Category: Publishing

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What Happened After My First Book Was Published?

What Happened After

What Happened After My First Book Was Published? Learn what I learned through six years of writing and publishing. I’ll cover my failures and successes, and what led to an exponential growth of sales and revenues.

The First Year 2016

My book Zombie Turkeys was published in ebook and paperback formats.

Oddly, Kindle did not accept my paperback cover. It was “too bloody”. I had to change the colors. So I have these two covers:

Best Science Stories Zombie Turkeys Gift What Happened After
Get your Zombie Turkeys here. You get a bushel of laughter with each book.
What Happened After
ebook version Get your Zombie Turkeys here. You get a bushel of laughter with each book.

Events: 1. Book launch at the Peoria North Library on October 31st. I had about 20 people and sold 5 books. Combined with 5 presales and I had ten in October.

2. Wheel Art First Friday – My wife made pottery here and I set up a table to sell books with their permission. I sold 4 books.

3. Peoria Library Author Fair – Sold 1, but I also made some author friends

4. Chambanacon in Bloomington – My first book fair. I sold 5 books. I made more author friends.

5. I started my newsletter in November, using addresses I picked up from my events.

Year total: 28 books, 27 paperback, 1 ebook.

Got questions? Ask me.

What Happened After 2016? 2017 happenings

I started writing another book in November 2016, My Undead Mother-in-law. It came out in August 2017.

Zombie Turkeys Thanksgiving What Happened After
My Undead Mother-in-law front cover. Click to get

Events: 1. I Know You Like A Book author signing. I sold 6 books.

2. Lit-on-Fire bookstore author reading and some sales.

3. I joined two author groups and sold some books to other authors.

4. I went to Her Majesty’s Tea Room and sold 4 books.

5. I sold 3 books at the Book Nook.

6. I sold some books to Barnes and Noble.

7. My Undead Mother-in-law launched at Barnes & Noble and I sold 1. I also appeared on TV here in Peoria.

8. I went back to Chambanacon and sold 8 books, 5 ZTs and 3 MUMs.

9. I published an audiobook version of Zombie Turkeys on 11/1/2017. You can get it for free by clicking here. I sold one later that year.

Zombie Turkeys Laughter 2021 Reviews What Happened After
Zombie Turkeys audiobook cover. Click to get!

Final results for 2017: 96 Zombie Turkeys sold and 37 My Undead Mother-in-law.

This post is long enough. Let me show you my sales chart to date and I’ll write another blog post soon. Notice my sales have increased every year except 2021. I sold so many in 2020, that my number of sales declined. 2022 isn’t over, but I expect to pass both 2020 and 2021.

The circle size represents the percent increase (or decrease) from the previous year.

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My Second Draft – What I Never Imagined

Villain's Vacation cover What is it like?

My Second Draft – What I Never Imagined – Here is my second installment of this series in real-time. I just finished my second draft and sent it to my editor. I’ll have the third installment in the future. Be sure to read the first post on my first draft here. Click here.

As always, you can get free books from me by clicking here.

Also, if you ever want to contact me, to comment or ask me something, click here.

So, what shocked my socks off about this second draft?

By the way, this book is the third in my Secret Supers series. It covers the adventures of four disabled middle schoolers who become superheroes. Here’s the first book:

Interesting Links My Second Draft
Secret Supers – click for free audiobook.

My Second Draft – My First Surprise

I finished my first draft last week and contacted my editor. She informed me that she has a six-week lead time. I didn’t know that. Oops!

Why is this a problem? I wanted the book completed by November 14th and the Christmas shopping season. I ASSumed she had a four-week lead time. My error.

My second error is that I promised it to her by Columbus Day October 10th and didn’t get it to her until today. That’s a double oops. So my publishing timeline is probably shot.

You see, when you’re a self-published author like me, you’re responsible to keep yourself on schedule and meet deadlines–or your sales suffer.

But why was I late? I have multiple excuses, but basically, it’s poor planning.

Villain's Vacation cover What is it like? My Second Draft
My second novel in the series, Villain’s Vacation. Click for a free copy

My Second Surprise in My Second Draft

Remember I mentioned being self-published? That means I contact and contract with an illustrator for each of my books. Fortunately, I’ve found a great illustrator, Sean “Fuzzy” Flanagan. I contacted him the same day as my editor about doing a cover illustration. He had the time to do it in October. Hurray!

