Reviews, Recipes, and Random Slices of Life

I had no expectations for how "Salvaging Scottwell" would do. It's a novelette, not a novel. I'm a relatively unknown science fiction author. I have no idea how many copies will sell. I priced it at $.99 since that sounded about right for something less than a novel. In the first two weeks, I've sold 18 copies. I'm guessing that's pretty much all off of the initial "telling friends, fans, and family." It's not a lot of sales, but I'm pretty happy with it.

The first sales bump spread out more than I had expected. For the first three days, I had multiple sales. Then it dropped down to about one sale a day, and now it appears to be at a couple of sales a week. Of course, this is without the distribution that Smashwords promises; that will take another couple of weeks to go through.

The first sales were mostly on Smashwords, then Amazon caught up and kept having a sale a day while Smashwords was dead. Now Amazon hasn't had any sales for a few days, but Smashwords is popping up now and then.

An acquaintance of mine who writes reviews did review "Salvaging Scottwell" on Amazon and Goodreads, and I do believe that prolonged the initial sales bump. Reviews are awesome! (If you've read this story and liked it, you should write one!)

Joel, a friend in my writing group, has added his own $.02 about the unpredictability of ebook sales:

From my experience, I'd consider waiting on the KDP Select for a while with a single story.

Here's why; I put out one of my short stories in February of 2011, distributing to the various avenues (it was a mystery story that had been previously published in an anthology). The most it sold in any one month was 12 (in January, 2012), which was through B&N's PubIt program. Then at the end of July, it suddenly took off, and sold about 200 copies in 10 days (also through PubIt). The only thing that I can account for this is that it became associated with some other books in the "also bought" category that were selling well, and therefor made this story more visible. Sales have cooled off again for that title, but I ended up selling about 400 copies of it in 2012.

One of my collections sells well at the Apple bookstore, but not anywhere else.

My novels tend to do better on Amazon.

So, imo, it's best to have your ebooks distributed as widely as possible, since you never exactly know which avenue it's going to click in. And the 'clicking' might take quite a while, too!

This makes the reliability of this experiment rather suspect, but I'm still looking forward to seeing what happens!

Sales So Far
18 copies sold total

11 copies sold of Salvaging Scottwell on Amazon (Kindle)

7 copies sold of Salvaging Scottwell on Smashwords (many formats)


Smashwords

I'm really impressed by Smashwords' usability. They've got neat graphs that show when people looked at the page, how many downloads there were when, and how many sample downloads there were. They make it easy to see where the ebook is in the distribution process to the different "channels" they offer--Sony, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Diesel, etc.



The distribution process does take longer than I expected. As of two weeks in, Salvaging Scottwell has been "shipped" to most of the channels, but it doesn't yet appear for sale on them. So all sales reported for Smashwords were purchased directly on their site. And it does not appear to capture what formats people downloaded the ebook in, alas.

Smashwords sends an email notification every time a copy of a book sells--as far as Amazon is concerned, that's peanuts, and you'd better log in to check your report if you want to know that kind of detail. That pretty much sums up the difference between them.

Amazon for Kindle (KDP)

I am not yet enrolled in KDP Select, which allows library lending and free days, and I haven't explored the communities. The reports available for KDP are pretty basic--so many sales per month, so much in royalties so far, etc. Their focus is clearly on the consumer, and honestly, that's as it should be. There were a lot of hoops to jump through to get it formatted right for them, but hopefully that pays off.

Posts in This Series
Ebooks - The Afterlife of Short Stories?
Ebooks - The First Bump
Ebooks - The Chirping of the Crickets

Circus of Brass and Bone Writing Log



New words: 437
Total words: 28,290
Overused word: money
Gratuitous reference: Sears catalog
Type of scene: Fiscally fun.
Challenge(s): Keeping up with the bits and pieces filtering into my brain.
Which line is it anyways?"Food?" the old man squawked. "How do I know what a potato's worth? How much 'change' do I give back for a chicken? Half an egg!?"
Researched: Sears catalog.
Notes: I love the thing that sometimes happens when writing, when you're just watching a movie in your brain and trying to describe it properly.
Other writingy stuff:
* Belatedly responded to acceptance of "The Perfect Costume" by Best New Vampire Tales. Bad email inbox, eating emails! Feel pretty bad about that.
* Processed "The Perfect Costume" acceptance and posted updates in various places.
* Did the publicity work for "The Radiator Burped" in Northern Lights. Important to do for every story!
* Recorded intro for the MinnSpec podcast.
* Processed Flash Me's release of "Gone Huntin'" (magazine on indefinite hiatus).
* Submitted "Alien/Whore/Mother" to the Baen's Universe Annex. Woot!
* Checked Escape Pod response times and 3+ months are not uncommon. Shouldn't query quite yet. ::drums fingers::
* Checked status of Dead Bells anthology, and it looks like there's an editing schedule, so that project is still in the works.

07/05/10, Monday, no work (4th of July observed!)
* Queried last 2 agents on my A-list for Vicesteed. Now I'm done with Vicesteed until I hear back from somebody, or at least for a couple of months--at which point it'll be time to query my next batch of preferred agents. Whew! Also, this feels so weird!
* Submitted "Demons of Disease" to Bizarro Magazine.
* Submitted "Gone Huntin'" to Flash Me Magazine.
* Submitted "Good Help Is Hard to Find" to Title Goes Here.
* Submitted "Look Back to Keep Her" to Flash Fiction Online.
* Submitted "Road of Dreams" to Neo-Opsis
* Read WritersMarket and Duotrope newsletters and updated market list from them.
* Nonstandard Structure: http://mrissa.livejournal.com/727223.html

Tried to see where I could send "Salvaging Scottwell" next--and blanched at the lack of options for an 11,000 word reprint. Yoiks. Well, I'll Escape Pod it even though it's longer than they usually take, but beyond that...hrm. It's a really good story (other people think so too!) but what to do with it? Small press publication as a novella? Is that too short? (Ideas, mmeriam?)

