I have been editing for close to three weeks now, and not a day passes where I can’t wait to get back to writing. I’m outlining a new Urban Fantasy series as I edit, and as a result I’ll have the most detailed scaffolding I’ve ever created for the first three books in the series before I start writing them. That should help the writing move a bit quicker once I start. I’m aiming for 70-80k per novel, and hoping to finish each one in about a month.
As far as new releases go, I’ve got a slew of ’em coming up. July 23rd is Children of the Wastes, July 30th is Warcaster, and August 30th is its sequel, Reclaimer. Super stoked about all three of these novels.
My secret pen name novel came out in late June, and so far it’s been my best release ever. It’s selling gangbusters so far (which for me means a few copies a day) after a strong pre-release period. You can see the effect of the pre-release and subsequent sales on my monthly Amazon totals:
In April, 2016 I sold 75 books on Amazon.
In May, I sold 78.
In June, sales spiked to 143, thanks largely to my pen name novel.
A few other important things that happened during these three months: people started getting their KDP accounts closed down for supposed ‘fraudulent borrows’ on their KDP Select titles. Amazon is trying to crack down on scammers, and innocent, well-meaning authors are getting caught in the crossfire. This, quite frankly, scared the crap out of me, so I’ve been withdrawing the few books I was trying out in Select and publishing them wide. I’ve never liked the idea of being exclusive anyway, and the thousands of page reads I was getting every month only amounted to a few extra bucks.
That leads me to the other important thing that’s been happening over the last few months. My sales on non-Amazon channels have picked up. They’re still nothing stellar, but they’re now more than the negligible amounts I was selling before.
As I finish up my edits on these next few releases, members of my Readers’ Group should expect a fresh offering of discounted and/or free titles in the coming weeks (just for being members!) If you’re not already a subscriber, you can sign up on the homepage of this very website. Thanks for reading, and I wish you good fortune in all your endeavors!