And I’m not sure where it went. Well, part of it went down the road to Atlanta, where I hired a new Project Manager for work. He seems to be fitting in fairly well so far, but the job has a tremendous learning curve, so it’ll be a year or two before he really has all his sea legs. Fortunately I have another really good PM down there right now, and he will serve as an excellent teacher.
Broke the 2,000 book mark for the first time this month, so that was really exciting. When I started the month my goal was 1,800, which would have been a 25% increase over last month. I nailed that with more than a week to go, blew through 2,000 early this week, and then Amazon’s servers crashed. Seems that offering the new Lady Gaga album for 99 cents overloaded the Amazon servers. A lot. Hell, I don’t blame the bargain hunters, I even bought a copy at that price! But the sales reporting from Amazon’s publishing arm was a little goofy for a couple of days, so my numbers may not be 100% accurate. For a day or so I wandered around thinking “Is this how traditionally published authors feel all the time? With no idea how many units they’re moving? How odd.” It seems to have recovered, and with a little luck and a decent holiday weekend push, I might just crack 2,500 total books sold this week, a full 500 books over my highest hopes for the month.
I’ve also made some serious progress on Knight Moves, which is a relief after having the project stalled for some weeks. I think I’ll have it wrapped up by the end of June, but having hard copies in hand early July is not going to happen. I really want to take a little more time with the editing and polishing of this book, to try and make it as good as it can possibly be before I release it. That may mean an August release, and if that’s the case, then I’ll live with it. That will still put four novels on the streets in one year, which isn’t bad no matter how you shake it.
Last night I was the guest of the Hickory Jaycees for a cool evening of beer, brats and talking about writing. They fed me, covered my gas money, bought a few books and had some good questions. The event was a lot of fun, and profitable, so I hope that more things like that are in the offing in the future.
Next week is the Heroes Con! I have a booth, so come stop by. I’ll be signing stuff, selling stuff and maybe even have some giveaways!
An evening of beer, brats and talking about writing sounds like an awesome time…of course I don’t know a thing about writing but if you give me enough beer I think I would think I do. 😀 Sounds like you had a great time.