My eBook Sales 2011

It’s the last day of the year. After 6 months of flogging my wares on the internet, what do I have to show for it? Time to take stock.

So far, I have published 5 eBooks:

5 June: Ovolution and Other Stories (an anthology of SF stories) 25 (12)

3 August: Bird Watcher (a short story) 8 (0)

28 August: St Patrick’s Day Special (a thriller) 35 (0)

16 October: Ooze (a short story from the anthology) 3 (0)

1 November: Bartlett Rebooted (a story from the anthology) 3 (0)

4 December: Ooze (free on Smashwords) 120 (120)

20 December: St Patrick’s Day Special (US edition) 1 (0)

On 4 December I re-released Ooze as a giveaway on Smashwords, and on 20 December I released a US edition of St Patrick’s Day Special. This new edition uses US spelling conventions but makes no concessions to US idiom or word choice. My ‘automobiles’ are all ‘cars’ with bonnets and boots, for instance, not hoods and trunks. A large part of the strength and charm of the story is the Irish idiom used.

The figures attached to the titles above are sales (with freebie copies in brackets). If you add up all the figures, the total comes to 195 (132). That’s 63 books sold for money. Amazon kindle sales in US/UK/DE/Fr/ES/It breakdown as follows: 43/11/0/0/0/0

I’ve put a lot of effort into spreading my name on twitter, Facebook, my web site and this blog. Also, a huge promotional effort for St Patrick’ Day Special in the run-up to Christmas consumed almost every waking moment and resulted in 7 sales.

My books are well written, professionally edited and well formatted for eReaders. Prices are $0.99 for all but Ovolution, which is $2.99. So what am I doing wrong? Could it be that the covers are not strong or exciting enough? I’d be grateful for any suggestions.

And happy New Year, everyone.

UPDATE: March 6. On advice from friends I have unpublished the US edition. Apparently it was a confusing distraction. I think it'll probably remain for sale on the iPad and Nook for some time to come, but it's no longer available on Amazon.

Christmas presents

I got nothing for Christmas this year, but my computer did rather well. Her first Christmas present -- from Santa Clause -- was 1MByte of RAM. My son installed it, upgrading my system from 512 KB to 1.25MB. The transformation is amazing; where before my computer was limping along like a geriatric vampire stranded between blood donor clinics, now it’s skipping around from task to task like a wild teenager called Bella.


My computer's second acquisition was a wireless mouse donated by my son. It’s working perfectly, and I expect it’s doing what it’s designed to do, but I’m not sure I can live with it. Who can live with a hyperactive mouse? My old one -- the one with the tail -- was sluggish, downright non-cooperative at times; this new one has power steering and a sport button, marked "DPI". Even without pressing the button, it’s all over the place busy-busy like a worker-ant on steroids. It makes me dizzy. Heaven only knows what it gets up to on its own while I'm in bed, asleep.

Karen Baney Interview

I’m with Karen Baney, indie author of four books so far, and counting.


JJ: Tell us a little about yourself and why you're participating in the SUPPORT THE TROOPS AUTHORS Group.

Karen: I don’t exactly know when my love affair with the US Military began. Perhaps it was as a young girl when my sister and I spent hours studying the Air Force ranks in volume “A” of the encyclopedia set my parents purchased. Maybe the detailed stories we invented planted a seed.

Regardless, at the age of 21, I found myself married to a military man and suddenly thrust into an entirely different culture and country. After two years and much heartache, I left a bad situation, but my love for our military survived. Even my second husband served our country for eight years, though I met him long after he became a civilian again.

JJ: Describe your book.

Karen: My latest book, Nickels, is a contemporary novel, set in the Phoenix Metro Area of Arizona. Niki Turner is a software engineer who finds herself on a project with someone from her past—Kyle Jacobs. Both Niki and Kyle went to high school together on Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.

They have very different memories of that time in their lives. Kyle thinks he was being cute by picking on Niki. He was just trying to get her attention. In Niki’s mind his efforts came across more like torture. She remembered in particular a time where he threw her into the pool in swim class, only she didn’t know how to swim.

