I sold a cover!

I sold a cover on SelfPubBookCovers.com! Yay! I had posted two covers there, and sort of stopped thinking about them because I had too many other things to do to make new generic covers to submit to the site. And today, I got an email saying the cover sold! I'm not sure whether I can post it here, but as soon as they add it to the published covers page I'll update with a link to it.

A Nice Boost

So I discovered today that without really trying, I'm back to selling a few books each month. My sales only ever got truly exciting about a year and a half ago when for some reason one April I sold a bunch of books. I was like, "This is it!!! I'm going to be able to quit my day job!" Uh, no. In fact, about two months later my sales tanked lower than they had ever been before. There ensued some desperate marketing of various stripes, until I finally decided I just didn't want to contribute to the spam out there anymore. I pretty much abandoned all marketing, unless you count occasional tweets about dieselpunk stuff. Which honestly, I don't. I do retweet when someone lets me know they are reading one of my books. That's really the only time I mention my books online anymore. I've quit checking my sales, especially these last few months because I'm not writing and seeing zeroes in my sales columns isn't going to help motivate me. But recently a couple of people on Twitter and Goodreads have let me know they are reading or have finished one of my books (mainly The City Darkens) and one of them gave me a five star review, so I thought, okay, let's check the KDP report. And lo and behold, I'm back to the numbers I was seeing regularly before that illustrious April. Nothing to suggest I'll be quitting my day job any time soon, but it really is so nice to know people are reading the books. I find I only ever want to write for an audience, so feeling like there was no audience was just an inspiration killer.

Why a picture of fruit? Why not?

I'm rounding the last base of this pregnancy and writing just isn't going to happen for a while, though. I do spend some time thinking about it. I started a story for NaNoWriMo but only got about 3000 words in. I may end up abandoning it--I don't know. I get ideas for it, but I also get ideas for this middle grade/young adult fantasy novel I was toying with. Though most of the latter have to do more with setting than plot. So I just can't be sure which way I'll go when I am ready to write in earnest. I also have the first draft of the sequel to The City Darkens to revise, and I'm about 3/4 done writing the first draft of book four of my Veronica Barry mystery series. And since actually a number of the books purchased recently were from that series, I do feel like maybe the first thing I need to do is finish that. When I have the time and the energy. Which probably isn't going to be soon.

Twitter: Spam vs. Marketing

A few months ago I took down all of my programmed tweets that directly marketed my ebooks. I did this out of frustration with how many of these tweets I was seeing in my own stream. They vastly outnumber tweets where anyone actually says anything about how their day is going or whatever. When I attempted to make  list of tweeps who "tweet real stuff" I only managed to accumulate 24 people, out of a potential group of nearly 2000. This makes Twitter really boring to me. I felt like I was just looking at a stream of spam, and it didn't help that 4 out of 5 of these marketing tweets used quotes from the novels with grammar errors or style issues in the quotes. One vampire novelist's quote said something along the lines of, "A dead body! Someone sucked his ass dry!" Now, just give that one a minute to knock around in your head. Not a pretty picture, is it? A couple of times I couldn't help myself--I had to @ the person with the troublesome tweet and point out the problem. This was never received very well (I can't imagine why!). Seriously, though. You're tweeting something from your book. Why not choose a line that actually flows well?

Yeah, that's what I end up thinking, too. They've probably already chosen the best line in their book.

But I digress.

Back to my point: I got fed up with all the marketing tweets especially since most of them seem to come from people who otherwise are not engaged with Twitter at all, or very little. I nixed my own, and kept an eye on my sales. At first, nothing changed. Then I had a couple of pretty dry months. Then, April happened. In which I more than tripled the the best month of sales I ever had before on Amazon, and had my second best month ever on B&N. What changed?

