If you’re an author, you need to get your books made into audiobooks. I’d heard that audiobooks weren’t very profitable. Not only did I get to hear my story brought to life by a talented narrator, but the additional revenue from audiobooks was unexpected. I produced my first audiobook last year and was delighted with the results. Other authors mentioned how easy it was to use. It was completed within the first few weeks of the Damaged eBook and paperback going on for sale. I made sure that the audiobook was a priority because of how the story spoke to people. I receive emails and letters from fans saying how the book strikes so close to home. When Damaged hit the virtual shelves, it took off. Why did you decide to produce an audio version of your title? I’m really glad that I didn’t.ĭamaged is a new adult romance novel about a college student that has a one night fling and finds out that he’s her new professor the following day. By the time Damaged hit the ‘shelves,’ I had a decent idea of what I needed to do for the cover and the story. That book sat in obscurity for nearly 9 months before people noticed it. Within a few weeks of the cover change, Scandalous hit the New York Times and USA Today Bestseller lists. Artistic covers don’t work well for romance.

It needs to clearly communicate as much as possible about the book in a blink. I recreated the covers for Secrets, switching to something more traditional, and they got some traction. I was about to forget the whole romance thing, but decided to give it one more shot. I tried another stab at romance and wrote Secrets. The people who read it really liked it, but it didn’t really do anything impressive. Then, in 2012, I tried writing a romance novel- Scandalous. I created the characters, the stories, the worlds, and even shot and created the covers. I wrote YA PNR (paranormal romance) and loved it. Ward: I self-published my first book in 2011 after realizing that traditional book publication didn’t really jive with me.

Damaged by H.M. Ward