Update: Whoops, Suddenly Sales

Writing Analysis: John Scalzi Plot Twists That Cheat the Reader

Update: Whoops, Suddenly Sales

Okay, so I can’t remember why I suddenly decided to run a Tuyo-series sale … oh, yes I do remember. It’s because my royalties are falling off this month, that’s why, a very straightforward and practical reason. Royalties were good in December, January, and February, much better than any prior year, because I released Silver Circle 1, 2, and 3 in the fall and then ran a December sale on everything. So that make a big difference, as it sure should, and therefore the first bit of 2025 worked well without my having to do anything.

But, as I say, royalties are now starting to fall. So, to goose Amazon’s algorithms and kick KU reads back up, time for a sale!

Thus, I looked at available promo dates for various types of promos, so here we are.

Tuyo will be free March 22 – March 26, everywhere. Other Tuyo-series novels will be reduced price March 22 – March 26, in the US and UK.

I realize you probably mostly have all the books in this series, but nevertheless, I thought I should mention this. Also, I will mention now, but mention with a lot more emphasis next month, that the Tuyo audiobook was approved for a Chirp promotion in April and May, which is great, and I will be super interested to see how that works. Chirp is BookBub’s audio promotion wing. I’ve been turned down by them before, this is the first time Tuyo has been approved, I’m very excited, but again, that’s next month, not yet.

***

AND, when it comes to Bookbub, remember how I said I was going to take a stab at getting some BookBub featured deals and so would people please move reviews from the individual Invictus books to the Invictus duology? Well, if you took a minute to do that, thank you! And if anybody else wouldn’t mind doing the same, this would be a great time. Because lo! As soon as I applied for a featured deal for the duology, I got one, which I did not expect! It took 14 tries to get a BookBub featured deal last year and now I’ve had books approved by both Chirp and BookBub at the same time!

Therefore, the Invictus duology will be reduced to $0.99 everywhere, or the equivalent wherever you happen to live, AT LEAST from March 27 — April 1, but possibly as early as this afternoon. That’s because I had no choice but to lower the prices by hand, which means doing it several days in advance to make sure the price is in fact down on the day of the promotion.

This will be interesting because BookBub offered me a non-US featured deal, which sometimes they do. This kind of promo (a) has a lot less oomph, but (b) is a lot less expensive. Some people apparently think that BookBub might use a non-US featured deal to decide whether to approve the same book (or boxed set) for a US promo later. Therefore, it’s somewhat risky to run this kind of deal, because if your book doesn’t do well, then that may be the kiss of death for future featured deals. However, after thinking about it overnight, I went ahead and accepted this featured deal, which is inconvenient in several ways:

A) I didn’t have the boxed set in KU. Now I do. However, I can’t use the countdown deal for the first 30 days after putting the thing in KU, which I did not realize, sigh. Always more to learn, apparently.

B) That means that I’m going to have to lower the prices by hand in each region, several days in advance. THAT means, I’ve done that as of right now, so the price should fall shortly, probably today, but possibly sometime in the next day or two.

C) Did you know that if you can’t use the countdown deal tool, you have to accept the 35% royalty level when you reduce prices below $2.99? I knew that, though I didn’t realize I couldn’t use the countdown tool for 30 days after adding a book to KU. This is too bad, but not as important as it might be, because you can never use the countdown tool to lower prices in Canada or Australia no matter what, so I was going to have to take the royalty hit anyway. But I’ll remember that for the future.

I went ahead and arranged a series of promos in the US as well, though I doubt that will be cost effective. But I did it anyway. We’ll see what happens to KU pages read, which is where I’m more likely to make back the cost of the promotion, I suspect. That’s why I put the thing into KU at all. Maybe I haven’t mentioned this, but the BookBub promo last year for the Death’s Lady boxed set did bump that boxed set up to a higher level of sales, apparently permanently, or at least ongoing as of now. I should have put that in KU, but I didn’t. We’ll see what happens with this one. I did do some fast editing of the Invictus boxed set: Now it includes excerpts from both Tuyo and No Foreign Sky, plus an updated Works By section.

So that’s the sale news! AND, because I’ve got these sales coming up, I went ahead and scheduled another newsletter to release, which I expect will go out tomorrow, at a time when the Tuyo series sale is still going on and the Invictus sale is about to start.

And I guess I should move ahead and make another boxed set. Or two. Or three. Argh. It’s not like it’s hard, or even especially time consuming — it’s just another thing to do, that’s all.

***

I’m now sitting at 200,000 words for the Tano book. Yes, it’s going to overshoot my guess of 210,000 words, but not by a lot, I’m pretty sure. Still on track to finish the draft this month.

Is “Hedesaveriel” too long for the title? I wouldn’t have named him that if I’d realized I might use his name for a title! For a change, he is just as important as he should be, given that his name is the title. His name, by the way, is Veriel, which we don’t find out for a good long time. Hedesa is the name of his star. As you can see, I now know what all the different parts of a Tarashana person’s name actually mean.

Hedesaveriel Kiolakarian seha-Toratarion

Hedesa = the name of his star

Veriel = his personal name

Kiolakarian = his “association upon the earth,” which means, basically extended family plus others.

seha- is a prefix that indicates he is a member of the Sehariel, the Thousand, a deliberative body.

Toratarion = his “constellation,” which is associated with his “affiliation below the heavens.”

And all this is partly because it’s a complicated-looking name that ought to mean something, but it’s also partly because the Tarashana we’ve met so far have often been a bit opaque and hard to understand, so the way their society is organized ought to be somewhat opaque and unfamiliar — that’s what I decided, anyway. But, I could ask the author to change the title to, say, Veriel — but he’s not called that very often. Or Sehariel — but the importance of the Sehariel doesn’t become apparent until fairly late in the story. There’s a different word I could use, but it would constitute a spoiler, so that’s out. So … I’ve been leaning toward just leaving it as Hedesaveriel. Which I’m now good at typing fast and accurately, by the way.

By the way, remember when I said the Tarashana looked too peaceful and nice and I was going to have to drop a few snakes in that garden? Well, I totally did. Lots of gentle breezes and glimmering flowers and, tucked amid the flowers, many venomous serpents.