Well, in April I was giving away two books. I released The Plane and the Parade so I was giving away The River and the Roses. And I had just started giving away Myadar's Snare then, too (I still am; get it here.) And because I wanted to be sure everyone knew about these giveaways, I did a lot more tweeting about them than I had been. I also sent out some direct messages--I really hope those didn't annoy anyone, but since what I was DMing about was free, I decided it was a risk worth taking. Since the free books are located here on the blog, I can't be sure that the tweets led directly to the sales--after all, for that to be the case, a lot of people would have had to click through on the pictures in the margins here or on the links on the ebook description page or something. I also joined several Goodreads groups in April and added my books to a few bookshelves, so it's quite possible that made a big difference--although I only did that with the Myadar books, and I sold a bunch of Veronica books as well as Broken Ones, too, which I didn't post.

So I've decided to give marketing tweets another try and see what happens. Right now, I'm only going to send out 2 or 3 a day. This is extremely low. Michael Hicks, who is my hero because he started out like any indie publisher and worked his way to where he quit his day job and bought a house in Florida with a pool, for pity's sake, sends them out every 60 to 120 minutes, for instance. He's being moderate compared to some of the spammers I mentioned above. I just really don't want someone who only has three dozen followers to open their Twitter account one morning and have to scroll through my fifty marketing tweets clogging their stream.

So we'll see if these tweets do anything. I may eventually up it to 6 a day, although I'm going to give it some time first. I'll give an update when I've seen what happens. By the way, if you don't already follow me on Twitter, you can do so here.

How do you schedule your tweets? Have you found that one kind of tweet is more effective for your sales than others (a book description, a quote from the book, a quote from a reviewer)?

When you see promo tweets, is there one kind you prefer? How do you feel about seeing a lot of promo tweets in your stream?

Myadar's Flight is out!

Myadar's Flight, the third episode in The City Darkens, is now available for purchase from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Like the other episodes, it is priced at $0.99.

Here's my description (SPOILERS if you haven't yet read Myadar's Snare--which you can download for free here--and Myadar's Betrayal):

Myadar has struck a blow against Reister, but she still hasn't found Bersi or figured out a way to escape Helésey. After the success of her first foray into the city disguised as Raud Gríma, she determines to don the costume of the legendary highway robber again. This time, however, things will not go as planned.

So far April has been great for sales. I've sold over three times as many books as in any prior month (although since that number was never very high, it's still not like I can quit my day job). It's super exciting, though. I love knowing that people are reading my books! I just hope they enjoy them, too.

What do you think of the cover? Do you have a favorite of the covers for the parts of The City Darkens, yet?

Veronica, Book 3 is Out!

I got so busy this week I haven't had a chance to do this post until now. My newest Veronica Barry novel, The Plane and the Parade, is out at Amazon and Barnes & Noble! This is the third book in the Veronica Barry series. The first, The River and the Roses, is available for free until the end of the month. I hope you'll download your preferred format and try the series out!

In The Plane and the Parade, French teacher and amateur psychic detective Veronica is off for the summer. It's not all fun and games, though, as Veronica begins to help SPD Detective Daniel Seong, her boyfriend, in his search for a murderer who may in fact be a terrorist. At least she and Daniel are going strong--but a visit from someone in Veronica's past may rock their solid foundation.

My bestest beta reader, Kathryn, interviewed me about The Plane and the Parade on her blog. That was loads of fun! It's always great to be invited to talk about my writing.

And as of this post, one copy of Plane has already been sold, so that's awesome.

This month has been great for sales, actually, after a somewhat disappointing March. And we're only halfway through, so I'm hoping this is the start of an ever increasing trend!

Releasing Plane brings up an interesting question for me, though. When you have a series, do you advertize the latest book a lot, or focus on the first? As a reader, I avoid jumping into the middle of a series. So it's irrelevant to me that book 7 of Song of Ice and Fire is out, for instance, because I would need to start at book 1 anyway. Then again, knowing that there are seven books does appeal to me, because I know when I start the series that I've got a ways to go before I run through the books that have been published. However, I also often hear complaints about book series that have "gone on too long" because the author "needs an editor" or has "lost passion for the story" or whatnot.

