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June in Review
Health/Fitness
I've been trying to get back to biking, and am riding for 60-90 minutes after work, three or four times a week. This isn't as good as my pre-cancer and pre-car days, but it's progress. After this Thursday, lut moves from weekly to bi-weekly appointments, so that may make it easier to make time to bike four-five times a week. We'll see. Having podcasts to look forward to helps with motivation. Unfortunately, my luck with the next two podcasts I tried was not as good as with the first two, so I may actually start looking for podcast recs as the list of "ones I've heard about for years" narrows down after I listen to a few episodes and realize, "oh turns out I don't actually want to listen to this after all."
Towards the end of the month I also started a brand new eating habit, which is "Only eat when I'm hungry."
Yes, this does substantially change my eating habits, sometimes in seriously weird ways. For instance, yesterday I went to a restaurant to eat lunch, and had half of my meal and took the rest home, which is pretty normal. It wasn't a particularly big meal, but by dinner time I still didn't feel hungry, so I didn't eat dinner. I woke up at 7AM, and ... still wasn't hungry. By 8:30AM I was hungry, so I had breakfast then, and broke my accidental 20-hour fast.
I don't intend to do a lot of "skip meals if I'm not hungry", but that's a thing. I have managed to stop myself from snacking quite a bit by thinking "I want a cookie" and then going "but wait, am I hungry? No. No cookie then. Wait 'til you're hungry."
I knew I was doing a lot of boredom eating but it's still weird to see it in action.
Writing
24,750 words on The Princess, Her Dragon, and Their Prince (this is my favorite book title for one of my works to date. If people start reading this book and are disappointed that it's a polyamorous romance, I don't know what to tell them. You need to read more shifter novels or furry stuff or something.) Princess is up to 38,750 words now.
I also did some writing for a new play-by-post game, and wrote a few dragon bios for Flight Rising. It's good to do some just-for-fun fic writing again; it's been a long time since I did that.
The Business of Writing
I wrapped up edits on Angel's Sigil and gave it to my wuff Alinsa to lay out.
I purchased an international-only Bookbub for Silver Scales, to run on July 7, so that's exciting!
For those who don't know: Bookbub is the most effective (in practice, really, the only effective) advertising outlet for books. They are moderately expensive and hard to purchase. Per their internal stats, they reject 80% of requests for ads. I started trying to buy a Bookbub in January and had been rejected nine times before this. But persistence works! I suspect a good cover helps too. Honestly, I am surprised it only took ten tries.
Bookbub is a discount newsleter; they get subscribers because they only advertise books discounted to $2,99 or less. You might make your advertising dollars back from discounted sales, but the it's real effectiveness is "follow-on sales in the same series". This is why I didn't start trying to buy a Bookbub until I had several books out. The carry-over effect to other series is small, and I only have two books in each of my series.
The international-only Bookbub covers just four countries: UK, India, Australia, and Canada. Bookbub's penetration in those countries is much smaller than the US, so the international-only cost is something like 25% of a US + international deal. $188, in my specific case, for a fantasy novel discounted to 0.99 (or 65 rupees in India). The ad prices fluctuate by genre, region, and price: Bookbub charges more for higher-priced books.
The results I've heard for an international Bookbub for a $0.99 SFF deal have been anywhere from selling a dozen copies to several hundred. I am unlikely to make a big profit from the Bookbub itself, because I only make 34-56 cents per copy. And I'm also unlikely to make a big profit from follow-on sales because there's only one more book in the series. So this is by no means a "Woo I'm RICH!" moment. If July's profits are in the range of A Rational Arrangement's profits for its first month, I will be shocked. :D
Nonetheless! I AM EXCITED.
So excited I already discounted Scales JUST TO BE SURE the right price would be in place, even though the Bookbub itself doesn't run until next Saturday. And I discounted it in all markets, including the US, because why not. So if you've been thinking about buying Silver Scales, now is a good time.
Related: if you've already read Scales, have not reviewed it, and would be willing to drop a review on Amazon or Goodreads, I would be delighted. People are a lot more willing to take a chance on a new author if they see the book has a lot of reviews. Even a couple of sentences is great for getting the numbers up.
Gaming
Bard and I started a new one-on-one play-by-post game, because it'd been a year or two since our last PBEM and we are contractually obligated to attempt one periodically. I titled it Dragon: Rebirth and Bard is playing a baby dragon.
Socializing
There was a small get-together at the hotel across the street from my house, and I spent a few hours there saying hi to people. One of my out-of-town SOs came by for it, so I also spent several hours with him. That was nice. I am still in Extreme Introvert mode, so that's a thing. Motivation to get out of Extreme Introvert mode has been sorely lacking.
Goals for coming month
I signed up for CampNano! I set my word count goal at 50,000 words! I don't know why I did that!
