Writing Lives…lots of them…all the time…day and night…awake and asleep…I can't control it…
My first novel – historical military fiction – made it to the top 10 of 9 of Amazon's bestseller lists. Via my blog I share what I have learned while writing two more.
Indie Author Retweet Group, Pop = 73
This morning, after rolling out of bed on this 4th of July, I saw that my first novel had gotten its 100th review on Goodreads and its 66th review on Amazon. From the same person, and only 4 stars, nonetheless it was exciting to hit 100 on Goodreads. That is just one of many metrics that can describe my book’s success in the market.
I wanted to share a great article I came across about Peter Gabriel and 27 of his most notable songs. Gabriel and Genesis are just two of the many influences on my writing and creative thinking.
Continue reading “Peter Gabriel and one view of his 27 Best Songs”
It is too nice to sit inside and stare at a computer. Took the dog for a walk in a greenbelt near our home in Austin. And one of the challenges of the writer’s life is sitting around too much, so figured I’d get a walk in before it gets too hot.
The first novel — Lonely Hunter — in my upcoming Science Fiction novel has a lot of action in rural settings. I have long enjoyed being outside while I was in the military, to include my time as an infantry officer in the Army. So it feels very comfortable to include such settings where it makes sense.
Joanna Penn, an accomplished writer and blogger about writing and publishing has penned (pun intended 😉 ) a nice article about the pros and cons of indie publishing and traditional publishing.
Note that it is not indie versus traditional publishing. It is indie and traditional publishing. Neither is perfect, both have many challenges, and some writers might pick one over the other for one book, and the other for a subsequent book.
If you are trying to make up your mind about which way to go, take a look. It’s a good article. Check it out.
Though sales of my novel have continued to slow as it is coming up on 3 years since I published it, I’m keeping my promise to donate half of my earnings. Since I made my last donation early in the year, I’ve earned another $400, so I’m donating $200. Because my employer matches my donations, that means another $400. I have again decided to donate to the VFW National Home for Children.
I really like this organization’s focus on families. They seem to understand that it takes a family working together to get back on its feet while you also have to help the children.
This focus on protecting children is also a key theme in Lonely Hunter and the subsequent novels in the series. More on that in a future post.
So in total, with a partial match, I’ve now been able to donate over $2,000 to organizations that help our veterans and their families. That makes me feel good and it is pretty exciting that my first novel has sold so well.
Speaking of book sales… Given that I’m kind of a data geek, I have long been tracking my monthly sales. You can see below in blue the average sales per day on a monthly basis, and the red line is the running average.
You can clearly see in blue how sales fell almost immediately (very typical for a newbie), and then climbed as I figured out to pick keywords that would actually get traffic. Sales peaked at over 7 books per day, and then fell dramatically in September of last year. Amazon clearly made a change that impacted my sales. When I spoke to them, they said they did not know what they could have done, but obviously, something happened. The change before and since has exceeded two standard deviations, which strongly implies something material changed.
In all events, I’m not unhappy. It has been a great run, and with the strong reviews and continuing sales, I’m very proud of how it did and the people who have helped me — my wife, one of my daughters who made the map, and my editor.
It has been a good year. 🙂
Best wishes to you and your family and for all your writing projects for the New Year!
Two and a half years after I published my novel, it is still selling several copies a day.Earlier today it had a sales rank of 50K (see the above screenshot). Sales have certainly declined from where they peaked about nine months after I published, but sales continue at a steady pace. And my novel is in a pretty small niche, so book sales have only so much upside in this niche.
My book is priced at $1.49, and it has been at that price for almost the entire time it has been for sale on Amazon, so I’m not wracking up sales by selling it at $.99.
Below you can see my Author Rank as tracked by Amazon. Even two and a half years after I launched my book it is still doing better than it did the month after I launched it. Again — see my blog on keywords. That dip the month after I published my book was because I did not know what I was doing (like most indies) with keywords. After that, I got my keywords figured out and my sales did much better.
I’m going to cut to the chase on why it continues to sell so well. There are three primary reasons, three things that anyone can do ramp their book sales and keep them up. Continue reading “Three things to do to ramp your Book Sales”
My first attempt at a novel was a dystopian science fiction story while I was in 7th grade in Hays, Kansas. It focused on the Junior High students and our coming challenges as we were to be protected from a cataclysm that would wipe out society before were were to restart humanity. Probably not the best sci fi book plot of all time.
I’ve not changed the price of my first book on Amazon in a year and a half. My guess is that frequent price change or even free days will not do much for your sales and won’t result in many new reviews. Nonetheless, I thought I’d make my book free for a day and see what happens.
The day is about half over, and per the KDP report Amazon offers, I’ve had about 70 downloads. Given that I barely advertised it — a few tweets only — that is not too surprising. But there are a few surprising things.
Continue reading “What is the Value in Giving Away Free Kindle ebooks?”
This morning, while I was sitting on the deck doing some writing, our dog (Trevose — named after the street we lived on in Singapore, where we adopted her from the humane society) and a buck had a conversation through our back fence.
Moments before, a huge owl had been sitting on a limb not far above where the buck was standing in this picture. And there used to be a famiy of hawks that lived in a nearby tree, but they seem to have departed about a month ago. We have a couple hummingbird feeders, but there seems only two that frequent them. And we have a squirrel with a black head and a brown body that crosses the deck from time to time. There is a downside…
Continue reading “A writer’s life… And raccoons, deer, hawks, owls and spiders”