Week One of e publishing

I'd just about given up on getting my Maid for the Billionaire published this year. The Presents editor said she liked my story, but it wasn't a fit. I've sent it around since, and it was a no go. Same response repeatedly....."Good writing, just not what we're looking for right now. Do you have anything else?"

New job. New baby. Maid for the Billionaire sat on my desktop for six months.

Then, about a week ago, my brother came over and told me that the RIRW meeting I'd missed had been all about epublishing your own book.

And I thought -- why not? The book is finished and before I spend time completing the rest of the series I might as well find out what people think of the first book. The speaker suggested building a fan base and then charging for your books. If book one is good enough -- I'm hoping people will download the next book for 99 cents.

I had heard that you could put a book on sale at Barnes and Nobel and Amazon for free -- but when I tried to I found that the option was closed to most. I started reading message boards and discovered a post about Smashwords.com. The post suggested that new authors post to Smashwords.com for free and then put their work on Amazon and B & N. Supposedly, a search engine will find the lower price and mark your books listed with them for free.

So far, that hasn't happened, but I'm excited about the response I've gotten on Smashwords.com
Slowly, I'm inching my way toward 2000...amazing when you think that a little over a week ago only a handful of people had read the story.

April 24 400
April 25 720
April 26 1077
April 27 1247
April 28 1400
April 29 1482

The number of downloads is on a decline over time. My next challenge will be to promote my book....but how?