Firstly, my next story is ticking along nicely, and I am hoping that it will be with my editors in the next week. I know that there are many readers out there who are hanging out for me to get my next story published, so there is some hope for them.
One of the more interesting things I read recently was the statement that July is traditionally a slow month for book sales. Looking at my primary distribution channels, I can kind of see where they’re coming from, with a very flat month going on at the moment. Looking at some of the smaller channels, and they’re ticking over quite nicely. In fact, July is looking like being the best month on record for a couple of them.
My free books have also taken off this month. In a couple of channels, I am watching the free copies being downloaded constantly. Some of these titles, which have been out for a while, picked up their downloads from out of nowhere, but they are being sustained, which is nice. Now I wait to see how many (if any) transition to becoming readers of my other books.
Trying to measure a purely electronic distribution against a combination of electronic and physical doesn’t always work out, but with the recent discussion about JK Rowling’s new pen name, it was the quoted number of sales that were of interest. For a book that was supposedly so highly rated / such a good seller, the number of titles sold prior to JK Rowling’s name association was less than just one of my free titles achieved. I was surprised that the number was so low (I have read about what the average number of book sales for a title is, so I do know what it could be).
Irrespective of anything else, it did give me some added perspective on how to measure my relative performance in the market, especially on days when I wonder why I don’t seem to be getting much traction in the market.
Finally, my website is probably going to change significantly in the next month or so -- making it more user friendly and easier for my readers to reach out to me and find out more about me and my books.