Trilogy launch: first week's results

I won't lie.  This past week has felt more like a month.  Launching a new book is stressful.  Launching three books at once is a nightmare.  It's one of those things I'm glad to have done but won't ever do again.  Anyway, the books have been live for a week now, so let's see what we can see.

Biggest surprise: Apple iTunes.  This retailer is almost keeping pace with Amazon on the free downloads of Clouds of Venus, and it has exceeded Amazon in paid copies of the other two books.  I didn't expect that at all.  Let's look at the numbers.

Here are the figures for all three books across all Draft2Digital outlets:

Here is the breakdown by retailer:

Yeah, Apple.  :D  I've got $12.50 in royalties due from Apple from seven paid sales.  That's net; D2D's already taken its cut.

Those two sales at Barnes & Noble are free downloads of Clouds of Venus.  Here's the interesting thing about that: the book's "overview" hasn't even appeared yet.  There's no blurb on the product page!  No reviews yet, either.  The purchasers either downloaded it on the basis of its cover alone, or they downloaded it because they were fans of my previous work.  Or maybe they're Kboarders who have seen my posts there and decided to give my book a try.

Now let's look at Amazon.  I've had over two hundred free downloads of Clouds of Venus, but fewer paid sales of the other two books:

Over time, I hope to see some sell-through as people actually get around to reading the free book they downloaded and decide to purchase the next two.  For now, though, the also-bought algorithms have kicked in, and that's good enough for one week's results.

These are all very early results, and they will probably change radically over the next few weeks.  In the long run, there's no telling how things will shake out.  But I've got a new soft spot in my heart for iTunes now.

To any of my readers who might be reading this: thanks for giving my work a chance.  I really mean it.  I appreciate you all, and I hope you'll stick with me.  Space opera is coming soon.  Sword fights, plasma rifles, space battles... all kinds of cool stuff.  So enjoy the Free Space trilogy, and I hope to see you in the Wheel of Fire.  :)

Also-boughts have kicked in for Clouds of Venus

I'm getting a little love from the algorithms:

Hopefully this stuff will snowball and more books will appear there.  Come on, 'zon algos.  Don't let me down!  :D

Bknights results

Ran a promotion with bkights yesterday.  Here are the results:

Each horizontal line represents 100 free downloads of Clouds of Venus.  I moved 173 copies yesterday, as opposed to the 26, 14, and 16 copies of the previous days.  So the promotion gave me an added 150 or so downloads.

Now we see if any of those translate into sales of books 2 and 3.  *crosses fingers*

Blast from the past

In today's Bookbub email was an old favorite: Forging the Darksword, the first book of the Darksword trilogy by Weis and Hickman.  It's been, what, thirty years since I read it?  Published in 1988 according to Wikipedia, so yeah, almost thirty years.

I'm afraid to read those books again, though.  The things we love as kids often don't hold up when we revisit them as adults, and I don't want to spoil the memories.

Running my first promotion

Clouds of Venus will appear on bknights tomorrow.  :o  Hoping for lots of free downloads, some good sell-through to the other two books, and having some also-boughts appear on Amazon.

Another promotion is scheduled for Tuesday, October 3.  And a third promotion is in the works.

UPDATE:  Two promotions scheduled for Oct. 3: Freebooksy and eBookBetty.

The trilogy has fans :D

Books 2 and 3 made their first sales on Amazon yesterday.  Awesome.  :D  No sales of those two yet via D2D, but many free downloads of Clouds of Venus.

Still no reviews yet.  :(  Hopefully I'll get some good ones soon.

Ready, fire, aim!

That's my process, basically.  Like Dale Kinmont, I never get anything right the first time, so I shoot first and adjust my aim later.  *sigh*  I've already altered the blurb for Clouds of Venus a little.  And then I realized I left an extra paragraph return in the blurb, so I had to go back and remove that.  The good news is that the book is perma-free on Amazon.  Across all retailers, a few dozen copies have already been downloaded.  No sales of books 2 or 3 yet, but it's still early.

Next up: ad blitz.  I've got a few places I want to submit to.  I'll do that tomorrow, though.  I'm kind of tired, and those ad people probably don't work on the weekends anyway.

