Getting Votes, Gaining Stats and What the Heck, Amazon!

It is a very busy time to be me.  Seriously.  I just released my fourth indie book (this time a full-length novel), I'm editing a completed novella, writing a follow-up to said novella, and trying to figure out which work-in-progress I want to finish up/polish to submit to my agent.  

As if that isn't enough, I am doing 95% of my own marketing and promotion on all of my books and just found out that I have been nominated for THREE Indie Romance Awards that I have to campaign to get people to go and vote for me!  It's exhausting.  All of this WHILE being a wife and mother, working a full-time job and just fighting to survive.

WHEW!

So how can one person with a VERY limited budget do it all?  It's not easy, I can tell you that!  Okay, the fourth book, "Catering to the CEO", is out on Amazon.  I went with the Kindle Select again just because.  Honestly, it's very time consuming to submit your file to multiple sites because they all want it in different formats and whatnot and I just don't have the time or energy.  I am trying a little bit different of a marketing strategy on this one and I'll see if it pans out for me.  Being that this book is a full-length novel, I was able to justify pricing it a little bit higher.  Again, we'll see if it pays off.

I'm guessing that the "Like" button on Amazon is a thing of the past because I have used multiple browsers on multiple computers and asked dozens of people and nobody seems to see the dang thing.  Why would Amazon take it away?  Probably because people try to manipulate results and do the "I'll like your page if you like mine" and so the results are kind of not an accurate telling of what people honestly think of the book.  I can admit that I am guilty of that.  But still, I wish there was a way that they could track traffic just to see if there is interest in your book!
 
Then the Indie Romance Awards.  I'm pretty excited about these but this offers a challenge all its own.  Getting votes.  Good grief, you'd think I was asking people to donate a damn kidney.  With 500 fans on my Facebook Author Page and another almost 900 on my personal page, do you know how many votes I have?  21.  TWENTY-FREAKIN-ONE.  I can't even get angry anymore but I'm still seriously annoyed.  This whole self-publishing thing is hard enough - with just the actual writing and editing.  Add marketing and promotions and then campaigning for votes?  There aren't enough hours in a WEEK! 

There's a site called "Get Online Votes" that you can submit your info too that will direct people to your site where you need votes.  It's not as sketchy as it sounds because people have to actually go to the site, click on your link and go and vote; it's not like it's hacking the site or anything.  And believe me, I don't know enough about computers or programming to even try to hack anything!   No, right now I'm seeing if I see any results from them to help me gain some votes and in return, I go and vote for other people's stuff.  We'll see.

Stats, Votes, Sales...Oh, my!

If you can, please vote for me on the Indie Romance Convention site.  I am nominated for Best Indie Contemporary Romance for "The Christmas Cottage", Best Indie Romance Novella for "The Christmas Cottage" and for Indie Author of the Year - Samantha Chase.

If you're looking for something to read, "Catering to the CEO" is out on Kindle along with "Ever After", "The Christmas Cottage" and "Jordan's Return".  

HELP A STRUGGLING INDIE AUTHOR MAKE SOMETHING OF HERSELF!!!