Weekly Writing Intentions: Saturday, August 26, 2023

News on how the launch of Dandy and the Dognappers is going.

Daily Diary, Day 1090

First of all: Brief recap of how the launch of Dandy and the Dognappers.

Just looking at Amazon, which has the best data for pre-orders, it appears that I had 377 preorders, and by the end of yesterday, I had made an additional 12 sales. However, as of this morning, I have sold another 60 books, which suggests to me that there is a delay in how quickly a day’s sales register. Consequently, I am going to take this to mean that the BookBub email announcing the book’s release, which came around dinner time yesterday, did in fact have some impact. In fact, I would image that most of the sales I make today will be from that email.

And the result of this mini-surge is that the novella is now in the top 20 bestsellers in the historical mystery, amateur sleuth, and cozy animal mystery categories.

Over all, right now my data as incomplete as it might be for all retailers, reports I have sold 526 copies of the novella. And when I went back to look at the launch of Mrs. Stein Solves a Crime, the novella that comes right before Dandy and the Dognappers that I published just over a year ago, I found it took a whole week to reach that number of books sold.

This probably reflected the fact that I didn’t do a pre-order for that book. However did have a new release alert from BookBub that first week, so over all I can feel that comparatively this newest novella is holding its own. This is particularly satisfying because my sales/revenue for this year is half of what it was last year at this time. It also says to me that putting the story up on my substack as I wrote it did not hurt its sales, which encourages me to do this again with future shorter works. 

This past week was again a rather rocky one in terms of exercise, with two days I did not walk at all. The first came on Monday because of the rain, the second because of the appearance of a black eye (for no discernable reason) after my Tuesday evening walk. Nevertheless, I still averaged 95 minutes of exercise for the week. I was able to achieve this average because I started to add PT and chair pilates to my daily regime.

Because there are still some questions about things like my blood pressure, etc. my strategy for the coming week is to make sure my walks are no more than 30 minutes, at an easy pace, and to continue to do the Physical Therapy and pilates exercises, which are more for strengthening my core. I started today with my regular cleaning schedule and a 30 minute walk. It was still cool out (we are heading into a warming trend), and I was pleased I was able to get a little further with the 30 minutes, which meant I was walking a tiny bit faster.

As for writing goals, I felt good enough about the initial plotting of the novella to actually start writing this week. As usual, it was a slow start, but by yesterday evening I had written a total of 788 words. I had my usual scheduled meetings and phone calls and posts this week, as well as working on an Authors Corner post on novellas, and that is pretty much the schedule for the coming week.

However, my main intention is to kick up the writing pace on In Ddaera’s Embrace, see if I can get up to an average of 500 words a day by the end of the week, If all goes well, I might be able to complete chapters 1 and 2, then start to outline the next chapters.

I also will do a little more promotion of the novella, for example, today I need to draft the monthly promotional newsletter. In addition there is a small promotion of Maids of Misfortune that went out today, and I will want to keep track of how it did. So far there have been 465 downloads of this, free first in series, which has pushed it up to #190 in the Kindle list for free books. Of course the goal is always to get in the top #100, but that seldom happens with a book unless it has a big, expensive Bookbub promotion behind it. But not too shabby for a book I have been selling and then giving away for 14 years!

So, that’s pretty much all I’m up to. Anybody got anything special planned for this coming week you want to share!

In case you aren’t sure how you got here, 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.