Do you want to know how important you are?

Many authors consider themselves artists. I’m no different. We use our creativity to write. But writing is only a small part of being an indie author. And I must add, thankfully, the easiest one.

My process is pretty much the same every time I write a book. I have an idea, that comes from anywhere or anything, and I write it down. Then, when I decided on an idea, I do a little research (or a lot sometimes, lol), and some consulting if needed.

I usually have the entire story ready in my head (even if it’s a novel), and then I outline it. But that doesn’t mean the story is set in stone; some changes may occur in the process, and they usually do. Then I send it out for editing, make a few adjustments, and occasionally do some re-writing.

Then the book is done, and it's the moment we authors change from artists to business people. Yes, we become business people. At least, it's the time we need to realize that and deal with it.

You might be wondering, "What does this have to do with me being a Very Important Person?" Well, bear with me and you’ll see.

Every new release is always the same for us authors. When we send a book out into the world, we can’t wait until we know what you, our beloved readers, think about our new book or story. It’s very thrilling, and scary. We've devoted so much time and effort to producing it for you that the waiting is unbearable. Trust me, it’s like having a series of heart attacks, lol.

But, yeah, the business thing. Of course, our main goal is for you to read our books. And as much as we’d love to give our books away for free to everyone who's willing to read them, we need to sell them. But not just because we want to make a lot of money (although it's not bad if we do, of course, lol); we need to spend a lot of money to get enough visibility for to readers to know that we even exist. For that, we need to have a considerable marketing budget to make sure our books reach readers.

Each books requires a great cover, editing, proofreading, book trailer, deals at paid promo sites, marketing, etc. All of that costs money, a lot of money. We can skip some of it if we don’t have enough budget (and the majority of indie authors don’t), but the one thing we cannot give up, so that we can offer the best for you, is editing.

And then, there’s Amazon! My books are all exclusive to them, except Bloody Origin because they refuse to let me offer this book for free. When my books had wide distribution (that is, on all platforms, not only Amazon), about 90% of my sales came from Amazon. So, it’s easier for me (and more cost-effective) to not have to worry about promoting everywhere else.

Now let me show you how Amazon works for us authors. They are a business, and we authors are a product to them. However, remember what I told you before? We are businesses as well. And we need to sell our books. To us, Amazon is just a place where readers can buy them.

Now you’re probably wondering, why doesn't Amazon do more to help authors sell their books? Wouldn’t Amazon make more money this way? Well, I myself ask this question all the time. The sad answer is, they only help if we are already selling books. Make sense to you? Yeah, I know, it doesn’t make any sense to me either.

Okay, they send an email to our followers telling them we're about to launch a new book. But that’s all. Everything else will depend on our numbers during the first week after the launch day. They watch our book's sales performance during this period, and then they either do or don't give us a hand, such as showing our books as ‘readers that bought this book also bought’, or if we're really lucky, they send an email to their mailing list. They also look at how many reviews our books are getting, as well as how many books we’re selling.

There are other crazy rules and requirements they impose on us, but these are for another time. I told you all of this to show you how important you are to us indie authors. We need you to help to spread the word about us and our books. We can’t really count on anyone else but YOU to do it for us.

Well yes, obviously, we need you to buy our books. But there are other ways for you to help us.

A great way to help is through ‘word of mouth’. Tell your friends about us and our books. And ask them to tell their friends, and their friends to tell their friends ... you know the drill. As more people learn about us, the more books we’ll sell. And the more books we sell, the more new ones we can write for you.

Indie e-books cost only as much as a cup of coffee or less, so it isn’t that much money. And we receive only a small percentage of its price. This creates the need for us authors to sell thousands of books to make some money. See our dilemma? That’s why we can’t give all of our books away for free. So, if you could skip a cup of coffee or a candy bar or two monthly and buy our books instead, it would help a lot.

Another thing you can do, and this is really important, is read and review our books. Post those reviews at Amazon, Goodreads, BookBub, anywhere you can. Reviews help us to get visibility. As I told you, even Amazon will notice, because the more reviews a book has, the more sales the book gets.

If you can’t spend any money buying books, but you’re on Amazon Kindle Unlimited, you can read our books through that. Well, at least the books that are part of the program, as mine are. We make a lower royalty if you read the entire book there, but if many do it, it helps.

I also have a Patreon page. For only two dollars monthly, you can help me pay for the essential services needed to release new books. And I have three more coming late this year and early in 2021. But I’ll only be able to do it if I have a decent budget. I’m going to change the pledge levels there so you can get the most benefits for being my patron. Even if you can’t do it, you can always tell your friends, to tell their friends ...

My Bloody Puzzle is on Reedsy Discovery. Please visit my page there, follow me, and upvote my book. The top books of the week are featured in their newsletter.

Of course, no matter what, we’ll still have some books to give away to you, our beloved readers – because, as I said, you are really important and without you there would be no reason for us to write books. We need you to read our stories and help us keeping writing them for you. Thank you very much for being my reader!