We met yesterday via Zoom and Facebook conference and brainstormed a good cover we both loved. We also brainstormed the chapter icons. I love them! All my books have them. Here’s a sample:

What Do Readers Think My Second Draft
Chapter 1 icon of Villain’s Vacation. Click to get a copy

So what’s the problem? The cover we both wanted depicted a scene I hadn’t written. It was in the back of my mind for the whole book. So I spent yesterday afternoon writing it. But that was one reason I didn’t get my book to my editor yesterday.

The Other Reason I was Late

Just adding a new scene isn’t enough. With every second draft, after I clear off all the Grammarly errors and made all my points of view correct, I read the whole book aloud.

It’s amazing what you discover when you do that with a book you’ve just written. I find inconsistencies in point of view. I find awkward sentences. And I discover plot inconsistencies.

I read really fast and I don’t read every word–unless I read it aloud.

One last pitch: find out when my new book comes out through my newsletter. Subscribe here.

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Writer’s Block My Experience – This is why I don’t write more

What Do Readers Think

Writer’s Block My Experience: I’ve written eight books in seven years. It doesn’t sound like I have writer’s block–but I do.

I’ve been struggling to finish Secret Supers in Space for seven months. That’s the first draft—just 50,000 to 60,000 words. Usually, I get that much done in two to four months.

What’s my big problem?

Writer’s Block My Experience – What Is Writer’s Block?

It means you can’t or have difficulty writing. Duh!

A more official definition is:

Writer’s block—wanting to write and not writing—is a persistent problem that every writer (yes, every writer, even Stephen King) deals with, and one that has ended far too many writing careers.

The first thing I saw in my search

The last book I wrote in this series was Villain’s Vacation:

Writer's Block My Experience
Chapter icon from Villain’s Vacation

I got off to a flying start in November, writing for NaNoWriMo, the official National Novel Writing Month organization.

Here’s a chart of my monthly writing, so you can see what my writer’s block looks like:

MonthWords Written
November3,973
December0
January423
February0
March1517
April211
May (so far)0
Chart of my writing ‘progress’

Total? 6129 words in 42 hours of writing for 142 words per hour.

Pretty pathetic for a professional author, but I have an excuse: I was finishing two other books: 1) Zombie Detective audiobook (now published)

Andy Zach Newsletter Zombie Detective Audiobook Writer's Block My Experience
Audiobook cover – click to listen.

and 2) my first non-fiction book, The Gospel Medley. Believe it or not, this is at least the 20th round of edits for this book, over the 35 years I’ve worked on it.

The Gospel Medley Writer's Block My Experience
The Gospel Medley cover. Click to get

So that takes care of December through March. I can’t multi-task. What’s my problem in April and May?

Writer’s Block – the problem of self-publishing

I get easily distracted while writing. First of all, there is research. I’ll write and then need some fact, like “Where are there underground nuclear silos in Kansas?” This question arose for My Undead Mother-in-law.

Writer's Block My Experience
My Undead Mother-in-law, front and back cover spread. Click to get.

The same thing happens for Secret Supers in Space. What does the ISS look like? What is the capacity of the Dragon capsule for SpaceX? Where does SpaceX launch from? What is the curriculum for Space Camp? What is the daily agenda?

But that’s not all.

More Distractions

Every publisher and author needs to market your book. That doesn’t mean selling, although that’s what you want to happen. Rather it means telling people who might like your book that your book exists and is worth reading and WHY it’s worth reading.

This is a very important thing to do. You, as an author or publisher should do it every week, if not every day. If people don’t know about your book, they can’t buy it. If people don’t know how much they will enjoy and laugh at my books, why should they buy them?

So I joined Story Origin this year to market my books. That’s absorbed my time, every week, as I promoted my newsletter, books, and other newsletters and books.

I also have maintained Amazon ads, although I’ve cut my expense from $300/month to $50. I found a better way to advertise: through Free Kindle and Discount Books.

The Bottom Line – What Should I Do?

Give me your best and worst suggestions. Everyone who does so will get a free ebook of mine to read and review. Reach out to me any time at my email: [email protected] Or subscribe to my newsletter for all my blog posts and news, as well as free books.