The good news is that I'm now in full Wheel of Fire mode.  I've started the third draft of Hostile Planet.  I hope to finish it in a week or so.  After that, I'll re-read it in epub on the computer for final proofreading.  And I'll need to finalize the cover.

Getting it all sorted out

Publishing three books via three different platforms, all in one day, is a draining experience.  Not only did I upload each book to Amazon, Kobo, and Draft2Digital, but I also filed the copyrights with the U.S. Copyright Office.  Doing all of those things was a several-hours-long grind.  I don't recommend it.  From now on, it's one book at a time.

I've added links to the blog's sidebar.  Still waiting on Scribd.

I've bookmarked the books in my browser.

I've sent out some free copies to a few friends.  I've also made three sales of Clouds of Venus already.  So at least, uh... *counts on fingers*  ...eight people have the book in their possession now.

I've posted links in the "Make it Free" thread on kboards.  I've also contacted KDP and asked them to price-match.  With any luck, it'll go free tomorrow or over the weekend, and I'll be applying for promotions on Monday.

I've added the books to Goodreads.

Oh--almost forgot--another author asked if he could read a chapter from Clouds of Venus for his podcast.  I agreed.  Planned for Sep. 29.  I'll post a link when it's up.

That's all for now.  And, frankly, it's enough.  lol



UPDATE:  All three titles are now on Scribd.  I'll add the links momentarily.

Published today

All three books of the Fee Space trilogy.  Book 1 is free everywhere except Amazon, and I'll try to price-match it as soon as I can.  The rest are $2.99.  Books are available at the same places as my short stories.

Took a few hours, and it was a bit tedious.  I uploaded to three different places--Amazon, Kobo, and D2D--and the files are slightly different in the back matter, so it was a challenge keeping everything straight.  The next few days will be spent trying to get these things stood up, updating the blog sidebar, and getting advertisers lined up and whatnot.  I'm looking forward to moving on, though, and getting back to the Wheel of Fire.

For now, though, let's see some covers.

Harry Dean Stanton has passed away

He was 91.  He was a great character actor, and he livened up everything he was in.

R.I.P., Mr. Stanton, and thanks for the excellent and memorable work.  :(

I survived Irma

I was never in much danger, being in north Georgia, but, just the same, I thought y'all would like to know I'm okay.

Power was out for about fifteen hours.  Internet was out for a few hours longer than that.  A neighbor had wind damage to his roof.  Leaves and limbs were everywhere, but nothing destructive happened nearby.  A tree fell on a nearby road, but that was it.  The birds didn't seem to notice the weather.  They congregated at the feeders in spite of the rain and wind.  Tough little critters.

As far as writing goes, I didn't make any progress on proofreading Cities of Mars.  I've been using my Kindle to read the book for this purpose, and my Kindle was low on battery power.  My laptop was fully charged, though, so I used it for the only thing I could: writing a draft.  I rattled off about 2500 words like it was nothing, and I finished the first draft of Silver Mountain, a 7k-word short story.  So "yay" for that.

I haven't done much today.  After a day without internet, I just felt like getting online and doing some old-fashioned internet surfing.  Lazy, I know.  What can I say... I'm a flawed man.  :(

So that's that.  Goodbye, Irma.  Be gentle with Alabama and Tennessee, and please don't circle back.

Migraines suck

It's been a while sine I've had one, but I had one tonight.  They're pretty crippling, and I can never get any writing-related stuff done.  I just can't think well enough, even when I'm not nauseous or shaking, and I just can't trust myself to make decent decisions.

It's mostly subsided now, which is why I'm capable of using the computer at the moment.  But the final polishing of Cities of Mars will remain postponed until tomorrow.

I had hoped to release the trilogy this week, but I might wait until this hurricane stuff has passed.  I want to release at a time when I'm fairly confident the power won't go out.  My location in the northern part of the state means I'm not in any real danger, but the power goes out around here every time a squirrel farts, so a little caution won't hurt.

Not sure...

...what Buzz is wearing on his head.  It looks dangerous, though, and possibly illegal in some states.

But he's Buzz Aldrin, so as far as I'm concerned, he can wear whatever he wants. 

