This week has been epic in sales. I’m not ready to talk turkey (details) as I’m wholly aware all this could go away as swiftly as it sprang up. That’s happened before. I sold big, didn’t know why, and it just disappeared.
This hasn’t disappeared yet. Here’s some sense of what I’m looking at, with actual numbers removed:
It’s heart attack territory, really. Whenever I see the chart rising, I get a mega adrenaline spike. Worries that it’ll disappear, or that it’ll lead to a flood of negative reviews that throttle future sales, or somebody will figure out this shouldn’t be happening and squash me on Amazon.
Well, it hasn’t happened yet. I wonder if it will keep climbing, plateau and hold, or drop again? I wonder if Amazon will contribute some promotion juice to the mix via their auto-recommendation emails, that’ll raise it higher still?
I grabbed a couple of bestseller tags in Amazon and Canada. I’ve never had this happen before, without the boost provided by a Bookbub or similar promo stack. This is just Facebook ads.
And in writing?
Early in the week I worked on Wren 6 – added 2,000 words at the end, then did some redrafting of the early material to sew in the secondary perspective. I’m getting rid of all these now, showing them through Wren’s perspective, and it’s clearly working.
The latter half of the week I’ve been doing this for book 2. I weaved in DeVore’s heartstopping opening scene, now seen from Wren’s perspective. I add in some jokes. My goal with all these books now is:
MAKE THEM FUN
That’s it. I see now, with fresh eyes, how often Wren drones on about guilt and misery and the weight of all these decisions. There’s just no reason for this. It’s like me, the author, browbeating the reader for some reason. That, what, PTSD is very real, nobody can kill without suffering themselves, and blah blah boring.
Nobody wants to read that stuff, that makes them feel guilty. It’s supposed to be fun. So I’m stripping those weight-adding sentences wherever I find them. They pop right out with ease. None are pivotal, they’re all just dragging the story down.
Plucked! Also I wanna double check for swears. My goal now is to make these books as close to PG-13 as I can. There are horrors, but if I pull the camera way back, I think they’ll be more palatable.
What else?
I’m going to rework the paperbacks to match the ebooks, cover and text. I’m going to finish book 2 then set in on books 4-5. I’m also going to keep working on book 6. Still the goal can be 20,000 words by this time next week. Keep pushing that back ;).
Now I’m gonna go mow the lawn. It sorely needs it y’all.