Andrew Gates's Blog, page 7

A Beautiful YouTube Page!

I’ve been trying to update my YouTube page recently, not just with new content, but with a new, fresh look! After figuring out how to put end title cards in my videos, I’ve been having fun making new videos and marketing pieces for my books!

In the last few days, I’ve added some new content and also spruced up the page. I replaced the old header photo that was an out of focus photo I took of three copies of Iris spread across my table, with a dazzling image of the entire Color of Water and Sky series on a white background.

Here is the old header image:

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Here is the new header image:

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I also figured out how to add custom thumbnails to my videos! Now, instead of a random screenshot from the video, I have titles and graphics to make the thumbnails really pop! This has been a lot of fun to put together and makes the YouTube page look all that more interesting and professional.

Here are some examples of custom thumbnails I created:

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With images like these, my videos are sure to capture more attention and gain more viewership!

You can find my YouTube channel by clicking here! Be sure to “like” the videos and “subscribe” to the channel! The more people who do that, the more I get bumped up in the “recommended video” algorithm.

Thanks for reading! Until next time!

Sequel to Cassidy in the Works

Those of you who follow this blog regularly and have good memories may remember a blog post I wrote a long time ago about my idea to publish a short story collection of tales set in the world of Water and Sky. I had this idea a long time ago and, at the time, had already started working on some of those short stories already.

Since coming up with an idea for a collection of short stories set in the world of Water and Sky, I’ve done a lot of other projects; from finishing The Color of Water and Sky series, to publishing Battle Planet, Apex Predator, various short stories in other collections and most recently, finishing the Pirates of Vexa Prime trilogy. But now with all of that out of the way, I’ve decided it’s a good time to revisit my short-story idea (especially considering two of those short stories have already been written!).

My original idea back in early 2018 (almost two and a half years ago now!) was to do four stories in the collection: Downfall, Descent, Gallino, and Allora. The first two, I finished years ago. The third, Gallino, I have now decided not to do at all (was toying with getting a different author to help at the time). The fourth story (now third since I’m not doing what was originally going to be the third), Allora, I am working on now!

When this short story collection is complete, this will likely be my next book to be released. Given that I am to be married in about a month (yay!), this collection will not be out until after the wedding, sometime after mid to late July at earliest.

I hope that I will once again be able to employ the help of The Color of Water and Sky‘s regular cover artist, Sarah Anderson, to design a cover for Atlantia (that’s what I plan to call the collection), though I have not yet approached her about it.

Here are the descriptions for the three stories that will be featured in the short story collection, Atlantia:

 

Downfall

War has come to the North American States.

It is a dark time for the NAS. The overseas war has finally made its way stateside, forcing every able-bodied man and woman to take up arms in defense of their country, including Sarah Prescott, an ordinary police officer who never asked to be on the battlefield. But when her hometown is threatened, she will not stop until her city is safe. Outgunned and outmanned, the newly-minted and desperate soldiers must do whatever they can to win… or to survive.

Set earlier in history than any other tale in the series, witness the downfall of the NAS as the deadliest war on Earth nears its horrifying end.

Descent

Year 100, Atlantic Federation Calendar.

It has been a full century since humanity descended to the Atlantic Station. Only one still lives who is old enough to remember the days of the surface: the 106-year-old woman, Monroe Greenwood. In honor of the Centennial Celebration, the station calls on the last survivor of the Descent to share her dark and fascinating tale with one basic question: “What was it like to relocate to the Atlantic Station?”

Allora (I’m writing this one now)

The from the pages of Cassidy, the journey of Sara Gessetti and Damien Saljov continues…

The newly constructed Cassidy City is a haven for some of Earth’s last surviving humans. For months, life has been peaceful in this hidden settlement that manages to keep its neighbors, the deadly ruors, at bay. But the arrival of a mysterious Hive pilot will give rise to unforeseen threats within the walls of Cassidy City.

This official sequel to Cassidy takes place parallel to book 4 in The Color of Water and Sky series.