What do you think about book series? Do you like them better than stand alone books? Do you ever start a series in the middle? How would you approach marketing books in a series?

Smashwords No More

I'm pretty disappointed in Smashwords. They asked me to unpublish Myadar's Snare because they don't allow serial novels. Which makes no sense at all. I don't see the difference between allowing someone to publish a series of novels and a serialized novel, other than the length of the works. But Smashwords says they don't consider a part of a serialized novel to be a complete work (even though they publish novellas all the time), and it is therefore against their terms of service. These are the people who also publish porn, (unlike Amazon). But when it comes to serialized novels, no no.

I contacted Amazon to be sure they didn't have a similar policy. After all, I suppose I could be taking crazy pills. They informed me that they have no problem with publishing parts of a serial novel. So there.

I am so annoyed with Smashwords that I've unpublished everything I have with them. I know, it probably is a little, "Imma take my ball and go home!" The thing is, this policy of theirs is bad business. No one stands to lose in the scenario where they allow me to publish my novel's episodes. If people like the first and want to buy the second and third and so on, they get to read these installments faster than they would if they had to wait for me to finish editing the whole thing to publish it all at once. (I do intend to offer that as an option eventually.) Meanwhile, if folks purchase the parts, that means both Smashwords and I would benefit financially.

Ultimately the best thing about Smashwords was that they made it easy for me to generate coupons to give away books, but I've realized I can just upload files in various formats right here, and I don't need them. The majority of my sales happen on Amazon, followed closely by B&N (I read the B&N policy, and while they don't prohibit serial novels, they do prohibit including links in your book, which I find weird as well). It's a pity, though. I liked Smashwords because it felt more like working with an individual's business rather than a monster corporation like Amazon. In this case, though, the logic of the big corps wins over the crazy of the little guy.

I'll be updating this blog to reflect the change soon. Look for a new page with free books to download.

Have you ever come across a baffling business practice that made you want to stop working with that business? How did you handle it?

Inspired to make a pledge

Okay, I know this is going to sound cheesy, but I was watching an episode of Glee, where they're singing Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror," and I got really inspired.* Not to write (although I've had a lot of inspiration for writing lately, for which I am grateful), but to make a pledge. It's still a bit hazy, but let's see... I pledge that when I break $1000 in sales (this is still quite far off), I will donate $100 to some sort of children's charity. It was a line in the song about not having a right to ignore a hungry child's need... Anyway, once I break $1000, $100 to a children's charity. And when (yes, when) I start making at least $500 a month in sales, I'll sponsor a child. I did this before for a while but had to stop because money just got too tight. I'd like to do it again. And if I ever become one of those epub authors who makes more than $50,000 a year, maybe we'll adopt a child. That's something I've always wanted to do, and if you ever read my family blog you'll know it's something we may have to do if we want a second child (although that's still not a sure thing). Adoption is so expensive though, so I'd have to be making a lot more than I am now to even consider it.

*This is weird for a couple of reasons: first off, I'm really not sure what to think about Michael Jackson when it comes to children, and unless you knew him personally, you can't honestly tell me you have all the facts either. But I am uncomfortable with at least some of what I do know, so for him to inspire me to want to make a pledge to help children, well... Anyway, secondly, it's all the more apparent that I am a sucker for Glee performances, because the previous performance in the show, a mash-up of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and Destiny's Child's "Survivor" already had me all worked up thinking I could take on the world. This is nothing new, actually. I straight up cried during Amber Riley's performance of "Beautiful"--and I still do every time I watch it.

So anyway, you folks who read this blog can hold me to my pledge. I will announce it when I break $1000, and you can say, "Hey, that means $100 to a children's charity!" and you can even suggest some good ones.

How about you, have you been inspired in unlikely ways lately? Do you have any pledges you've made or would like to make?

Pen Names: Good Idea or Bad?

