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Sheryl Hoyt saw that graph, but it didn't deter her. Shortly after she returned home from the conference, she was thrilled to find that her promotional efforts had borne fruit in the form of a four-star review for Dangerous Heart: "Could not put it down!" Still, she had a guilty sense that she should be doing more, working the marketing game and monitoring sales. "I'm not one of those people who are pushing the button all day," she says. "I have a full-time job and a full-time husband and full-time cats." In October she published her third novel, the Victorian romance Heaven Made. By November, after nine months as a published author, Hoyt had sold a total of 291 books, including more than 100 free downloads, earning $352.79.
Hoyt says the numbers matter less to her than her words, though. Publishing can be humbling, but it is better than keeping her stories to herself. She is thinking about writing her next book, which was inspired by another dream. "I can see it in my head," Hoyt says. "There's two women and a guy, and there's a relationship between him and one of the women, and the other woman, the heroine, they are going to fall in love somehow, and it's going to be a problem."
"There's a ship," she adds. "It kind of feels like the Titanic."