Fraud “Andrew Gates” on Amazon Using my Name

Well, I’ve done it! I’ve officially gotten big and famous enough for people to use my name on their product to sell books. While I’m honored to finally be considered an important-enough writer for people to want to steal my identity, I’ll say this: It is also extremely annoying.

For those of you who don’t know the ins and outs of the Amazon publishing world, here’s some background:

When an author makes a book available through online retailers like Amazon.com, they have their own author page. This is a page where authors can personalize their bio, photo, links, blog, videos and so forth. Authors can put up a lot of stuff of their choosing so that fans can follow the author and the author’s updates. For instance, this blog you are reading right now will appear on my author page.

But if you visit my page right now, you’ll notice some strange content there that doesn’t belong to me. Take a look at the images below and see if you notice some books that shouldn’t be there:

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If you spotted Thriving With ADHD and Anxiety, then you’re right! This book about ADHD is listed on my page with me listed as the author and if you click the product link, you will see that it has my description in the “About the Author” section.

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And here, if you spotted, Cleanse, Detox, and Reset, then you’re right! This book about detoxifying is also not mine, but once again lists me as the author and if you click the product link, you will see that it has my description in the “About the Author” section.

So how is this happening?

To link a book to someone’s author page, one must do it through a second website called Author Central, which is a website that manages the back-end of these Amazon author pages. To link a book to an author, an intentional process must be made for someone to search for and link the authors to their books. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS AUTOMATICALLY. In fact, there have been times when I myself have had delays in linking my own books to my own page. It is not always smooth and straightforward. Therefore, to have done this, someone intentionally had to have searched for and linked these books to my author page.

In all likelihood, I suspect this person really might be named Andrew Gates and could very well be using their real name. After all, Andrew Gates is a fairly common name. However, that being said, I also think this person is intentionally linking their books to my page because, as I already mentioned, this is not something that just happens automatically.

This began happening about a week ago when I noticed that both Thriving With ADHD and Anxiety and another book, DIY BUCKET AEROPONICS: Ultimate Guide To Growing Vegetable With An Aeroponic System, both listed on my page and with my bio in the description.

But what these authors must not have realized is that when these books go up as being “my books” on Amazon, that means I now have control over details of those books through Author Central. That means, being that these are considered “my books”, I can edit things like product description. And so, when I first noticed these two books on my page, I edited the product descriptions as follows:

This is not my book. Please remove it from my page. Thank you.

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I edited the description to say those words for both Thriving With ADHD and Anxiety and for DIY BUCKET AEROPONICS. Additionally I also changed the “From the Author” section to read as follows:

 

From the Author


The author listed on this Amazon page is not the author of this book. The supposed author of this book did not write this and does not consent to someone else using his name to sell a product that he is not affiliated with.


As I hoped, what happened next was that DIY BUCKET AEROPONICS no longer appeared on my page. Whoever put it up clearly saw what I changed and wisely decided to take it down (and yet, as of now, despite being taken off my page and despite me no longer having editing power over that book, that product description remains up).


However, the other book, Thriving With ADHD and Anxiety not only remained on my page and kept my bio, but whoever is behind this book changed the description back to it’s original description. Not only that, but another book was added to my page, the aforementioned Cleanse, Detox and Reset.


Whoever put these up clearly saw my message because they took down one book and changed back the description of the other. These actions only further proved that whoever is doing this is doing so intentionally. So this time, I was a little less kind in changing the product description:


Please DO NOT purchase this book, as it is being published without proper permissions or consent. Someone is going around and trying to credit an author for writing this book even though the credited author had nothing to do with this project. The author listed on this Amazon page is not the author of this book. The supposed author of this book did not write this and does not consent to someone else using his name to sell a product that he is not affiliated with.


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At this point, I was bluntly telling customers not to purchase the book. If this is how this copycat person is going to operate, then I have no sympathies, especially since this is now their second chance.