Both characters have gone through much heartache in the eight years since they’ve seen each other. Niki has lost someone close to her. Kyle lost his entire CSAR team in a horrible accident that left him both physically and emotionally scarred.

When they are thrust onto the same project at a helicopter avionics manufacturer, the tension is palpable. Kyle hopes Niki can see him as the man he has become. She just wants to avoid him at all cost. Only one more problem – he’s her roommate’s brother and seems to keep showing up at her house at all hours.

JJ: Where did the idea for the book come from?

Karen: There’s a lot of me in this book. It’s a little scary to admit. As one close friend said, “Oh, I thought Niki was you.” Niki shares some similarities, but in some ways she’s very different from me too.

I’m a software engineer. There are so few women in this career field that it presents an interesting challenge at times. I thought it would be fun to show the world a glimpse of the camaraderie that exists between programmers.

I also spent two years in Germany, so when I decided to include a lot of different aspects of the military life, I didn’t have to go far for ideas.

JJ: Give us a short exclusive excerpt - a piece that won't be seen in the sample. (Introduce the characters first, if need be)

Karen: Kyle Jacobs is the male role in the novel. Just prior to this scene he’d been flirting with Niki in the pool by getting in a splashing contest. When she stared as his scars, he got mad and left. Inside the house his sister, Marcy is getting ready for their Memorial Day BBQ party.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kyle glanced over his shoulder at the sharp intake of her breath. Niki had seen the scars. All of them. The ones on his chest and arms. The surgical scars running up his back. Even he hadn’t been able to see the full extent of those. Judging from her reaction, they were as bad as he thought.

“Stop staring,” he growled as he opened the sliding glass door and stalked through.

“What’s got you in a bad mood?” Marcy asked, looking up from salad fixings she chopped.

He whirled around to face her. Raising his hands, he motioned across his chest. “These. And those.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder as he turned his back to face her.

Her mouth slacked open.

This is why he was careful to hide his torso at all times. He didn’t know what he had been thinking, trying to play in the pool without a shirt on. He hated his disfigured body. How could he expect any woman not to be repulsed by it. His perfect physique died in that helicopter crash. And it made him feel like less of a man.

“I think you’re overreacting.”

“Am I? Have you taken a good look?”

“Yes. That’s why I think you’re crazy. The scars aren’t that bad. You’re still an attractive man—with a few imperfections.”

“A few? Look at this!” Again he motioned his hand over his chest. Was his sister completely blind?

“Yes, a few. You’re obsessing.”

“Am I? How well do you think Niki reacted to them?”

“I don’t know.” Marcy stood on her tip toes to peer around him through the sliding glass door. “She doesn’t look horrified or anything.”

JJ: Have you written / published other books?

Karen: Yes. I have three other books, all available to the troops. They are all set in Arizona in the mid to late 1860’s when the territory was first formed.

A Dream Unfolding follows the lives of two different families as they encounter many dangers on the trip west to their new home. Eventually the two stories merge in the brand new town of Prescott, Arizona.

A Heart Renewed follows Julia Colter’s flight for her life as she heads to Arizona to the safety of her brother’s ranch.

A Life Restored is about Caroline Larson. When the stage coach she is on is robbed and everyone but her gets murdered, she must survive in the desert. An express rider, Thomas Anderson, comes along and becomes her reluctant hero. Sparks fly as he escorts her safely to Prescott.

JJ: What are you working on?

Karen: My current project is the conclusion of the Prescott Pioneers Series: A Hope Revealed. Then I have two more contemporary stories planned before stepping back in time to WWII. Just don’t hold me to that order. I’m getting really excited about all the WWII research so those could end up coming before (or in between) the contemporary stories. :)

JJ: If you were stuck on a desert island, what one person, living or dead, would you like to find there?

Karen: Ok, I know it sounds corny, but I’d really like my hubby to be there. We’ve been married, very happily, for eleven years and I really can’t imagine being stranded apart from him.

Hopefully there’s no weird stuff happening on the island like on Lost.

If I got to have more than one person with me? Tom Hanks. I’m pretty sure he could find a way to make us raft to get off the island.

Thanks, Karen. Great answers.

