I’ve had POWER PLAY out in the world for almost 10 years now, December 11th will be the tenth birthday, and this is its’ 3rd…tone up, for lack of a better word. I say that because the bulk of the story didn’t change, but it definitely got stronger over the years.
There were a lot of reasons for that, mainly being that I grew as a writer and that I learned a lot, I talked about that briefly in my introduction blog, but this is going to be a bit more in-depth.
The main difference is that a friend of mine, who also did the copy edit this time, told me how much she loved the story, and that was a validation I didn’t know the power of, until she said it. I still have the messages saved on my phone as favorites. My partner’s read the book, several others whose opinions I value have read it and loved it and it means the world to me.
Something about having this honest, prose magician, ace, not really a fan of romance woman like my story and my female lead (she has mixed feelings on Michael, but that helped me know she was being honest) made me feel invincible this time around.
So, I got another good friend to design my website and sat down to really think about how to get my book to readers. I already knew it was hard to find my book when searching on Amazon. I’ve learned over the years that the number of reviews and keywords play a crucial role and then the algorithms. Good gravy, trying to understand the algorithms and hashtags of Amazon and social media, not to mention the number of posts you need to even show up…it’s a full-time job and I already have two of those between my day job and writing.
For a long time, I struggled with the idea that, if I really wanted this, I’d do whatever it takes and that stopped the day my partner said “isn’t this supposed to be something fun for you?”
So, the goal became, how do I get the book to readers without it taking all of this time and fighting these machines?
Romance only bookstores have been increasing over the years and I knew there was a bit of a hang up for them in buying self-published books, because if they don’t sell then the store is out the money they spent because a lot of times they can’t return the books for a refund. Completely made sense to me, heard it from a few different indie bookstores, they’re a business, I get it. I know there’s a love of browsing bookstores and finding a book organically, just coming across it, picking it up and thinking, “I’d read this.”
You don’t get that online.
Then I thought, I have money from my day job, why don’t I buy some copies and just give them to some stores to sell. If they do, maybe they’ll be willing to order/carry it, but the store isn’t out any money.
Also, podcasts and book reviewers, people trust them, let’s send some copies to them, if they like it, awesome, if not, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but at least I tried.
Last Saturday that’s exactly what I did. I had a whole list of stores, podcasts and reviewers I reached out to and offered them free copies of POWER PLAY. I’ve already had some positive responses and y’all…I scared my dogs I got so excited. I put the first batch in the mail today, I’m hoping to hear from more people as the days go by, so if you want to check out POWER PLAY and want to support your local bookstore, pop in and ask them for POWER PLAY, if they don’t carry it, they can order it from me or Ingram. I just want to share the story and still have time to write all the others I’ve got inside.