I first met Adriana Ryan when her title, The World of Shell and Bone popped up under The Breeders on Amazon. Once I read her book, I knew we were kindred souls. She will have a new release out soon that I am very excited about. The premise is one that makes you think, "Gee, I wish I'd thought of that." Today she is revealing the cover of her much anticipated book, Secret for a Song. Check it out. 

Saylor Grayson makes herself sick. Literally.

She  ate her first needle when she was seven. Now, at nineteen, she’s been kicked out of college for poisoning herself with laxatives. The shrinks call it Munchausen Syndrome. All Saylor knows is that when she’s ill, her normally distant mother pays attention and the doctors and nurses make her feel special.

Then she meets Drew Dean, the leader of a local support group for those with terminal diseases. When he mistakes her for a new member, Saylor knows she should correct him. But she can’t bring herself to, not after she’s welcomed into a new circle of friends. Friends who, like Drew, all have illnesses ready to claim their independence or their lives  

For the first time, Saylor finds out what it feels like to be in love, to have friends who genuinely care about her.  But secrets have a way of revealing themselves. What will happen when Saylor’s is out?


Can't wait? Me neither. The book is due out in June and in the meantime check out The World of Shell and Bone. 

A huge fan of spooky stuff and shoes, Adriana Ryan enjoys alternately hitting up the outlet malls and historic graveyards in Charleston, SC where she lives and imbibes coffee. Her husband and two small children seem not to mind when she hastily scribbles novel lines on stray limbs in the absence of notepads.

Website: http://www.adrianaryan.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AuthorAdrianaRyan
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/adrianaryansc
                                                              Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/adrianaryan

Before I had children, I watched A LOT of Dr.Phil. "Now Katie," you are likely thinking, "this blog is usually about writing and not about your most embarrassing personal escapades."  Yes, dear reader, you are right. I state this point about my previous love for Dr. Phil not just to embarrass myself, but to use it as an illustration  One thing I love about Dr. Phil (besides his folksy sayings and shiny head) is that he helps audiences identify hidden negative thoughts they are thinking about themselves. Then he helps to squash them like a Texas chigger. As a school counselor I use this a lot with my students, but I also use it a lot in my writing. There is no other activity where I have more negative thoughts than when I am conjuring up new worlds. I think I am not alone, though if I am solo in this cold and lonely place at least Dr. Phil is with me. (Imagine his thick mustache for a moment. Ah, yes.)

Here are some of the most common negative thoughts in no particular order.

Lie One - "I have to be inspired to write." 

The Fear - "I will sit down to the computer and realize I have nothing to say. Furthermore, I will realize I actually am a dolt with a Twizzlers for a brain. I should probably give up and focus on my Words with Friends game." 

The Solution - Begin by telling yourself that it is okay not to feel inspired to write, but make yourself do it anyway. Tell yourself it is okay if everything you write sounds terrible. I'd say it's okay if all you write is "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." (However, if you have any inklings towards buying an ax, seek professional help.) The very act of sitting down in front of a computer can kick your brain into writer mode. You'll be surprised at how the inspiration finds you right there on the page. 

Lie Two - "If I write, it will be terrible and there will be no fixing it." 

The Fear - "Any material that I produce will be drivel. My writing will be crap and no matter how many times you sculpt a cow pattie it'll never be Michelangelo's David (tiny pee pee and all). 

The Solution - Pounding out a crummy first draft is the only way to start. No one writes a perfect first draft, not even the greats. As Raymond Chandler once said, "“Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.” And as Ernest Hemingway so eloquently put it, "The first draft of anything is shit." So, either way you've got a lot of puking or pooping to do before you lay a golden egg. 


Lie Three - "I'll focus on building my platform first. I need to have lots of followers so that when I actually write my book, I'll have people to buy it."

The Fear - Sitting down to do the hard work. What's more fun: dredging your soul or chatting on Twitter?

The Solution - Forget about platform, at least for now. You'll need to connect with readers at some point and you'll want a landing spot where readers can find you, but the work. THE WORK, is what will sustain you and keep those readers coming back for more. Don't let your brain fool you into taking the easy way out. Write first, platform second. 

There you have it, little Phil-inites, three big lies we writers tell ourselves. The sooner you can squash them, the sooner you'll be on your merry, writing way. What about you? What are some lies you tell yourself when you sit down to write? 

One of the big tenets of Indie writing guru J.A. Konrath is a professional book cover is worth its weight in gold. I couldn’t agree more. Besides the book being recommended by a friend, a stunning cover is one of the top reasons someone buys your title over the rest. Readers need to see your cover (sometimes only in a thumbnail size) and feel drawn to it. They need to look at a slew of books and pick yours above the rest. Otherwise your book, no matter how brilliant it is, will be passed over time and time again.