I even did some investigating to see who this person may have been. In the case of Thriving With ADHD and Anxiety, the original product description (before I changed it) mentioned that Andrew Gates (the other Andrew Gates) was the Silver (second place) winner of the Benjamin Awards in the ADHD Category. So naturally, I decided to look up all past winners of the Benjamin Awards to see if I could find this Andrew Gates listed. Although the year that this person won an award was not provided in the description, the book was published in April 2020, so I figured it would be the last two years. I checked back to 2017 and not only was there no Andrew Gates listed in the past winners, but THERE WAS NO CATEGORY FOR ADHD.


This tells me that even before being caught using someone else’s author page, this other Andrew Gates was already being a fraud and claiming things that were untrue (though I do find it funny that this person fabricated an easily-searchable award and still gave themselves second place).


Naturally, I outed this person again by editing the “From the Inside Flap” section:



From the Inside Flap



The supposed “author” claims to have won silver in the Benjamin awards in the ADHD category, but there isn’t even an ADHD category at the Benjamin awards. Furthermore, if you look at the past winners, someone named Andrew Gates isn’t listed anywhere on the page for any category. This person who is publishing this book is a fraud using Andrew Gates’s name to sell books. This is not the same person as the science-fiction author, Andrew Gates. Take a look at the Benjamin awards yourself with this link:

ibpabenjaminfranklinaward.com/2020-wi...



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At the time of me writing this, these edited descriptions are still up on both books, though it is a mystery how long they will remain up. I certainly hope that these books get taken down from my page and that whoever is doing this learns to build their own brand name instead of piggy-backing on the success of another. On that note, I also hope that this other Andrew Gates somehow finds this blog post and reads it.



In the meantime, all this silliness really amounts to nothing. Having a brand name only gets you so far. You need to have the quality content to back it up. If this other Andrew Gates is a good writer, then he need not worry. It may be slow, but he’ll get there.


Or, I guess I could always fight my impostor like Jack Sparrow…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2FjIRK2psQ


Until next time!

 

YouTube Videos!

Ahoy, fellow sailors. Hoist the sails and raise anchor! The winds are blowin’ and a howlin’ in the air tells me today is a fine day for a bounty of online videos!

Yesterday I put up a lot of new content on The Color of Water and Sky IRIS YouTube Channel. If you didn’t know that there was a The Color of Water and Sky IRIS YouTube Channel, well, now you do! The channel has been up for several years now, but there haven’t been a whole lot of videos on it. If you haven’t already subscribed to the channel, please do!

About a month ago, I experimented with putting up some funny home-made content on the channel, but while funny and short, the silly videos didn’t get a lot of traction and didn’t really go anywhere. Regardless, the content is fun to have and it doesn’t hurt by having it up.

But over the past week, I’ve hired a spokeswoman, a voice actor, a book reviewer, a digital effects guy, a sound effects guy, and then did all the editing myself to create some cool content on a low budget. I put up three new videos and finally figured out how to put links to other content at the end of my videos. The new content came out really well and you can see all the new videos here:

Pirates of Vexa Prime Commercial – Runtime 0:53

Pirates of Vexa Prime Trailer – Runtime 0:29

Book Review: Praise for Seas of the Red Star by Andrew Gates – Runtime 0:29

Hopefully with this new content, it will help to gain some visibility and SEO for my brand. While I don’t expect any of these videos to directly convert to sales, the content is fun to have and vibrant and exciting and adds legitimacy to my product and brand name.

And in fact, some of my videos have actually done rather well. My first ever video on the channel, the Iris Official Teaser, actually has over 700+ views! Who knows – maybe one of these could do even better!

In the meantime, as they say on YouTube, “be sure to like and subscribe!” That’s all for now.

Work Officially Done on “Return to Red One” – Paperback Available Now!

Work is completed on the third and final book of the Pirates of Vexa Prime (or as I’ve been telling people, “Pirates in Space”) trilogy, Return to Red One. The final draft for the kindle version was submitted two days ago and approved this morning and the final draft for the paperback version was submitted this morning! That means all I need to do now is sit back and coast.

