Scrambling on the Boat...before it leaves

@Judy: Thanks, Judy! Momentum can be a pain in the behind to maintain, especially when life gets hectic, but I think writers should keep putting products out at a consistent rate, especially in the romance genre, where there are writers who are just writing machines and can pump out a book a month. I'm not sure if things have picked up yet, but it's not the end of the month yet, so I'm hoping for a few more sales. I've got a short story releasing on Christmas, a re-release of an older book on the 27th and another short erotic story on the 31st, so it'll be interesting to see how these releases affect my numbers for this month.

@Eamonn: Thanks so much! The cover for Angel of Death is awesome It's not a genre I would normally read, but the cover did make me linger for a while. I especially like the flare effect you got going on over the angel's left shoulder.

UPDATE 12/22/2013

BITE: 15
HIS FOR CHRISTMAS: 32
INVINCIBLE: 3
WAITING FOR DARKNESS: 7

Sales are okay. Since I'm releasing a prequel to the Blood Martyr Series (Waiting for Darkness, Bite), I'm hoping the prequel will boost the sales of the other two books.

Got a terrible review for HIS FOR CHRISTMAS in which the reader basically said it was the worst book she'd written and it wasn't worth it even though she got it for free. D< So, like the vindictive person I am, I engaged her by calling her out and telling her what a terrible person I'M KIDDING. But not about the vindictive part. But I noticed from her previous reviews that she's very heavy into the Christian-themed novels and I don't know...maybe the sex in HfC just offended her? She never said why she thought it was the worst book ever written, so I guess I'll never know. Ah well. Different strokes for different people.

merrihiatt said:

We're the best worst writers club!

Click to expand...

Yes, please!

UPDATE 12/29/2013

BITE: 18
HER WICKED KISS: 3
HIS FOR CHRISTMAS: 44
INVINCIBLE: 4
WAITING FOR DARKNESS: 8

My sales pretty much stopped for the last couple of days. Last week, I upped the price of His for Christmas and Waiting for Darkness to 1.99 (they were 99 cents before) and I still sold copies, so that's good. I've starting selling on All Romance Ebooks and Smashwords, so I'm hoping my visibility will start to improve. I'm releasing an older book today, and I've got a short story that's supposed to be coming out on the Wednesday.

This month was pretty productive with 4 new products, but my sales haven't seen any drastic change. I'm hoping next month will be a bit better with the release of 2 full-length novels. I've just got to remember this is not a race and keep plodding away.

I know I'm lucky when there's countless people who don't sell more than a few copies a month. My weak point in the writing business is definitely publicity so I'm definitely going to need to work on that.

That's it from me for this week.

UPDATE 1/5/2014

BITE: 3
HER WICKED KISS: 2
HIS FOR CHRISTMAS: 5
INVINCIBLE: 2
KISS THE SHADOWS: 4
WAITING FOR DARKNESS: 3

So I haven't been able to do much writing the past few days as I've started offering cover art. I did a flash sale of $30 for a custom cover and got inundated with inquiries, which I should have expected. As for book sales, they have definitely picked up since I have put out new material. I'm writing a new historical called FOR A DUKE'S LOVE but since it's not an urban fantasy, it should be interesting to see how the sales will go.

UPDATE 1/18/2016

Wow. It's been two full years since I posted my sales numbers. Honestly, the past two years...have been hell. I quit my job, moved halfway around the world to a really different country to which I didn't speak the language, but looked like a native, so every time I couldn't reply to a simple question, everyone thought I was touched in the head.

Yep. I moved to China.

My husband got a teaching gig and for a while, I thought it was going to be awesome. No more 40 hour work weeks! All that writing I would do! Oh boy! We moved to China in May 2014 and only now, almost 2 years later, am I finally getting back into writing and publishing. I just released my first work since 2014 on Amazon, a contemporary romance set in Japan and it has been exhausting. Working with a developmental editor, then a copy editor...then a proofer. I can honestly say that my past efforts did not take that much work and it is evident in the not-so-good reviews I got.

But a few weeks ago, I looked back at my 2015 and thought "Jesus, I can do better than this." 2015 was a really bad year for me, both writing and life wise. I was depressed, gained weight I really didn't need, slept insane long hours...basically, I farted around the whole year. I did some writing, finished some books, but nowhere as much as I thought I would get or what I was capable of pulling off.

But 2016 is going to be different. Very different. I feel refreshed, energized, ready to kick butt.

I won't bother posting up my sales numbers for 2015. They were dismal, absolutely dismal, almost mortifyingly so. I promised myself 2016 won't be like 2016.

Let's see how that goes.

UPDATE 2/1/2016

Total sales: 13
Total page reads: 3139

My tale needs to be a cautionary one. I think a lot of writers starting out are kind of lulled into this sense of "OH MY GOD, I'M GOING TO BE THE NEXT (insertselfpubfamousnamehere)" and that's a great thing to think. It's motivational and the idea of all those dolla bills (yes, I skipped the "r" in dollar intentionally) can keep a person going from Chapter 1 to The End.

I've been self-pubbing since 2013. I have ten books out. I have to be honest with you though. Every month, I think I'm scrapping in anywhere from 20-40 bucks a month. LOL. It's kind of depressing and painful, but I'm in this for the long run, so even though the sales numbers are depressing, I can't stop.

Keep in mind, I pretty much stopped writing for all of 2015. I had just moved to a different country and everything was falling down around me. Of course I kept writing, but I did nothing to maintain my publishing business. I did no promo, publishing nothing new, didn't bother to fix the messed up Createspace print books because I didn't see anyone buying my books, print or otherwise.

Sales are trickling through. In truth, I'm writing in one of the most popular genres and I should be making a lot more. But I'm not. My fault, of course.

I got lazy and that's kind of the death keel (is that even the right word?) in the self-publishing world.

2016 rolled around and I looked back at 2015 with disgust, wondering what exactly I thought I'd be achieving.

So this past month, I kind of grabbed my writing career by the neck and shook it really hard. Then I got back to work. Today I am finishing the sequel to The Handsome Devil.

My word count for January was 61,789, but I only started writing on the 16th, so really my average daily wordcount is around 3.8k. Not bad, but recently I started pulling 5k days, to be accomplished in two totally focused hours. Then I moved up to 8k days, possible in 3 1-hour writing sessions. Having written 8k for the past few days, I know it's possible to hit 10k in 4 hours. I don't have a job. All I have is an empty house (husband went to Vietnam for a few weeks, but I opted to stay home to write my ass off for the next few weeks), three lazy cats and about twenty pounds of coffee beans.

2016 is going to be different. I'm not going to quit. I won't quit. I can't quit.

See you guys in March!