Self-Publishing Success Stories: Donna Fasano

Excerpt from Blow the Trumpets, Bang the Drums! (from the author's blog)

I have sold in excess of 100,000 copies of my books!

When I uploaded The Merry-Go-Round to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords back in January of 2010, my only wish was that a few people might get the chance to read the book that Harlequin purchased but never published. (The publication rights were returned to me when the book line that The Merry-Go-Round was slated for, NeXt, folded.) THEN I realized I could request the pub rights of eleven other novels that Harlequin had let languish.  [ . . . .]

Please follow the link to read the rest of the author's blog post.



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Self-Publishing Success Stories: Shadonna Richards

Excerpt - useful advice from an interview on Dark Angel Writing Tools:

Do you have 5 helpful suggestions to help struggling writers become better novelists? If so, what are they? 

1) Read a lot. Read for pleasure and for learning about what works and what doesn’t work in fiction. Stephen King once wrote that if you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.
2) Write a lot. Writers write. As John Grisham once told me and a group of other writers (at a conference), you should be able to write at least one page a day. One page a day is 365 pages in a year.
3) Set realistic goals.
4) Network with other writers.
5) Believe in yourself and don’t ever give up. 

Excerpt from the author's blog post
http://shadonnarichards.blogspot.com/2012/04/greetings-lovely-people-thank-you-so.html

THE BRIDE SERIES (BOOKS 1-3)


KINDLE #1 BESTSELLING SERIES IN HUMOR/ ROMANCE
(Over 50,000 copies sold in the first seven months of release)

A BUNDLE OF THREE BESTSELLING ROMANCE NOVELS IN THE BRIDE SERIES
***(Currently all three titles are in the Top 100 Bestsellers in Contemporary Romance)

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Self-Publishing Success Stories: Samantha Young

Excerpt from the author's blog (12000 sales in July 2011! How I got There)

And it’s with great pleasure that after checking my sales and double checking them that I came to the realisation that I could write full time. My dream job. Wow. In the month of July I have sold over 12000 copies of my novels on kindle alone. I’ve pasted in screenshots just in case there are a few disbelievers out there. These screenshots are just my kindle sales and don’t include my paperback sales through CreateSpace or my sales through Smashwords (BN etc) but those are nowhere (nowhere) near as awesome as my kindle sales.

July 2011 is ages ago in the world of self-publishing.  I just checked the author Amazon Page and her books are still selling very well.  And since July 2011, the author has added a few more books.



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Self-Publishing Success Stories: Jonas Saul

Helpful advice to new writers:
Excerpt from The Farthest Reaches's Behind The Words // Jonas Saul

[. . . . .]
4. I receive my battle weary manuscript back and make the corrections she has suggested.
5. After all that I do a character edit which means I read only one characters POV scenes from the beginning of the novel until the end so I can monitor their progress and growth. I need to make my characters just right so the story rings true.
6. Lastly, I read the entire manuscript backwards, page by page, out loud. This is so I don’t get lost in the continuity of the story. This keeps me out of the story and into the words. Just seeing the sentences and paragraphs for what they are and hearing them out loud really makes a difference. A huge difference.

Very useful tip in my opinion.  Follow the link to read the whole post
http://www.thefarthestreaches.com/2011/08/behind-words-jonas-saul.html

The author generously shared his sales number with other writers on the Kindleboards

As of March 2012 I have sold over 50,000 ebooks since the beginning of last year. I have 12 titles for sale right now at Amazon with four more going up for sale within the next eight weeks. 

Sincerely,
Jonas

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Self-Publishing Success Stories: Laurin Wittig

Useful tidbit for new writers (excerpt from Savvy Author's Let's Get Emotional by Laurin Wittig)

Writing emotion is hard. How do you capture something that is so fleeting and without substance? How do you paint a word picture of a feeling?

Shh. I've got a secret. Are you listening? Describing emotion is all about describing the physical manifestation of those emotions. Yep, the easiest way to show emotion is to describe what they make your character feel in her five physical senses, and what they make her do. That's physical description.
You can do that, right?
Think about it.   

If you see [ . . . . ]

 Click to read the rest of this helpful advice.  http://www.savvyauthors.com/vb/content.php?899-Let-s-Get-Emotional-by-Laurin-Wittig



As for her success, she recently shared with this blog that she has sold over 75,000 copies of her indie books since Sept 2010.  Congratulations and thanks for sharing this with everyone.  Many writers will appreciate this transparency.  I know I am.


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Self-Publishing Success Stories: Beth Orsoff

Excerpt from the Writer's Guide to E-Publishing's My Journey from Failed Mid-Lister to Successful Author, by Beth Orsoff

Thanksgiving weekend I uploaded all three books to B&N via their PubIt program.  I sold 9 books at B&N in November.  In December I sold 500 books at B&N.  In January 2011 I sold almost 7000 books at B&N.  Between Amazon and B&N, I sold over 13,000 books in January.  Will I continue to sell books at that rate?  I don’t know.  But I’ve already had much more success as a self-published author than I ever did as a traditionally published author, plus I get to write the books I want to write, choose my own covers, and publish on my schedule, not someone else’s.

Is self-publishing for everyone?  No.  Is my success typical?  Probably not.  But if you’ve followed the rules of publishing i.e., learned your craft, written good books, perhaps even landed an agent, and you still can’t get a traditional publisher to take a chance on you, why not self-publish?  What have you got to lose?

Read the whole guess post by Beth Orsoff here:
http://thewritersguidetoepublishing.com/my-journey-from-failed-mid-lister-to-successful-author-by-beth-orsoff


She also wrote this very helpful article for writers.  Lot of good and useful advice.
http://bethorsoff.com/for-writers/


She recently shared her sales number (over 75,000) with this blog.  Thanks Beth and congratulations on your success.


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Self-Publishing Success Stories: Tori Scott

Useful advice for new writers (excerpt from Theresa Ragan's interview Meet Tori Scott!)

Any advice for new writers just getting started? 

Yes. Read. Read everything you can get your hands on, and not just in the genre you write. You absorb form and structure as you read. Read once for content, then read it again to analyze it. What worked in the book? What didn't? What would you have written differently? If you don't read, your chances of success as a writer are greatly diminished.

 I'd like to see my Satisfaction books back at the top of the lists. I was selling 15,000 a month of those in Dec and January, but they've dropped off to around 3000 a month.

The author generously shared her sales number with other writers on Kindleboard Writers' Cafe.

I had to go back and add up my monthly sales since I started last summer. I hit 84,772 as of midnight 3/15/2012

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