Friday, August 25, 2023: Launch Day!

Daily Diary, Day 1089

Dandy and the Dognappers is now available to buy. Actually, the pre-orders for Dandy and the Dognappers started to be distributed last night to people who had ordered it through certain international stores, but the bulk of them showed up this morning.

That means at 6:30 this morning, I was able to see that yesterday 79 of those pre-orders had been delivered, and that this morning another 294 had been delivered. The sales through some of the retailers, like Apple, Nook, and GooglePlay, are delayed a day, so those essentially first day-preorder numbers should go up tomorrow.

This also means that today, as I indulge in the obsessive behavior of an indie author, which is to constantly check to see how many people have bought their new book, I will be only looking at Amazon and Kobo.

This practice of checking every hour or so on your sales totals, on the day of publication, is not something that traditionally published authors can not do. Not sure if this is a good thing or not.

However, I as an indie author, I did get to see that at noon, there have only been 7 sales on Kobo, and 8 on Amazon, (whoops, no, it’s now after lunch and I have 12 sales!!!s). See what I mean…obsessive. Traditionally published authors normally don’t get this immediate feedback, except by looking at the rankings on Amazon to see if their book is going up in ranks, which means at least they are getting some online sales.

I get to do that as well. For example, early this morning, Dandy and the Dognappers was ranked #28,815 in the Kindle Store, and #293 in the mystery, amateur sleuth category.  Right now, 2 pm it #15,652 over all, and #137 in amateur sleuth. This of course means no one is going to run across it just by browsing, so of course I want there to be enough new sales today to drive it into the top 100 category of historical mystery or amateur sleuth.

Seriously, this ability to track sales in almost real time is, in fact, useful to an author, if you can detach your ego and consider the implications in terms of marketing strategy.

For example, all those 12! sales occurred after I got an email from Amazon about the book’s availability, an email I got because I had “followed,” myself on Amazon. This probably means that the sales were from fans of the series who had also followed me and got a similar email, opened it, and then bought the book.

In addition, the promotional site, Bookbub, is supposed to send out a “new release” newsletter to people who have followed me, and this in turn will helpfully boost sales today.

Then, in a few days, I will be sending out my own promotional newsletter, reminding people that the book is now published. Then I will look to see how many of those people clicked on the links connecting to the product pages, and then look and see how many sales were generated that day. This will give me some idea of not only how well the newsletter worked, but how many of the people who clicked on the link might have actually bought it.

On a smaller scale, after I publish this daily post today, with the link to where to buy the book, I will obsessively look at how many of you immediately clicked on that link, and if I see get any sales! Of course, if no one does this, I will simply tell myself that most of those pre-orders were from you all, so you have already gotten the book and hopefully are now reading or rereading the story, so that you can then immediately give it 4 or 5 stars and maybe even write something like, “cute dog story!” as a review.

Because reviews are the next thing that an author, any author, tends to obsess over. The first book I published, Maids of Misfortune, took almost a year to get more than 10 reviews. Mrs. Stein Solves a Crime, now out a year, has 180 ratings, with 74% of them 5 stars. This will now be my benchmark for how successful this new novella is.

Did I mention obsessive?

Anyway, I will no doubt update you tomorrow how the books did overall today, but meanwhile, between obsessively checking my numbers I will also try to get some words written on In Ddaera’s Embrace, since yesterday I achieved less than 100!

Finally, I do want to sincerely thank all of you who have supported me, with your likes and your comments while I was writing the story, and then did in fact go out and pre-order it (or will buy it now that I’ve reminded you it is available-smile.) The money that the sales generate is lovely (and has already covered the cost of the cover design and proof-reader), but it is knowing that you enjoy spending time with my characters that brings me the most joy.

In case you wondered, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. This is my newsletter reflecting on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully. If you aren’t already subscribed but are interested in doing so, you can subscribe for free by clicking the little button below. If you enjoyed this post, please do click on the little heart and/or share with your friends.