Just recently made the nineteen hour flight back from Korea to Newfoundland, not including the nine hours spent in airports waiting on me duff. I can’t really sleep while sitting, so it was especially torturous after the eighteen hour mark, then everything just got fuzzy.

Anyway, for the month of Feb, sales were:

The Troll Hunter–– five

No Experience Necessary— fifteen

The Missing Boatman—three

Flight of the Cookie Dough Mansion––two

For the total of 25.

This also ends the fifth month, although in October titles were released one a week for three weeks. The surprise has been the drop in sales for The Missing Boatman. Flight of the Cookie Dough Mansion, I now think, needs pictures, so that experiment has pretty much died—at least until I can afford to place pictures in the book. And my attempts at promotions are marginal at best. I hate promotions. If you can do this, great. I’ll just have to try something else.  Writing guest blurbs and allowing guests on the website has proven to be successful, so I’ll keep doing that.

Also, in continuing building a readership, to celebrate my getting back to Canada, and attempting to kick-start a writing career, I’ve decided to lower prices on TTH and TMB to .99 cents.

This wasn’t arrived at easily. I’ve been reading about what other authors’ experiences have been in experimenting with pricing, and I realize that the lower price is effective in obtaining both impulse buys, and building an initial readership (some are even able to make a living at it). I’ve also noted that there a number of sites out there that promote cheap ebooks (the .99 or free variety) which will flag your ebook and inform their subscribers of the bargain, prompting a burst of buying activity.

How do I know this?

It just happened to me.

Tuesday was the unofficial start of my “Back Home” book sale. I lowered the price and perhaps two hours later, TMB had sold two units. By the end of the day, twelve units were sold and the ebook had flown up Amazon’s charts from 217,000 to a high of six thousand and something. I was impressed, happy, and a little perturbed.

These are full 350+ page books, and while I’m glad that people are buying them, I can only hope that the numbers pick up to make a living at this. Also, I’m concerned about what happens when my .99 novellas start coming out (I have three planned initially). Do I raise the prices on the novels or do I keep them at .99? Right now, I plan to raise them and let the novellas stay at .99 as an introduction to my work. But if they are selling well, even well enough that I’m earning money on them, should I tinker with things that are working? It’s difficult to decide.

I guess that’s a big if right now. I keep telling myself that these things take time, and I should concentrate on writing the next book. If I do that, I hope the sales will take care of themselves. I’m sure if I look back at the previous posts my ramblings are pretty similar in tone.

So, the plan is… keep the novels at a low price for a month, maybe two, write guest blogs where I can and offer the same to writers as promotions, and work on the new books.

And see what the results are in August. August is the first check point for me, I have to have some sales, else this new career will be cut short. If I make it past August, and sales continue to improve, then the following March will be the second check point.

If I make it to then, I’ll consider myself an author able to make a living.