Seriously, I wrote less than half that in June and my whole schtick for YEARS has been "set modest goals that you can exceed", so I don't know why THIS MONTH I decided I should set an ambitious goal. I think I've just been setting modest goals for the last couple of months and I feel unproductive.
Also, I actually do not have ANY plans to edit in July. Angel's Sigil is set for an August release, so I don't even have to do proofreading for it. I could edit Frost, but that release won't be until, like, November or something. There is seriously no rush on that. I honestly can't remember the last time there was a whole month where I didn't have a book in the works that I needed to edit or was in the process of releasing.
*scrolls back through her monthly updates tag looking for the last time*
*keeps scrolling*
Okay, it was November. Of 2016.
This is a RARE BIRD, is what I'm saying. It's a good time for me to focus on writing and not worry about anything else. I don't know if I'm actually going to want to write this much; I'm halfway through the first day and I've written all of 70 words so far. And I wasn't doing anything but writing for the last three weeks of June, either, but was still undermotivated.
But hey, we'll see. Right now, the goal feels intimidating, but it also feels oddly good. Like yes, it's okay to have high expectations of myself, because I can meet them.
We'll see how that works out in practice. :D
In bullet-point form:
Goals
Optional Goals (not worried about meeting these)
I've been trying to get back to biking, and am riding for 60-90 minutes after work, three or four times a week. This isn't as good as my pre-cancer and pre-car days, but it's progress. After this Thursday, lut moves from weekly to bi-weekly appointments, so that may make it easier to make time to bike four-five times a week. We'll see. Having podcasts to look forward to helps with motivation. Unfortunately, my luck with the next two podcasts I tried was not as good as with the first two, so I may actually start looking for podcast recs as the list of "ones I've heard about for years" narrows down after I listen to a few episodes and realize, "oh turns out I don't actually want to listen to this after all."
Towards the end of the month I also started a brand new eating habit, which is "Only eat when I'm hungry."
Yes, this does substantially change my eating habits, sometimes in seriously weird ways. For instance, yesterday I went to a restaurant to eat lunch, and had half of my meal and took the rest home, which is pretty normal. It wasn't a particularly big meal, but by dinner time I still didn't feel hungry, so I didn't eat dinner. I woke up at 7AM, and ... still wasn't hungry. By 8:30AM I was hungry, so I had breakfast then, and broke my accidental 20-hour fast.
I don't intend to do a lot of "skip meals if I'm not hungry", but that's a thing. I have managed to stop myself from snacking quite a bit by thinking "I want a cookie" and then going "but wait, am I hungry? No. No cookie then. Wait 'til you're hungry."
I knew I was doing a lot of boredom eating but it's still weird to see it in action.
Writing
24,750 words on The Princess, Her Dragon, and Their Prince (this is my favorite book title for one of my works to date. If people start reading this book and are disappointed that it's a polyamorous romance, I don't know what to tell them. You need to read more shifter novels or furry stuff or something.) Princess is up to 38,750 words now.
I also did some writing for a new play-by-post game, and wrote a few dragon bios for Flight Rising. It's good to do some just-for-fun fic writing again; it's been a long time since I did that.
The Business of Writing
I wrapped up edits on Angel's Sigil and gave it to my wuff Alinsa to lay out.
I purchased an international-only Bookbub for Silver Scales, to run on July 7, so that's exciting!
For those who don't know: Bookbub is the most effective (in practice, really, the only effective) advertising outlet for books. They are moderately expensive and hard to purchase. Per their internal stats, they reject 80% of requests for ads. I started trying to buy a Bookbub in January and had been rejected nine times before this. But persistence works! I suspect a good cover helps too. Honestly, I am surprised it only took ten tries.
Bookbub is a discount newsleter; they get subscribers because they only advertise books discounted to $2,99 or less. You might make your advertising dollars back from discounted sales, but the it's real effectiveness is "follow-on sales in the same series". This is why I didn't start trying to buy a Bookbub until I had several books out. The carry-over effect to other series is small, and I only have two books in each of my series.
The international-only Bookbub covers just four countries: UK, India, Australia, and Canada. Bookbub's penetration in those countries is much smaller than the US, so the international-only cost is something like 25% of a US + international deal. $188, in my specific case, for a fantasy novel discounted to 0.99 (or 65 rupees in India). The ad prices fluctuate by genre, region, and price: Bookbub charges more for higher-priced books.
The results I've heard for an international Bookbub for a $0.99 SFF deal have been anywhere from selling a dozen copies to several hundred. I am unlikely to make a big profit from the Bookbub itself, because I only make 34-56 cents per copy. And I'm also unlikely to make a big profit from follow-on sales because there's only one more book in the series. So this is by no means a "Woo I'm RICH!" moment. If July's profits are in the range of A Rational Arrangement's profits for its first month, I will be shocked. :D
Nonetheless! I AM EXCITED.
