Let me open by saying that I have two causes for excitement. First, I had my first sales in March – one on Smashwords and one on Amazon.com- for two different ebooks. The second is that March saw this blog hit a thousand views for the month!
I’m really pleased about the two sales. I only hope that they lead to reviews in the appropriate places. It would be nice if they were also reviewed and rated on Goodreads. Speaking of reviews, the discovery of some reviews on Barnes & Noble, for To Sail The Dark Sea, was another pleasure. It’s a pity that both were by ‘Anonymous’, and that B&N don’t notify authors when reviews are posted. Like all authors, I do like to receive feedback from readers.
The number of views for March far exceed any for any previous month since Imagineer-ing started. The number of ‘Likes’ has increased just as phenomenally. There has also been an increase in the number of comments posted. Just as with my ebooks, I draw pleasure from the fact that I appear to be making some impact with the blog. Nothing grows quickly, really, and success is never instant – the ‘overnight success’ is usually the result of years of hard graft!
Introduced in March, ‘Book Promo Day’ is a scheme on Imagineer-ing which allows authors to gain free publicity for their hard work. It should appear every Thursday, but does depend on submissions from authors. The first was successful. At the moment, rather oddly, there have been no submissions for inclusion for the second, which is due this coming Thursday! I am surprised that so few authors are eager to gain the publicity – especially as it’s free.
During March, I’ve written three novelettes and a short story, which I’m happy about, but the novel only saw a false start of a resumption, which I’m very frustrated by. I also started a fourth novelette, which I’m just over half way through. The short story was The Guild, the last (so far) in the Thief series. The first novelette was Shade of Evil, a horror/future fiction, and is the origin of a new series, called The Guardians. The new novelette currently in progress is the next, and brings the Guardians of the title more to the fore. The other novelettes were both of The Captain Henri Duschelle Stories, being For the Sake of Mercy and The Ossilan Affair.
I decided, during March, to go beyond using just Smashwords to publish my ebooks, by using Amazon’s ‘Kindle Direct’ publishing system. I deliberately avoided subscribing to Kindle Select because of the restrictions the scheme puts on an author, requiring a period of exclusivity and limiting promotional activities outside of the scheme, such as on this blog. I have no plans to include my free short story ebooks on Amazon. I have established a proper ‘author page’ on Amazon UK but have no intention, at this stage, to do the same on the other Amazon sites, especially as Amazon.com (the USA and worldwide site) threw up problems. I did, effectively, establish my rights by choosing to list my ebooks on all the currently established Amazon sites. In addition, I listed Imagineer-ing as a subscription blog on Amazon.com – which allows it to be accessed on Kindles.
So, March was a busy month. Hopefully, the ensuing months will see Imagineer-ing continue to grow, more ebooks published and (most desirable of all) a resumption of the novel.
~ Steve
52.057772 1.143786
