One of the biggest challenges for me as an indie author is deciding what I'm going to work on next. I have so many irons in the fire, so many ideas, that it's hard for me to decide which one to go with. When you couple this with the business end of things, well, it really gets messy.
Of my three books, The Eye of the Beholder is my best performer. It took off much more quickly than I'd expected. Frankly, I didn't think anyone would want to read a fairy tale retelling. I'm glad everyone who's purchased my book has proven me wrong! Its success has inspired me to write a second fairy tale book, which will be my NaNoWriMo project for this year, and which I hope to publish early in 2013. I love fairy tales, so I'm more than happy to write more now that I know there's a demand for them.
Creators and Contributor are proving much slower to take off. This is so funny to me because I was convinced that the reverse would be true. Just goes to show you that, when you do this self-publishing thing, you never really know how things are going to go. Sometimes I feel like I spend 99% of my time flailing in the dark, angsting over what marketing (if any) I should do, what genre might prove to be the most reliable, etc. I didn't go into this expecting to be a pro, but it is uncomfortable to feel like such an amateur at times.
My intention was to continue on with the Contributor trilogy, but now I'm really torn. I resurrected an old partial manuscript for a contemporary women's fiction novel, and I'm strongly tempted to finish it first and then work on the next Contributor book once NaNoWriMo is over. I'm very curious about how that book would perform, and having books across three different genres would probably also give me a better idea of what types of books are more successful. Then again, another part of me feels like I need to stick to one thing and then branch out later. I'm afraid if I'm spread out over multiple genres, I'll lose readers because, even if they liked one of my books, they might not necessarily care for the other genres I'm writing in.
Right now, I am leaning toward working on the contemporary novel. I had some more ideas for it this morning, and I'm anxious to tackle it. Maybe I need a little space from the Contributor saga. Either way, I'll be in front of my keyboard again tomorrow morning, working on my next novel. I've had a bit of a break and now it's time to get back to work.
I also want to announce that I'll be doing another free promo with Creators on Wednesday, September 19. I was excited about how successful the last promo was, and I'm hoping to reach even more readers with this next promo!
