Tag: #directsales

Fun New Things for a New Year

2025 is here. There was a time when I thought that year was a long way in the future. And now, here it is!

I’m excited to get this year rolling. You can now purchase my books in print, ebook, or audiobook direct from my website! It took a few months at the end of last year for me to get it all set up and my web guy to set it up on my website but you can now purchase any book or version of the book you want direct from me.

If you buy a print book, I will autograph it, add a couple of pieces of swag, and ship it to you for free.

The perk of purchasing the audiobooks from me is the price is lower on my website than on the vendors, unless I’m doing a specific sale. Because I cut out the middleman I can make more by giving you a deal on the audiobooks.

And the ebooks are the same price, but if you subscribe to my newsletter, you will be able to get new releases before anyone who purchases from a store and they will be a dollar cheaper for a limited time.

So if you aren’t already signed up to get my monthly newsletter which by the way, also gets you a free book or short story from an author who writes similar books to my Gabriel Hawke series, and you get a chance to win a mug. Each month I’m giving away a coffee mug. This month it’s a Gabriel Hawke mug. February is one with artwork from a local artist.

This month I am starting a new series and first book. I may be crazy but the idea came to me for a cozy mystery that I haven’t been able to figure out how to bring in the Native American element I have in the other mysteries, but I’m hoping the crazy cast of critters will be enough to draw readers in.

The title of the new series is Cuddle Farm Mysteries. The main character, Andi Clark, is a widow who owns a group of therapy animals. She goes to schools, hospitals, nursing homes, shelters, parties, and events with her van and animals. During the course of these adventures they will get caught up in a murder some way or another.

Here are her therapy animals:

 LULU – a dapple brown and black female Chiweenie with long hair who barks at men but loves women and children.

COCOA – a brown and white female border collie who herds the other animals into the van.

ATHENA – Golden Retriever/Pyrenees mix. She keeps watch over the other animals.

SPARKY – a male mini donkey who likes to steal things.

CUPCAKE – a female black and white pygmy goat who eats anything she can get between her lips.

FLOPPSIE – a female brown and white dwarf lop-eared bunny who can get out of any cage she doesn’t want to be in.

CHICKLET – a female checkerboard silky chicken with crazy head feathers and eyes that hide behind her feathers but she sees everything. 

While I’m writing the first book now, it won’t be out until next October. It will take a while to decide on the cover and what things I want to focus on for the cover elements going forward as a series.

So stay tuned to learn more about this new series, the Gabriel Hawke and Spotted Pony Casino books I’ll be writing this year.

Things I’ve Learned…

I don’t know if this will help any of you, but this past week and a half I’ve learned a few things about myself. What started this whole soul-searching endeavor was getting on a plane knowing I was headed for a mob of people.

Last week at this time I was immersed in a conference of 1800 writers set up to teach authors how to run their writing like a business. I’m not saying I didn’t learn a few things, but a good number of the presenters were people pushing their services. However, when more than one of them said the same thing, I took notes.

Which has led to a list of 6 items I need to do in regard to making my books easier to promote and or entice the reader to purchase. There are 6 items I need to do to ratch up my social media presence. Another 4 items that pertain to getting more interaction on my newsletter. And 9 items to work on that deal with promotion.

The biggest item I came home pondering was Direct sales from my website. It was all everyone talked about. Authors who were doing it talked about how much money they were making and people who can help you set up direct sale sites on your website. It sounds like a great idea to:

1) make more off of each sale

2) have more ease of creating sales and discounts

3) connecting more with your readers.

However, I have all my print books up on my website for Direct Sale with me autographing the books and sending out swag with the book with no mailing fees. You can also contact me about purchasing multiple books in a set for gifts at reduced pricing. Just click on the tab “Shop” here: https://www.patyjager.net/

Thinking about how much work I had to do to get just the print books up on my website and connected with a place that handles the money, I can’t imagine the hours it would take to set up a direct sell for all the ebooks and audiobooks I have. Because of the time factor and I don’t feel like “training” readers to come to my website to purchase from me, which is what I would need to do to make the whole thing worth my time- which would be taking away from writing- I have decided not to do direct sell for the audio and ebooks.

I will be doing more promotions with different audiobook vendors to share deals with you and other listeners. I will even be putting up some promo stuff here for you to help me decide what works and what doesn’t. So stay tuned in the next few weeks to help me determine what will grab a reader’s attention for each of my series- both in murder mystery and romance.

It was fun to see my author logo used in one of the presentations when they were talking about branding!

Now I’m off to sell books at the NIWA booth at the Portland, Oregon Holiday Market at the Expo. If you’re in that area, I’d love to have you come by the booth and say HI!