B.E. Sanderson's Blog, page 11

FERTILE GROUND is On Sale

Adam Wyte is a serial rapist on a twisted mission. Agent Teri Buchanan is a rape survivor tasked with hunting him down and bringing him to justice. But when a rapist turns to murder and justice crosses paths with revenge, can Teri to do the right thing?

FERTILE GROUND - on sale now for only 99c/99p. (Always free with Kindle Unlimited.)
US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FOPNE9YUK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fertile-Grou...
#suspense #ebooksale #Revenge #justice #99c #SerialCrime #sciu

Kind of a Cascading Sale Thing

Okay, so I totally forgot to post here on Wednesday.  Which is kinda stupid of me, since I had a sale start on Wednesday.  Oh, I did all the marketing posts to FB and MeWe, but not here.  Derp.

Anyway, here's the deal...

DYING EMBERS is on sale now.  99c if you're in the US.  99p if you're in the UK.  This sale will last through to the 16th.  Then FERTILE GROUND goes on sale for 99 through the 23rd.  Then EARLY GRAVE goes on sale for 99 through the 2nd of March.

:shrug:  I'm trying something there.  Kind of a cascading sale thing.  Of course, I think the sales for FG and EG would be dependent on sales for DE, and so far it's been crickets for DE.  I'm not holding out a lot of hope.  

But hey, you can't win if you don't try.  Right?  

In other news, I've been so wrapped up in preparing for and worrying about the weather (it's frigid now and they're predicting 3-9 inches of snow for next week), I haven't used much brain power to actually work.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  One would think because I'm stuck inside, it would be the perfect time to work.  Umm, nope.  

Hopefully, now that we're as prepared as we're going to get, I can settle down and work.  I need to poke myself in the ass and just get it done.  Sheesh.  

Updates and Stuff

Yeah, I know it's not a day when I usually post here, but hey, it's good to shake things up a little every now and then. 

Anyway, I finished the edit-note phase of Duke Noble: Rumor Has It.  (Still not sure about that title.)  I ended up with thirteen college-rule, notebook pages chocked full of notes.  Typically, it takes me about an hour to input a page of notes.  I'll start that today.  If I can squeeze three hours out of each day to edit, I'll be done by the end of the week.  However, the chances of me editing for three hours a day is slim.  I hate editing.

The saving grace of editing is that it's a step toward having this book published.  I love the thought of that.  Having this book out into your hands is the goal.  Editing moves me toward that goal.  Thus, I will edit.  

Let me amend that slightly.  Having this book out - and worthy of being read by you - is the goal.  I could write THE END and shoot this sucker into space right now.  But it would suck and I can't do that to you.  You deserve better.  This book deserves better.  So, I edit.

And I bitch about editing.  Heh.  It's my process.

In case you're new here and haven't seen the process before, it goes like this: 

1) Write the book.
2) Send the book to my Kindle and read through the whole thing while making notes in a notebook.
3) Input the notes
3) Repeat steps 2 & 3 until I feel it's ready to send to readers
4) Send to readers
5) Input notes from readers
6) Read through entire manuscript again, making notes if there are any
7) Input notes
8) Format for publication
9) Publish

The other day I had a gal who read Dying Embers ask me how long it takes me to get a book all the way through from start to publication.  If all goes well, I can complete steps 1-9 in three months.  Things rarely go as planned.  Lord knows, this book has taken longer.  I started writing DN in August.  In August and September, I got about 8000 words down and then the wheels fell off.  I restarted this in December, finished it 6 weeks later.  It took me two and half weeks to actually do this edit round.  It should roll faster now.  Good lord willin' and the creek don't rise.

I hope to have this into the hands of readers by the end of the month.  They'll take however long they take.  Once they're done, publication won't be too long after that.  End of March maybe?  

I still have to make a cover.  Blerg.

