Thursday, January 09, 2014

New Year Musings of a Writer.

Latest release
Christmas now seems a distant memory, even New Year is forgotten as the children return to school and the streets return to normal. However, January is still a good time to review what you've achieved last year and what you hope to get done in 2014.
Last year I managed to publish almost a book a month from my back list but my goal was to start writing fresh material again – something that had been reduced to a trickle since I moved three years ago.
In the summer I started writing my first new Regency,The Duke's Proposal, to my delight the words flowed and the book more or less wrote itself. Fortunately it has also proved popular with my readers and still remains my best seller. I then started writing the second part of my World War II drama as I'd received several e-mails from readers asking where this book was. I'd promised to publish it in October 2013. My aim was to complete this book and get it out to my beta readers before Christmas and I just got it done in time. It will be published sometime in February.
Most popular title.
Now what do I hope to get done this year? I want to continue to release my back list, I have four more Regencies  to put out. In October the rights revert to me from the six books with Musa so they will be re-released with new covers – but I'll not be able to put up the first of these until December.
My intention is to write three new regencies, and am two thirds of the way through the first of these and this will, hopefully, be published at the end of January. I'll also write the final part of Barbara's War and publish that in October.
I'm cutting back on social media, blog tours and promotion as I've come to the conclusion that, apart from the new Amazon promotion tool, none of the above  produce extra sales or even more reviews. I shall continue to adjust pricing of my books as this does seem to improve sales sometimes.
Interspersed with my writing life I also have family and friends to spend time with and I'm celebrating my golden wedding this year. I can't believe in 2015 I'll be three score years and ten - how have I got so old when inside I still feel the same as I did 30 years ago?
What are the rest of you doing? How many books do you plan to write, edit, publish? Do you have any inspired plans to increase sales or find yourself a new agent or publisher?
I hope that 2014 brings everyone what they wish for.
Fenella J Miller

1 comment:

Jane Jackson said...

Your post rang an entire peal of bells for me, Fenella. Good luck with continued sales of your back list, and I hope writing your new book/s brings you enormous pleasure and even greater success.