Where I am today in indie publishing

Hi there,

So, another quick post today, but an important one before we get into the meat of the Big Relaunch.

Where I am as of today!

I've been doing this author thing full-time for almost ten years now!

Before I attempted it full-time, I finished the first draft of School of Shadows (and in fact, the first drafts of School of Glass and School of Blood too, The Eversfield Academy Vampire Hunters: Books Two and Three, respectively) over ten years ago.¹

Here's a (somewhat) brief timeline of my journey so far:

• Late 2013: Quit my job as a biomedical engineer (that was so not working for me) so my hubby could take his dream job. Moved from Boulder, Colorado, to Los Angeles, CA.
• 2014: Used my new free time to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, debating between data analyst (spreadsheets! statistics! computer programming?), veterinarian (helping animals!), and author. By the end of the year, decided to commit to being an author.
• 2015: First year of writing full-time as an author! Along with taking care of things at home, learning how to work from home with All. Those. Distractions. etc.
• 2017: Published my first books! The Unleashed Creation (a novelette and the first edition of what is now known as Chain of Flame), The Impossible Creation (the first edition of what is now known as Chain of Magic), and The Impossible Adventure (a choose-your-own-adventure-style reader magnet² set in the world of The Eversfield Academy Vampire Hunters that is no longer available and I have no plans to resurrect at this moment, though I may change my mind in the future, after the Big Relaunch is complete).
• 2018: Published two books, A Brush with Vampires (the first edition of what is now known as School of Shadows) and A Brush with Betrayal (the first edition of what is now known as School of Glass); Started serial for VIP readers group called Sam's story (the in-progress version of what is now known as Chain of Blood; it was also known as The Vampire Pact for a hot second).
• 2019: Published one book, A Brush with Blood (the first edition of what is now known as School of Blood)
• May 2020: Published one book, A Brush with Fire (the first edition of what is now known as School of Midnight)
• Summer 2020 - Fall 2021: Unexpected maternity leave for over a year due to a certain global pandemic
• Late 2021: Re-read the first editions of all my books in The Eversfield Academy Vampire Hunters series and decided to relaunch them, going with "The Six-Million-Dollar Launch" plan from Chris Fox's book, Relaunch Your Novel. That means I decided to go with a full relaunch, re-editing the books to get them up to my current standards, going with a big launch plan to get attention, etc. Of course, I won't be spending anywhere near six million dollars on it, lol. 
• 2022 - present: Edit. Those. Books. (and write and edit new prequel novella Chain of Shadows)
• Did I think this would take six months? Absolutely. 
• Has it taken 2.5 years and counting instead? Yup. 
• Is that disappointing? Yup. 
• Is my Type 1 Enneagram Perfectionist self thrilled with the results so far? Abso-bloodsucking-lutely.³ 😂

Next time: Why the Big Relaunch.

Happy reading,

Betsy

The epic list of side notes and digressions:

1. The events of the first three books in The Eversfield Academy Vampire Hunters romantic YA urban fantasy series were initially all in one slightly-greater-than-50,000-word book. Yup, the final drafts changed a ton from the first draft. But that is a topic for another day. I will tell you that the word count for the final manuscripts for those three books combined comes in at a whopping 230,000+ words.
2. Reader magnets are something you give readers in exchange for an email, to deepen fandom, to encourage readers to try your work as an author, etc. The original reader magnet book (which I may or may not have read, I can't remember anymore (oops!), but I did take his course back in 2016ish that also covered this) was Reader Magnets: Build Your Author Platform and Sell more Books on Kindle by Nick Stephenson. That book was updated in 2019, but I have not read the updated version. More recently, I’ve been following the strategies laid out in Newsletter Ninja 2: If you Give a Reader a Cookie by Tammi Labrecque. At least in general. I love creating reader magnets, so I have lots of ideas of my own about reader magnets/cookies at this point.
3. Yup, that's a Nightstalker swear word, from my books in The Eversfield Academy Vampire Hunters series.