I've been toying with the idea of creating different pen names for different genres of stories I write (or intend to write). It seems like it might function as a way to keep things organized. I'm the type of person who has folders and subfolders for organizing email or documents on my computer. And yet, in real life, I'm pretty messy. Go figure.

There are my Veronica books, and I'd probably include Broken Ones in the same genre. Modern day, involves ghosts. Those have been around for a year, with "Sophia Martin" as the author name.

As a writer, you wear many hats. :)

Then there's The City Darkens, my current WiP, which is a serialized novel and in the genre of decopunk, sci fi/fantasy. So... I could put my same name on it, or something like S. D. Martin, or M. R. Tinn (= Martin, get it?) or something else. The idea isn't to disguise who I am at all. I'll be posting all about the book here and putting it in the margin with the other books, etc.

And I've been thinking about writing some Georgian or Victorian romances, because there just aren't enough Jane Austen novels, you know? I love them. A lot of people love them. So why not attempt to approach the brilliance of Austen--ha! good luck, Sophia--or at least capture some of what makes those stories so wonderful? Anyway, it seems incongruous for Sophia Martin to write ghost stories, sci fi, and Georgian romances. So some other pen name for that.

The problem is, would using pen names destroy any value my platform on Twitter, Facebook, etc. provides to Sophia Martin? Ultimately, I'm not really convinced those do all that much for my book sales anyway, but what do you think about it? If I'm not going to hide that all the pen names are one person, does that make a difference? Do you think using pen names would be useful or frivolous?

I'm really curious. I hope you'll comment.

Marketing: Doing Nothing Works Better?

In the first week of March I made a list of things to do for my writing/publishing goals. Among those things was to start marketing my books again, at least on Twitter. Over the last year I've gone through different phases with the marketing. I got a couple of book review bloggers to look at my books, but mainly I've sent out tweets promoting them. In the beginning this did seem to make a difference. Then I stopped doing anything to promote the books and even pretty much stopped blogging, because I was pregnant/a new mommy and my head just wasn't in it. And now since early March I started up again. Here's what I've observed:

Marketing seems to have no effect on my book sales, at least the tweet marketing. In past months when I wasn't doing any I sold an average of five books a month. This month, with renewed attempts to market, I've sold one.

I've been giving away books as thank yous to long time followers (let me know if you didn't get a DM on Twitter with a coupon code--I think TweetAdder has been patchy with this) and also new followers. The long-time followers got a coupon for Veronica in Paris, and the new followers got a coupon for Broken Ones. So far, about a dozen people have downloaded Veronica in Paris, and one person has downloaded Broken Ones. Generally, I sell about three copies of Veronica for every one copy of either Broken Ones or The River and the Roses. I thought it was because Veronica is priced at $0.99 and the other two are $2.99. But this would indicate that some other factor is at work, since I offered both for free.

Veronica is a novella, while Broken Ones is a full length, if short, novel. I've heard that novellas are popular--I didn't really believe it, though, because I like long books for the most part.

Veronica is a romance and is set in Paris, so it has a travel aspect. Broken Ones is a ghost story. Could people be tiring of the glut of paranormal novels out there? I think this is a possibility. Look at the popularity of The Hunger Games and the Steig Larsson books. No paranormal there. And everyone on Twitter seems to have a paranormal novel to sell. Myself included, of course. It's frustrating because I like paranormal stories a lot, I always have. But I think maybe some of these authors are just trying to sell what they think is popular. Did they all watch every single episode of Charmed via DVR, like me? I don't think so! Anyway, whether all of these authors are sincerely into vampires (or witches as the case may be) or not is irrelevant. I think paranormal may be in oversupply.

Then there's also the possibility that more people downloaded Veronica because they've known me for a while now and they wanted to give my book a try. It was free, so why not? Whereas with Broken Ones, it was offered to folks who've only just "met" me so it's much more of an unknown entity.

What do you think? Have you offered a book for free? What results did you get?

Do you think there's an oversupply of paranormal fiction? What genre are you into these days?

