Royce's Random Thoughts

Summary: Sales slightly down from the previous month, but otherwise acceptable. More disturbing is the utter lack of sales so far for April. As in one for CotRV, and absolutely nothing else. WTF?


Things to Do: Writing a short piece with Alinadar back during her time aboard the Relentless. Gonna be heavy on the angst, but I need to get something out soon.



Sales Report:


Captive of the Red Vixen: 4 (1 DE)

For Your Safety: 3

Good Landing: 17 (1 CA) *

I Fought the Claw & the Claw Won: 3

Mimsey’s Tale: 2

Prisoners of War: 2

Shadow of Her Sins: 13 (1 CA, 1 DE)

Shadow of the Red Vixen: 3

Teal's Bargain: 1

Triumvirate: 1

Unexpected Diversions: 1 (1 UK)


Total Paid Sales: 33

* Free ebook

Summary: Another broad but shallow month. Lots of sales across the board but no real spikes on any of them.

Things to Do: I'm pausing on my 365 Days of Drabbles project so I can push forward on I Fought the Claw. As an interim piece I'm re-working Mimsey's Tale for sale as a $0.99 story. I've already commissioned Wazaga for the cover, just waiting on pricing.


Sales Report:


Captive of the Red Vixen: 4

Demon Eyes: 1

For Your Safety: 3

Good Landing: 20*

Prisoners of War: 4 (1 DE, +1 borrow)

Shadow of the Red Vixen: 6

The Dragon's Companion: 2

Teal's Bargain: 1

Teal's War: 2

Teal's Choice: 2

Triumvirate: 1

Unexpected Diversions: 1

Total Paid Sales: 27

*Free ebook

Summary: Blech month, wide but shallow. Sales were seriously down after the post-Christmas jump. Strangely, I didn't even get any borrows from my Prime books, though I did get three unusual buy of Triumvirate. Again, the new cover seems to be helping sales much more than the old one.

Things to Do: I'm approaching Month Three of my writing drought. The little 100 word drabbles I've been doing since the beginning of the year have been all I've been able to manage, and I still owe one person a gift fic in return for some artwork. Just can't seem to get motivated to do anything I can sell. (Unless someone wants to buy 365 disconnected narratives at the end of the year).


Sales Report:


Captive of the Red Vixen: 6 (1 UK, 1 DE)

For Your Safety: 1

Good Landing: 33*

Prisoners of War: 3

Shadow of the Red Vixen>: 7 (1 UK, 1 DE)

Teal's Bargain: 1

Teal's Choice: 1

Teal's War: 1

The Dragon's Companion: 1

Triumvirate: 3

Unexpected Diversions: 1 (1 UK)

Total Paid Sales: 25

* Free ebook

Summary: This has been the best month I've ever had, frankly. It started with the long awaited (by me at least) publication of Shadow of the Red Vixen. To celebrate this, I switched CotRV over to Amazon Prime and offered it for free the first five days of the month. I expected I'd get a few downloads, but the response was pretty overwhelming, with over seven hundred purchases domestically and quite a few internationally.

Meanwhile, SotRV sold extremely well, with twenty-five copies domestically and one Prime lending download. The $2.99 price tag I put on it doesn't seem to have been a factor in sales at all.

This leads to an important lesson. That 70% royalty rate from KDP made a big difference in my profits. Normally I'd expect about $15 to $20 in profits every six weeks or so. Now I'm looking at over hundred dollars when everything is added together. Small change by professional standards, but pretty good for an author of silly Furry sci-fi.


Things to Do: I'm working on the next story in the Red Vixen Adventures, Legacy of the Red Vixen which involves Mel and Rolas' n'er do well daughter getting into trouble, exiled to Planet Dull, and then finding amusement when she discovers her mom's old hobby. It's going slowly, since I've been fighting to get time to write, and then motivation as I fight my now usual winter depression.

Meanwhile I intend to use the profits from this month's sales to commission new covers for Triumvirate and Good Landing from Nez, just to make them more professional looking and bring them in line with my other works.

After that I'm going to poke more at the For Your Safety universe and see if I can't get an anthology out of it. I figure there might be two books worth, the first concerning the Groupmind's gentle conquest of humanity, then the "War of the Ring" as their charges awaken on their new home and make their displeasure known.


Sales Report:

Captive of the Red Vixen: Paid 7 (1 DE), Borrowed 3, Free 768 (48 UK, 13 DE, 4 FR, 1 IT)

For Your Safety: 3

Good Landing: 26 (Free)

Prisoners of War: 10

Shadow of the Red Vixen: Paid 26 (1 UK), Borrowed 1

The Dragon's Companion: 2

Odd month on Amazon, as I was reporting earlier. After an initial spike in sales the first four days of the month, Captive of the Red Vixen was moribund for most of the middle of the month, then sales spiked again as it drew to close, reaching its usual 10 domestic (and one UK) sales. Meanwhile I got two sales on Unexpected Diversions and one apiece on The Dragon's Companion, Teal's Bargain and Triumvirate.

Over at Smashwords I got... zip. Though that may change as the sales figures from the associated retailers come on. Going by the previous history, I'll likely see some sales through Barnes & Noble, maybe Apple and one or two from Diesel.

Meanwhile, I got a couple of nice reviews on Amazon and Smashwords courtesy of akaihyo for The Dragon's Companion and Demon Eyes. I've also been getting anonymous starred reviews (if rare text reviews) of my stuff at Barnes & Noble. Though as usual CotRV remains reviewless, despite being my bestseller by far. I guess by the time people finish it, its so mediocre they don't want to bother commenting.

Writing: Shadow of the Red Vixen proceeds slowly. Currently I'm at 19k words, with the plot just starting to show up. I need to get better about budgeting my time to work on it.

