Finished!

I finished up Home for the Holidays today and sent it to my beta reader. It's one long story (7000 words) and two short-shorts, totalling about 10,500 words. I hope to have it up on Amazon within a few days.

Go buy this book

My friend Ellie Marvel's latest, Claustrophobic Christmas, is now available:

In the Mood...

is finally free on Amazon.

A Wintertide Spell

My friend Jody Wallace has a fun new short story out:

You can find it on Amazon.

Warning: Dangerous agent contracts ahead

There's an excellent blog post here about an agent who's been seeking out indie authors to represent. Read the details of any contract you're sent, and be very, very careful what you sign.

What going free can do

People are still posting links to stories about the author who "lost" royalties on 6000 copies of his book when Amazon incorrectly made the book free. A lot of the comments on these articles make it clear that people have no idea how much the difference in sales can be between offering a book for a price, and for free.

Case in point: my book In the Mood. Last month in the UK, I sold 16 copies (at 99 cents-- the book in the above-mentioned case is priced at $5.99, which is a lot for an indie). This month it went free, and within a week I've given away 4277 copies. And that's just the UK. Successful freebies on Amazon.com can move a lot more copies than that.

I'm not saying Amazon didn't make a mistake here. I'm just saying the people commenting who react as if the author would have earned thousands of dollars in any event don't know much about how sales and freebies work on Amazon.

The cat update

A while back, I posted about a hungry, scrawny little cat and kitten we rescued from beneath a neighbor's house. The kitten stayed with us, of course, and is growing into a rather pretty, sleek young lady who gleefully pounces on and destroys unsuspecting curtains. The cat went to live with my dad. We visited today, and I observed that she's changed from a pitifully friendly little wisp of a cat with scruffy fur into a well-fed, beautifully long-coated, aloof house cat who stares balefully at visitors. The fact that I took her in, gave her vet care, and fed her for weeks is of no importance to her, and she feels no need to show me any affection, though she will occasionally unbend enough to grant me the courtesy of a brief brush against my hand. She is the queen of her domain, as a house kitty should be. It's nice to see:-).

Getting exposure

In the Mood continues to be the number one free contemporary romance on iTunes, and is still #5 on the free romance list and #31 on the free book list. I've also been featured by iTunes again, this time under "What's Hot" for All I Ever Wanted, which is nice:

Meanwhile, I've given away over 900 copies on Amazon UK, and am #18 in free books there. I wish I could get Amazon.com to make my book free, too. Seems like it might really get me some exposure. But I'll just have to be patient, and happy with what I've gotten so far:-).

Thank you, iTunes

I think iTunes featuring me this morning has helped my sales quite a bit. Seeing Spots is #42 in its iTunes category (which is about as high as it's gotten so far), and Isn't It Romantic? and All I Ever Wanted have climbed back up the contemporary charts and are at #23 and #35, respectively. I can't wait for Unwrapped to clear the Smashwords premium process and become available over there!

Meanwhile, In the Mood has gone free on Amazon UK (and is already #132 on their free list-- ETA: now it's at #112, yay), but not on Amazon.com... yet.

In the Mood...

...is now free on B&N.

Also, it was displayed at the very top of the contemporary romance category on iTunes this morning, at least for me:

Amazon in error

Here's an article in which the author claims that Amazon lowered his price to free incorrectly (price-matching sample chapters rather than a full book), and now they won't pay him for the 5104 copies he "sold" while the book was free. Well... regardless of whether Amazon made an error or not, there's no way in the world he would have sold those 5104 copies at $5.99. Any observer of Amazon knows that when a book goes free, it can go from selling no copies to thousands of copies in a heartbeat. (Now that the book's back to paid status, it's only ranked at 71,662, which means the author is selling at most a couple copies a day.) Therefore, I don't think the author "lost" the royalties; he just gained some exposure.

Last month's results

I sold at least 4000 copies (over 19 different titles) last month. I've lost track of the exact amount because one book was a freebie on Amazon UK part of the month, and I'm honestly not sure how many copies I sold and how many I gave away. I have also sold an unspecified (but probably reasonably substantial) number of books on iTunes in the past month. I'm waiting eagerly for Smashwords to update to find out how many I sold there!

Overall, sales were down on Amazon and B&N, but I did have one hot romance that sold over 500 copies, which helped my sales numbers.