Blog No. 337
The Neon Heart has been out for just about a month and I’ve sold at least 70 copies. I say at least, because I have 18 left in person and there are 12 out in the wild (currently at Biblioasis and Anchor on Huron Line). I know some of those have been sold, but it’s a bit like Schrodinger’s books. Until I get a report from the store and/or a payout, I can’t say for sure if they exist or not. Considering that I printed 100 copies for my first run, I did pretty well for a month. I’m going to have to order more. The only problem is the money. I was supposed to recuperate the funds from those first 100, but somehow, that never happens. You get bits of cash for one or two sales. You deposit some, but hang on to a bit (because you were going to take our cash for whatever anyway). In the end, you tend to get some of the money back, but never the amount that you put in. So, when it comes time to order again, you are still digging into your pocket for the funds. Usually, it takes longer, so the sting isn’t so pronounced.
I need copies of everything right now. Again, it’s a good thing, but the money has to come out of pocket for all of it. Mostly I need some Thinking and Neon. Thankfully, my hope that having the second book in the novella series would push sales of the first one. With the fancy wrap I made (or maybe despite it) this seems to have been the case. I don’t have many events on the horizon, and I’m pretty sure most of the people who were all but guaranteed to buy a copy of my new book, already have. Chances are, the big run of sales is over. I’ll still have one or two stragglers, but it will be slow until the next event. As of now, I have nothing until the ChiSeries reading in June. I’m going to be the host for this one so Christian can wow everyone with an excerpt from his soon to be finished novel. While I won’t be a reader, I do put my books on the table. Maybe I’ll get lucky and sell some.
There may be something else before then (I’m keeping my eyes open) but nothing for sure. In the mean time, I’m plugging away on the invasion novel. I failed my first month’s goal of 20 000 words, but not by too much. I got just about 16 000 done, and with the busyness of the new book and three events (and some good old day job malarkey) I think I did okay. I have to do better in the coming months, but at the moment, I’ve made a radical decision and I’m not going to do any writing this week. I’ve had Christian’s book to review for weeks and I have made no real progress. I’m going to dedicate this week to going over that. He worked very hard on The Neon Heart for me (with an edit and the cover) so I totally owe him. Plus, he is flying on a new side project and frankly, I could stand to slow him down with some editing to do. It will make me feel less awful about my limited progress on my own writing.
That reminds me (for some reason) that I’m going to be at a wedding this weekend. It’s going to kick off a few busy weeks for me with day job and other non writing responsibilities getting in the way of writing. (It was the limited progress at the end of the last paragraph that reminded me. I got there eventually). I’m looking forward to the wedding. Some good folks are getting hitched and I’ll get to see some mutual friends who I haven’t seen since the last wedding I went to. Come to think of it, at least a couple of those good people will buy a book from me (if only out of some misguided loyalty). either way, I’m taking a week long break from writing just before I’m going to be busy with stuff that will make writing regularly more difficult. It’s a genius move. Hopefully I’ll be able to take better advantage of my evenings (something I’ve been saying I should do for a couple of years now). We’ll see. I should have gone for a bit on Tuesday evening and I should go tonight. It’s a start (I guess).
Ben Van Dongen 