Sunday, October 12, 2014

A Shared Journey by Aileen Fish

A writer’s life is primarily one of solitude, us alone with our computers and characters. We do need critique partners and/or beta readers, and very much need our fans, but so much of what we do we do on our own.

Unless we’re lucky enough to find a group like Sweet Romance Reads. Having friends to work with you in promoting your books, or just introducing yourself to new readers, is beneficial in more ways than just increasing sales. We share knowledge and experiences, convince each other to try something new with the potential to move beyond what we’ve come to think of as our niches.


We did that this summer, with the project coming to completion just under two weeks ago. We contributed stories for our anthology, and set to work plotting and planning the best ways to get the word our there to new readers as well as the ones already watching for our next books.

It took the full team of our fourteen authors to accomplish our initial goal of hitting the top 100 at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. In addition to the prestige of being a bestselling author, that puts our book where more people might find it. But I’ll tell you a secret: deep down inside, most of us get giddy over the accomplishment of reaching those numbers. We only try to be blasé, while we’re screaming in excitement to our families.

Sometimes we get amazingly lucky, and all that works allows us to reach an incredible number of readers, as it did with out anthology. Our boxed set reached #51 on the USA Today Bestseller list! That’s like having your movie being one of the top earners for a weekend. It’s our version of a blockbuster, along with the other major bestseller lists.

So, what you find here at Sweet Romance Reads these days are some very happy authors, grateful to have found these amazing women to work with, and even more grateful to have an increasing audience of sweet romance lovers who want to read our books.

I know the others join me in saying thank you to each and every reader out there who has ever enjoyed one of our books. You make our writing lives complete.

~*~

Aileen Fish is the still-giddy USA Today Best-selling Author of sweet contemporary and Regency romance. Her most recent work, Christmas in White Oak, appears in the boxed set Sweet Christmas Kisses, and will be available individually on October 29th.

Stay up to date with her on her website http://aileenfish.com and on Facebook or here at Sweet Romance Reads.

12 comments:

  1. It's been an honor to work with you on this. So much fun!

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  2. Loved your post, Aileen. This has been a wonderful experience. Definitely would like to do it again! Our readers and followers were fantastic!

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  3. I AM SO HAPPY for you guys. (And happy to have all those books to read for next-to-nothing, just quietly! I just love Christmas stories.) You are all such a great bunch of writers to know and be part of SRR with! xxx

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  4. Huge congratulations to you all. It is an honor to be part of a group of such talented writers! :)

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  5. This was one of those times when all the stars aligned. What a great summary, Aileen!

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  6. Great blog, Aileen! I"m so very thankful to be a part of Sweet Christmas Kisses!

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  7. Wonderful post, Aileen. It's been great to be a part of Sweet Christmas Kisses and to work with such talented authors.

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  8. What an amazing experience it was to work with the other authors. I was blown away by the knowledge that was willingly shared. As one person commented...it was a master class in how to launch a book.

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  9. I feel very fortunate to have been a part of this effort - and what a deal - 14 outstanding novels and novellas. We had/have a wonderful product to share with readers, so this has been an amazing experience all the way around.

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  10. It's wonderful that all fourteen of us have worked so well together. It's been a pleasure taking part in the boxed set!

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