Using Tweetadder

In order to quiet some of my "shoulds," I've subscribed to Tweetadder, which Michael R. Hicks recommends for marketing your novels. It's a cool utility. You may get a direct message from me in the next week or so if you follow me on Twitter offering you one of my ebooks for free, for instance. I'll be curious to see if the marketing I'm doing with it amounts to anything. So far, I seem to sell between 1-5 books a month not doing any active marketing at all. If that number increases in any significant way, that would be exciting. I'll be sure to post here with my observations either way.

Also, I've redesigned this blog a bit. What do you think? Do you prefer the previous, aquamarine version, or this beige?

After a long hiatus...

Hi everyone! Let me start by saying, THANK YOU for sticking around despite my disappearing act these last couple of months. I've been focused on everything but writing, and since I intend for this blog to mainly address writing, it seemed better to wait until I had something to say about that. Here are some brief news updates, not all of which have to do with writing:

Fun Summer Stuff:
Jeff and I have been having a great time this summer. Among other things, we went to Reno for our anniversay and renewed our vows in the presence of the King. That's right, we got (re)married by Elvis.

We also saw a concert by Chris Isaac, who has now rocketed to the top of my favorite performers list. If you're ever considering seeing him in concert, hesitate no more, just go.

The Pregnancy:
I'm 20 weeks along, doing well! The baby is BOY. I was dreaming of a girl, so I had this moment of adjustment where I had to let her go, but I find that my new dreams of the boy are wonderful, and I'm super excited about him. And, surprisingly, I have discovered that boy clothes are actually cuter. Usually.

The Move/Rental Debacle:
So frustrating. I'm actually not going to go into a lot of detail here, because it still makes me mad. The short version: we're out of the house and the owner is prohibited from pursuing us for anything above the deposit, but she did get to keep that ($2000) as a settlement, and Jeff has since run into her and she admits we did no damage but shows no remorse for having extorted us. Meanwhile we've been living with my inlaws but are now going to try to find our own place.

The eBooks:
Good news there, as I've managed to sell somewhere between 6 and 12 without doing any promo. I even sold two on B&N this month (very first Nook sales). Someone reviewed "Veronica in Paris" and gave it 5 stars, so, awesomeness. And all of this came as a complete surprise as I haven't done more than throw out the occassional tweet, about how I'm not writing, since, like, May.

The Writing:
I've done a little bit of revising, and about 6 weeks ago I wrote something like 3000 words, but it's been, to say the least, patchy. HOWEVER, the time has come to BUCKLE DOWN. The plan is: go to the gym to swim 30+ laps every morning first thing, then at least on the weekdays, off to the internet cafe for two hours of writing. Today was all about getting back into the platform (hence this post). I plan to finish the revisions I've been doing (on the sequel to The River and the Roses) tomorrow. After that, I want to reconnect with my online writing groups (I'm waving at you, Mary, and also at you, Mare, as well as at Will and everyone else on WSE). Sooo... with a little discipline I should be back on the horse soon. :)

How have you been? Has your summer been more productive than mine? Has it been as much fun as mine?

Update for the Week

Well, this week there is good news and bad news. Good news: I sold a book! Considering the fact I did close to no promo (that's the bad news, also very little writing or editing), that's pretty wonderful.

Here's the thing, folks. I'm pregnant. Yep, about a week after I wrote that blog entry about being child-free I found out. I'm due in December. This is my first experience with pregnancy and I vascillate between joy and terror. I'm 38, which means the pregnancy is higher risk than it would typically be for a 25 year old, but so far all my tests are good.

The biggest downside is, I'm exhausted most of the time. My friend tells me I'm building a placenta and that's a big job. Okay, but I'm a writer! I need to write! A lot! Yeah. My body has other plans, involving eating crackers while lounging on the couch and watching 40s movies. And of course, I still have to go to work, and some days it's really really stressful. We had a day last week where three kids got suspended (I personally suspended one of them: a six foot tall, 250 pound, 18 year old country boy who likes to bully women) and a fourth got arrested and spent the week in the hall for threatening to stab his teacher (the same woman who told me about the exhaustion of building a placenta, actually). So the writing and everything associated to it has been suffering.