New Phrases

Have you ever noticed how the language changes, how new phrases seem to magic themselves into our lives?

I’m thinking of “Plausible Deniability”. Remember when that one arrived, round about the time of Watergate? Then we had “Extraordinary Rendition”. I’d love to know who dreamt that one up!

Nowadays, faced with a “Double Dip Recession”, we have the almost medical-sounding “Quantitative Easing” and the dreaded oxymoron “Negative Equity” as well as the mysterious and insidious “Bank Recapitalisation”, all recent additions to our vocabulary, leading up to the inevitable “Financial Meltdown”.

"Happy Christmas" to all my readers!

Kindle All Stars

It's here! The Kindle All-Stars first issue has been released and is available on Amazon. This marvellous project, the brain-child of Bernard Schaffer, is an anthology of short stories by indie authors. The idea is to showcase indie talent while, at the same time, generating income for charity. The lead stories are by Harlan Ellison, Alan Dean Foster and John Merz. There are 31 stories in the collection, including a humble offering by me (*ahem*). And there are some real gems in there.

As I write this, the eBook has been on sale for a little over 12 hours and it has already reached #802 in all categories and 

#3 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Anthologies

#6 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Short Stories

#7 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Short Stories

The charity chosen by Bernard is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The book is priced at $0.99 so we need to sell a huge number of copies to make a difference by generating significant income for the charity.

BUY A COPY HERE  Read it, enjoy it, write a review and tell all your friends to buy a copy, too.

Getting To Know My Computer

You know the way they say you should get to know your own body, so that, if (when) things start to go wrong you’ll notice those subtle changes? Well, my computer has been sluggish and uncooperative lately, so I decided it was time I got to know it.

I started with the Task Master. This is a dandy program that shows all the applications and processes running on the computer. It shows -- in real time -- the amount of CPU and memory used by each process. Right now, my computer has three applications and 58 processes running. The 3 applications are MS-Word (creating this blog entry) Outlook Express, my email program and Task Master.

The processes are programs that run in the background. Programs that monitor and control stuff, like spooling to the printer or checking for incoming emails. I checked out each of these processes to make sure that I had nothing untoward running, like that pesky Trojan that I discovered recently.

Next, I checked the hard disk. I ran the Defrag program and discovered that 20% of my disk is free. The program told me that I do not need to defrag the disk at this time. Defrag is the program that consolidates all the free space created by file deletions into one area on the disk.

Then I turned my attention to the keyboard. There are a lot of keys on there that I never use. Starting at the top, we have Esc and 12 keys marked F1 - F12. I never use these, so they can go. There are 3 other keys up there: Print Screen/SysRq, Scroll Lock and Pause/Break. I don’t recall using any of those, but they look important, so I’ll hold onto them for now. The block of 6 under these are useful for word processing, as are the arrow keys. On the second row from the top we have the numbers, minus, plus and backspace. I will keep those, of course, but who needs that other block of numbers over on the extreme right? Whip them off. On the bottom row there are 2 Shift keys, 2 Ctrl keys and 2 Windows keys; That’s 3 that I don’t need. Also on the bottom we have a mysterious key with a picture of 2 overlapping windows and a pointer; what’s that about? And finally, there’s one called Alt Gr that I never use.

I call that progress. Maybe my computer will run faster now that it doesn’t have to worry about all those superfluous keys.

Free eBook

Just before lunch today I decided to publish OOZE for FREE on Smashwords. The whole process was incredibly fast. By lunchtime, the eBook was up and available for all sorts of eReaders. By the time I'd finished my lunch, 6 people had downloaded it. Here's the link and here's the cover.

Ooze is one of the stories from my anthology Ovolution and Other Stories A fun story about first contact between intelligent life forms on a distant planet, it's one of those stories that wrote itself.

Me with Christine Cunningham

This is the lovely, talented author Christine Cunningham, known to her Twitter followers as @E_B_ChristineC. As part of the #HolidaySirens Crime Writers' event, she has found a corner of her blog to ask me some searching questions.

Find Christine's blog here

Here's Christine's latest book

Amazon Link

Thanks, Christine.

