To Self Publish Again or not?

Before reading this post, I highly suggest you read my post titled Self Publishing with CreateSpace: My Experience from a little while back. In that post I offered a timeline of every aspect of the self publishing process.

Now, onto the subject matter of this one. The paperback edition of my book was released on October 29 of this year and the Kindle version soon followed on November 7. Are there things that I could have done that I haven’t to help get the word out about my book? Yes. But have I sat at home doing absolutely no promotion whatsoever and expected readers to somehow discover, buy, and read my debut novel? No.

I’ve offered the Kindle version of my book free for a total of three days since its release. Those three days alone resulted in 6737 readers downloading my book. Which is great, but the same methods that I’ve used to promote my free days have not helped me sell more books at the always affordable $0.99 price that it currently sits at. I still have my blog tour coming next month, but my sales expectations for that are no longer what they once were. I have no idea if I’ll sell any books during my three week long tour, and that’s why I’ve come to the decision that I have.

I’ve decided that I will not self publish my second book under any circumstances. All of my fellow authors know this means there’s a chance I don’t find an agent and/or publisher for my book. I’m now prepared to face that challenge because I simply haven’t been able to gain any traction with my first self published book. It’s unfortunate.

I don’t even know that I feel like an author right now. I mean, so what if I managed to string together 21 chapters and bind them together and call them a book. What’s that gotten me after five months of writing and rewriting and then two more after the book’s release? Not much.