The Kindle version is ready for pre-order here (available April 22nd):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0869R57VN/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i10

The paperback version can be purchased today using this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0875Z3M1Z?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

Finishing this book has been a particularly difficult task. When I started writing this book several years ago, I was still partnered with MD Cooper to co-publish the books together. When that fell apart, I promptly obtained the rights to the first two books in the series, which were already written and mostly edited, then published those out in quick succession. At that point, Return to Red One was only partially finished and to say I was sick of dragging out the series was an understatement. After working on that book for two years and dragging my feet with MD Cooper, I got so tired and frustrated with the project (hence why I interrupted working on the project altogether with Apex Predator). But finally, at long last, with ample free-time and a need to get it done, I finished the project and have it out and selling!

I am curious to see how the release of the final book in the series will influence sales of the series as a whole. Up until this point, the Pirates of Vexa Prime series has not been selling as well as I expected. It sells nowhere near as well as Iris or the other books in the Color of Water and Sky series, despite what I would consider an easier title and premise to grasp and a more digestible page-count (each book in Pirates is about half the length of a book in Water and Sky). Therefore I suspect that the incompleteness of the series is a major factor in what has been holding it back.

Since that first week of the coronavirus quarantine, sales have basically reverted back to normal. I had one week of extremely high sales, but it lasted only a week or so, then ended. I expect that was everyone’s immediate panic purchase period. Since then, things have been pretty normal back to pre-coronavirus levels.

Will be Return to Red One be the spark that picks up sales again like they were a month ago? Probably not. But hopefully having a complete three-part series will be enough to get people to want to make a purchase and lead to a few more sales here and there.

If you are looking for some pirate fun, avast ye’ hearties and claim yer’ copy of Return to Red One today! It be better than a chest o’ gold!

What Have I Been Up to This Week? Editing – Facebook Marketing – Article Writing – Oh, and a Yoga Video!

What have I been up to this week?

It’s been a dramatic week for me personally, but aside from the things going on in my personal life, I have managed to get a lot of work done on many side-projects and fun things.

The first thing you’re probably all wondering about is the status of Return to Red One, the upcoming final part of the Pirates of Vexa Prime trilogy.

Beta-copies came in on Saturday and I have been busily editing away! I noticed right away that the book arrived too large – I mean that literally. The dimensions were way off. That is one of the best examples I can give as to why it is important to proof these physical copies of the books rather than doing it all digitally. It’s the little things like sizing and spacing that you may not otherwise catch.

Right now my goal is to edit through at least 100 pages per day. So far I am easily on track for that. In order to get the book out by its April 22nd release date, I’ll need to submit everything in finished condition by April 18th at the latest.

Given my current rate of editing, that should be easily doable.

In the meantime, I am trying out a fun promotion idea to increase brand engagement. I put out a post on Facebook for people to share in an attempt to spread my name to the world. From now until April 22nd, people will share the post in order to be entered to win the prize of a free set of books. Here are the details I wrote in the post:

Avast ye’ hearties! This be yer’ chance to win some bootie! You can win THREE FREE paperback books: Seas of the Red Star, The Daltus Conspiracy, and Return to Red One. Own the entire Pirates of Vexa Prime trilogy by winning this here grand sweepstakes – it be better than walkin’ the plank!

All ye’ need to enter be these simple steps:

1) Share this here post with all ye’ mates by clickin’ “Share”

2) Like The Color of Water and Sky page by clickin’ “Like”

It be that easy! Contest begins now and ends April 22nd.

Good luck to the lot of ya’!

The goal is, obviously, to get people to share this message across Facebook and therefore to increase my brand visibility. It’s advertising, in a sense, with people being the advertisers and my budget being books. I’ve seen this as a common tactic among authors, so I know this is something other people do. We’ll see how it pans out.

