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Although I'm new to all this self-publishing, website making, facebooking, twittering, pinteresting and even squidoo-ing, I will always keep my expectations realistic as I go thru this learning curve. My name is Ricard Hill aka R E Hill and I've been busy illustrating educational books and other stuff for authors & clients for around 35 years.
I am lucky that I continue to work on projects and am able to make my living doing just this...HOWEVER, a few months ago I started to doing some research into publishing my own ebooks and BOOM it hit me. I have a head full of ideas and it sure would be nice to illustrate something to please me. So I spent days writing ( it wasn't going to be "War and Peace" just a short kid's story that came from a personal experience), then spent weeks doing 26 illustrations, then spent what felt like forever figuring the right format, who & where to upload it. And like that, "So...Whatcha Gonna Name Your Doggie?" was on Amazon. Then came the next days of reformatting, adding pages, making color and other changes. A couple of days later there's a knock on my door and a bright and shiny 8"X10" printed copy from Create Space arrived. LIFE IS GOOOOD!
But then... NO, ZERO, NADA I mean the big donut hole in sales. So, being realistic I figured either 1. I'm not marketing, categorizing, meta-tagging, keywording or promoting it right OR 2. the book stinks and my family and friends are all lying to me. So, that is one of the reasons I'm here... NEED HELP.
If anyone or everyone can point me in the right direction it would be appreciated. It is truly a learning experience, and I wouldn't mine selling a book or two...thousand.

http://www.kboards.com/book/?asin=B00B51YE78
I am lucky that I continue to work on projects and am able to make my living doing just this...HOWEVER, a few months ago I started to doing some research into publishing my own ebooks and BOOM it hit me. I have a head full of ideas and it sure would be nice to illustrate something to please me. So I spent days writing ( it wasn't going to be "War and Peace" just a short kid's story that came from a personal experience), then spent weeks doing 26 illustrations, then spent what felt like forever figuring the right format, who & where to upload it. And like that, "So...Whatcha Gonna Name Your Doggie?" was on Amazon. Then came the next days of reformatting, adding pages, making color and other changes. A couple of days later there's a knock on my door and a bright and shiny 8"X10" printed copy from Create Space arrived. LIFE IS GOOOOD!
But then... NO, ZERO, NADA I mean the big donut hole in sales. So, being realistic I figured either 1. I'm not marketing, categorizing, meta-tagging, keywording or promoting it right OR 2. the book stinks and my family and friends are all lying to me. So, that is one of the reasons I'm here... NEED HELP.
If anyone or everyone can point me in the right direction it would be appreciated. It is truly a learning experience, and I wouldn't mine selling a book or two...thousand.

http://www.kboards.com/book/?asin=B00B51YE78