas like series romance. We are basically supporting the astronomical overhead of a big company. I don't have that overhead and can use a different pricing scheme when assigning cost to my books. When selecting my price points, I looked at the market over and over again. True, there is a glut of $0.99 reads out there. Many are better than my little story. Some aren’t. Many have lots more words than mine and surprisingly, some don’t.

The fact is that I worked these numbers over and over again in the past six months. In November, I started writing them down on paper so I would remember them. At the end of that month, I made a spreadsheet so I could look at every price point and different scenarios. Why? Because I’m in this for the long haul and I needed to know just where I was both in my traditional epublishing as well as my indie venture.

I also know just how long it takes me to write a story based upon those word counts. On a very good day, if I sat at my computer writing up to a full 8 hours, I could write a 10K story. I've done it. The max I've ever written in a day is 18K and that was over a twelve hour period. I was definitely on a roll that particular day. Still, I know what I can do and how long it will take me if I put my mind to it. With those type of scenarios, I could in theory produce a 40-50K book a week. To me, those time frames are short. They are also usually unrealistic but again a topic for another day. I considered these facts as well when coming up with my pricing scheme.

I also needed to know when and where I would make money. I needed to evaluate the amount of risk I would be taking as throwing around $500 is nothing to sneeze at but I’ve gambled before and lost. This time, I was lucky in the fact that a personal happening in my life allowed me to set aside a certain amount of money for my indie publishing venture. I’ve been watching that overall budget like a hawk. I won’t let my guard down until I’m actually making money and I don’t see that really happening for six to twelve months.

In the interim, I’ll be writing more books and getting them ready for self-publishing. I will also be submitting my contracted books to my traditional epublishers. In about a year, say January 2013, I will evaluate the whole system again to see where I’ll be going with it.

I believe in showing the money when there’s something to show. So here are the stats to this point. Remember, because I’m using a book aggregator, these numbers will not be accurate until probably March 2012. I will continue to update them on a monthly basis sometime during the first week of the month.

A Lover for Rachel ~ release date 12/22/2012
Amazon ~ Unknown on 1/06/2012
Apple ~ Unknown on 1/06/2012
B&N ~ Unknown on 1/06/2012
Kobo Foreign ~ Unknown on 1/06/2012
Kobo-Sony-Diesel ~ Unknown on 1/06/2012
Smashwords ~ 1 sale, 38 views, Money Made ~ $0.81 (Gotta figure out where that 3 cents has gone!)

See you all soon!

Lynn

Ch-Ch-Changes - Turn and Face the Change

Hi everyone!

I know it's been a long, long time since I've posted anything here but I've had my reasons. Some of which you can see on this blog.

I've moved for those of you who haven't heard. And no, we're not talking about to just a new house. I've moved to a new country and it's had me in a tizzy for about a year now. Between this and the birth of my grandchildren, I haven't know what was up in so long. Add to that the winning of EPIC's award in Historical Erotic Romance and I've been one confused woman. LOL!

No, really, it just means I've been busy beyond my wildest dreams with life and now that it's settled down again, I'm spending time with this blog. First, you'll notice the new look. I've decided to not have people on my blog for a while but rather some wonderful color and what some are calling grunge though I can't see it. Me, I just love the colors and in reality, the night sky. I still love nekkid people a lot but as I'm looking for a designer to do up a website, a blog, a twitter background as well as a Facebook one, it might be a while. This will suffice until I can get those all in place. Besides...I like it! Second, I'll be doing a lot of things in these new colors. Like I said, you can expect a new website as well as a new twitter site. It will take me a while to get all of these things done and progress will be slow as I'm writing up a storm.

I'm sad to say that I won't be having a Christmas Extravaganza this year for a variety of things. One, I won't have an elf book out again this year and though it has me depressed, it doesn't mean I won't have a release. If all the stars align I should be having a December release from Shooting Star Books. They're waiting on a few items as they want everything perfect as this book will be their first release. You can find them at http://www.shootingstarbooks.com/ and it's a cool little story called A Lover for Rachel. It's a revamped, re-release of a very old story that first came out years ago from Whiskey Creek Press' Torrid line. It was in an anthology that didn't get much action and another author wanted out. The publisher then released us all. The story has about 2500 added words and has been totally refurbished for this new market. It's my understanding it will be on sale for just $0.99 everywhere. I'll keep you posted. Here's a copy of the draft cover...it's missing the company logo...but I've been told to start showing it around. Other than their website, you're the first to see it. Let me know what you think...as for me...I always love a Jimmy cover!

Starting in January of 2012, I will be hosting new authors and their work, holding contests and a whole lot more. Right now, you can see me at www.twitter.com/oddlynn3 and at another blog, http://www.theloglineblog.blogspot.com/ where I host authors showing off their log lines for their books. The other place I hang out is another blog called A Writer in Vienna where I showcase my adventure in Vienna, Austria with my husband and new pup, Harry. Check it out at at http://www.awriterinvienna.blogspot.com/. I hope to see you stop by when you can.

Until next time...

Lynn