So, Duke Noble will be born into the hands of readers soon.  Well, soon-ish... for varying definitions of soon.  Sooner than traditional publishing could make it happen.  =o)

Kicking My Own Ass, Yet Again

It's been a hard couple of weeks and I've been letting things overwhelm me when I should be working.  I know it's natural.  I also know it can become an excuse rather than a reason.

All in all, despite the grief and the changes and the fears of what lies ahead, things really haven't changed that much here at Sanderson Publishing (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sanderson, Inc. LLC*.)  I still have a computer to write on and internet access to communicate with the outside world.  My brain still works and so do my fingers.

So, yesterday I took myself in hand.  I didn't make huge strides into the editing, but it was a start.  

Also, I'm thinking about a sale.  My 6-year anniversary for publishing is coming up on the 13th, so that's cause for celebration.  It would be a nice time to market something.  I'll let you know what I decide.

Allowing myself to be derailed is not an option.  Not for any length of time anyway.  It's a luxury I can't afford.  I let myself be derailed for most of last year.  And we all know how that went...  $108.50 in sales** for an entire year (November 2019 - October 2020), that's how it went.

I have to do better.  I cannot wallow in my misery or let outside stuff live rent-free in my head to the point where the work isn't getting done.  

Consider this a personal ass-kicking.  And expect to see more writerly work out of me from here on out.  Feel free to jump on the ass-kicking bandwagon if you don't.

*Not a real company, folks.  It's just me and Hubs.  But I like to joke about being a company.

**According to Amazon's 1099.  If you haven't downloaded your 1099, best get to it.

New Releases by Cedar Sanderson

Breaking from the schedule, today, I'm bumping up the signal for a new release I read at the end of 2020 (you know, a couple weeks ago) - The East Witch by Cedar Sanderson (no relation).  It was a helluva good read with great characters, an awesome plot, harrowing adventure, fun mythology, and a little romance.  

Click the link and snag yourself a copy.
Also, for the younger set, there's a children's book that Cedar illustrated coming out 1/31/21 - The Hungry Werewolf.  (She's a woman of many talents.)  At the time of this posting, it's #136 in Children's Scary Stories.  Not sure if it's actually scary or not, but I was totally into this stuff when I was a kid.
When you're a werewolf, you make your own friends...
Step inside the covers and meet the monsters so creepy and so adorable that you may want to invent a new word to describe them! We like "creepydorable" but you could come up with your own.
Inside you'll find blobs, a mad scientist, and an awful lot of bats, but we invite you to begin at the beginning, with just...
One Hungry Werewolf.

I haven't read the above, but I assume if Cedar's associated with it, it's got some pretty good stuffs in there.  Pre-order a copy for your little reader of scary tales today.  

Enjoy!

Another First Draft

Last night, I finished the first draft of Duke Noble: Consequences...  I'm still not sure about that title... I like the end.  I like the book overall.  I know it's any unholy mess and will need a lot of editing, but I'm okay with that.  The point is it's done.  The first draft word count is 51280.

Tomorrow, I'll email it to my Kindle and drag out the notebook and the red pen to start the editing process.  We'll see how that goes.  I'm not promising anything.  Frankly, with the way the world is, I can't promise anything.  But I would like to have this out to people mid-February and published by the end of March.  :fingers crossed:

I've written all but 7 days since 12/8/20, so I'm taking today off.  From writerly pursuits at least.  I'll be around here somewhere doing something.

Jackals

Just now as I was commenting on a friend's blog, I started thinking... and I think there only a couple ways to go right now - either a person writes like mad to keep the jackals away or the jackals overwhelm them to a point where they can't write.

I was in the latter place for most of this year.  Obviously, that wasn't working for me.  Sales sucked.  My writing suffered.  And the jackals were never satisfied.

Now I'm in the former place.  I think.

Anyway, I'm writing.  I'm climbing toward the climax of this novel as fast as my little fingers can take me.  Last night, I cranked out over 3100 words and rolled over 40K words by a good margin.  That's the most I've written in a single sitting since forever.  The best I did last year was 2400+ words last May, when I forced myself to sit down and work on Cinder Ugly.  (That lasted like 3 days and then I fell apart again.)

