*looks around nervously* Is it safe to come back?
Wow. What a week that was, eh? If you haven’t been around these parts in the last few days, on Tuesday I had the honor of being Freshly Pressed, i.e. being highlighted on the WordPress.com homepage.
Cue more than 12,000 hits in one day, and more comments, like and subscribes than even a highly caffeinated gal can keep up with. At one point my average hits per hour rate was more than my average hits per month for the entire first year of this blog. What’s utterly hilarious about this is that the post in question—How To Sell Self-Published Books: Read This First—wasn’t even really part of this month’s how-to-sell-self-published-books theme. It was the introduction to it. But clearly it struck a nerve. The whole experience was amazing, and who wouldn’t want to see this below something they wrote?
A lot of people have been asking how I got Freshly Pressed. I don’t have a clue. I can only tell you that Read This First was already a popular post, having been picked up Joel on The Book Designer on Sunday (a great blog for self-pubs, by the way) and subsequently linked to on Twitter a lot. On Monday Reddit sent a few thousand people its way. (Before Tuesday, Monday was this blog’s busiest day ever with 3,393 visits, most of them Reddit referrals. Before that, my busiest day was around 2,500.) So maybe its popularity got it noticed by WP or something…? Honestly though, I don’t know. All I know is this: getting Freshly Pressed was great. If you’re reading this now because of it, hello! Welcome. Do stick around. And always bring coffee. If you’ve already been with me for a while, I sincerely hope you didn’t subscribe to comments when I first posted Read This First—if you did, may I apologize for your inundated inbox…
Anyways, let’s get back to business. Over five days next week I’m going to be presenting my Not at All Scientific Theory on How Self-Publishers Can Use Social Media to Get Amazon to Sell Their Books—on my To Do list for the weekend: (i) read This is How It Ends by Kathleen McMahon, (ii) watch the Spanish Grand Prix, (iii) think up a snappier name for that theory thingy—but in the meantime, new followers might want to catch up on some past popular posts:
- How (Not?) To Get Your Book Reviewed
- Why It Doesn’t Matter Whether or Not Your Book is Good
- Why You Need an Editor: A Demonstration
- Why I Might Stop Self-Publishing Paperbacks
- Could Your Self-Published Book Pass THIS Test?
- How Much Work is Self-Publishing?
- 5 Things I’m Always Having to Tell Self-Publishers
- 5 Things Self-Publishers Shouldn’t Worry About (But They Do)
- 6 Ways to Survive Bad Reviews
- How To Format Your E-book (the Non-Migraine-Inducing Way)
- What the Dream Looks Like, Or Why This Self-Publisher is Still Pursuing Traditional Publication
(By the way, my novel, Results Not Typical, is not available to download at the moment. That’s because I’m doing some tweaking to it—changing “mum” to “mom”, for a start—in preparation for setting it to free next week.)
Have a good weekend!
Good Morning Catherine! So glad you were freshly pressed and I discovered you! I’m an old print journalist, pretty new to blogging and live in a literary town. Attending the Festival of the Book has been fun and challenging – you can get some face time with agents and publishers, but marketing your own book is always highly recommended. Which makes me wonder what the publishing world actually does anymore…looking forward to the journey.
I’m one of the newbies. And I love your blog. And Mousetrapped… The Duck and Tuna would be the Swan and Dolphin, right?
Yes! I just didn’t want to put it in print in case they read something they didn’t like and sued me.
You know, I’m reading that one now and have been trying to figure out what the real name could be. I’ve never been to Disney (well, except the one in Paris), so I have no knowledge of the parks themselves. That’s quite clever.
Is there a particular reason you’re de-Anglicising your novel? It’s such a shame that the American dialect is becoming so heavily globalised and I would prefer to read the English dialect from English authors. Just a quick question and I’m new around here so I don’t know the context. Congratulations again.
We had a big discussion about this a while back. I wrote it in British English, but the novel is set in New York, so the characters are American. Therefore it’s weird for the main character to be calling her mother “Mum” when really, she’d call her “Mom.” So I’m just going through it again catching things like that, but the spelling will remain British English. And thanks!
Ah, I wondered if you’d use an American setting, all is clear now! The quirks of the varied forms of English.
Woo! That’s awesome, Catherine, congrats!
(and keeping with your caffeine theme, I guess you’ve been french pressed?)
Ooh that’s brilliant! Really wish I’d thought of that..
Your blog is definitely one of the most helpful ones by far of the whole process and well, fears that many of us have in self-publishing. I’m definitely looking forward to demystifying this process by learning more from you. Of course, it would help if I actually wrote a book, but that’s what blogging is for. Working up that nerve.
Pink.
You DESERVE it – Congrats!!! Have a Great Weekend!
Wow, great to see you got Freshly Pressed! You write a great blog so it’s good to see it getting more exposure. Quick question, though: why are you changing “mum” to “mom”?
Wow congratulations. holy hannah, that’s amazing
Fantastic results, and well deserved, Catherine. I’ve heard from other bloggers that being featured in our curated posts has brought them quite a bit of traffic, but not of this magnitude, so enjoy it!
Looking forward to an atypical read!
Oooh, I missed all of this excitement, as I was away for a few days. I am delighted for you, but can understand how overwhelming it must have felt. Wonderful and well -deserved!
Catherine honey I have always loved the advice and stories you tell on your blog and I tell everyone I work with to head over here and read your stuff (mostly because it isn’t boring. And that’s important). So glad you are getting more recognition. Yayzers!