Sneak Preview of Mia Book 3!

I'm about half way done with Mia book 3 so I thought I might share a peek.

♥ Mary Lee

Why Ebook Piracy is Killing Indie Authors

I just found out one of my books was pirated and available for a free download on a site without my permission. Not only that but they list a counter on top that says it was downloaded illegally 4000 times.

Like many people, I didn't really care when Napster was hurting the sales of millionaire bands and many may have the same opinion with ebooks. With the recent lawsuit of big publishers trying to jack up the prices of ebooks, many may feel they deserve it. So why should anyone care if people download a few free books?

The simple answer is because it's hurting indie authors. We don't have a big publisher to back us up with marketing dollars, give us money up front and protect us with lawyers. While we may give our books away for free a couple days, it's really mostly to get visibility through the "people who bought this, also bought this" lists on Amazon. Downloading a free illegal copy gains an indie author nothing and generally hurts sales. After all, why pay for something you can get for free?

Popular books with a big publisher get thousands of paid downloads a month. The average indie book is lucky to get 100. When it's available for free elsewhere, that number drops until it's no longer worth it for them to make more books. Taking legal action can cost a lot more than an indie makes on a book and many piracy sites are from countries without copyright laws.

Indie authors do not in any way deserve getting stolen from. The average price of an indie is between .99 and $3.99 making the royalty only between .35-2.50 a book. The price already has to be low for someone to take a chance on a new author. Stealing from a rich publisher may make you feel like Robin Hood but stealing from a poor indie author is just mean.

So what does that mean for me? It could mean I'm working on my last Mia book. I'll just have to see how much sales go down from here. Being out for only a couple months, my two books combined haven't sold half as many as the indie-killer site has given away. Luckily, I believe one of them hasn't been pirated yet but, it may be just a matter of time.

♥ Mary Lee

Sneak Preview of Mia Book 2!

In case you didn't get in on the promotion and might want to take a peek, here is a few pages of Mia's book 2, Beautiful, Magical, Amazing Ballet.

Enjoy!

♥ Mary Lee

Results of the KDP Select Promotion

So to kick off my new book "Beautiful, Magical, Amazing Ballet" I used up 3 promotion days to offer the book for free. I ran a similar promotion for 2 days on the first book "Not Just a Princess" last month. Here's how they compared.

Not Just a Princess
Total Downloads: 2366
#1 Children's free ebooks > People and Places
#11 All Children's free ebooks
#168 All Free ebooks

Beautiful, Magical, Amazing Ballet
 Total Downloads: 10,996
#1 Children's free ebooks>Arts and music>Dance 
#1 All Children's free ebooks
#25 All Free ebooks

So basically the second promotion was over 4 times more
successful than the first. Given that this promotion was a day
longer but 8500 came in the first two days.

What are the differences that could have affected this total?
- Having more than one book?
- Asking more free ebook and coupon sites sites to add the book to their list?
- Having more Twitter followers?
- People like ballerina's more than princesses?

Who knows but, it's great though that almost 11,000 people may be reading my book to their kids in the near future. Regarding the aftermath of sales, it's a bit early to tell. The first one did see an uptick after the promotion ended and continues to do better than the second. The second is seeing a tiny uptick but not as much as the first one did after it's promotion. I'll get a better read in a couple days. If anyone has used KDP Select to do a promotion, I would love to hear your experience below.

♥ Mary Lee

FREE Children's Ebook!

Today is the day! You can get the second Mia ebook, "Beautiful, Magical, Amazing Ballet" for FREE (Normally $3.99). This promotion is only going on till Friday, so get it while you can.

Here's the link:
http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Ballet

Also, in case you don't own an Ipad, Kindle or E-reader, it's now available in softcover as well here: http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-BALLET

♥ Mary Lee

Tomorrow Get Mia Book 2 FREE!

Just a little reminder that the second Mia book, "Beautiful, Magical, Amazing Ballet" will be on sale FREE tomorrow through Friday.

Happy Tuesday!


♥ Mary Lee

Free Ebook Wednesday!

Mark your calendars! Okay, maybe no need to write it down but, I would appreciate if you remembered this one. Wednesday, September 12 through Friday, September 14, my latest book, "Beautiful, Magical, Amazing Ballet" will be on sale for FREE! That's right, I'll be giving the ebook away. Why? Because I'm actually a really nice person that likes free stuff too and am hoping to find other really nice people that may be so inclined to leave a review. Not required but appreciated.

 ♥ Mary Lee 

FREE 9/12-9/14

Ebook Now Available!

The second Mia book is done! Woohoo! Happy Friday!

You can find it here in ebook form: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00971KWOC
The print version is still in process. I'll let you know when it's ready.

♥ Mary Lee

Coming Soon!

The second Mia book "Beautiful, Magical, Amazing Ballet" is coming together. This one has been even more fun than the last to work on. I hope other people like it as much as I do because I would love to do another one.