Let’s take a look at a few examples. To preface, I hold no ill-will toward any books presented here. Nor am I affiliated with either author. I am only using the covers as examples. 

To the right you will see exhibit A. This is a book available for sale currently on Amazon. When you look at this cover, what strikes you? Would you think that this author spent a lot of time designing a cover trying to get the aspect ratio correct? Would you assume that this author might have spent the same amount of time trying to correct plot holes in her manuscript? 

Exhibit B is a self-published title hailing at a steep $6.99 price tag on Amazon. At first look, I would think this book is about a giant on the swim team. It again has some of the same issues as above in that it conveys a cheeply put together product. This is not the message you want to send, people. You've toiled for months, maybe years on your book. Don't blow it by slapping some stock photo into a Word document and calling it a day. Lazy cover art makes readers think you are selling a  lazily written book. First impressions matter. 

Now to exhibit C. The book below is also for sale on Amazon and it is the same price as the book A and half the cost of book B. Now, if you were interesting in buying a book and these three were sitting side by side, which do you think you'd drop $2.99 on?  This cover is compelling. It draws me in. I know instantly what genre the book is and I 

have an idea of what it will be about. It also tells me its author has spent considerable time and probably some money on making this the best quality cover it can be, which leads me to assume she did the same with her content.  

So, if you are pondering your own book cover, here are some elements to consider. 

1. Does it look professional? Would someone immediately categorize it as "self-published" just by looking at it?
2. Will the image hold up when shrunken down to a thumbnail?
3. Does the picture convey the genre, age group and tone you are going for?
4. Is there a gut reaction to the image? Will your readers be drawn toward the book because of it?
5. Is it legible? Does the title and author stand out from the image? 

If you've gotten my drift sufficiently, I think you'll conclude that it is worth spending some money on a cover. It doesn't have to cost you an arm and a leg, however. You can purchase a quality cover for around $300. The amount of sales your cover will bring you should make up that much and more. 

What about you? What do you think makes a good cover? 

Ah, time, one of the most precious commodities on earth. If you are like me, you protect it like Smeagol and his ring (Imagine me repeating "my precious" in a creepy voice while wearing a loin cloth). I literally have less than 60 minutes in the day to write. Don't believe me? Here's my work day schedule. 

5:50 am - Wake to Alarm. Hate life. Hit snooze. 
6:00 am - Get ready for work. Pet Cat. Tell children it is too early and try to convince them to go back to bed. Fail. 
7:00 am - Work. Change lives ... or class schedules. Give free pep talks. Change more class schedules. 
3:30 pm - Pick up daughter. Pick up son. Mediate fight over who gets to use the Ipad in the car. 
4:30 pm - Arrive home. Feed Herpes Cat and Over-weight Dog. Pick up mess. Change into what the hubs calls my "comfy (i.e. awful) clothes" 
5:30 pm - Make and eat dinner. Drive kids to gymnastics or swimming or underwater basket weaving. Facilitate baths, homework, Herpes Cat. Spend a moment to tell a story to the hubs, get interrupted by a kid and never finish telling the story. 
8:30 pm - Put kids to bed. Read stories. Turn on night lights. 
9:00 pm - Slap my face and pry open eyelids. Write. 
10:00 pm - Fall into bed and pray the kids sleep through the night. Repeat. 

So, if you are like me and life is always trying to get you down, I want to give you five things you can adjust so that you have 60 minutes a day to write. It isn't easy, but it is worth it. Here they are in no particular order.

1. Cut Out Three TV Shows a Week   Stephen King tells writers in his book On Writing to throw their TVs away. Now, not only is that bad for the environment (recycle, people), it is also very hard. Watching zero TV sounds like a death sentence to many. I am not suggesting anything that drastic. I suggest looking at your viewing list and cutting out your bottom three shows. Do you really need to know who won Cupcake Wars? Will life go on if you watch Parks and Rec in reruns later in life? Keep a few of your favorite shows. After all  this is your only life and you deserve to enjoy it, right? But, I'm certain you can live without a lot of what you watch. Try it for a week. I've found I don't even miss Oprah anymore. 

2. Say No I am a self-diagnosed people pleaser. That means whenever someone asks me to attend a PTA meeting or bake cookies or volunteer in the church nursery, I want to say yes. It is hard-wired in me to please others. But, the more I do those things, the less time I have. Are any of those things bad? No. Are they time consuming? Yes. One person cannot do it all. And by saying no, you are really saying yes to other possibilities. 

