It’s the first…er…second
Wednesday of the month.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
It’s been a very busy time for me lately. I finally finished my second book, Leverage,
the sequel to my first, The
Mistaken, and I must say, even
though I haven’t gotten a whole lot back yet from my CPs (it’s only been a
couple days after all), I do feel pretty good about it. What they have said is they can’t put it
down, so I’m feeling pretty solid. No
rookie mistakes this time around. And
where most of my reviewers called The Mistaken a rollercoaster, Leverage is more of an amped-on-steroids rocket ride.
Speaking of The Mistaken, November was a rather dreary month
for sales. Most all of my author friends
had the same complaint, so I felt in good company. But I decided it was time for a shot to the
arm, so I placed it on sale for 99¢ for five days in early December to
celebrate turning 50.
Prior to that, I’d applied for a very expensive BookBub ad
to run on the 4th day of my sale and was accepted, but it was well worth
the price. The Mistaken went as low as
#87 overall out of all Amazon Kindle ebooks.
I made several bestseller and top-rated lists and have managed to hold
on to two of them so far. And while it’s
slowly creeping back up in rank, it’s still in a nice, comfortable range, so
mission accomplished! 
Also very exciting, The Mistaken audiobook was finally
released by Cherry
Hill Publishing and can now be found on Amazon,
Audible,
and iTunes.
My point to all this? Well, in this rather sucky business of publishing, it’s always an uphill battle and can be downright depressing at times. But don’t give up. Figure out how to deal with it and move forward. There are a lot people out there in the same boat or who’ve experienced the same thing and have managed to pull through it. Ask them for advice. I bet they’d be only too willing to help out. That’s how I was able to experience success last month. I’ve found that all of my author friends are very Pay-It-Forward people. It’s how we stay sane in an industry that will eat you alive if you’re not willing to play.
