Kindle Big Deal vs Bookbub

Good news, everyone!

Yesterday, I got an email from Amazon offering Nice Dragons Finish Last a potential spot in the upcoming Kindle Big Deal. I participated once before in November, and we were generally happy with the results, so I was excited to do it again. BUT (you knew that was coming, right?) there was a catch this time, because with the second dragons book nearly ready to go (yay!), I'd been aiming to apply for a Bookbub ad during this same period.

At the moment, Bookbub is considered the gold standard in book advertising if you're self-published, or even traditionally published given how many NY titles they feature, but it's expensive and tricky to get in. There are no guarantees they'll accept you. Also, if you're going to do a Bookbub ad, your book can't have gone on sale for a lower price during a set period of time before your Bookbub ad, which would pretty much write out participating in the Kindle Big Deal.

Now, I realize of course that this situation is an embarrassment of riches. I am exceedingly lucky to have a good chance at participating in either of these promotions, let alone both. Luck aside, though, I still had to make a decision, so I did what I always do in times of overwhelming detail: I turned to my husband, business manager, and all around amazing dude Travis and asked him to look at the numbers and figure out the best strategy.

I expected a simple yes or no answer. As usual, though, Travis blew me away, sending me an amazing email chock full of information and graphs! (Can you see why I married him?!) The email was actually so good, I asked him to turn it into a guest blog post because 1) I thought you guys would be interested to see some real world book advertising results/decisions, and 2) the post I was going to write on managing multiple POVs in a novel is only a third done and it's already Thursday.

I know the blog has been pretty business heavy of late, but hey! Writing is a business. I promise we'll get back to the craft posts soon, but for now, here is Travis to give you an inside look at the kind of business decisions you have to make as a working author (and save my blogging bacon).

Take it away, love!

Writers and Money Part 3

Sorry for the long delay! I really meant to push these out in a series, but my writing's been going really well lately, so I was loathe to leave the writing cave. BUT, I'm back now, so let's talk mon-neh!

For those of you just tuning in, this is the final installment of a three part series about writers and money. In Part 1, I talked about how authors make money in the traditional, advance paying publishing system. In Part 2, I talked about self-publishing money. Now, for Part 3, we're going to talk about what you actually need to do with that income, wherever it comes from, in order to make a full time living as a writer. So, without further ado, here's

Writers and Money Part 3: Taxes, Quitting the Day Job, and the Realities of Making a Living as a Full Time Writer

As the meme dog would suggest, here are some DISCLAIMERS!

1) Everything below is written in the spirit of sharing information, not as iron clad rules. I'm not actually a financial adviser (or a dog), and as such I can only speak from my own experience, which is almost certainly going to be different from yours. With that in mind, PLEASE don't make any major financial, career, or tax decisions based purely off what you read here.

2) All the tax advice below is written from the American perspective, and as such might not be relevant in your country. That said, wherever you live, if you are making any sort of significant income off your creative work and you have a specific tax question, TALK TO AN ACCOUNTANT. Yes, they're expensive, but knowing this stuff is their job, and that's worth paying for.

Okay, now that we've established that you're not going to run off and reorder your financial future based off a single blog post, let's get to the good stuff.