3. Limit Social Media Social media is a time suck. There are no ifs, ands or butts about it. I know you use it to promote your book. I know you need to build a fan base, get more Twitter follows and Pintress your character pages. But, it can also eat up your time faster than my kid with a box of Gogurts. You may need social media, but I encourage you to take a long hard look at the minutes per day you are using it. More than thirty minutes total for someone as busy as I am can be killer. If you have more time in your day, then by all means, indulge. However, you still need to pay attention to the time. Facebook and Twitter can be a black hole vortex where time goes to die. Set a kitchen timer for thirty minutes. When it beeps, leave your Farmville game and move on with your life. 

4. Socializing This is the point where you realize how lame I really am. I rarely go out. Like as in almost never. This is probably not a good thing. I have a handful of close friends that I see fortnightly. The rest of my free time is spent with my family, managing my house or writing. Will I regret not going out more or hanging with my peeps (do people say peeps anymore? Word.)? Maybe. Will I regret never making my dream a reality? For sure. It is all about priorities. You need to find yours and stick to them no matter what. 

5. Be a Crummy Housekeeper At this point Martha Stewart would revoke my lady card if she knew what a crummy house keeper I am. Now, Child Protective Services doesn't need to be called or anything. My kids are clean. My house is neat, but you certainly wouldn't want to eat off my floor. Also, I think the dust bunnies are scheduling a revolt. The sad part is I really like a clean house. I love my home to be tidy and smelling fresh. But with children and two weird pets, I'd have to devote hours a day to keeping it that way. So I don't. I let go. I even hired a cleaning lady twice a month. Am I less of a woman? Maybe. Do I care? Not when I'm making my word count every day. Dust bunnies be damned!

There you have it. Five relatively painless steps to add time into your day. What about you? How do you find time when there is none? 

When I look at that title above, it gives me chills. 800 books. I started this little adventure in August of this year thinking it would be great if a few people I didn't know read my book. How exhilarating to reach someone half way around country! As my sale began to pick up I thought, wouldn't it be cool to make a little bit of dough doing this? And, ta da! That started happening. What I could not predict is how much my sales have picked up since Christmas. I am on a tidal wave that just won't quit (hopefully it won't, please, please don't let it quit). But, I'm not here just to tout my success. I want to give you some tips to help you to sell right along with me if you aren't already. 

First of all, let's start with the numbers. Here's the breakdown of sales for February. The Breeders sold 552 and had 78 Amazon Prime borrows. Nessa sold 250. So, with only two titles on Amazon and one of them a novelette, I made roughly $1500. If I were to add one more title that sells like The Breeders, well, as Mater from the movie Cars would say, "Dag gum, dems some job quittin' numbers right dere." 

So, I'm selling well. The question is how? Well, I have a few good guesses as to why I'm doing well right now. I'll lay out the top five to give you an idea of what I think put me over the top. 

1. Write something people want to read. The Breeders is a cross-over YA/Adult dystopia. People are still out there looking for YA dystopias. So I am riding the crest of a Hunger Games wave and the odds are ever in my favor. I know other authors having similar success in genres like SciFi, Paranormal Romance and Erotica. That is the bonus of being an indie author. If you spot a trend that you are already comfortable in, you can write, edit and produce a book fast enough to ride the wave. Bottom line is no matter how good a book, if people aren't reading that genre, it won't get sold. 

2. Put out your best book. I took 18 months with The Breeders. I must've revised it 100 times. I am not exaggerating when I state that figure. I think I reread and changed that draft about 100 times. I had critic partners that were writers. I hired an editor and she did three passes on it. I have read a lot of self-published titles with my stint as reviewer for Underground Book Reviews. Most of them do not read like a book that has been revised 100 times. If you want a book to sell, it has to be as good as something sitting on a bookstore shelf. No short cuts. 

3. Reviews, reviews, reviews. I now have close to 80 reviews for my book. It has been a slow build, but now that I have amassed those numbers, the book is selling itself. This is something that takes time. Once you write the best book you can, be patient. If it's good, people will review it and momentum will build. 

4. Building platform. I read a great book called Platform by Michael Hyatt. I recommend it for any creative type that is trying to wheel and deal. From Michael's ideas I've been doing some major consideration in regard to my platform. I've tightened up my blog, posted more content and thought deeply about what topics might draw readers. I've started tweeting even though I didn't understand it. I've build a decent following on Facebook using an ad I bought for $50. I've also been reaching out to other authors in my genre, talking, sharing and cross-promoting. It's taken a lot of hard work, but I think I'm starting to see the fruits of my labor. Platform matters. 

5. Put out more titles. Nessa was an experiment to see if I could put out a quality short that would help sell my main title. As a novelette, or 30,000 words, it was quick to write (about a month) and it only cost me $100 for the cover art. I'm hoping since it is priced at 99 cents people will pick it up on impulse. I'm also hoping they'll like it and buy The Breeders or vice versa. So, each book is helping sell the other. Magic. 

So, there you have it, five ways I've found success selling books through Amazon. What about you, what's helped you make headway in selling your titles?