Of course, I'm throwing things out there I never intended to.  There's no basis for it.  There's no groundwork laid ahead of time.  It's a hot mess.  But it fits in the grand scheme.  I'll have to go back and edit the earlier stuff so it makes sense.  Hey, that's what edits are for.

I feel good about this.  In a spot where I feel good about little else.  Will the rest of the world meet Duke Noble with the same excitement?  :shrug:  I can't worry about the rest of the world right now.  I can only worry about this.  And write like mad to keep the jackals at bay.

Not sure what'll happen when this book is finished.  I'll dive into edits and hope that works the same as writing like mad.  Then I''ll work on publishing.  Then?  Maybe Duke will talk to me some more.  Maybe Dennis Haggarty will put his foot down.  Maybe the gang at the SCIU will demand their place again.  

Whether you're pushing to keep the jackals away or hiding from the little bastards, it's okay.  We all do what we have to do to survive right now.  Hang in there as best you can.  :hugs:

Wrapping up 2020

Whew, I made it out of 2020 alive and with my sanity intact... mostly.  Time to wrap that puppy up and shove it into storage.  Here's how my writerly year shook out...

I wrote 73044 new words last year.  For the most part, that was finishing Cinder Ugly and writing Duke Noble .  I also laid some words down on several other books - another SCIU novel, the Arthurian UF thing, a quirky thing, and an attempt to start a sequel series to the model books.

I edited and published two books last year - Ugly and the Beast and Cinder Ugly.  That brought my total number of published novels to 15.

In sales, it was not a good year.  I sold a grand total of 65.39 books for a whopping $79.89 - an average of $1.49 a book. The only book I didn't sell any copies of was Project Hermes.  :sigh:  Of course, I didn't do any paid advertising last year for the nine free or sale things I did.  It was all on me and I didn't have the heart to do much marketing.  

I had five freebies.  I moved 359 books that way. 

Goals for the new year?  Well, I'm trying to take it day by day.  Lord knows my goals for last year didn't pan out.  And I quote: "If I can swing that, I'd like to see Ugly and the Beast and Cinder Ugly hit your ereaders in 2020.  I'd also like to get another SCIU and another Dennis Haggarty at least written, if not out there in public."  I did get UatB and CU out to the world.  As for the other two... umm, no.

This year, I will get Duke Noble's first book finished and out there.  Yes, I hope he will be a series.  No, I have no clue where I'll go after this one is in the can.  I still want to get another SCIU and another Dennis Haggarty out there.  Then there's the idea I had for more from Jeni Braxxon.  We'll see what happens.  I'm not promising anything but Duke at this point in time.

Other than that, the hope is to just keep plodding along and not let whatever happens this year derail me as much as last year's events derailed me.  

How was your 2020?  Do you have plans and goals for this year?  What are they?

Spreadsheets for the New Year

As you all probably know, I'm a spreadsheet geek.  On the personal side, I have spreadsheets for the books I've acquired and for my weight and activity (where I also keep track of writerly things like word counts and pages edited).  I do spreadsheets for the payjob.  And I have spreadsheets to keep track of things for the writing business.  Those last ones are the ones I want to talk about today.

I have a whomping huge spreadsheet to keep track of my expenses and income.  All six years worth.  That one's particularly ugly this year, so we won't really talk about it much.  When I finish updating it, it will tell me how far in the hole I am and whether I made any progress anywhere.  The closest any of my books is to being out of the hole is Accidental Death.  It's only $102.51 in the negative.

My other two main spreadsheets are Book Sales Data and Sales Totals.  

Book Sales Data has a tab for each month of the year and on each tab, it has sales information for each book - color coded by book on the rows with columns for each possible sales item.  Each potential US price gets a column, other countries get columns (except the EU countries only have one column because they all use the euro), there are columns for KU and print and returns. This sheet is for quantities only.  I used to do quantities and amounts, but I deleted the amounts section several years ago because it wasn't necessary here.  I keep all that over in the Sales Totals spreadsheet.

