CSS Appomattox Milestone Reached!

I have just sold copy # 1,000 of CSS Appomattox. This is across all platforms (Google Play, DriveThruFiction, Nook, Kobo and of course - Amazon). Since going back to only Amazon as my distribution, sales have improved. Even though I am doing zero advertising.

I have now received edits for Chapters 1 through 16. All of those edits will be applied by the end of the day. Since I am at the halfway point, do I resubmit the book to Amazon with those edits in place or wait till all are done? I am just not sure what would be best. Any thoughts?

Kindle - The biggest fish in the pond

After going off Kindle Select program back in late February, my experiment in multiple publishers is coming to a close. With Google Play, Kobo, Drive Thru Fiction and Nook all performing extremely poorly, I have gone back with my tail between my legs and clicked the button for KDP Select once again. I may try again at a later date but at this point it does not seem worthwhile.

CSS Appomattox Brief Update

This month and last month were both slow with sales but that is ok. Still working on getting the edits done. That is turning into a longer process than I had expected.

At this point, it has sold 953 copies in total. Of which 938 are Amazon sales. Definitely Amazon is the biggest fish out there with e-books. The rest of the sales are nearly evenly divided among Drive Through Fiction, Nook, Kobo and Google. I had hopes to break 1000 by the end of the month but that seems unlikely now. Still, its all good considering that I have to get the edits completed. Heck, I am pleased as can be that I have as many reviews as I do on Amazon. 16 reviews on Amazon US and 2 on Amazon UK. I have had a surprising range of sales. US is dominant. But I get regular sales in the UK as well. Australia is the next country that I get some decent sales out of, followed close behind by Canada. What has been a surprise is the readers from other countries. They have only been a small handful but it was interesting to see. I have sold at least one book in Spain, France and Italy. All in all, I have to say, that my experiment in online publishing of fiction is a success.

I would like to get some more work out there. I have experimented with putting up a couple of story ideas on both Wattpad and WriteOn but I obviously have not mastered how to market those items as neither story has gained any traction on either site. The Christmas/Holiday story is out of season which may be why that one has had little traffic but the sci-fi one has gathered no readers at all. I am still a complete beginner at this so I still have much to learn.

WattPad

I just signed up for WattPad. The experiment with WriteOn so far is a non-starter as there does not seem to be a large amount of traffic there in terms of readers. Writers is another story.

I found an interesting ongoing piece about the Spanish Civil War on WriteOn. It is called Yes, I am Spain by S H Villa. If you have any interest in the Spanish Civil War, you really should check it out.

Anyway, back to WattPad. This seems to be a much more established site. At this point, I am just duplicating the work I have on WriteOn out there. I started with the Holiday Short that I first posted here. I added a WattPad widget off to the right here if you want to track me down over there.

The sequel to CSS Appomattox is coming along. I have 12 finished chapters done so far. I have closed out the initial part of the story and gotten the characters to the location of the main action of the book. I held back on resolving some of the loose ends from the first book. There is some more I wish to do there still but just not in this book.

I have also found some half started things. I have begun transferring all of those from Microsoft Word over to Scrivner. That should make them easier to deal with.

Sorry that I have been so quiet as of late. Been dealing with some family health issues that have taken up much of my time. I will be back.

CSS Appomattox Update

I am closing on five months since the book has gone live. I changed my relationship with Amazon and am no longer exclusive on Kindle. This had a dramatic impact on sales. I think they have dropped by half. Putting the book up on Kobo, Google Play and Nook have gotten me no more than a handful of sales each. Google Play has been better than the other two so far but its only been a month since I changed that.

Still, I am closing in on 900 copies sold. I have not done any more advertising and will not until I finish getting the book professionally edited. So far I am very pleased with my editor. She is doing a fantastic job. Once she is done, I hope I will have a draft of the sequel to throw her way as well. It has been a slow process but I think it has been very good.

In terms of what an author has to work with, I really like the simplicity of the Kobo and Nook author interfaces. They are simple and straightforward. Amazon's are very good and offer much deeper details. Google Play is surprisingly the worst of the bunch. To find out your sales, you have to run a report and open it in Excel. There is not a web interface to show you your sales for the day. There are three reports to choose from.

My attempts to go live on iTunes has been a complete non-starter. In order to upload a book you have to have a mac and their publishing software. It took longer to get to the point where I could (if I had a Mac) upload than any of the others. Amazon by far was the simplest and easiest to get up and going with.

The other site that I originally had the book on was DriveThroughFiction. It is great in terms of reporting that is available. Definitely more cumbersome than Amazon, Nook or Kobo but still better than iTunes. I just brought that listing back alive today.

The Border Crisis

I dipped my hand into an attempt at writing science fiction. If you are interested, the first chapter of The Border Crisis is now up on WriteOn. Swing by and take a look. Feel free to make comments or suggestions. I would really like to hear your thoughts.

Thanks.

UK Reviews, WriteOn and ramblings

I just noticed that I had picked up my second UK review. The first was not so good but his point about the editing of the book was fair. I edited it myself and I am not good at editing. However, I hope to have the book professionally edited soon. (Thank you Allison!)

I have actually been making some progress writing the past two weeks. I have fixed some problems in what I had so far for the sequel and fleshed out another chapter. I think I have the first draft about a quarter of the way done. Then I got side tracked. I am about 2000 words into a science fiction story now. Its is a space opera type of story beginning with a young midshipman leading his first boarding group on a friendly vessel that is not responding to their ship's hail. I am debating putting this up on either the blog or on the Amazon WriteOn site.

Have you heard of WriteOn? Its a cool concept where folks can put up their short stories. A buddy of mine has a story up already. Head on over and check out his story One Night Only. The web interface for mobile devices is not so good yet as it gave the impression of a second page when there is not one. Its a quick read. Stop by and let Phil know I sent you.

Anyway, let me know what you think. Should it be posted here or on WriteOn or save it up till its a full book and pop it up on Amazon?