it's either an excess of coffee or a deficit of sleep

[azriona]

I am not entirely sure that I've got the hang of Twitter yet.  ( This is me, if you would like to follow.)  I think this is mostly because I'm still trying to figure out how to use it.  I'm not doing much that is fannish with it - though most of the people I follow are from fandom.  I'm trying not to retweet everything under the sun, and I'm trying

Comments

[thistle_chaser]

It's entirely possible that the six people who were going to buy my book now have free copies in exchange for reviews.

That made me snicker a little. It's true, when I want to buy a book, I always start by seeing if it's available for review instead (I do a lot of reviewing, so I have lines of communication open with a number of publishers). Books are darned expensive, and since I review everything I read anyway, that works out for me.

not counting whatever Amazon keeps in taxes (assuming they even do and oh, dear, this is going to totally screw with the taxes next year, isn't it?). I strongly suspect they have a system for that in place, yeah. I was going to set up an affiliate link with Amazon (since I link all my reviews to the book there), and about a third of the process was dealing with tax issues

[azriona]

That made me snicker a little

Good, it was meant to. :) I did have one person comment about how she wants to buy the book, which is very heart-warming. And I'm pretty sure my parents will buy it, so that's at least two copies

[thistle_chaser]

The Amazon review issue is complex. Paid/reciprocal reviews are a massive issue, to the point of the Amazon review system being basically useless now. They're trying to clean it up, but I suspect they'll have little luck with it. They don't automatically delete reciprocal reviews, not unless you set off other alarm bells. (No one outside of Amazon knows the details of those.)

I believe there's a system for taxes - I know I had to fill out tax information - but I'm not sure how it works exactly as I haven't done anything for which I would be paid just yet.

If it's like the affiliate system, I think it's to send you tax paperwork at the end of the year. I'm not totally certain though, because I backed out of the program just after enrolling. (Turns out I'm way too small of a fish for their system to work for, and I'd end up making zero money even if people bought things through my links.)

[ponygirl72]

Amazon will send you a 1099 for taxes if your earnings exceed the threshold required by law. That used to be $600 or so-- not sure if it's changed. They do not withhold taxes. You'll owe taxes on anything you make above your business expenses (i.e., your net profit). The rate will seem high compared to withholding on a W-2 because as a business owner you will be paying both sides of Social Security tax in addition to income tax.

Disclaimer: I am not a CPA. If I was, I would probably make decent money. :-P

[belleweather]

I'm terribly old-fashioned and still believe that the first secret to success in publishing is to actually write a good book that people will want to read. You've got that. Plus, all the buzz generation and that stuff is about how to sell lots of books fast, which isn't necessarily your goal either, so hey... if it takes a bit to get started and get word of mouth going, who cares?

(And as someone who reads the kind of books you write, I hate 'pre-release buzz' and I'm not sure it works as well as folks say it does. The whole point of escapist reading on Amazon is to hook my id directly to my kindle by way of one-click ordering. If I have to wait, it doesn't work.)

[develish1]

I had another thought earlier, which I admit is unusual for me since that's, erm, three today so far, lol, but... Check out these sites/blogs;

Ruth Ann Nordin
Fenella J Miller
Carole Mortimer

They're not even remotely similar writers to you genre-wise, but they're all published, to varying degrees, so you might find something about their sites, or how they promote themselves, that you can take away and modify for your own use.

As for reading articles on how to use Twitter, forget it. Again you're far better off learning by checking out those already using it for a similar purpose. That's where you learn the best tricks :)