Author's Log Stardate 03282011

Monday's are tough days for me to get words on paper. I'm still attending college and utilize Monday to get the week's work done. Little league season also cuts into my quality writing window (I seem to write best in the afternoon). With four boys on three different little league teams practicing and playing on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday - I'm really left with Friday and Sunday as the only totally unfettered afternoons to dedicate solely to writing.

One thing I've learned though from my years of experience as a professional musician - doing something as a profession means doing it when you don't want to do it and when you don't have the time to do it ... and doing it as well as if you had all the time in the world to do it! (grin)

Agenda items:
- Almost 25% of _Signs of War_ is written. That puts me on track for completing the writing portion by early June - which is in keeping with my September release deadline.

- I reduced the price of the eBook editions of _The Watchman of Ephraim_ from $5.99 to $4.99. I did it after long consideration of the psychological price point of 'under $5.' I will use $4.99 as the initial retail price of any novel-length work going forward. My pricing strategy for eBook is to use $4.99 for new releases; $2.99 for previous release; and once I get to book 3 and beyond $.99 for older backlist. I also expect to utilize package pricing (packaging all books in a series, etc.) as a further incentive for consumer's to purchase backlist titles.

- I corrected a discounting error I made with Lightening Source/Ingram. I made the mistake of offering a 55% trade discount on the hardcover edition of _TWOE_ only to be embarrassed when I saw my February Sales report reflecting a 19-cent loss on each hardcover sale. I immediately adjusted the discount to 35% (which will yield me the profit margin for which I'm looking to stay near) but alas, Lightening Source/Ingram does not allow immediate price or discount adjustments - so supposedly, it will only take effect April 01. One interesting note: I checked and within seven days, it appeared that many retailers had already adjusted their prices to reflect <35% discount. In any case, lesson learned: watch your discounting!

- I've been very impressed with the distribution chains of Ingram and Amazon! In just over a month _TWOE_ is being sold in the U.S., U.K., India and as of this weekend, Australia! Even more impressive to me is that I've sold books in as far away places as Romania!

- As for my sales, they seem to be picking up in March. After the end of the month, I'll publish some of my performance stats - but suffice to say that my mentor, Dean Wesley Smith's base projections and predictions are remarkably consistent with the sales performance of my debut novel!

Remember, this blog is really an on-going research article on applying the methods and advice of DWS from his three fantastic series, 'Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing,' 'The New World of Publishing,' and 'Think Like a Publisher.' If you're interested in self-publishing, you need to read every word of those article (with the comments).

Everything you heard about the success and reach of indy distribution is proving true - your written works certainly have the ability to be purchased by anyone around the world in an affordable way. So the key is in getting the global community to know of your written works. How you do that is by writing great works - utilizing social networking and ... writing more great works!

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(Please feel free to leave comments – your comments can be as helpful as anything I write for others. I hope this series turns out to be less my talking at you and more – a group of like-minded storytellers that self-publish or intend to. Peace & God Bless!)