I don't know about any other authors, but I'm somewhat obsessed with the sales rankings of my book on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble.com. I find myself looking at it at least twice a day, I guess because I bored or something. I watch how, at least on Amazon, my sales ranking goes up to a few thousand(around 100,000) and for a few days sinks into the millions, then out of the blue, jumps all the way up to like 70,000 or so. BN.com doesn't seem to fluctuate as much as Amazon, I don't know if their sales figures are more accurate or they have a different way of calculating the rankings. I'm sure I'll find out once Iuniverse posts what I sold in March in the next few days, which I'm am definitely looking forward to since I set a very modest goal of 100 sales.

Anyway, I was searching for a way to watch the figures and stumbled on rankforest.com, which keeps track of figures from both websites. I added my book and I watch the graph go up and down throughout the week, which is cool or not, depending on your mood at the time. I don't know how Out of Time compares to other book sales because I really don't want to get discouraged. I just wonder if authors like Stephen King or James Patterson ever obsess over sales anymore or now that they're rich they don't have to or need to?

If you're a new writer and looking for websites to market your work or yourself as an author, searching for those places online takes a really long time, especially if you don't type in the right keywords on google or other search engines. I thought I'd post sites all in one place so you can find what you're looking for without searching for days on end.

http://www.writersmarket.com Online version of the book

http://www.writersdigest.com

http://www.helium.com Where writers can post articles, stories, opinions

http://www.writing.com Writing site

http://bookmarket.com/index.html This is John Kremer's website where there are supposed to be "1001 Ways to Market Your Books"

http://authornation.com/ A community for authors and readers

http://www.bookreview.com/$spindb.query.bottom.booknew This is where you can get interviewed, post your book, or even get it reviewed.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/ Where you can post short stories, articles, or other kinds of content

http://www.oncewritten.com/

http://www.sffworld.com/ if you write SF, then take a look at this site

http://www.bibliophil.org/ a website you can have a customized library

http://www.ibookdb.net/ an internet database for books

http://ebookscafe.writergazette.com/addbook.php where you can list your e-books

http://www.published.com/ a free directory of writers and artists

http://thewriterslife.homestead.com/promotion.html book promotion links

http://www.writing-world.com/ articles about writing, or post your work

http://wordpress.com/ a blogging network

http://www.blogger.com a blog site

http://www.writermag.com a writing magazine

http://anotherealm.com/prededitors/pepb.htm a website that tells you which sites are real or not real

http://www.bookcrossing.com/ If you ever want to see if people read a book you just leave around, then come here

http://www.goodreads.com/ a social network for book lovers

http://www.librarything.com/ your personal library online

http://www.facebook.com You can do an advertising campaign for your website or book

http://www.authortree.com/ build your own author website

http://bookmarket.ning.com/ social network on Ning.com

http://www.authorsden.com/ Author community

http://www.authorzone.com/index.php another community for authors

http://www.shelfari.com/ List your library online

http://www.writerscafe.org/

http://www.squidoo.com/browse/homepage

http://www.editred.com/ Writing community

http://www.myspace.com this is obvious

http://www.redroom.com/ Author community

http://www.booktour.com/readers If you feel like going on a tour for your book, this is a place to post it

Well, these are most of the sites I have on my favorites list. Hope these links are helpful to the beginning writer. Have fun surfing!

I just thought I would take the time to post my experience with self-publishing so far. Since I published through Iuniverse.com, they post sales 2 months after the fact, so I just recently found out I only sold 7 of my novellas in February, making all of $2.34 in royalties. I guess I shouldn't go wild and spend it all! ha ha. I have to wait until the end of May to know how many novellas I've sold off of Barnes and Noble.com or Amazon.com, or any other online store that is selling it. I'm learning the art of patience when it comes to waiting to find out my book sales.

I know I've sold my novellas on BN.com and Amazon because I used to watch, almost daily, the sales ranking on Amazon. The highest I got to was around 180,000 out of who knows how many million, but its dropped since I'm not advertising Amazon anymore, since I get more royalties off of Barnes and Noble, at least according to Iuniverse.

I have my novella at the library I work at and quite a number of people have put it on hold and have read it. None of them know me, other than the fact that I work there, so they were unbiased. So far, three of them have told me it was a really good story and told me things they liked about it. Two of my co-workers read it and thought it needed a little more work, which I will do eventually, but overall, they liked it too. I recently found out that a 12 year old cousin of mine in California really enjoyed it and thought it needed to be made into a movie. I wouldn't go that far, but I'm glad it's enjoyable for all ages.