In addition to doing work on Return to Red One, I’ve been busy in other ways as well. I had a lot of articles published in Run Washington over the past few days, which you can view here:

April 6th – After Several False Starts, Running Sticks for Ken Quency

April 2nd – Marathon Day Stayed on the Calendar for Some Local Runners

March 30th – High School Coaches Tackle and Unexpected Offseason

Additionally, I have two more articles that I submitted to the editor. One for Run Washington, the other for a different publication, VIP Alexandria Magazine. Hopefully those other two articles will be up soon, though I have no control over the date of their release.

Typically I usually average about one story a month for Run Washington, but with so much free time after being furloughed from my day-job, my output has increased tremendously.

Lastly, I had some fun on Friday co-hosting a live yoga event on Facebook as part of VIP TV. I was basically acting from home as an “anchor” and cutting away to a yoga instructor as she offered a class. It was very fun!

Click HERE to see the video and click to the 38-minute mark to see the portion where I come in. Yes, I realize after the fact that my hair did not look good, but hindsight is 20/20.

If you are interested, I am scheduled to be co-hosting another episode of VIP TV tomorrow. You can tune in to see tomorrow’s episode live!

Return to Red One Fully Written and Edited Through Once Next up, Beta Copies!

Return to Red One, the upcoming pirates-in-outer-space book by Andrew Gates, has been fully written and edited once through. After going through and formatting it and making sure the page numbers are correct and so forth, I have now ordered beta-copies.

I’ve written in the past about the importance of beta-copies. These are the physical copies of the paperback book that I read prior to it’s official release. Reading these physical copies in person, I tend to catch a lot of things I wouldn’t normally catch looking at a computer screen. Going through the book page by page is a taxing, but extremely important part of the process because it catches a lot of smaller errors or font or spacing or sizing issues that I may not have otherwise seen on the computer.

I haven’t seen the physical book in person yet, but the order is supposedly on its way. Books should be arriving soon. But based on what I have seen on the computer, the book is going to look really good! Here is a preview:

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I expect everything should work out well for the April 22nd release. This timeline is manageable and realistic. Unfortunately, the book so far has ZERO pre-orders. Come on, guys! The pre-order link has been up for days now!

I suspect the reason no one has yet to pre-order is simply because this series has not garnered nearly enough interest as The Color of Water and Sky series. When I put up a new book for sale in TCOWAS, it would almost instantly get at least some pre-orders. But the Pirates of Vexa Prime series has not had nearly the same draw or interest. This is clearly visible in sales numbers too. All of this is due, in large part I think, to the fact that I haven’t marketed Pirates of Vexa Prime books nearly as much as I’ve marketed The Color of Water and Sky books.

In any case, I am excited to see the physical copy of Return to Red One in person soon. I’m sure it will be a beautiful book!

Update on Upcoming Book, Return to Red One, and Attempts at Viral Marketing

Return to Red One, the final part of my three-part pirates in space trilogy, is mostly written. I have one chapter left to write and it’s not a very long chapter at all. After that, I should have the rough draft completely finished. With the ample free time I have now and for the next few days, I expect to have the rough draft finished either tonight or early tomorrow.

After finishing the rough draft, the next step will be to go through and edit everything. And with the aforementioned free time on my side, I expect to have all of that done in a matter of days.

In preparation for the book’s upcoming completion, I went ahead today and put up the pre-order link on Amazon.com. I set the release date to April 22nd, which is just under a month from now. Normally I would see this as a rather ambitious date, but considering the free time I have on my hand right now, I don’t see this as being ambitious at all.

If you want to pre-order your copy of Return to Red One, click this link here and pre-order your copy today! You’ll have it downloaded on your device the second it gets released.

Here is the description:

When a powerful technology capable of giving long-lasting life is discovered to be hidden on Red One, an ocean-covered planet home to pirate-like savages, parties from all across the galaxy will flock to claim it.