Jerry Pournelle has died

One of the living legends of science fiction has passed away.  He was 84.  He was a brilliant man, with actual scientific accomplishments to go along with his literary ones:

He worked in operations research at The Aerospace Corporation, and North American Rockwell Space Division, and was founding President of the Pepperdine Research Institute. In 1989, Pournelle, Max Hunter, and retired Army Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham made a presentation to then Vice President Dan Quayle promoting development of the DC-X rocket.

I've only read a couple of his books.  I always meant to get around to reading The Mote in God's Eye, but have yet to do it.  Some day, hopefully.

R.I.P., Mr. Pournelle.  :(

Not sure about Pale Moon :(

I made the switch to Pale Moon, and I added the add-ons I wanted.  I've got it configured.  Unfortunately, there are still issues.  I can't embed youtube videos on kboards.  Also, PM seems to hang more often than Firefox.

Will I switch back for good?  Hard to say.  I'm on Firefox right now, but I've still got PM set as my default browser.  :|  I just don't know.  If the developers can get my favorite add-ons available as WebExtensions, then that would be great.  I could stick with Firefox.  At the moment, though, it looks like most Firefox add-ons will self-destruct in November.

I just don't know what to do.

A generous move by Audible

They're offering free audiobooks to victims of Hurricane Harvey.  They'll still pay the authors, though.  :D  Here's the email I received from them:

Hello,

My colleagues at Audible, ACX, and I watched the terrible news about Hurricane Harvey with the same sense of "What can we do to help?" that so many others had. We've noted publishers making books available to schools, libraries and shelters in the area and applaud their efforts. We wanted you to know that we've contacted the tens of thousands of Audible members in the greater Houston area to let them know their memberships are on Audible for the next three months and that they won't be billed during this time. Our hope is that this makes life a little bit easier for our customers who are impacted by Harvey. We did something similar after Hurricane Katrina and try to extend the same spirit of "do the right thing" in working with school kids in Newark (more on that soon).

While we won't be billing our Houston-area members for their audio over the next three months, we will continue to pay you your royalties on their selections. We've already gotten a few notes from members in Houston who are grateful for our offer. Let's hope that listening to some high quality audio may brighten a bleak situation for some people.

Sincerely,
Beth

Beth Anderson
EVP & Publisher
Audible, Inc.

That's a nice gesture, guys.  Cheers.  :)

SF themes according to Clare Winger Harris

Mrs. Harris was an early 20th-century SF writer.  In 1931, her list of "themes" was published in Wonder Stories, one of several pulp SF magazines of the day.  Here's the list:

1. Interplanetary space travel.
2. Adventures on other worlds.
3. Adventures in other dimensions.
4. Adventures in the micro or macro-cosmos.
5. Gigantic insects.
6. Gigantic man-eating plants.
7. Time travel, past or future.
8. Monstrous forms of unfamiliar life.
9. The creation of super-machines.
10. The creation of synthetic life.
11. Mental telepathy and mental aberrations.
12. Invisibility.
13. Ray and vibration stories.
14. Unexplored portions of the globe; submarine, subterranean, etc.
15. Super intelligence.
16. Natural cataclysms; extra-terrestrial or confined to the earth.


Let's see... Buddy only hits one of those, and that's 8.  And possibly 9, depending on what "micro-cosmos" means.  Mr. Wilson hits 1, 2, and 4.  It also includes 8 if one considers time dilation to be a form of time travel into the future.

Yet-to-be-published works: The Free Space books hit 1, 2, and 9.  The Wheel of Fire books hit 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 15.  Lol... Looks like I'm sort of throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the Wheel of Fire.  :D

I think Harris's list is a pretty good one, and surprisingly still relevant all these decades later.  Here's one of Mrs. Harris's stories, "The Fate of the Poseidonia."  It's about Martians trying to steal Earth's water.  Man, you just can't trust those darn Martians.  Free to read at the link.

Hummingbird activity has increased

They're always territorial, but their behavior has picked up recently.  That's typical--it's late summer, and they'll be migrating soon.  They have to store up energy for the long flight to Cuba, and that means they're constantly chasing each other away from the feeders.

Still, though... it seems like it's cooler now than it should be.  Tomorrow's high is only going to be 84.  But the hummers are frantic, and the poplar leaves have started to fall, so I guess summer's reaching its end.