June 2, 2022
Daily Diary, Day 641:
In the ongoing story of how my word count is going, I did get 526 words written yesterday. I already have 473 written today, although I have my usual Thursday mid-day zoom meeting, followed by another hour-long phone meeting, so I don’t know if I will get any more written. The reason I didn’t get any more written yesterday was that I was busy getting my promotional newsletter ready to go out this morning, and checking on how my BookBub promotion was doing for my Novellas collection.
Feeling quite good about the results of both. At the end of yesterday, I had 18,581 downloads of the collection and this put the book at the #4 spot in the entire Kindle Free best-seller list, and it was showing up as the #1 book in numerous Kindle sub-categories like historical mystery, cozy mystery, mysteries with amateur or woman sleuth, and historical collections.
This is how I, as an author, can attract new readers who are browsing these categories and may decide to take a chance on an unknown author. The importance of having your books in the right categories is the topic of the next indie journey post I am currently working on.
The promotional newsletter went out early this morning, and it already has a 40% open rate, which is really quite good—and probably has contributed to the additional 2500 downloads of the novella collection this morning so far.
If you think you should be getting this newsletter, and didn’t, do go into your spam folder, because it may have gone there since it is coming from the new substack address. Do message me if you are having trouble getting these newsletters.
I don’t mean to belabor these sorts of figures, but they are my way of reminding myself that spending time on marketing tasks does have a purpose. I do enjoy writing, but even more than making money at it, I really enjoy the idea of people reading what I have written. It is very satisfying to think of over 20,000 people now being able to read about Annie and Nate’s honeymoon, witness Annie’s sister-in-law, Violet and the maid, Kathleen, stepping into their own, and, of course, reading about the terrier, Dandy, again saving the day.
On the health front, wearing regular shoes today without difficulty, tomorrow I will try walking! And here is another set of rose blossoms to brighten your day.