March Madness (of a Different Sort)

I've been taking advantage of Amazon's free giveaways ever since I first published (Amazon's Kindle Select program always you to give away your published work for free for 5 days in a 90-day period). I see it as an opportunity to have people read my story who would have otherwise passed on spending money on an unknown author. 

I do it all wrong. I don't bother to advertise at all ... so I truly have no idea how people discover my book is available for free. Sometimes they don't -- I've had giveaways where I don't think I had more than 20 downloads. But this last time, for whatever reason, my book caught the attention of almost a thousand people.  It was my own crazy March Madness, and at one point I was ranked as high as #5 in the Free Epic Fantasy category, and #470 in the All Free books category.

Granted, most of the people who downloaded my book will never read it -- it will be lost amongst the hundreds of other books on their "to read" shelves -- but a handful already have, and I'm reaping the benefits (and consequences) of a successful giveaway.

I've seen a nice post-giveaway bounce in sales and another 5-star rating, which is always good for my ego :)  Unfortunately, I've also received my very first one-star rating. As one-star ratings go, it's actually not that bad ... especially since the review starts out with "The story is a good one..."

They say that you should never look at reviews, but they are hard to ignore. I know how much I rely upon reviews when making a decision to purchase something -- and I often wonder how much the reviews on my books influence the decision making of others.  Right now, my two worst reviews are the very first things people see when going to Amazon or Goodreads, and I know that has probably affected my sales, but there is nothing I can do about it. Those reviewers are entitled to their opinions, and in the case of the Amazon review, apparently several others agree. Oh well, c'est la vie.

On the bright side, the increase in sales and the 5-star reviews have been a great motivator for me to get the third volume done.  The audience for my story might be a small one, but they are definitely out there, and I don't want to leave them hanging :)

I'm not quite half-way done with the third installment of the series.  I'm taking a few days off from work this week (my kids have spring break), so I'm hoping that I'll make some good progress. I'm still committed to having this published this year (fingers crossed). 

Winter Musings

Weather

This has been a long, cold, icy winter. While my suffering pales in comparison to what those in Boston have gone through, the winter has still been quite miserable. My commute to work has been like I'm on an Arctic expedition, with tug boats pulling my ferry through the endless ice.

The weather often makes it into my stories.  Volume 1 of the Stewards of Reed (the version that included an opening chapter describing the Village of Reed, anyway) recounted how the village was often shrouded in fog, rendering the summer months dreary and cool. This was a nod to all the cold summers I had spent in San Francisco. "It is snowing again" became a repetitive theme in Volume 2 (more than 60 inches of snow fell upon the Jersey Shore last winter).  Volume 3 currently includes a description of being stuck in the ice, with the imagery described courtesy of my recent commuting adventures.

No ABNA

Usually this time of year is busy with excitement surrounding the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA), a contest in which 10,000 people compete for the chance of having their book published by Amazon. I entered the contest in 2013 and 2014. The first year I was full of naive hope that someone would discover my book, fall in love, and propel my writing career forward. I was cut in the very first round.  The second year, I entered the contest with little expectation of success, but enjoyed participating the the forum where I could lurk and commiserate and laugh with fellow authors struggling to get their stories noticed.  Again, I was cut in the very first round. This year, Amazon canceled ABNA, and it is not clear if they have any plans to bring it back. Such a shame...

Pursuit of Perfection

I think I might have blogged about this before, but one of the things I learned from the ABNA forums was how driven some authors were for perfection.  They would spend YEARS writing and rewriting their books, just to get things "perfect". That is not my style (as anyone who has read my books can attest).  I'm sure there are plenty of things I could have done to make the story better ... but there reaches a point when the effort is not worth the return on investment.  This is especially true for subjective things like writing. What is perfection to one is boring and bland to another. Once I make the decision that my book is good enough to publish (and I only make this decision after my work has been reviewed by a professional editor), I don't look back. Usually...

 My very first edition of Volume 1: The Rise of Fallon, included an opening chapter that set the stage on the Village of Reed.  I tend to fall into the camp of readers who don't mind having a little background at the start of the story. Apparently, I am in the minority.  I had two motivating factors for ultimately removing that chapter:  (1) Several people had complained that the opening chapter was "boring"; and (2) for those lucky enough to advance to the second round of the ABNA contest, the first 5000 words of your manuscript is read, and in order to advance to the third round, it is important that those first 5000 words are compelling.  So, I ended up deleting the first chapter and paring down the text in the early part of the book so that the first 5000 words reached a more interesting point in the plot line.

Anyone who purchases Volume 1 now will read a slightly different book than those who happened to purchase the first edition.  And so it goes...