Sandy Nathan's YOUR SHELF LIFE

When I wrote my last post on Your Shelf Life, I was preparing to launch my first “free day” campaign with Amazon’s KDP program. Since my track record on such promotions has been miserable (check out this article in which I explain how my Amazon bestseller day yielded sales of thirteen books), I was concerned about how the days would go.
How I Made Over $42,000 in One Month Selling my Kindle eBooks (known at $42K hereafter). Making $42K in a month is good enough for me. This is a really good guidebook outlining what Cheryl did to make a small fortune doing exactly what I’m going to be doing. It’s all there, step by step.

The major, major leaning I gleaned from $42K, is that while Cheryl is a marketing whiz and really loves doing it, I am not. I am a writer. I love to write and produce highly imaginative fantasy, sci-fi, visionary fiction, and even nonfiction about horses and spirituality. I’m not a marketer.

What happened when I applied Cheryl’s techniques in $42K to my ineptitude?

Holy macaroni! The Angel SOARED. Let’s see if I can find some screen shots. (Always take screen shots. My book Numenon once was #1 in 3 categories of mysticism and flew at about the 1,000 in paid sales level on Amazon for, oh, a year or so. I didn’t realize that this was good. Didn’t think it would ever change, either. I didn’t take any screen shots. Now all I have is a memory.)

Is Numenon a gripping page turner, a thriller pitting the highest levels of American capitalism against ancient shamanic power?

Or is it a philosophic investigation into the reality of the mystics, the reality beyond and beneath our everyday lives?

Will it take you to your core, the real you you’ve always wanted to be?

Read it and find out.

So here’s the question: Is it possible to be successful and sane in the writing profession? Writing is hard. Getting published in a professional manner is harder. (Whether you self-publish or go the traditional route.) In my experience, marketing is hardest of all.

In the world of writers and authors, success is measured by two things: the number of books sold and the amount of money made selling them. If you want to test this, go anywhere that authors or writers congregate. Check out my Facebook wall (or yours). Authors crow about their book sales and big events and triumphs all the time.