At the Intersection of Fiction & Reality

MY GOD! The Woods has sold 5 copies on amazon and 1 copy on B&N! I'm going to be freakin' RICH!

Yeah, so that's a bit of hyperbole. But hey, the month of March is now over, so consider this the first "end of the month" report. THE WOODS went live on B&N on the afternoon of 3/29 and on Amazon sometime on 3/30, so the six sales are two and half days of B&N and one and a half days of Amazon. Still, there's been no huge surge of hungry readers desperate for my brand new tome -- in fact, Denise is responsible for the lone B&N sale herself, and she's already read it... FWIW, the best sales rank I notice on Amazon was in the 16,000s; on B&N, Denise's purchase pushed it to 325,000 or something like that in sales rank...

I am so going to rule the self-publishing world! Look out, Amanda Hocking!

I'll admit there is a temptation to check every hour or so to see if anyone else has bought the book, but so far I'm resisting gamely (and a good thing, too, since I'd usually be thrown into the Pit of Bookish Despair). As far as working with the two markets: the jury's still out. My first impression is that B&N has the better sales tools, though I've yet to see what each market's monthly sales reports actually look like. No customer reviews are up on either site yet -- don't know if the lack of reviews also has an impact on sales. Maybe I should have seeded a few friendly people with the manuscript???

BTW, I'm not going to report sales every few days -- but as I said in the first report, my intention is to be upfront about how things are going with this little venture in order that others might learn what to expect. I'll give you the sales figures each month, but it won't be until the end of April that we'll have a full month of sales to report.

At the moment, I still haven't heard back from Apple on the application I filled out to provide THE WOODS for iBooks. So that's still hanging fire... C'mon, Apple -- hey, I used to work for you; give me some love! I wonder if I should put it up on Smashwords as well... any thoughts on that?

And that's enough for now. When I have something interesting/new to report, I'll let you know!

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-- learn more about THE WOODS here.
--Buy THE WOODS in Kindle format here from Amazon
--Buy THE WOODS in Nook format here from B&N

I'm conducting an experiment, and am inviting all of you to ride along.

Back when I realized just how much I loved teaching at the university, I knew that in order to teach full-time, I would need an advanced degree, and completed a Masters program in Creative Writing. For my 'thesis' in that program, I wrote a novel: a somewhat quirky story that didn't fit easily in the genre 'buckets' -- it's maybe dark fantasy, maybe young adult (or maybe not), with elements of magic realism and psychological horror. The book is titled, simply, THE WOODS. Want to know more about it? Click here for the web page.

I really loved writing THE WOODS, and poured into it a lot of my heart. Now, I very much like my current publisher and editor, have a current two-book contract with them, and intend to continue working with them for as long as they'll put up with me. They are a top-notch and professional group. Had they not passed on THE WOODS, I wouldn't consider doing this 'experiment' -- but they have, saying they weren't certain how to effectively market and target the book in their line. That's fine: that's a perfectly viable reason to pass, and I rather expected it.

Publishing is also changing, and I feel that as someone teaching new writers, I should also be actively working within those changes, so that I can pass along to my students my own experiences as a working writer.

So hence this experiment: I'm releasing THE WOODS as an e-book, and what I plan to do is to be open and honest about its performance, so that perhaps others can use my data point as a reference for what they might reasonably expect if they do the same.

For those who don't know, I've managed to cobble together a four-decade career (starting in the 80s) as a mid-list author. My books (generally) have received good-to-excellent critical reviews; the sales have been decent enough that I've continued to sell books, but not so fantastic as to propel me into the stratosphere of "advances on which someone could reasonably live." I'm not an unpublished writer tossing his/her book out there with no audience or track record; neither am I a best-selling author who has a huge built-in audience and can thus reasonably expect to make a fortune doing this. I'm also not Cory Doctorow or John Scalzi, with a website getting six-figure hits each and every day, who can instantly notify thousands of loyal readers that hey, I've a new book out that you might be interested in. Marketing, in general, is not my strongest suit (I can see those of you who know me well nodding at that...)

What do I expect? I honestly don't know. It'd be nice if, over a 3 - 4 year span, THE WOODS manages to sell enough copies that it earns into the low five-figures -- that would, interestingly, match my usual advances. But I don't expect that. I really don't have expectations. I don't know what'll happen: THE WOODS could sell barely enough to pay for a monthly lunch for Denise and me, or it could outperform every other book I've ever written. OK, that last bit's really unlikely, but hey, I can dream, right? :-)

But whatever it does, you'll know too, because I'll tell you. What good's an experiment without results, after all? I'll be upfront with the sales figures as they come in -- because I do look on this as an experiment. Let's learn together.

So what else can you do in this experiment? Well,

1) You can buy the book if you're so inclined. Heck, if enough of you do that in the same time frame, you can push the sales rank nice and low, which might encourage even more people to buy it.

Beyond that, I'd appreciate help boosting the signal.

2) If you do buy the book and like it, it wouldn't hurt to write a review on the book's page. It seems that browsers are impressed by books with lots of positive reviews. Mind you, I emphatically DO NOT want you to write a positive review unless you actually feel that way -- I really, really hate marketing of books with 'suspicious' reviews that all seem to be generated by the same person. I don't want anyone to say anything they don't honestly believe.

3) If you like the book and have your own blog/website/facebook, I wouldn't mind if you mention that you read the book and liked it -- nothing works better than good word-of-mouth, frankly. When someone I like and trust tells me that they enjoyed a book, I'm much more inclined to pick it up myself.

4) If you run a review website or zine, let me know (sleigh (AT) farrellworlds.com) and I might just drop you a review copy in what format you want.

5) If you have other ideas or know of other places I should put this (Smashwords, maybe?), well, I'm open... Mind you, the advertising budget in my house is $0, and free time in which I can work on Non-Critical Things seems to always be at a minimum.

So: THE WOODS is now in Nook format at Barnes & Noble, and the amazon/Kindle link should go up later today or tomorrow. I've applied to Apple for iBooks, and am waiting to see if they approve it. If and when they do, I'll update here.

Will there be a print format version? Right now, I've no plans for that. Maybe if it does well enough, I can interest some imprint or small press into putting out a print version, or I might one day use Lulu to give me a copy to put on my shelf. All that's for later -- right now, it's enough to have the e-book out. That'll do for now.

Thanks for listening!