Interview - Tony Healey, Kindle All Star

WHO ARE THE KINDLE ALL-STARS?

Tony Healey has posted short conversations throughout November with the stellar talent behind the revolutionary short-story anthology THE KINDLE ALL-STARS PRESENT: RESISTANCE FRONT. To even things up, here's an interview with Tony himself.

JJ: How did you come to hear about the Kindle All-Stars project?

TH: I saw Bernard tweet about it, and e-mailed him straight away to find out about it.

JJ: What’s your contribution called?

TH: It’s called REDD

JJ: And without giving too much away, what’s it about?

TH: It’s a prequel of sorts to my story FRANK, and we get to see the character in action pulling off a job, and what the repercussions will be for those who work with him.

JJ: What was the main inspiration behind it?

TH: Really it was to explore his character a little bit more, and have an action vignette featuring him. It’s got a little touch of a heist about it, in a way.

JJ: Did you write it specifically for the Kindle All-Stars, or was it written prior?

TH: I wrote it just for the Kindle All-Stars project.

JJ: Obviously the primary goal behind this anthology is to make some money for disadvantaged and abused children. But secondary to that, it is to promote fresh, new writing talent - the punk rock of literature - and show that Indie writers are out there, dedicated and working hard to produce Class-A work. If people take notice of what you’ve written for this anthology, what do you hope the outcome is of that attention?

TH: I hope that everyone gets some good exposure from it, and that that exposure has a domino effect in getting people’s attention. Bernard has set out to show that Indie doesn’t mean crap, just because it’s not come from Random House or some other big name. With the right amount of love and care, an Indie book can equal something put together by industry ‘professionals’ and that’s the point I think.

JJ: Is there anyone in particular who’s contributed to the anthology that you’re excited to be included alongside?

TH: Alan Dean Foster, mostly. I love his work, and he seems like such a nice guy. He travels the world over, trying to see as much of it as possible, and you just genuinely get the feeling that he is a generous spirit. As a kid I thought I’d found my favourite series of books in the Chronicles of Narnia until I found his ‘Spellsinger’ series.

JJ: We know that there will be a KAS 2 at some point. Plans are already afoot. Is there a dream name you’d like to see involved in it the next time around? Me personally, getting published in a book that includes a story by Alan Dean Foster is one of those “Wouldn’t it be great if one day...” things that I can now tick off of the list.

TH: I’d like to see King, for obvious reasons. Perhaps his son Joe Hill.

JJ: So when you’re not helping to fight evil, what do you get up to in real life?

TH: I used to be a manager in retail, but I changed company and took a step down so that I could cut my hours and spend more time with my kids. I realised that promotion and pay rises and all that business didn’t really matter to me, and that I didn’t want to miss any part of my children growing up, which I would do if I carried on working a 50-60 hour weeks. Now I’m enjoying working 30 hours a week and getting extra time to see the kids grow and develop into little people. It also gives me more time to read and watch TV, which is always a bonus!

JJ: Are you working on anything now? Anything you’d like everyone to know about?

TH: I’ve got the first draft of a thriller, ‘The Man With The Broken Heart’ resting until I’m ready to rewrite it. I’m working on a novella/short novel length scifi story called ‘The Stars My Redemption’ which sort of incorporates both Frank and Redd - the stories that is - into a much bigger and grander narrative. You can find out more about it, as it develops, at http://thestarsmyredemption.wordpress.com Hopefully I will have ‘The Stars My Redemption’ ready to go before Christmas so watch out for it!

JJ: And to your readers - both potential and existing - is there anything you would like to say? They might be reading this months after Resistance Front has landed, wanting to know more about you. What would you like to say to them?

TH: Support every writer involved in this project by looking at their stuff and maybe buying some of their books. They’re all wonderful. Bernard wouldn’t have included them if they were crap writers. The man is a paramount professional, and he wouldn’t cheat you by trying to sell you a book of stories that weren’t up to scratch. Seek these writers out and buy their stuff. Help us to drive this Resistance Front!

JJ: Thanks, Tony, and thanks for interviewing all those other Kindle All Stars.