So excited I already discounted Scales JUST TO BE SURE the right price would be in place, even though the Bookbub itself doesn't run until next Saturday. And I discounted it in all markets, including the US, because why not. So if you've been thinking about buying Silver Scales, now is a good time.
Related: if you've already read Scales, have not reviewed it, and would be willing to drop a review on Amazon or Goodreads, I would be delighted. People are a lot more willing to take a chance on a new author if they see the book has a lot of reviews. Even a couple of sentences is great for getting the numbers up.
Gaming
Bard and I started a new one-on-one play-by-post game, because it'd been a year or two since our last PBEM and we are contractually obligated to attempt one periodically. I titled it Dragon: Rebirth and Bard is playing a baby dragon.
Socializing
There was a small get-together at the hotel across the street from my house, and I spent a few hours there saying hi to people. One of my out-of-town SOs came by for it, so I also spent several hours with him. That was nice. I am still in Extreme Introvert mode, so that's a thing. Motivation to get out of Extreme Introvert mode has been sorely lacking.
Goals for coming month
I signed up for CampNano! I set my word count goal at 50,000 words! I don't know why I did that!
Seriously, I wrote less than half that in June and my whole schtick for YEARS has been "set modest goals that you can exceed", so I don't know why THIS MONTH I decided I should set an ambitious goal. I think I've just been setting modest goals for the last couple of months and I feel unproductive.
Also, I actually do not have ANY plans to edit in July. Angel's Sigil is set for an August release, so I don't even have to do proofreading for it. I could edit Frost, but that release won't be until, like, November or something. There is seriously no rush on that. I honestly can't remember the last time there was a whole month where I didn't have a book in the works that I needed to edit or was in the process of releasing.
*scrolls back through her monthly updates tag looking for the last time*
*keeps scrolling*
Okay, it was November. Of 2016.
This is a RARE BIRD, is what I'm saying. It's a good time for me to focus on writing and not worry about anything else. I don't know if I'm actually going to want to write this much; I'm halfway through the first day and I've written all of 70 words so far. And I wasn't doing anything but writing for the last three weeks of June, either, but was still undermotivated.
But hey, we'll see. Right now, the goal feels intimidating, but it also feels oddly good. Like yes, it's okay to have high expectations of myself, because I can meet them.
We'll see how that works out in practice. :D
In bullet-point form:
Goals
- Get Lut to oncology appointments and suchlike.
- Write 50,000 words of The Princess, Her Dragon, and Their Prince
- Continue the Dragon: Rebirth game at whatever pace is comfortable
Optional Goals (not worried about meeting these)
- Final edits on Frost
- Cover for Frost
- Proofread Angel's Sigil
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The thing is, the conventions of blurb writing do not include "state the precise subgenre." If you look at the back-cover blurb of a romance, it's not going to say "This is a heterosexual contemporary romance with a happily-ever-after ending" or "This is a gay fantasy quasi-historical romance" or "this is an action-adventure near-future science fiction novel". The reader is expected to be able to tell the subgenre based on the way the blurb is written instead.
However, it turns out that just putting three characters on the cover all looking at each other, with equal weight to each of the characters given in the blurb, and text that has all of them thinking about love and marriage, and closing with a question about HOW CAN ALL THREE BE HAPPY???
and having it be in the "bisexual" category
is not sufficient to overcome the expectations of compulsory monogamy for some readers. It actually is enough for most readers though! Just not everyone.
I might ignore conventions next time and put "polyamorous fantasy romance" on the cover or in the blurb. It's kind of iffy; it's not like traditional publishing declines to spell out the subgenre in the blurb out of pure spite or something. :/
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So why does traditional publishing decline to spell out the subgenre, then? It seems like a good idea to me. (As opposed to putting testimonials on the back of a book instead of a blurb, which they do...)
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The "don't spell out the subgenre" is to make the blurb as interesting and distinctive as possible: "this is why you want to buy THIS PARTICULAR BOOK and not any other random book in the same subgenre". Putting the subgenre on the back cover is a bit like saying "my product is basically interchangeable with other books in this subgenre and there's no special reason you'd want this over them." Yes, the whole rest of the blurb is still there, but it has a psychological effect.
I've seen self-pub books that put the the subgenre at the bottom of the blurb, and paperbacks that put it at the bottom of the back cover ("An Action-Packed Science Fiction Mystery!"), yeah. I could stick it into the cover text, for instance, in place of the tagline. The other problem is "what word to use"; the standard for books about a threesome is "ménage" or "ménage à trois" rather than "polyamorous", but I don't really like "ménage" because it's more closely associated with "three people having sex" than with "three people in a romantic relationship". :/
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Don't forget to eat now and then. };)
Aww, baby dwagon!
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I can't remember if you've said what you like in podcasts, but if you're interested in fiction podcasts, I REALLY LIKE The Strange Case of Starship Iris.