Nevertheless, I will write! My big plan for May was to do a pseudo NaNoWriMo to get 50K words written on Veronica book 3. Realistically, it probably won't be 50K. I also planned to edit the heck out of Book 2 in the hopes of being able to publish it soon. The good news is, school lets out for summer June 10, which is also the start of my 2nd trimester, and I'm told the second trimester is the least exhausting. We will be moving either in June or July, so that will take a chunk of time and energy, but I'm still hopeful that the summer will be a productive time. I really want to get Book 2 out because I plan to lower the price of River to $0.99 promotionally when I do and I'm optimistic about sales picking up then.

What kinds of crazy, unexpected things have been popping up in your life, and making achieving your writing goals harder than you expected? Do you have children? How do you find the time to write as a parent?

Weekly Update on Sales (or lack thereof)

This week, I sold two books, and that was on Sunday. Since then, crickets have been chirping.

I have given this some thought, and here's my theory as to why.

1. I reformatted two of the books at the beginning of the week, and sent out a lot of tweets about that. So I figure, I probably lost some customers because they were concerned about my formatting, even though the point of the tweets was to let people know that an existing problem was fixed, and that I'd comp a new copy to anyone who had an old, flawed version.
2. I raised my prices on two books: the two full-length novels. They went from $0.99 to $2.99. Although Amazon is still discounting one of them to $0.99, at least last time I checked. I did this after doing some research on prices, and I think it's the right choice. And I expected sales to slow a little but then recover. At this point, sales are beyond slow and show no signs of recovering, so we'll see. Also, the price change doesn't explain the halt in sales of "Veronica in Paris," which remains at $0.99.
3. It's possible the pre-programmed tweets I sent out were in some way unappealing. I've been puzzling over this. I know a little bit about sales, and what little I know I've been applying to the tweets. For one thing, don't ask a rhetorical question, because a person's internal response may be "I don't care." As in, "Will Veronica find out who the murder is in time to save her friend?" My own response to such tag lines is often "Who cares?" so I don't want to make that mistake. And then if you do ask a question, make it one people will say yes to. So I had a couple of tweets going out with a question at the beginning, "Got a Kindle?" figuring some people would say yes. The next thing I asked was, "Like stories about ghosts, psychics, and strong women?" figuring that after the first yes they'd be more inclined to say yes again and click the associated link. However, that seems not to be the case. So I want to go back to my drawing board and figure out a different formula for my book tweets. I had a couple of others going out with just a summary tag, like "Veronica must accept her psychic ability or someone she loves will be the next to die." Those were generally more successful, if you believe my sales of the first two weeks were in any way correlated to them, and I think they were. But they didn't work this week. So maybe people got bored of them.
4. It's possible that I've reached all the potential buyers I can within the first two weeks, among the population of followers I had on Twitter and Facebook. I've gotten new ones, but I have decided to wait at least a few days before putting out any more advertising. I figure if my tweets were in any way annoying, I'd better give people a break before starting up again.

Anyway, so this has been discouraging, but of course I'm not giving up. I'm focusing on the fact that 24 people have bought the books and presumably are reading and enjoying them. That's pretty cool. Also, on other blogs chronicling eBook sales, it seems typical to have bad weeks. I've got all three books out to reviewers, so I'm hoping those reviews will be good, and that once they are posted on Amazon and the rest, I'll see a return to regular sales. I've been getting mixed messages about the value of tagging, and in any case I can't seem to convince anyone to tag my books, so I'm not going to obsess about that. I may join the Independent Author Network, but they do charge a fee ($19.95), so I'm not sure yet. I probably will.

If you have any ideas for me about marketing, please let me know! Have you had to deal with any writing setbacks this week?

Weekly eBook Sales Update.

