Author: Janna Hill

The First Year as an Indie (Apples to Oranges)

/ Janna Hill / 9 Comments

Part II (This is Me)

In the first portion of my annual Indie report I shared a few things I have learned regarding support, reviews and social media. I like the number five so if you’re interested I’ll share a couple more. I believe I left off at #3 in Lessons Learned. Since inquiring minds really want to know “how many books are you selling and how much money are you making?” We’ll start #4 with sales.

# 4 Sales: This is like comparing apples to oranges or beets to hamburgers. To simplify it allow me to use e- books and a twelve month period because a year ago I had maybe four titles available, all e-books exclusive to Amazon. Today I have about sixteen, most available wherever books are sold.

Don’t say wow yet. That number includes several books that were combined or joined and counted as a new title.  I.e. The Rage Trilogy, The Perpetual Series and Interior Verse/ Pose Prose & Poems.  Also Disturbed Affections was created for Barnes & Noble  which combines The Perpetual Series and Dour Number Four. Price trials were done and settled between 99¢ and $2.99.

For apples to apples sake March 2012 Amazon e-book sales were roughly about $5.80 with paper books way outselling them. March 2013 sales were about 50x that with very few paper books being sold. That’s two hundred and ninety sneering tight-lipped little Washington’s! Greenbacks baby! $1 smallYou can say wow now but hold that victory dance — I need to tell you something.

Sales over those twelve months were like a bipolar Bohemian. They were all over the place, feast and famine, up and down. Whew! It made me dizzy, now I know that’s just how it goes.

Looking at statistics is supposed to help me understand Bohemians’ such patterns and utilize them for … I don’t know but the good news is I made a few dollars. Woo-hoo – go ahead, dance with me.

#5 Stats and Ranks: OMG poke me in the eye! My website stats? I sort of saw a pattern of increased visitors equaled increased sales but it could’ve been my mind playing tricks on me. Example October hits were good and November sales increased. Why, how, what or who made it happen? Was it a tweet, a post or a random recommendation? I suspect it was a combination of factors or a cousin. I have lots of cousins.

Visitors: My door is always open and people apparently come and go while I’m in the shower or taking a nap. I am supposed to focus on unique visits, unique sites and unique referrers. [sigh] Okay. Most visits occur around 3:00 PM CST. Top referrers are direct requests followed by Google, Bing, A porn site I know nothing about (I swear!) and some from WordPress — that is probably fellow bloggers. Thank you all very much. See how boring data is?

I prefer to look at search string results. Search strings are interesting because you can see what query people use to arrive at your site. My favorites are “who is Janna Hill, “who the hell is Janna Hill”, “is Janna Hill really Janna Hill”, “Janna Hill + Symphony Angel, “is Janna Hill married to Joe Hill?” and “big ugly feet”. Really?! Someone searched “big ugly feet” and arrived here. [scratches head] Okay. Moving on…

Ranking: I use Amazon’s author tools. Just login and click rank. I occasionally break above the 12,000 overall in e-books. I know that sounds pitiful but when you came from ranking 500,000 to 12,000 I call that progress. C’mon, let’s dance again.

I may never be in the top ten or even the top 100 but I’m singing the Jefferson theme song and movin’ on up. I don’t want a deluxe apartment in the sky but I will take a small piece of some humble pie with a cup of coffee please.

The data above was gathered from March 2012- March 2013 reports. Yes I know we just entered July — I would make a great government employee, huh?! It has been (and is) one hell of a ride and I am truly grateful.

This is me. Not me writing on behalf of someone else. Not me pretending to be someone else. Not me wishing I was someone else. This is just me in all my rags of glory.

Addendum: Though it’s too early for me to offer a report or an opinion I can tell you I am seeing sales now at Apple. Maybe someday I’ll do an update and compare them to oranges. Ahh, I crack me up.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Companionable

/ Janna Hill / 9 Comments

Companionable

That is an odd sounding word, isn’t it? It is also the theme for this week’s photo challenge. Michelle was pretty clever with that wasn’t she?

So why squirrels and a tomatoes you ask? Because of the companionability!

Believe it or not squirrels and I are quite chummy. We have many likes in common and get along very well. Well, until they get greedy with the tomatoes and then we have dumplings in common.

Farewell to The Mean Green Traveling Machine

/ Janna Hill / 16 Comments

The Mean Green Traveling Machine

If vehicles were books…

If words were miles…

If cracked leather upholstery could speak…

If frogs had wings they wouldn’t bump their ass every time they hopped. 😉

The Mean Green Traveling Machine aka Nana’s Hooptie
Seal your grill and never tell
Farewell my good and faithful servant

I snapped a few shots as they readied her to travel yesterday and said goodbye to the 1996 Chevrolet Blazer but I wasn’t prepared for such nostalgia!

