The monthly status report and butt smooch

It’s the 28th, so it’s about time for another sales and progress report, followed by your monthly butt smooching. I’m already wearing lip balm, even. =^*

This month, nobody bought all my books all at once, so this month wasn’t as awesome as last month in terms of sales. But I’ve had 13 sales from Amazon and a sale of a three-book zip file on the blog bookstore. I’m still debating if I should call that three book sales or one efile sale, but for now I’m calling it one. I don’t have my Lightning Source numbers yet, but they shouldn’t bump me up by more than 3-4 extra sales. For me, for a summer month, this is really rather good. Last year at this same time, I only had half these sales.

Alas, Roll the Bones had a a terrible first month in terms of sales, getting only two for the entire month. A lot of the books I sold this month were not what I was advertising, which is par for the course with me. One of these days, I’m going to figure out how advertising actually works. And then? Hand over fist, baby.

(>_>) Well I can dream, anyway.

Setting aside the first month sales, Roll the Bones did manage to get a good review, three stars, which totally works for me. I also got a good review for Sandy Morrison and the Pack of Pussies from Wading Through Electronic Ink, and Peter’s series got another review this month, with the second being a YouTube video review for Peter the Wolf. So, it wasn’t a great month for the new book, but it has been a good month for regular sales, and I got a few extra reviews. Definitely can’t complain with new reviews, especially when none of the reviews are bad. =^)

Overall, this summer’s sales have been much better than I normally get during this time of year. So first, thanks to all of y’all picking up my books, and then I’ll thank the reviewers for taking the time to write up a little something for their fellow readers. I really do appreciate the financial help, and even more the help with word of mouth promotions and reviews. That I continue to sell books is a sure sign that some of you are helping with promotions, and I appreciate all the help I can get.

I’ll close with a writing update and let you know that I’ve completed the first draft of A Boy and His Dawg, a YA werewolf romance that I’ve been working on since the start of summer. It’s about halfway over 50K but depending on what the editor thinks, it could get bigger or smaller. You may recall, while I was writing this an editor offered to read the completed story because she liked the premise I was pitching for a unique werewolf story with a gay protagonist and an African breed of werewolf. I double checked to see if she still wanted to read it, and she said she had space in her schedule to look it over. I’ve sent the first draft to here, and I can’t say if she will like the story or not, but I’m sure she will have suggestions for what to fix or tweak. I’m also going to be looking for beta readers to check this story out before I consider any publishing plans. If you would like to beta read for me on this project, email me at: zoe_whitten (at) yahoo (dot) com. Obviously it will be a while before this goes on sale, probably 9 months to a year from now. I wish I could pump these puppies out for you faster, but the polishing process requires outside eyes, and it takes a long, long time to get all of those little freaking mistakes out.

So that’s the monthly report. Thank you very much for your continued support. I should have some new stuff out for you sooner rather than later. I just have to finish editing some of it to whack a few last typos. Of course I’ll never get them all, but I will hunt down as many of those wayward little bastards as I can. And when I find them…ahem.

Thanks, y’all. More books coming soon!