Vexa Corp, the Governor’s Navy, Sea Scorgers, Ellen Milsen and her friends, and the mysterious Crosshair Pirates will soon converge in an all out war for the planet. Meanwhile the mercenary, Boltoc, still hunts Ellen MIlsen, intent on claiming his revenge.

The War for Red One comes to a dramatic end in the third and final act to the Pirates of Vexa Prime trilogy.

 

Pretty exciting, right?

In the meantime, I’ve also been playing around with doing some funny videos to promote my books. This is what the young people at Geico call “viral marketing”.

I’ve made a couple silly videos already. You can see them here:

Cooking in the Oven: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybEVx__X2oU

Cooking in the Microwave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM9iTdmzOgE

Will these videos get any views? Probably not. But regardless, I have a lot of time and so I’m having fun with it while I can. You can expect more of these silly videos in the next few days.

Author Updates Amidst Coronavirus

If you have not yet seen my previous post about the coronavirus’s effects on book sales, I encourage you to read that article. Surprisingly, sales have seen a strong boost during the coronavirus period, largely due to quarantines and people looking for forms of entertainment.

In addition to an increase in book sales, another result of this virus is also, as you can expect, an increased amount of free-time. This is both good and bad. The bad being, I work for a living and I get paid by the hour. So no hours means no pay. Obviously that’s a hard pill to swallow, but one that I no doubt must accept. And in the end, I do accept it. I recognize that this is all in the interest of the greater good. The good news, however, is that all this time off from work and stress may have a positive effect on my psyche and general mental wellbeing. It is good to have time to be stress free about work and focus on day-to-day things.

So what have I been doing? Lots of fitness firstly. My goal, starting Tuesday, was to do at least 1,000 pushups in the week. Today being the final day of the week, I’m at 1,060! I’ve also been doing a lot of running, sit-ups, pullups and more! Who needs a gym when you can work out at home?

What else have I been doing? Watching TV and playing Xbox secondly. Specifically I started watching the show Jack Ryan on Amazon and I’ve been replaying through the campaign mode of Reach, the Halo prequel (in case you didn’t know, I’m a big Halo fan and I’ve even written about it here on this blog).

But the other thing I have been doing is writing. Of course an author with a lot of free time is bound to write. And I admit, I’ve actually been procrastinating more than I should. But my focus over the last few days has been on two writing projects in particular:

Return to Red One (Pirates of Vexa Prime – Book 3)

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The third part of my “pirates in space” trilogy, Return to Red One, is a long-overdue story that has taken far too long for me to write. While most of the story is written, it has been difficult for me to motivate myself to finish it. Over the past few months, I have fallen in and out of periods where I am motivated to work on it and not. It is my hope that during this free-time, I will actually be able to finally finish the rough draft.

I hope and expect that will be easily doable.

2) Egyptus

A brand new project, Egyptus, is a short story I wrote in a few days (I actually started writing this even before the virus-related quarantines and shutdowns). I wrote it for the purpose of being included in a future short-story collection. Specifically, I am eying the next Beyond the Stars Anthology. The next  Beyond the Stars will come out over the summer and they are taking submissions between now and May for original space-based science-fiction short stories.

If my story doesn’t get accepted into the next Beyond the Stars, that is no problem. I will, of course, hold onto the story and shop it around. With people always on the lookout for submissions, I am sure someone will pick it up.

The story Egyptus has a really cool premise. It is set in a faraway space setting, but with all the star systems, kingdoms and empires relating to ancient history. The main character, Aegeus, comes from a planet Athens, which is analogous to the ancient Greece. He is on a mission to the Kingdom of Egyptus, specifically to the pyramid-shaped space station called the Osiris, which is part of the ever-moving fleet called the Nile.  You get the picture.

The mix of future tech and ancient culture makes the world really really cool and it was a blast to write. I am optimistic about this story’s chances of getting picked up in the next anthology.

In the meantime, now that I have written and submitted Egyptus, my current focus is going to be finishing the rough draft of Return to Red One, which I am optimistic I should be able to finish in the next few days (especially since I have all this time now!).