Things are moving along!

The only fly in the ointment? Two readers have reported some formatting issues in two different Kindlebooks. I suspect it's the em-dashes, which some ereaders don't translate correctly. I am, at the moment, pretty stumped about how to fix this. The two readers both got their books from Smashwords (right Kathryn?) so I have no way of uploading the html version Guido Henkel teaches you how to make which is the only one that would address this, as far as I know. Smashwords only takes .doc files. So mostly at this point I'm crossing my fingers that the formatting won't be bad on most ereaders. On my laptop, using Amazon's Kindle for PC app, I am unable to reproduce the formatting bug. And I'm also unable to bring it up on my actual Kindle.

Another possibility would be to find/replace all my em-dashes and make them into "--" instead. I'm reluctant to do this without more of a sense of how pervasive the problem is, though. The "--" just doesn't look as professional to me. It's probably just me being anal. What do you all think?

Anyway, to the numbers!

Smashwords, total sales by title:
Broken Ones = 5
Veronica in Paris = 2
The River and the Roses = 4

Amazon, total sales by title:
Broken Ones = 4
Veronica in Paris = 4
The River and the Roses = 2

B&N, total sales by title:*
Broken Ones = 0
Veronica in Paris = 1
The River and the Roses = 0

*Keeping in mind that B&N has a reputation for being slow to report sales.

Total sales of all titles, just this last week: 14

Total sales since the beginning: 22

My sales have almost doubled since the first week. This is very encouraging! I've been submitting my books for bloggers to review. I'm hoping once the books get reviewed, they'll really start selling.

By the way, if you have a minute, something you can do for me is go to the sites of each book and select some of the tags associated with each. For instance, The River and the Roses has the tags: psychic, ghost, mystery, etc. The more times people click on these tags (signifying that they agree with them) the higher up in certain lists the books go.

For Amazon, US, go here. That should bring up my three ebooks. Select one and scroll down the page until you get to the tags. Click on a few of those. That simple!

For Amazon, UK, go here.

For B&N, go here. Edited to add: I can't seem to find tags on B&N--did you? I think maybe they don't do them. Please let me know--sometimes I don't see the same stuff because I published the book.

Smashwords doesn't do tags the same way.

Anyway, THANK YOU whether you have a chance to do that or not--just that fact that you are here, reading this blog, shows me that you are supporting me.

Please comment and let me know how your own pursuits are going!

quick numbers update

For those who are interested in my experience so far with epublishing, here's the update for week 1.

Sales by title:
Broken Ones
Smashwords 2, Amazon 2, B&N 0*
Veronica in Paris
Smashwords 2, Amazon 2, B&N 0*

Total sales this week: 8

*I've read that B&N can take a while to report sales, so there may be some that I don't know about.

So... eight! Several bought by people I don't know. In fact, the first purchase was by someone on twitter. SO. COOL. I about died and became one of my own ghosts, people. And every time I check my numbers and one's been added, it's like, JOY!

Even if my books never take off, this experience has been worth it. It's so worth it to know that people out there are reading my books. And from what one person has told me in direct twitter messages--enjoying them! And it's not even the same twitter person. Ha.

This week has been amazingly productive. It was spring break, and I used just about every waking moment (minus showers, meals, and dog walks. Oh and sleep. But not a lot of that--I'm too manic at the moment)doing something writing-related. Here's what I did:

• Finished the WiP, The Fire and the Veil.
• Finished the RiP, The River and the Roses.
• Created 3 finished covers and started collecting possible images for The Fire and the Veil.
• Published 3 ebooks, Broken Ones, Veronica in Paris, and The River and the Roses.

And I also did a bit of critiquing. And I intend, now, to do some more of that. I've gotten so much help from fellow writers. It would be gratifying to give back a little!

And I've got some ideas percolating... short stories? Novellas? Novels? All I know is I'm going to try to do ApriNoWriMo. So whatever happens happens.

What about you? What successes have you had recently? What goals do you have for April?