The Sales Totals spreadsheet is another whomping huge one.  This sucker tells me everything - quantity, amounts, page reads, etc. on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis with comparisons and charts.  I use the Book Sales Data sheet to feed this one.  (I have to, or this one would be even huger and the weight of it would probably topple my computer.)

The first tab of the ST takes the data from the BSD.  It's a lot like the BSD in that there are color-coded lines and columns for each of the possible sales items. Rather than try to explain it, here's a screen capture of what I'm talking about.

Pretty, pretty rainbows.

I couldn't capture the whole sheet, so I just gave you a month and the quantity side.  The earnings side looks the same, except the numbers over there will have dollar signs, when I have numbers to put into it.  The colors are for more than just looks, too.  They help me keep track of things with a glance.  Dying Embers will always be that shade of blue.  If I'd thought this though way back when, series would all be the same color, but I didn't.  And it would've messed up my rainbows anyway.  

If you look beneath the rainbows, you can see the tabs to where all that information works.  The Daily is quantities of everything sold.  The Daily Pgs is for Kindle Unlimited.  Overall keeps track of everything over all the years.  Monthly breaks it down.  Pgs Read does the KU by month and book.  It's all pretty self-explanatory.  

Every time I publish another book, I have to update everything - adding rows and columns, etc. - but for the most part, this works for me all year long.  Sucking in data and presenting it in a format I can easily digest.  

Every month, I have to plug in formulas to make ST pull from BSD, but that's only because I'm too lazy to do it all ahead of time.  I used to populate the thing with formulas at the start of the year.  Then it got to be such a pain, I decided to do it month to month, as things sold.  Why put a formula into a cell if there will never be any information in that cell?  So, I stopped.

Anyway, you probably won't ever want or need anything like this.  It keeps me out of trouble and even when the sales are light, it gives me a clear outlook on where I've been and where I'm going. 

If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them as long as they aren't too involved like I'd be building your spreadsheet for you.  I've often thought about offering my services to make spreadsheets like these for other authors, but the sheer weight of these things and the data involved makes it less than ideal.  And the time it takes to create and maintain one would make the process costly for other writers. 

And besides, few writers are as geeky as I am.  I like knowing exactly what's going on with the business at any given time.  Even when the news is bad.  

Speaking of which, I will be doing at least one wrap-up post here sometime next week to talk about 2020 sales and junk.  See ya then.  I won't be here on Friday.

Once Upon a Djinn Sale Wrap-up

Gah I overslept.  And I didn't set this up beforehand, so bear with me.

I wanted to talk this morning about the sale that just wrapped up last night.  I'm not sure if any of this is interesting to anyone but me, but here goes...

The sale ran from 12/23 through 12/27.  Wish in One Hand was free and the other 3 genie books were 99c/99p each.  

Books moved:

WIOH - 82
IDW - 3
UWC - 3
WHTF - 3

No page reads yet. 

To achieve that, I posted to 16 different Facebook Groups, 2 MeWe groups, 3 FB pages I own, and my MeWe page.  I know of two different people who posted about my books as well.  

I made $5.82.

Now, before you think that's depressing news, it's actually not totally gloomy.  I mean, it isn't great, but looking on the bright side, that's pure profit there.  And it's more money than I made on books in five other months this year.  

(Yeah, I am blowing smoke up my own wahoo, but it's early and I don't feel like being bummed out, so there.  =op)

Anyway, there was a sale.  I moved some books.  There are 88 new chances out there in the world for people to read and enjoy my work.   Maybe the freebies will spark someone enough so they'll buy the rest of the series and then buy the model series and then the rest.  Fourteen other books for them to read.  Yay.

The rest of this week will be devoted to getting my 2021 spreadsheets up and running.  I might talk about that on Wednesday.  I'll also be writing on Duke Noble.  I rolled over 30K words last night.  Woohoo.

Now, on to more coffee before my brain implodes.