- Penny Walker
A Self-publishing Journey - Part 2
You may have noticed that things are moving fast. The blog is currently playing catch-up to reality, so here’s what has happened in the interim.
I finally got everything together. With my trusty husband providing moral support from behind my left shoulder, I uploaded it all onto the Kindle Scout website, just 7 days ago. The email in response said I would receive a decision about whether I could have a campaign within 1–2 working days. It was Sunday so I figured Tuesday if I was lucky.
The confirmation arrived at 9.30pm on Monday night with a launch date two days later and a link to the campaign page. I had 24 hours to notify them of any mistakes in the page and to organise my social networking strategy. My head is spinning with buzzwords right now.
I timed my Facebook wall post and my emails carefully to coincide with the launch time, thinking that midnight EST on February 1st meant midnight in Sydney.
First mistake, my post was up thirteen hours too soon with wonderful people trying to help me using a link that had yet to go active and sending me messages saying, “it’s not working.” That thirteen hours was filled with self-recrimination as I upbraided myself for a wasted opportunity.
I know how this works. Life has become a series of instantaneous reactions to multiple stimuli. You see a post on FB, read it, do the thing and immediately move on. Valuable votes could be lost because of my scheduling error.
If you plan on trying this yourself, remember it is American Eastern Standard Time. Of course it is; it makes perfect sense in hindsight.
My plan, such as it was, was to try and push hard to get as many votes as early as possible and hopefully get into the ‘Hot and Trending’ section. I figured if I could get there, hopefully regular Kindle Scouts might take a look.
When it went live, I felt sick. I couldn’t eat that afternoon. Four and a half hours in my novel went ‘Hot’ due to all my wonderful supporters. It stayed there solidly for three days but dropped out this morning. It is back in again as I type.
We spend a great deal of time hypothesising how the system might function and what else we could try. I have had two approaches from people offering me networking services for a fee: not happening. I am going to trust to the work as the final decision on any book rests with Kindle.
It is going to be a very long month.
Penny’s book, Remission, is currently being considered for publication through Kindle Scout. You can read an excerpt of the book here and if you like it, you can nominate it to be published. If it gets enough nominations, it will be available for sale in the Kindle Store and you’ll receive a free copy of the book.
You can also check out more of Penny’s work at her website, www.penelopewalkerwriter.com.