A final Indiegogo update and some butt smooching…

Today marked the conclusion of our Indiegogo campaign, and while I would have liked to stay up all night and attempt to get a few last hour contributors, fatigue dropped me pretty early. Still I did get a bit more energetic near the end, resulting in 4 donations on the final day. (Our average was 1 every 3 days, so this is really a huge improvement, relatively speaking) This brought our amount up from $288 to $348. Had we used Kickstarter, we’d have lost the funds for not meeting our goal. But, we used Indiegogo and flexible funding, so my editor will be pocketing this hard earned cash, minus 9% for processing fees.

Almost repeating myself from an earlier post, this is about $348 more than I was expecting us to get together, and all of the funding came through Twitter. I made attempts at promotion on Facebook and LinkedIn, but those places don’t share shit, EVAR. Meanwhile, over on Twitter, I’d come back from lunch to check the status of tweets and find complete strangers had retweeted for me. And more compelling, most of the people who funded the book had never read the first two books. Though we offered a $1 incentive and a few people gave that amount anonymously, almost everyone else sent between $5 and $50. That’s all Twitter. So other sites like Facebook can claim to be social sites, but they mostly are full of wind-tunnel wannabes talking up their own shit and ignoring everyone else. But Twitter is the true king of social sites, because people who don’t even know each other share stuff and try to help out. And, that is awesome. That’s the very definition of being social.

It was almost getting to be that time for another butt smooching post, being the end of the month and all, and I was going to have to assumed the butt smooching position because I got some nice sales figures on Amazon, including 6 sales of Sandy Morrison and the Pack of Pussies thanks in large part to that guest post offered to me by Matt Staggs. (Who offered it on Twitter out of the blue without me even asking, by the way.) But now my editor has some money to take care of thing, and with the $50 I’d sent her from last month’s royalties, she’s made $398 for editing Roll the Bones. So I only need to send her another hundred dollars or so to consider her properly paid. And I will send her the funds, just as soon as I’ve earned them in sales.

But, we wouldn’t be so close to our goal without Twitter. And that’s why this month’s butt smooching post is dedicated to you awesome folks making all those tweets. Hell, some of you may never even read this post and know how much you did for us with your signal boosts. But I wanted to get this out on my blog so if you do pass through, you can see this and know how grateful I am for your help.

I want to get back to book sales and repeat something I’ve already said on Twitter. I’m a complete stranger to a lot of people, and yet I still make sales every month. Every month, I get a few new readers from my promotions on Twitter, and some of these even result in reviews, either on Goodreads or Amazon. The thing is, we’re in a global recession, and people are hurting for cash. Fiction books, and in particular genre fiction, are now considered luxury items, and people are having to trim fat from their budget. A lot of people trim it by getting only famous authors they already know. This is understandable, not wanting to risk hard-earned cash on unknown authors.

AND YET, many of you folks still buy my books. You do it even if you don’t know me, and you do it even if times are tight. Now maybe I help that out buy keeping my prices reasonable and by offering you a fair ratio of hourly entertainment to dollars invested. But I’m still a nobody indie, and I shouldn’t be making this many sales every month, especially considering how lousy I am at promotions.

So to you buyers, I extend my heartfelt appreciation for you taking a risk on me. This goes doubly for those of you who take the time to leave a rating or a review on Goodreads and Amazon. Yes, even the lady whose entire one-star Goodreads review of Peter the Wolf was “Awful, awful, awful book.” That’s still a review and a rating. It totally counts.

And finally, to all you awesome folks on Twitter, thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I dropped all forum promotions because they just didn’t work, and I left Facebook, MySpace, and G+ for the same reason. But even though I did a right lousy job of promoting myself on Twitter, you people picked up the slack by extending the reach of the few promotions I did, and you opened your wallets and took a risk on a writer you didn’t know. No other social platform is as social or generous as you. And yes, this is quality butt smooching, but It’s still genuine, and my gratitude comes from deep in my heart. Thank you, and I can only hope to help y’all with one of your projects one day. Because you’ve done A LOT to keep me going those last few years, and I’m only able to keep putting out new projects because of y’all. For that, I owe most of Twitter a hug.

And that concludes this longer than usual butt smooching. I’m currently playing Gravity Rush on my Vita, so I expect a gushing review of it in the very near future. I’m also reading a fantastic paranormal YS story on Wattpad, Windswept by Gwen Cole, and when I finish it, I’m sure another glowing review will be forthcoming for her too. I may have something to bitch about in the coming days, but right now, I’m just full of the love of you fine folks on Twitter.