04/11/10, Sunday. Had too much stuff to do to set priorities, so the D6 determined where I spent my time.
* Worked on BookRix PR for "Salvaging Scottwell."
* Worked on typing up "Alien/Whore/Mother."
* Worked on making editing changes to Vicesteed ch. 29.
* Processed Realms of Fantasy's form letter rejection of "Warmth in the Cold Time."
* Read Critters, Ralan, Writer's Digest, and Duotrope's Digest newsletters and updated markets from them.

04/10/10, Saturday
* Reworked notes from Copyright speech at MinnSpec into a how-to writing article and emailed to lawyer for a double-check.
* Began typing up Alien/Whore/Mother.

04/09/10, Friday
* Posted for volunteers to crit "Alien/Whore/Mother"
* Posted writing log,
* Worked on BookRix PR

I have been working a lot less half-time and a lot more full-time for the last couple of months, and I am *really* sick of it. I have stuff that needs to get done, damn it!

04/06/10, Tuesday - 04/07/10, Wednesday, full-time at the day job
* Got a few more pages of Alien/Whore/Mother written, but mostly had time for nothing. Also working the 6:30 AM shift messed me up.

04/05/10, Monday, full-time at day job.
* Posted freewriting, writing log
* Did contracty stuff for getting Wiscon panel notes published.
* Processed "A Phoenix By Any Other Name" being available for (electronic) reprints again.
* Processed submitting "Salvaging Scottwell" to BookRix competition.
* Processed TweettheMeat's rejection of "The Reaper came."
* Belatedly processed TweettheMeat's publication of "She loved her new husband's mansion" and payment for it.
* Processed Nanoism's (twitfic reprint!) acceptance of "The Key to His Heart"
* Added twitfic benefit contest for Haiti to market list: http://nanoism.net/meta/nanoism-contest-for-haiti/
* Began making edits on Vicesteed ch. 29.

03/29/10, Monday, full day at day job
* Wrote 2 1/2 pgs. longhand on Alien/Whore/Mother

03/28/10, Sunday, church in a.m., grilling party in p.m.
* Read Writing-World, 2 FundsforWriters, Writer's Digest, WritersWeekly, Publisher's Lunch, and FFWSmallMarkets newsletters and updated market list from them.
* Contests to AVOID: http://kathytemean.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/contests-to-avoid/
* Fiddled around with figuring out cover art etc to enter "Salvaging Scottwell" in contest.

02/09/10, Tuesday, worked a full day, but with downtime.
* Finished writing Vespa's Letter to Platinadar, typed up during work downtime, and sent on its merry way.

02/08/10, Monday
* Finished writing "Ekaterina and the Firebird." Felt all accomplished because I'd hit the ending and all that--and then realized I had to go back to the beginning and fill in transitions and research [brackets]. Not done yet! Alas, alack!
* Began writing "Letter to Platinadar" on the bus.

02/07/10, Sunday
* Updated market list from link submitted.
* Processed payment for "Salvaging Scottwell" and "The Key to His Heart." Go go gadget spreadsheets!
* Read Writer's Digest, Publishers Lunch, WritersWeekly, WritersMarket, WritingWorld, FundsforWriters, WritersMarket, Duotrope, Ralan, and FFWSmallMarkets newsletters and updated markets from them.
* Flow: http://blog.writersdigest.com/mfaconfidential/On+Words+Flowing+And+Why+Its+Worth+It.aspx
* Submitted "The Perfect Costume" to Extreme Creatures Anthology for reprint.
* Submitted "Good Help is Hard to Find" to GUD.
* Submitted "Demons of Disease" to Arkham Tales--and whoa! realized it was my 108th story submission since I started using my own spreadsheet to track.
* Finished typing up what has been written longhand of "Ekaterina and the Fire Bird" (4,463 words)

02/06/10, Saturday, Phil's game all p.m., then friends birthday dinner.
* Posted writing log, freewriting, NanoWri
* Typed up almost all the rest of "Ekaterina."

It is late and I am tired, but I still need to do one more critique for writing group tomorrow, plus (maybe) time, practice, and mark my reading. Which will be the beginning of "Salvaging Scottwell," as it's recently published, although I'm a bit worried that enough people followed the links I posted and read the first bit to make it repetitive. Ah, well.

Sometimes, being a writer is a lot like permanently having homework. With deadlines.

Go to Baen's Universe to read "Salvaging Scottwell," my story about an obsolete police dog robot that gets an upgrade with unintended consequences to the Powers That Be: http://baens-universe...

Excerpt:

Max woke up inside his kennel, unplugged his tail from the wall, and ran an automatic systems check. Recharging his battery had taken a half-hour longer than last month. He connected to the BigDog network so that he could send an error report about the battery. The automated reply told him that his error report had been filed, and a handler would contact him if any further action was required. The last handler contact recorded in Max's memory log was three years old.

He limped to the door of the jailhouse. His right third leg had broken down two years ago. It had taken three weeks for his movement pattern to functionally reform, but he still limped. His speed was a fraction of his original specifications. His right second leg couldn't provide the same motive power. It had been designed for stability, not speed.

He stepped out into Scottwell neighborhood to begin his patrol. His tail wagged once. Scottwell was more than just the neighborhood that he guarded; it was as much a part of him as his paws. When he kept himself and his neighborhood protected and well-maintained, he was a Good Boy.

His tail drooped. He hadn't been a Good Boy for a long time.

Read more.