Lessons Learned in Self-Publishing 2: Details, Details!

If you're not living outside North America, you may not have noticed that the print versions of "The Brutal Blade of Bruno the Bandit" have not been available on the Amazon EU sites. Heck, I didn't notice until today, when my Createspace dashboard kindly pointed it out to me and walked me through the process of activating the books in that market. So the good news is that if you now search "Bruno the Bandit" in any of the Amazon EU sites, you will find our print editions as well as our Kindle editions. This is not the first time I've overlooked, or failed to think about, something like this, and it probably won't be the last. Frankly, sales through the Wowio page are so few that I hardly ever check in there, and I'm always forgetting to push our banners on DriveThru Comics.com, even though it doesn't cost me anything. I'm sure there's marketing possibilities over at Graphicly that I'm overlooking right this minute. So today's lesson, boys and girls, is pay attention to detail. It's worth your time to investigate all the details of any service you partner up with in the production of your work. There may be markets you are overlooking, like my recent experiences with Amazon, or you may be leaving money on the table, like the time I gave up all revenue on one of our books for a month because I had the price set incorrectly. Oops. I recommend taking each of your partner services one at a time and falling down the rabbit hole with them for a while to see what you may be missing. Investigate all the links on their websites. Check out their FAQ's and Howtos and even their user forums if they have them. Discover everything they have to offer and find out whether it's relevant to you, or whether you can put it to good use. Little by little, as you tweak out the services, you will open up new possibilties for making money and getting your work seen. While you're at it, don't forget to check out their competitors, and see what they're offering and whether you can turn them to your advantage as well. Maybe there's a whole other service you've overlooked, but you'll never know until you do your legwork, and dig into the details. Now it's time to go use up some Publisher Promotion Points over at Drive Thru and see if I can get those banners running again....