One of the great things about publishing with Amazon’s KDP, is the instantaneous reporting of sales.  I sell more books through Smashwords, which distributes to B&N, Kobo, Sony, and Apple, but sometimes the reports of sales can lag a couple of months.  I know that Smashwords reports to me as soon as they get the reports from the retailers, but it is still a long wait.  I check in regularly at my Smashwords Dashboard, especially near the end of the month.  I like to keep track of my monthly sales as much as possible.  In the meantime, I should get back to revising Blood Trade.

As a self-published author, I really need to put on my publisher hat and get paper editions of every book out this year.  Case in point: both The Dark and Forbidding Land and The Drache Girl have been out for months in ebook form and aren’t yet available in paperback.  I don’t sell very many paperbacks (whereas my ebooks are really starting to take off) but I think they help my exposure.

As for a traditional publisher, I still have a desire to see my work in giant stacks of hardbound editions, but I don’t have much that will be ready this year to submit to a publisher or an agent.  Maybe Women of Power.  On the other hand, the publishers are doing such a good job of driving themselves out of business that I may not get a chance.  Expect to see at least one major publisher fold in 2011.  Expect also to see some big names going the self-publishing route.