Greetings and Salutations -

I apologize for not writing for a while. I kept putting off writing until I got caught up on email, but I haven't gotten caught up yet. So rather than keep waiting I'll apologize to those I haven't answered yet and will work to get to those emails soon. In the meantime, though, I wanted to share some news.

We will be moving forward on the server move to new, faster servers. I'm finalizing the details with the hosting company. I'll definitely let you know at each step what is happening so you know what the status is and when things are moving.

Many of us here make our income through web income and book income. Most of us have been seeing our web income decline and book income rise. I'm finding that selling books / ebooks is definitely the way to earn money going forward. I've been working hard on that myself, to then pay the hosting bills. Especially since I refuse to run the pop-up / moving ads that many ad companies now require :). So here are a few insights I've found over the past few weeks.

First, I did a free 5-day promotion for my "boxed set" of four novellas recently and gave away 7,178 copies. This was completely free for me, so I didn't lose money. These people who got the copies had, by and large, never heard of me so this was a way to hook them. If they liked that taste, they'd both give me good reviews and also buy my other books. Sure enough, I'm now getting good reviews on that set which is causing other people to buy it. Also, my other books are selling better, meaning a portion of these readers liked me enough to grab other books from my library.

Give serious consideration to doing free promotions of your books. It's not that you're losing money. Most of the people getting the promotion hadn't heard of you before. This is a way to get known, have them tell their friends, have them buy your other books, and build your review pile.

You definitely want to market your promotion heavily to get as much mileage out of it as you can. I do blasts on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and then every GoodReads promotional group I can find. If you're not in these five places and have questions feel free to contact me and I'll help you through them. These are the key to getting your book sold. You don't have to love Facebook yourself. It's ok if you're not a fan of Twitter. Just set up the account anyway and use it as a PR engine. This is your way to get your message out to people who DO use those systems.

Next, I'm going to a convention this weekend to promote my books and other authors in my local group. I'm doing up promotional sheets for each of us. You can see those here -

https://www.facebook.com/LisaSheaAuthor

I highly encourage you to join a local group if you can. The more you can cross-promote each other, the better. It gives you all far more fans in the "ripple effect" of people knowing people. Similarly, look in our admin area at the social networking links there. You'll see the links to all other editors' pages. Find a few you like and make posts! The more we help each other out, the more we all thrive.

Once my big promotional push is done on Saturday evening I will strive to plow through the email messages and get back to those who have been patiently waiting. I hope you have a fantastic weekend!

Sincerely,

Lisa Shea, owner
BellaOnline.com

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