Sunday Summary and #ROW80 Update

  1. Spring has sprung! Yesterday was the first spring blitz of the yard (the clover and weeds had taken over) with mowing and weed-eating and pruning.  There’s a massive pile of bamboo at the street from cleaning that up too.  I wore my sandals for the first time this year.  And we had a cookout with the in laws last night with my favorite grilled potato salad.  The sneezing has, thankfully, stopped for the time being.  FYI, the chocolate and vanilla swirl marshmallows roasted are DA BOMB!
  2. As of this morning, Blindsight has been downloaded 924 times since Wednesday. I’ve gotten a few ratings, all good, and have definitely acquired some new fans.  Judging by some of the conversation I heard on Twitter yesterday, I may have to make some Team Ransom and Team Mick badges.  Not that they’re competing for the same woman, but there are definitely some hard core fans who love them both.  That just tickles me to death.
  3. Also in the realm of achievement, Forsaken By Shadow has passed the 4,000 copy mark a whole week before it’s 1st birthday! I am really really pleased by this, as it was one of my goals for this book.  Overall the response has been really positive, despite the fact that I absolutely push the limits of believability with the means by which Gage and Embry gain access to Fort Hurley (too far for some readers, but hey, it’s fiction, and you can’t please everyone).  I still feel like it was a  strong first release and that I’m improving with each new thing I write.
  4. Next month I’m going to try moving it up to $2.99, to see what happens. There has been a lot of talk about ebook pricing lately–on both sides–justifying the $2.99 and up crowd and those pricing their books lower.  It’s always a business decision on each individual author’s part.  I still kind of feel like $2.99 is pushing it for a novella, but there are many other authors who’ve had excellent results at that price point, and I am a scientist by trade, so I think it’s worth the experiment.  And for anyone who can’t or isn’t willing to pay that, FBS can be read for free in serial here on the blog.  I’ll give it a month and see what happens.
  5. On the writing front, well, as I said on Wednesday, I had a nice 1500ish word return. I wrote another 671 words on Wednesday, didn’t write on Thursday (but I did finish the LAST LECTURE FOR THE SEMESTER, which was a big thing and a huge weight off my brain), and Friday I wound up doing some mega series plotting for my Mirus stuff. I didn’t write yesterday because we were busy catching up on other stuff (see the mega yard blitz).  But overall, I feel like my creative brain is working again, so I’m still pleased.
  6. On the reading front, I finished reading Heck: Where The Bad Kids Go and had a brief but lovely chat with the author on Twitter yesterday. I love that about Twitter.  It really makes a lot of people accessible who otherwise wouldn’t be.  When I love a book, I can directly let the author know it.  I also finished Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy, which I enjoyed.  Though I am generally really jaded about vamps these days, I found her take pretty fresh, and I enjoyed the characters enough to try the next book in the series at some point.  And, hey, DIMITRI.  Nuff said.  Also zipped through Stacey Wallace Benefiel’s Day of Sacrifice, which was a quick and interesting read.  I’m intrigued by the concept and set up and liked the characters.  My only beef was that the action scenes were far more telling than showing (but this is my particular area, so I am really picky), and there were some firearms things that simply were not possible.  They weren’t enough to stop my enjoyment of the story or from moving on to the next installment, Rebellion.

6 thoughts on “Sunday Summary and #ROW80 Update

  1. Congratulations on your download and copy mark achievements! 🙂

    Pricing . . that’s something I haven’t even considered (numbers and I don’t get along). but I suppose I have a while to go before I have to throw that dart.

  2. Congrats on the sale results 🙂 Pricing is an interesting issue, with some saying “Oh, people will read anything if it’s 99 cents” and others refusing to pay for anything and choosing to pirate instead (I’m still a long way off having a completed novella so it won’t be an issue for me in the near future).
    P.S. Roasted chocolate and vanilla swirl marshmallows sound like EPIC WIN.

  3. Congratulations on your sales – both with the new book and the old one! 🙂

    By the way, I started reading ‘Forsaken by Shadow’ on here the other day, and I’m really enjoying it. I was planning to get your omnibus thingy when it comes out, but I’m positively looking forward to it now! 🙂

  4. Way to go, Kait. It’s great when you can gain new fans. It looks like offering Blindsight was a good move. :0)

    I’m still struggling with the pricing issue. I’m seriously thinking about moving the novels up to 2.99 and the novellas to 1.99 right before the summer surge. That’s when I plan to release something new. I just don’t know. I usually sell better at .99, but I never tried my most popular work at a higher price. This issue is really iffy for me.

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