The Nav Computer

This book is still being revised. I’m not going to make predictions about the release date. My wife is reviewing the book and she has some great feedback. This book has a love-interest sub-plot and I want to ensure it’s realistic. She’s also good at pointing out inconsistencies because she’s reading it for the first time. I have blind spots because I’ve been over the story dozens of times and my brain fills in context. In other words, when I read a scene, I can visualize what I had in mind when I wrote it. Anyone reading the book for the first time has to use my words to form a visual in their heads. If I don’t have the right description or enough, then they won’t get the vision necessary to follow the story.

Stolen Property

I reached about 90% completion on the rough draft when I decided I didn’t like the ending. In fact, the manuscript was so far from what I expected that I decided to stop and brainstorm alternate ending scenarios. Late last night, I finally hit on the magic storyline. I had to toss 13,000 words to change the ending, but I’m so excited about this new story that it shouldn’t take long to retype new words. I have to complete 18 new scenes. I was able to save 3 scenes in the middle, but I’ll probably have to tweak them a little.

My average word count is around 1,500 per day on a weekday and approximately 3-5k on a weekend. Though, I have had a few 8k days and one 10k day. I usually have my best writing days when I have the scenes planned out with lots of notes (and a good visual of how it will play out). My typical writing session consists of writing for almost an hour. I’ll knock out about 1,000 to 1,200 words (which takes me 45 minutes), then I’ll force myself to take a break. Then I’ll start another round of writing. On weekdays, that’s about two hours per day. On weekends, I’ll just work all afternoon. My 10k day occurred on a bank holiday when my wife had to work and I decided to get up early with her. I started writing around 8:30 in the morning and finished late at night. I ended up with a 9k day, then after dinner, I decided I couldn’t live with an odd number as my record… So, I sat down for another 45 minutes and hammered on another scene until I reached my 10k goal.

Supercomputer

I’m a little antsy to get this book started. However, I have vowed to not write more than two books at the same time. Since I’m alternated with Escape from the Abyss, that means my attention is already divided. Book 1 of the Abyss is already up to 34k words. Judging by the position of the story (just past the point where it goes from Act I to Act II), I would say that this book is going to be about 120k.

Back to Supercomputer. I have about 23 scenes outlined. For a 50k book, I need about 50 scenes total. The bones of the story are really good. It has intrigue, a few major twists, and plenty of action. Daphne will be plunged into major trouble right at the beginning. While she’ll recover for a scene or two, she gets plunged into more trouble, followed by something that makes all of her world problems seem trivial. I have an ending in mind, but I’ve made notes that this one has to end with a bang.

Sales

Sales of this series got off to a rocky start. I use Amazon Ads and I started with a low bid. The impressions were far too low which meant that I wasn’t getting any clicks. I analyzed the cover and title of the first book and decided that the title was wrong for the genre. My wife agreed with that assessment. After changing the title and starting a new Ad campaign, I still didn’t get any clicks. I looked at the information that a potential reader would see before clicking and realized that the star rating is shown as well as the number of reviews. Book 1 currently has only 4 reviews and the total is good, but not spectacular (3.4 stars). I wondered if that would keep people from clicking. For me, I don’t pay attention to the stars, unless it’s a 1 star or something really bad.

After thinking about the lack of clicks, I looked at the raw data and compared it with the Mac series that I wrote earlier. One of the differences was the number of impressions. The lightbulb went off. The first task in the sales funnel is to get impressions. If it’s too low, then the bid price is too low. So I upped it. I know I’ll lose money off such a high bid price because I only have two books published and I’m not sure what the read-through will end up being. The good news is that I’m getting clicks. The bad news is that the click rate is low. It takes a lot of impressions to get a click. It could still work though.