Summary

Title Sales

Captive of the Red Vixen 11
Good Landing 63*
Unexpected Diversions 2
Teal's Bargain 1
The Dragon's Companion 1
Triumvirate 1

Summary: Some interesting numbers this time around. Over at Amazon CotRV sticks firmly to its ten copies a month average, which frankly is creeping me out a little at this point, though I'm not going to argue with it. Meanwhile Unexpected Diversions gets an increasingly rare sale, along with one or two sales each on Teal's stories, which seems to be their average (though perhaps I need to make it more explicit that all three stories are available in a cheaper anthology edition). Good Landing roars back to life after Amazon sets the price back to zero, matching Smashword's non-price, and I'm hoping to similar numbers from Demon Eyes once its new free price migrate over.

On the Smashwords side things, the situation is heating up. Sales on the main site are anemic still, but several sales through Barnes & Noble and the Apple store have more than made up for the slack, including a last hurrah for Prisoners of War. Numbers here are a little harder to analyze on a month-to-month basis, since the different online stores send their reports to Smashwords on different schedules, but they're encouraging.

In the Future: I'm thirteen pages in on Shadow of the Red Vixen, the cover for which is in Meg's queue to be created. Once it's completed, I'm expected its sales to match the first book. Also, due to an unexpected bit of good fortune, I may be able to get that new cover for Triumvirate so I can catch the attention of the Furry market better.

I'm debating on whether to offer up Prisoners of War on Amazon, to make up for its disappearance on Smashwords. The first consideration is a better cover for it. The current Photoshop piece of crap is unacceptable for Amazon standards. Naziha was intending to make a new one for me gratis but got distracted by other projects, which I can't blame her for.

More importantly it would be a change of fare compared to my other works on Amazon. I originally wrote it as straight up pr0n, and by the time it was finished it was more like Plot With Porn, working as a proper story, but some definite explicit bits. Right now my Amazon stories work in the PG-13 range, and I'm not entirely certain I want to mess with that.

The Far Future: After Shadow is completed, I'll need to get back to work on Warbird and once that's done see if I can plot out Triumvirate: Traitor's Homecoming. Also I need to configure How the Dragonfly Was Made into both Kindle and Smashwords formats, so it'll be ready to submit once Nez completes the cover for that (probably around the same time she does the comic version).

Amazon

CotRV 10
Good Landing 44*
Teal's Bargain 1
Teal's War 2
Teal's Choice 2
Triumvirate 0
Unexpected Diversions 1

Smashwords

CotRV 1
Prisoners of War 2
Teal's Bargain 1
Teal's War 1
Teal's Choice 1
The Dragon's Companion 2
Unexpected Diversions 2

Well, with the loss of my profits from the past four months to car repair, I need to get off my tail and commit to adding several works to Amazon and Smashwords so I can get more sales. I'm rather like a mid-list author at this point. Sales aren't exactly flying out the door, but they're reasonably predictable, and if I can get enough works out there to catch the reader's eye, then I might be well rewarded.

So my current To Do List goes like this:

Triumvirate

1. After a very premature release, I've begun the process of re-editing it, using the beta-read provided by ankewehner. Real Life permitting, it should be back on the virtual book rack in a couple of weeks.

2. The cover art is still crap however. Need to see if I can do an art for prose trade with someone for a better piece.


Warbird

1. My big Nanowrimo project for this year, which I'm currently letting lay fallow while I finish working on Triumvirate. It's going to need a good beta-read once its done to prevent a repeat of the Triumvirate disaster.

2. Cover Art: My big bugaboo. It deserves a good one. Good ones cost money I don't have. Maybe if I can make googly eyes at chaypeta I can get one, if I promise her more Terinu pr0n.


In the Red Vixen's Wake/Wake of the Red Vixen

1. With the ongoing success of Captive of the Red Vixen a sequel is probably my best sales bet in the near future. I've got an inkling of an idea, probably a longish novella rather than a full novel, involving Rolas' sister, Salli, travelling to Earth and regaining her self-confidence. I want it to be a romance as well, but given the disaster of her first marriage that's going to be a tough sell to readers of CotRV.

2. Cover Art: Since this is a direct sequel to CotRV, I really want to keep the same visual style as Meg's most excellent cover art . Once I'm closer to publication I'll need to discuss a possible commission with her. Given my concept involves a simple bust of Salli, I'm hoping the price will be something in the range that potential sales can absorb.

I like this much better. I just need to figure out if I want to leave my name down where it is or move it up underneath the title.

Many thanks to ankewehner for pointing me in the directions of the stock desert photo and the triskelion image, and thanks to aldersprig for suggesting I give GIMP a try.

So for the past few days I've been working on reformatting Triumvirate in oder to get it ready for a proper beta-read and posting on Smashwords and Amazon. The problem is that I know the middle act is weak, because I basically handwave over about three years of training with a time skip. I found it unsatisfying when I wrote it but I was too busy trying to get my daily word count in for NaNoWriMo to worry about it at the time. And the idea of writing a full blown training montage was less than satisfying.

I think I finally hit upon the solution though. I've already established that the Triumvirate Council is understaffed and underfunded. It wouldn't be totally out of left field for the leader of the Council to send a junior team just starting their training on a "simple" courier mission (ie: find out why Obafemi's team haven't sent a report recently) that goes horribly, horribly wrong. It'll mean re-writing late Act Four a bit to accomidate Nafir and Co. discovering the situation instead of getting briefed on it, but plot wise it'll likely make for a more satisfying read.

Still going to be a pain in the ass to re-write though.

Finally got the commissions from Cheeko that I'd ordered prior to Christmas. They aren't bad given they were just $10.00 apiece.

( Pics behind the cut )