Seventeen years ago I was totally in love with that piece of machinery but it hasn’t been driven in over six months and it was taking up space. It was old and out of style, it had become temperamental and needed repairs and maybe it reminded me too much of something else. The melancholy definitely goes much deeper than a defective starter, a dented bumper or Kool-Aid stains in the rear compartment and I was just thinking…

She has seen her fair share of asphalt, dirt roads and white rock. From daily commutes to long trips, from mountain tops to sandy beaches…

Our oldest son vacationed in it when his first child was just an infant. They traveled to San Antonio. That infant is a sophomore in high school now. The oldest daughter borrowed it from time to time when she needed reliable transportation — when her babies were literally babies. Our youngest two children learned to drive behind the wheel of the hunter green hooptie and I’m sure they entrusted more than a few secrets to her, I know I did.

If The Mean Green Traveling Machine were a novel she would be epic. The odometer read 220,771 miles. Actually it was 220,771.4 when the man winched her onto the trailer.

Here’s praying the donation makes a positive difference in someone’s life and hoping the hooptie doesn’t gossip.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Curves

/ Janna Hill / 17 Comments

Photo challenge + Family + Father’s Day = gobs (yes gobs) of fun!

 

Don’t expect to see the #1 son and the husband. They hid in the shadows drinking Dos Equis because they are the most interesting men in the world. No really! I had a few of those lovely green bottles and I must admit it was pretty exciting. 😉

Where the dirt road curves …
Lightening Meadow
Straight shooting curves.
All sorts of curving going on in this scene.
Tired watermelon faces
Dry curves….

Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting

/ Janna Hill / 17 Comments

Fleeting

We went fishing Saturday and my oh my how the time flew by.

Okay the truth is the guys fished while we (my granddaughter and moi) took pictures. We of course caught a lot more of what we were after. As a matter of fact the two of us snagged nearly two hundred shots yet three men with six tackle boxes and four rods couldn’t catch a single fish! Not even a catfish! In a lake as large as Tawakoni that takes some real lack of skill. 😉

My husband says I shouldn’t poke fun being as I have a serious case of lack-a-jerk. True, the fish are usually too fast for me but a desperate fisherman resorting to the ritual of the frog dive, that I can catch.

 

Assume the frog position
Leap lamely from the bow
Call “fishy, fishy, fishy”
See fish laugh

The dive left the fish laughing so hard they couldn’t bite. Have you ever tried to laugh and eat at the same time? It is hard to do. It is hard being a fish, I understand these things. It’s also illegal to be on the water at night without the proper lights (which we had left in the truck) so we turned starboard heading to shore and watched the sun set on another beautiful day… another fleeting moment in time.

Starboard turn
Into the setting sun
Another day ending Lake Tawakoni
Another fleeting moment

See how time flies…

How time flies

How time flies

Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape

/ Janna Hill / 18 Comments

I have no photo of my head in the sand, which would be appropriate while admitting I do not want to deal with my current reality. My mother is ill… critically ill and I am a “mama’s girl” which I admit without shame.

She is/has always been my touchstone, my constant reminder to move forward despite obstacles, my assurance that ‘this too shall pass’… Tonight she lays in an Intensive care unit fighting for her life  and I long for a quiet place in a green meadow beneath a sunrise to remind me how marvelous nature is even as life takes its course . Pleading to the heavens not now… not now. Let me sit on the green meadow and meditate on the rising sun of hope. Let me find the courage to endure whatever the future holds. I can hear her gentle whisper,”Keep your obligations. Move on and do not look back except for a glimpse and a smile.”

Escape

Longing for serenity

I am trying  mother. And here is my submission for this weeks photo challenge : Escape.

Dabbling & Dibbles

/ Janna Hill / 9 Comments

Dabble: to fiddle, putter, experiment

Did you know that a significant number of the population does not consider writing a real job? You did? You knew that already? Well color me shocked and bubble busted when a sweet little old lady accused me of dabbling. Writing is real work by golly. True I have never broken a sweat over a keyboard but dabbling?

Admittedly it is easier than sorting sheets for a laundry company that services nursing homes. Yeah I did that for three whole days. That was a long time ago (a really, really long time ago) when the unemployment office would actually put you to work. I suppose in comparison it does look like I am dabbling.

Thinking back on those three days of sorting fecal stained linens I’ll take being called a dabbler. Heck. I will embrace it and laugh at it like a real country boy laughs at Earl Dibbles Jr.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Pattern

/ Janna Hill / 25 Comments

Sara Rosso posted a beautiful example for this weeks photo challenge.

This weeks theme is Pattern. I have been doing a little sewing (a little is all I know how to do) but that is not the pattern Sara had in mind. Shucks! I had just relearned how to load the bobbin.

Oh well, look at this cool Polyphemus I found last week.

Polyphemus Mammoth Moth in Summer

And this is what he/she looked like in November. Not the same pattern but lovely still. Polyphemus caterpillar in Fall

Alas I ate a portion so you could see the pattern here. Yum Hmm, the sacrifices I make. 😉 Mothers Day Strawberry