What needs to happen next? I’m getting a few Kindle readers who are devouring the first two books. Hopefully, they’ll come back for books 3-5. If the read-through rate is high enough, I could calculate the number of books needed to break even for Kindle readers. If it’s five books, then that’s OK, I’ll write ten. If it’s going to take twenty books, that could be tough. I’ll probably end it on five books and start a new series or focus my energy on the Abyss series.

I’m skeptical about the Abyss series. I think the book is a really solid concept and the action is very intense. I’m focusing on a lot of broken characters with issues that will bite them along the way. I have some antagonists that you’ll just want to reach into the book and strangle. So far, I love the way the story is coming along. I have the whole first book outlined and lots of notes. I have the accompanying book roughed in, though that is going to need a lot of work to get it to be a polished product.

Strategy

So, what’s my strategy with the Abyss series? I plan to write the first book, get a professional cover, and get an editor to pick it to pieces. The accompanying book will be produced at the same time. When they are both ready to be published, I’ll set them up and get them on Amazon (the accompanying book will be free as a reader magnet). The first book will be somewhat self-contained. In other words, a reader could read the first book and be done. No cliffhangers. It’ll be like the Battlestar Galactica reboot miniseries. You can watch the two-part show and be somewhat complete. The Abyss will end on the same kind of “the story isn’t done” but have most of the story tied off. The reason I want to do it this way is to allow the book to be published and determine if it’s going to sell or not. If it sells, then book 2 will be right on its heels. For books that are 120k, I’m not sure I’ll be able to meet the Amazon 60-day cliff (where the sales plummet if the next book in a series isn’t published in 60 days). But, we’ll see. If I didn’t have a full-time job, that would be achievable, but, you know, the bills don’t pay themselves.

How many books will go into the Abyss? That will be contingent on how well it sells. I fear that the Daphne series is not strong enough to get good sales. The first book isn’t as strong as it should be. It’s light-hearted and doesn’t attract as many readers as I had hoped. If the first book of the Abyss does great and the readthrough is good, then I might be able to stretch it longer. I already have 19 book ideas roughed out, with the intent of doing 20 (coming up with another book is easy). The concept is strong and I have a lot of characters.

There’s always the downside to this as well. Let’s say that the first book gets published and it’s a flop. For whatever reason. Then I’ll be left with two choices: Leave it as a stand-alone or write a second book to wrap it up. I could also do a trilogy. I’ll make that decision when I see the numbers. Which usually takes a couple of months to determine. That’ll give me time to plot and rough the second book before I know what the sales of the series will look like. But, let’s not get all depressed about bad sales sinking a series I haven’t written yet… LOL.

The Daphne series is difficult to get a read on as well. I really only have two weeks’ worth of data to go on. The great thing about a series is that the author can make money on KU books and still pour money into Ads. Each book just ups the total because it’s easier to sell more products to an existing customer than to try to find a new customer. That means that as customers come into the funnel and read books, they’ll keep their eyes open for future books in the series and automatically buy them (or read them if they’re KU). The downside to a series is that one bad book can sink the whole thing. Like a broken link in a chain. If it’s down the line, that can be awful, but the first book can kill the whole series. If the first book is bad and the rest are great, then the author could always delist the first book and give it away for free as a separate book. Reducing the price to the minimum (like 99 cents) won’t do it because people will read the first book (or DNF it) and not get into the series. Fortunately, Daphne is a chronicle, so technically, each book should be able to be read out of order. However, I planted some information into books that give foresight of future plots and there are a few flash-backs that give the backstories. The first book actually has two flash-backs that are kind of critical to who Daphne and RUSTY are. The SciFi genre doesn’t really lend itself to a collection of independent books. The I Robot series is a good example of one where the people and robots are possibly different for each story. The theme is the three laws of robotics and how each story breaks those laws (even though they’re touted as perfect). So a bad book in that series could be removed and nobody would notice.

Back to Work…

Well, I have at least 20k to fill in for Stolen Property. Those words are not going to write themselves. If you have any questions, want to be a beta reader, or have questions or ideas, feel free to post a comment.