Adrienne Woods Guest Post

How I quit my day job and become a full-time author.

 

I always wanted to write this post, and I'm so glad that I remembered this topic.

My first ever written book is called Firebolt. It's actually the reverse of Darkbeam Part I. Told from Elena's point of view. The girl that has no idea that dragons and Magic existed and was chucked into this world for various reasons. The entire Darkbeam Series is written in Blake Leaf, the alpha of the Dragons' Point of view.

Now, it took me three years to write Firebolt. After I was done with it, I outlined the other three - which later became four and that was how the five-book series in the Dragonian Series was born.

I was super excited when I published Firebolt and thought the hard part was done. LOL.

I had no idea what waited for me. Writing the book is the easy part. Getting the book in front of readers is the hard part, and I had no idea what to do.

So, this is what I did?

I'd stalk authors, authors who sold exceptionally well, and basically copy-cat what they did.

I knew these authors were way too busy to answer my questions, and that was why I stalked them and copied them all the way (NOT ASHAMED AT ALL).

Blog tours popped up in that year the most, and I begged hubby to help save up for a blog tour so that I could see how it was done.

I got helped from a company that did my cover reveal and followed it each step of the way (I didn't even know about bloggers then, hahaha)

Then after I saw how they did that, I started organizing my own for an entire year. It's hard, arduous work doing this if you don't have a list to work from that is filled with bloggers.

I have done each month a two-week blog tour at least. If you can book monthly tours, do it. They work then, they still work now.

But to get on track. I started organizing them two months in advance, worked hard every day to get back to the bloggers that emailed me, and sent them the media kit, review copies, blog posts, whatever they needed, and did something different every month.

My first was always a cover reveal, with links like GoodReads, and website, social media. Because if your book is not up on pre-order, you can't give them any other links.

The second was a release day blitz, which usually goes out to many blogs on the day your book gets released. I actually booked a tour with another company for this.

Only in my third month did I organize my own, and the first one was an excerpt tour. I would send every blogger a different excerpt of my book and an image if they would like to follow the tour to read other excerpts.

The fourth tour was a character interview tour. I had loads of interviews scheduled with my characters, which is still one of my favorite kinds of tours. Still, it's hard work again, hahaha.

The fifth was an author tour. A tour filled with things about me. Guest posts about me etc.

The sixth tour, till the 12th tour, was just standard blitz tours but scheduled for a month long. I think only from month 8 to 12 did I actually paid other companies to do them for me (the money I made from selling my 1 book)

I enjoyed organizing them, but it took up such a lot of time and away from writing that I couldn't carry on, but you can do them if you do not have money to pay for them when you start out.

So with no idea what these tours did for me, I wrote the second book. And I put it up on pre-order for two months and basically forgot about it. I had a little novella also up on pre-order about all my scenes that my editor cut, and I actually made a short little book about it and sold it for 99c. That was on pre-order too.

Then I had to get ready for getting the second book edited, released, get a cover, etc. The money that I made from my first book all paid for this.

During my second book's pre-order and arranging more blog tours for that release and marketing, I didn't even check my pre-orders. When I finally viewed it, about ten days before the release, I was bowled over.

I had about 200 pre-orders of the 99c book and a whopping 575 pre-orders of book two sold at $4.99.

You can do the math.

My husband and I were utterly shocked as I made double his salary just with one title.

That is how I became a full time author as it just grew from there on. The year that I did blog tours, actually helped me find my readers, and even though I didn’t have a website, or social medias back then, just Goodreads and twitter, I think, they made sure to keep and eye on me when the next title was going to come, and the cover reveal of the second title, mentioning the little novella that was on pre-order, did all of that.

Blog tours are God's gift to authors. Do not put them on the back burner if you do your marketing. Their readers are crucial and extremely popular in the reading community. They have substantial followers who love books and give new authors a chance if your book sounds interesting.

Thanks to all the Blog tour companies that have made my author dream of becoming a full-time author come true. I couldn't have done it without you.