Category Archives: publishing

Book Sales

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I checked my email and saw that today at Smashwords somebody bought a copy of His Robot Wife.  Somebody else bought His Robot Wife, The Drache Girl, and Women of Power.  If you are either of those people, thanks.

I check my book sales frequently.  At Smashwords, I get real-time feedback, but I check at Amazon usually once a day, and I the other ebook stores as frequently as possible.  Book sales are only one indicator of success as a writer– feedback is another, as are posted reviews.  Book sales are really gratifying– that someone thinks enough of your writing to purchase a book, especially if they are buying the second or third book in a series.

To all of you out there who have purchased one of my books, thanks.

Next Up: Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike

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Next up, Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike.  I’m just about at the halfway point in the first draft.  This is my first kid’s book, aimed directly at middle school students.  It’s about a girl inventor and her friends, and it is very much my interpretation of a modern Tom Swift book.  I’ve written before about how much I loved Tom Swift and His Robot Wife is dedicated to Tom.

I actually made enough royalties last quarter that I was able to set aside a few buck to get my first professional help.  I was able to hire Shaed Studios to design the cover for me and this is the result.  I’ll show you the flat version later.  Matthew Riggenbach was great to work with and I’m really excited about the book and its cover.  If you’re an author and want to check Shaed amd Matthew out, here’s the address: http://shaedstudios.com/.

Sales Reporting — Waiting…

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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.

Revision and Editing

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As I work on finishing Women of Power, just a bit about the revision and editing process.  As I write, I solicite alpha readers (friends, family, and members of my writers’ group) to give me feedback as I go.  I make major changes as I go along– adding, cutting, moving sections around.  When the entire first draft is done, I have my beta readers (often but not always the same people) go back to it.  At this point, I’m not editing.  I’m revising.  I’m looking for changes to be made in the storytelling.

Once I’ve got the manuscript the way I want it, I give it a few editing passes.  Editing is much harder to do on your own manuscript because you know it.  You’re very likely to skip over errors because you know what’s supposed to be there.  If possible, I have my crack team of grammarians go over the manuscript again.  My final pass uses the program Text2Go to read the manuscript aloud to me as I follow along in the text.  I’ve caught many errors that I missed and many that editors missed.

Once all that is done and my story is ready to go out, it’s a quick trip through the formatting machine (That’s me.  I format it myself.) and then it’s available to ebook lovers everywhere.

His Robot Girlfriend no longer available in Hardbound

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Do to some change in the way Lulu works their distribution, and which is impossible for a normal human being to figure out, His Robot Girlfriend is no longer available as a case wrapped hard bound book.  This isn’t much of a big deal, as it is still available as a digest paperback, not to mention available free wherever you find fine ebooks.

Thanks Kindle Users!

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I just got my May Amazon royalties and couldn’t be happier.  Thanks to every Kindle owner out there who purchased one of my ebooks.  My Amazon royalties are already quadrupled over what they were last quarter, and this quarter still has another month to go!

As I mentioned before, my primary motivation for writing isn’t the money (but I really appreciate it), but the royalties are real validation of the time and effort put into writing a book.  If I could just ask one more thing, if you’ve read and enjoyed one of my books, please post a positive review, or if that is too much work, just recommend it to someone.

THANKS TO ALL YOU KINDLE OWNERS OUT THERE WHO’VE BOUGHT ONE OF MY BOOKS!  Yes, I’m shouting– that’s why they’re all capitals.

Where are the Ebooks Selling?

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I can only tell where I am selling the most ebooks, and that is definitely the Apple iBooks Store.  I think it is because of the way they are presented.  It’s easier to find Indy books among the listings at iBooks.  Once a book starts selling well, it shows up on Kindle lists, but otherwise it can just sit there.   Here are the sales to date for His Robot Wife.

Smashwords 60

Amazon
832

Kobo
0*

B&N Nook
102

Apple iBooks
1146

Sony
7

Diesel Books
1

* Kobo seems to be having a problem importing new books from Smashwords.  Both say they are working to fix this.  Note also Amazon includes both Amazon.com and Amazon.UK.

What is a Book?

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There has been a lot of discussion about ebooks destroying the publishing industry, and many people crying about the demise of the book.  It kind of begs the question, “what is a book?”  Is a book a collection of paper with a binding, or is it a collection of thoughts and ideas and language?  I think Amazon gets it right in their Kindle commercial when the actor says “this IS a real book.” 

I think the big problem for the publishing industry is that they have been trying to sell paper, when they should have been trying to sell thoughts and ideas and language.  Paper books are just the medium.  We should no more bemoan their loss than we did VHS tape– well maybe a bit more, they have been around for half a millennium or so.  Still, no one cried that VHS tapes were going away in favor of DVD.  We knew that it was what’s on the media that was important.  The same is true for the printed page.  It’s not the paper and ink.  To paraphrase Bill Clinton: “It’s the words, stupid.”

Record Book Sales

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I’m pretty excited.  My books are selling well.  Prior to 2011, the most books that I had sold in a month was 65.  Since most Indy authors sell fewer than 100 books, I wasn’t too discouraged.  I write what I would want to read, and I think that most of my books don’t have much of a “hook.”  When people start reading them though, I seem to get pretty good feedback.  So I knew that at some point I would hook a few readers.  I also suspected that His Robot Wife would be the book to hook a few.

His Robot Wife came out in February, and I sold over 100 books that month.  Then in March, I sold almost 500!  Here (as I write this), April has just started and I’ve already sold over 500 this month!  As I mentioned before, most of them are in the UK, but also quite a few in Australia and Canada.  Thanks to all my readers out there.  I appreciate you.

Hello from Around the World

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One of the great things about publishing a book is hearing from people around the world who enjoyed it and who care enough to let you know.  This past week I’ve had emails from places around the globe I have never visited (but hope to).  It can make you feel both very small and big at the same time.