As always, keep checking back here on this blog for more updates with my writing. I am sure I’ll be posting a lot over the next few days.

Coronavirus’s Effect on E-Book Sales

The coronavirus has undoubtedly had a profound ripple on every facet of life. While many business are struggling, some going out of business entirely, and many people ill, out of work, or both, things are dire for a lot of people around the world.

But even for those who may not fall into any of the aforementioned categories; they aren’t small businesses, they aren’t sick, they aren’t out of work or so forth, everyone else is still heavily affected due to quarantines. And just being quarantined is no doubt the best scenario. If you fall into this group, you should consider yourself lucky that all you have to do is stay home with no struggles with your business, income, or health.

For those in that latter category (the quarantine-but-still-have-income category), the most this group has to worry about is how to stay entertained during isolation. Admittedly it can be tough when there are no events, restaurants, movies, gyms, museums, or other things to go to. Therefore people have to find ways to entertain themselves at home. For example, I have read that Netflix is seeing a massive uptick in streaming that is putting pressure on their servers.

One other way to be entertained is by reading books. And while people may be wary of touching a physical book at this time, the good news is that e-books exist! Completely online and therefore free of germs, e-books are a great way to entertain oneself for hours without touching anything or putting extra stress on anyone’s servers.

The evidence is apparent when looking at sales numbers for my own books. In a typical month, I usually make somewhere in the $20’s for book sales. I’d say that’s a fairly standard month. And usually sales of my books are pretty well split across various books and series.

This month, however, things are very different. Not only have book sales increased astronomically, but a disproportionate amount of purchases are for the first book in my most popular series, The Color of Water and Sky. This tells me that many of these customers are new customers who have not yet read my other books and are starting at the beginning.

You can see March’s sales numbers thus far below. Keep in mind, these numbers are only for the first 2/3 of the month so far. With ten more days left in the month, I anticipate these numbers will only go up.

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As you can see from the image, Iris, which is the first book in the series, has made a disproportionally high amount of money compared to the others. As of this time, Iris has made $105.79 in March, while the second book in the series, Kholvaria, has only made $3.02, the third book in the series, Veznek, has made $2.88, and the fourth book in the series, Hive, has made $6.28. Coming up in the rear is Apex Predator, which is my newest released book at only $1.61 for the month. Other than Iris, those other sales numbers are all pretty typical for a regular month.

As I mentioned above, the fact that Iris is so drastically outselling all the others demonstrates that these are mostly new readers who have not read my books before and are going for the first book in my most popular series. Therefore, I estimate that this uptick in sales of Iris will result in additional sales of my other books. If even 1/4 of the customers who bought the first book buy the second, that will be another $24. If even a quarter of those buy books three and four, that’s another $12. I can fairly safely estimate that even if I don’t see any new Iris customers in the next few days (which is honestly unlikely), I will at the very least see an additional $36 in sales from other books in the series.

So what does this amount to?

Well, truth be told, as great as these number are, let’s not kid ourselves. If I make $200 in a month, I’m only barely paying for two weeks of groceries. My primary income isn’t from book sales. Far from it. Books sales are some extra cash, that’s all. And this is true for most authors out there. Instead of an extra $20 at the end of the month from book sales, I’ll see an extra $200. But with my hours cut at my regular job, and the future uncertain, I am clinging onto whatever I can save at this point. As I see it, this uptick in sales might be a way to help reduce the loss in income I am set to experience in the next few weeks. But even then, how long will these kind of numbers last? Looking at the sales data over the last few days, sales of Iris are beginning to go back down to more regular numbers already.

What this amounts to is that I believe these numbers are temporary. And while I hope they will continue, I don’t expect them to. As things are already starting to level out, I think this was the quick result of folks at home abruptly adapting to the new status quo of life.

If you want to help an independent author during these tough times, please share with your friends or buy your own copy of Iris today. I can promise you the e-book is germ-free.

You can buy Iris today on Amazon Kindle:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LZA9CSN/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0