As far as marketing goes, I've done it all online, which is far easier, but still requires a lot of money. Since I self-published, I had to get the coypright for my work copyrighted myself, because I would really like to get it into libraries with a Library of Congress number, but, being the federal government, it's taking them a really long time to approve it. So far, doing it myself, I've managed to get Wichita Falls Public Library and Midwestern States' Moffett Library to carry my work, so I'm hoping with a LOC number, more libraries will buy my book through Ingram(the supplier to most libraries).

I've actually enjoyed this whole process so far, but, next time, I might try the whole sending in queries to big publishers or sci-fi magazines like Asmiov's or Analog, but I don't know if I'll do that.

I'm going to post the opening scene to my next novel, and I'm not sure if its weak or what. So, if a reader of this has an opinion on how it needs fixed or if it works, then please post! Anyway, the jist of my novel is about advanced humans leaving Earth around the time of Noah's Flood and coming back a thousand years later, leaving, then coming back a few thousand years more, because they need help fighting aliens. Some of the "Terrans" take the place of actual humans in history and have adventures of their own, sort of inline with what actually happened. Anyway, the aliens, called the Ragnor, cause chaos at Roanoke, Salem, and Roswell, and abduct humans and experiment on them. The US government spends the next 60 years figuring out the alien technology after the crash at Roswell, then decide to pay back both sides. This is the President introducing the story to the world....

The President was not looking forward to this press conference, especially in the White House Press Room in front of all those scowling reporters. He had wanted to do it in the safety of the Oval Office, sitting behind his desk, with no one around but the TV people and the Secret Service. In the end, he felt it was necessary and the right thing to give this press conference in person, because he was the one who ordered the strike on the planet. What he was about to tell the people of not only the United States, but also the rest of the world, filled him with anxiety, mostly because it could anger enough people to get him impeached. The United States government had kept this secret now for more than sixty years, and now was time to tell the world. The President walked into the Press Room as his press secretary was introducing him, feeling as if the whole world was on his shoulders. He stationed himself behind the podium, took a deep breath, and began, "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the Press and those of you at home watching on TV or the Internet. I am here to inform you of an action we, the United States, have taken no other government on Earth would have known about until shortly before this press conference. I suggest all of you sit back, relax, and listen to the whole story, because this may take a while. It all started a few thousand years ago...."

So, you're probably wondering how I came up with the story of Out of Time, at least that's what I'm hoping you're thinking ha ha.

I started out with thinking the whole US government-alien UFO landing conspiracy theories would make a good story. Then, I saw the movie Titanic in 1997 and thought it would be cool if I could include it, so it turned into a time travel story. My villain, at first, was a guy who turned traitor and sold technology secrets to a terrorist organization. I had him hijack the timeship, but he thought he was going to 1941 to help Japan attack Pearl Harbor, instead he ends up in Roswell 1947. I didn't think this character worked too well as the main antagonist, so I created a bigger bad guy, who pulled the strings from 50 years further in the future.

This antagonist ends up going back in time himself and impersonates J. Edgar Hoover. I have Hoover stay in control of the FBI because he knows where all the bodies are buried and what skeletons all the politicians have in their closets since he is from the future. He uses his knowledge to try and stop the time travelers, by sending teams of his own to where Hawking and the others are supposed to be. Eventually, it's discovered that this Hoover had a hand in trying to assassinate JFK. At the end, you find out just why Hoover is determined to stop Hawking.

Other chapters deal with Anne Frank and the time travelers attempt to keep her from dying in the Concentration Camp she ends up in. I have my time travelers visit JFK because I was into the whole conspiracy about there being more than one shooter in Dallas that November day. I still think there is more to the whole assassination of the President than the government will ever let us know, but then again, maybe it was Oswald by himself who did it.

I have my time travelers even attempt to fix Apollo 13 and the Challenger shuttle. The only problem is, that when they return to their present, they discover changes they never imagined. I have them debate about whether they should fix the mistakes or just leave it alone. The message here being, should time travel ever be attempted and what about the grandfather paradox?

I'm really into American history, so that's why I chose certain times in US history to start with. One of these days, when I'm a much better novelist, I will add more chapters or just add more to the chapters that are in the novella already, because I think it needs more meat to the story. Of course, I could just write a bunch of sequels, I don't know yet. I just know that my next novel won't take me ten plus years to finish, because I just nitpicked this one to death, and decided to publish it because I was just tired of looking at it and messing with it. From the various people who have read it so far, who knew how I wrote in high school, have been pleasently surprised by how well the story flows and how interesting it is. Hopefully, that translates into a lot of people wanting to buy a copy.

I'm currently working on another novel that I once submitted to the Writer's of the Future contest as a short story. Stay tuned for that, once I have it completely written, I will post what that novel is about.