I did nothing for the release of A Gift of Luck, except announce it on my blog (which cross-posts to a Facebook page for Sarah Wynde, plus links to Twitter and Tumblr, none of which I actively use anymore), and then send a message to my mailing list a few days later.
Results have been, well… lukewarm? As one might expect, I guess.
Over the first four days, I sold 26 ebooks and 2 paperbacks.
My email to my mailing list (currently with 886 recipients) generated better results: it had an open rate of 51.7% and a clickthrough rate of 17.01%, and over the next three days, 90 ebooks and 3 paperbacks sold. It also generated several nice emails from readers, which was awesome. I’m so unenthusiastic about marketing, but getting delighted responses to a marketing email felt terrific.
This morning was the first negative rating which felt less terrific, but inevitable. But currently Luck has 19 ratings on Amazon, including 5 with reviews. One is a 2-star, six are 4-star, and the remaining 12 are 5-stars. I haven’t previously recorded # of ratings/reviews in the first week or average rating, so I don’t know whether this is par for the course or not, but the average is 4.5, which is slightly lower than the averages of my last two books. And still fine.
The royalties estimator suggests that I’ve earned $482.43. ($58.61 of which comes from KU pages read.) I ought to start calculating hours spent on a book, so that I could figure out my hourly rate, but I suspect I’d have to have an entirely different personality type to actually do that — less INFP, more SJT. I doubt it’s $1/hour yet, but book sales can trickle along for a long time, so maybe someday I’ll achieve minimum wage. Or not. I definitely haven’t on some of the other books, including ones that have been out for years. Even Cici, which I wrote quickly, hasn’t hit minimum wage levels. On the other hand, Thought definitely has, so maybe I need to give myself another decade or so before doing the math.
I might also have missed my opportunity to have BookBub send out an email to my followers there, which would be a pity if so. I looked yesterday, wondering why they hadn’t sent it, and apparently you have to notify them within a week of publication. I thought it was automatically generated. (And am kind of surprised that it’s not, tbh.) But I did the notification and I think I should have had a day left, so maybe that will happen. BookBub buyers are very price-sensitive, though, so I’m not counting on much either way.
The highest sales rank it reached, according to the sales ranks on Author Central, was 5724. It gave me a chance for this screenshot:
Moving on: Serena’s book found the obvious title, A Gift of Sight. And I think the cover might have sunglasses on it. And I know that the Monday appointment is with a realtor. I might even know the opening line. Hmm, no, apparently I don’t. But maybe I’ll find it today. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with revenge.
Updated to add: Serena’s revenge was hot, radiant with spite.
