For the record, I've decided to make these updates a monthly occurrence. The theory is that a) I can keep y'all updated (no way!) and b) force myself to get some work done so that I actually have something to update you on. So far, it's kind of working.
I didn't title this one a "writing" update simply because I have more to talk about than just writing (which I usually do anyway, but that's beside the point). In case you missed it on Facebook and Twitter yesterday, I posted the final numbers from the 1-2-3 Deal I'd been running throughout the month of May. Actual sales weren't super awesome, but that was to be expected. What I was really curious about were the free downloads, especially since I'd thrown Dakiti into the pot for a promotion that guaranteed me 500+ downloads over the course of the three days it was required to run (hence the reason the book was free longer than the others).
The results kind of blew my mind.
REGULAR SALES
I'll be honest -- I don't make a ton of sales. I'm usually happy if I sell a copy a day. Since I have a day job and another source of income, I'm not worried about the money; if my books aren't selling, I'm really only worried about the fact that they're not getting the exposure they need to reach new readers. Taking all of that into consideration, the numbers you see on the graph above are good in my eyes (yes, this shows sales for the entire month of May). Many of those Dakiti sales were from the day before the anniversary when I had a Book Barbarian promo, and the majority of the Nexus and Ronan sales were from the last two days of the month following the free day. It was definitely cool to see that cause-and-effect.
TOTAL FREE DOWNLOADS
Here are the overall numbers of free downloads. That Dakiti number shows the total downloads from the entire weekend. It came so close to getting 2,000 downloads! I was impressed. And 300-400 single-day downloads for Nexus and Ronan isn't bad either! That promo for Dakiti definitely came through -- that's a few more than 500 downloads.
DAKITI DOWNLOAD BREAKDOWN
And here's a look at the breakdown of Dakiti downloads over the three-day period. 411 would have put it right there in the running with Nexus and Ronan on the day all three of them were free. I have no earthly idea what caused that huge spike on the third day, but it totally blew me away!
So huge thanks to everyone who downloaded/bought my books during the month, and to everyone who helped spread the word about the promo. It was a lot of fun and I'm hoping even 10% of my new readers actually read and leave reviews.
Anyway, on to writing. I've been making a reasonable amount of progress on both Fracture and Embers, more so on the latter than the former just because I've gotten excited about a couple of certain scenes. I still procrastinate a lot when I should be writing, but at least there's progress happening. It's interesting to be writing a little more from Aroska's point of view. Since he played such a large role in previous books, it was sometimes hard to remember how few POV chapters he actually had. I guess he just made a big impression from *cough* other characters' points of view. He grew a lot during the series and it's insane to look at what I'm writing now and compare it to the beginning of Dakiti, especially if I stop to consider everything I learned from my Myers Briggs testing earlier this year.
There's a new Twitter game going on this month that uses the hashtag #WIPjoy, and everything I post for that will be related to either Fracture or Embers. Look for the posts on Twitter -- if the posts involve photos, I'll also be cross-posting on Facebook and/or Instagram. It should be fun, and should hopefully be a way for me to share my progress and make more progress, all without spoiling too much ;)
And speaking of spoilers, here's a tiny snippet from Fracture, just because I'm nice.
