The Cowboy's BabyAs I write this, Gretchen Rix, self-published author of The Cowboy’s Baby, has a 2,200 sales ranking on Amazon and is selling dozens of copies a day of her ebook. That wasn’t the case a few months ago and especially not a year ago when the novel first came out.

I asked her to do an email interview and share some of the changes she’s made and also to talk about how she’s selling physical copies of the book in her small town of Lockhart, Texas. I hope you’ll find something of value here!

Interview with Gretchen Rix

How long have you been involved with self-publishing, and what made you decide to choose that route?

When I finished the first draft of my novel The Cowboy’s Baby in late 2009 I already knew that legacy publishing took about three years from submission to having a book in the bookstore, that most paperback books got about a three-week stint in a bookstore before being stripped and sent back, and that my humorous and inoffensive romantic novel was too short at 60,000 words and too slight to appeal to publishers wanting only blockbusters with lots of sex. So I’d already made the decision to bypass all this as 2010 started and self-publish.

My first plan was to go with print on demand (POD). I liked what I read about it until I realized there was no way for someone like me to market a POD book. Next I looked at e-publishing, specifically Amazon.com and the Kindle. I really liked what I saw, but did some investigating.

I bought a Kindle, I bought legacy published Kindle books and a few self-published books or indies and read them, and I liked what I saw. I studied the Kindle self-publishing information, read all the comments, complaints, pleas for help with various problems and read several blogs (especially J.A. Konrath), and by the time I was done with revisions I was hooked on self-publishing to the Kindle. It was free, it was fast, it was professional and I could write what I wanted to write and I could control what it looked like.

You’ve had a couple of different covers for The Cowboy’s Baby. Could you tell us what kind of a difference changing covers made?

I love the original cover for The Cowboy’s Baby (and we still use it for the POD trade paperback), but a year later when I decided to expand away from exclusive Amazon.com Kindle publishing and take on the Nook and Smashwords, I commissioned a new cover and decided to use it on Kindle, too. I also contracted for professional formatting.

Up until that time, The Cowboy’s Baby on Amazon.com was slowly making its way to selling almost thirty copies a month, which I was delighted with. But the minute I changed the cover (I also changed the product description and the formatting as well) the sales increased. By the second month with the all new cover, formatting, and product description, the sales doubled. By the third month they went through the roof (681 for month of September alone).

Professional cover, people! Professional formatting!

I see the ebook is currently selling at 99 cents. Was that the first price you tried, or have you experimented much?

I started out at $2.99 and at that price I sold to friends and neighbors and the general community who already knew me, but I don’t think I made a single sale to a stranger at $2.99.

After six months of scant sales I gave a sigh of defeat and dropped The Cowboy’s Baby to 99 cents. After that I got the sales I’d been waiting for. Sales grew each and every month, and by the time I changed the cover I was inching towards the one book a day sale (which is damned good). I think it is the price and the cover (but I have been assured that it is the book as well) that are driving the good sales I am now getting. I will probably keep this price for this book; right now gaining readership and name recognition is much more important to me than money.

I happen to know the paperback of your book is for sale all around Lockhart, Texas (or at least in a couple of stores!). Do you have recommendations for indie authors looking to get local stores and libraries to carry their books?

Advice — probably the best advice is to read Dean Wesley Smith’s blog and to buy a copy of his book about publishing. In there he answers all these kind of questions. I haven’t bought it yet because I’m not yet ready for a really big push into bookstores. The name of it is Think Like A Publisher.

I live in a small town without a bookstore so my sister (who is the publisher of the paperbacks) and I made a deal with a florist shop called Buffalo Clover on the historic town square to sell our books. It is also a gift shop. So far they sell between one and two copies of The Cowboy’s Baby a month.

Also, quite recently we were able to get The Cowboy’s Baby into BookPeople, a famous independent bookstore in Austin, Texas. They have a consignment program that will showcase The Cowboy’s Baby for six months. I haven’t checked back yet to see if anyone’s bought a copy.

We gave a copy of The Cowboy’s Baby to the local library and to the Lulling library, but this is as far as we’ve tried with libraries. My town’s library has also bought the Kindle edition for the library’s computer.

We sell the book at local festivals and fairs, usually selling about ten copies over a couple of days. And we’ve done a few book signings and readings, selling a few more books each time. We just sold 15 copies at the Evening With the Authors Event here.

I can’t tell you if this would be typical sales for anyone else. It’s really been pretty good, considering the small town we live in and our inexperience in marketing.

Advice about getting local stores, etc. to carry your book — Go in and ask them. The worst they can do is say no. In time we might try to branch out to Hastings, maybe. And maybe we will put the paperback up at Amazon.com (they have a program for that. So does Barnes and Noble, but we didn’t like their returns policy).

Thanks for all the great information, Gretchen! Do you want to tell us about your next project?

I plan to follow the same publishing path for my next novel. I love Amazon.com Kindle publishing. I am just now finishing the proofreading for my paranormal western Arroyo. I think of it as “Indiana Jones meets Forrest Gump”, but it’s a pulp action adventure novel with a touch of the horror genre.

Arroyo is set in 1893 Texas and involves the adventures of a trio of strangers initially caught in the web of an enchantment that takes them from one crises to another. I had a hell of a lot of fun writing it.

Look for Arroyo as an e-book late in October or early in November. My horror short story is also up at Amazon.com. It’s called When Gymkhana Smiles and is pretty creepy.

Good luck to all of you with your writing and publishing careers.

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