Two Weeks Later...

The new books have been out for two weeks. I finally broke down and glanced at the sales reports. Not bad, not great. Pretty average, actually. I'm not going to complain about average in this day and age. I have seen a lot of people reading ALL WE HAVE on Kindle Unlimited. Here's to hoping that translates to some reviews, and maybe future sales.

I'm still on the fence for Kindle Unlimited. Basically, anyone who subscribes to Amazon Prime and has a Kindle can read for free (well, as part of paying for the service, really) any book enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program. Authors make money by fractions of pennies per page read. The idea is that you'd make the same amount of money as you would an eBook sale if someone reads your whole book. Now, most writers make almost nothing if they're pricing their eBooks fairly. (To me, this means $4.99 or less.) It works as a service for Amazon to help corner the Kindle market (which--let's be honest, they have. The eBook wars are over and Amazon won), and it allows people to try new authors or independent books with no risk to their pocketbooks. For a lot of independent authors, it's really the best way to proceed.

However, the results are sketchy. As an author, I see only a bar graph that shows me pages read. If I see 600 pages, I have no idea if two people read the book cover-to-cover, or if 600 people read one page. The money is much greater if two people read it cover-to-cover.

If you have Kindle Unlimited, you don't even have to read books in this program to help the author. Just page through the books while you're doing something else. Watch TV and hit the Kindle with your thumb until you hit the end. It's sort of like how people help their favorite bands on Spotify by playing albums on repeat with the sound muted while they're not at their computers.

ALL WE HAVE has already garnered nine reviews. At this point, I have not read any of the reviews (because I try not to read reviews), but I know from checking the book's page on Amazon, all nine have been 5-star reviews. I'm very grateful for that, and if you've said kind words about the book, I'm even more grateful. Please, tell friends, tell your local bookstores, tell your local libraries, and post about the books on social media. Every bit helps. If you know any podcasts or blogs that need a guest, send them my way. If you have any bookstores that need a speaker, my schedule is currently wide open. 'Have books, will travel' reads the card of a man...

I spent last weekend at TeslaCon. I did not sell as many books as I'd hoped, but I sold a lot. The hour I was given to speak to people while I was there was not overly packed with people (I think maybe 12-15 people showed up), but the people that did show up were attentive, interactive, and fun. I got to embarrass my daughter, so it was all worth it.

So far, LORD BOBBINS AND THE DOME OF LIGHT has not garnered any reviews, but I'm hopeful. The first book only has five reviews at the moment, so maybe I'm not overly hopeful, but there is always a little hope. I know that the steampunk fandom is very niche and they like to support authors. I know that the week of release, LB&tDoL was actually in the top 25 Steampunk Books on Amazon that week...but since then, I don't know. It's dropping off the radar. I did see someone photo-quoted a passage from the book on one of the TeslaCon fan pages. That was nice. I'd seen people do that for other authors before, but that was the first time I saw someone do it with something I wrote. Felt good. Almost like I know what I'm doing.

The third book in the TeslaCon series, LORD BOBBINS AND THE CLOCKWORK GIRL is complete, so there will be at least three books in the series. There's an outline for a fourth book sitting on my computer at this very second, too! Fingers crossed that people want to see more.

This publishing thing...it's so hard.

Gail Carriger was at TeslaCon (https://gailcarriger.com/). I did not get a chance to even see her from a distance, let alone exchange pleasantries, but I really admire her career arc. She's really a good writer, and she's got this image and presentation that fits really well with her fans. She appears a lot of conventions. I'd like to be able to do that. I learned long ago not to appear places that charged you for table space, though--you almost never get your payment back, and if you do get your payment back through sales, you certainly won't cover gas/food/hotels. I see a lot of indie authors slogging it out at cons, but I can't help but think most of them are losing money on the deal. It's a lot of building an audience one person at a time. You can become successful that way, but it's a long slog.

Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) sold his book out of the trunk of his car at flea markets for years before finally becoming discovered. Fantasy novelist Amanda Hocking published $.99 cent novellas on Amazon for years while pushing her stuff in chat rooms at night until she ended up selling over 900,000 ebooks in a year before agents and publishers took her work seriously. (If you make almost a half-million cash on your work, publisher suddenly want a piece of you.) There are paths to success for independent writers, but luck still plays a large part of it, and you still have to have good books.

Here's to hoping.
--Sean