A few loosey-goosey updates

Since I don't have much time to spare this weekend--today is an errands-and-laundry day, and tomorrow is the first day of the Clark High School Basketball Tournament and I'm working it all day; and Monday is a travel day--I wanted to go over a few things with you that I haven't mentioned here recently.

First off, Persuaded By The Reflections is finished. The first draft is, anyway. The MS clocked in at a little over 135,000 words, and let me tell you: I'm overjoyed by that total. At it stands, its first draft total is slightly less than what I wrote for Redeemed, but I published that book at 132,000 and some change. I don't expect to make any cuts to Persuaded; if anything, I'm going to enhance the story and add to it. Since I finished it on Feb. 6--the day after my Patriots won the Super Bowl--I'll give it a respectful three months to June 6 before I start editing.

If everything goes correctly, and if the pre-readers I have lined up give me the feedback I need and do so by the end of August/middle of September, I see no reason why this book can't be in your hands by the end of November. The pessimistic side of me says January or February of next year, which would mean nearly a year between releases.

And maybe in hardcover? We'll see about that.

Secondly, the launch of Ticket Agent went fairly well. There was one day this week where I didn't sell a copy, but so far, so good. Would love more eyes on it. I'd actually like more eyes on the entirety of the now-eight book series: I think I've said this before, that if half the people who downloaded Model Agent for free liked it and moved on with the series--it's $2.99 for each digital book, people--I would be a happy miser indeed, and I wouldn't have to cover high school sports again (although there's a part of me feels that I'm being pushed out of that profession right now, but that's another story). That's the ultimate goal, to get out of sportswriting on my own terms. Getting solid sell-through in the Agent series will aid in me achieving that goal.

Third, I have an outline for the ninth Agent novel, Scouring Agent, printed up. I've been thinking about what I'm going to do in Scouring Agent since November--actually, I had an inkling of one scene back in February or March of 2016, and it just built from there--and I've finally put it all together. I made the outline linear yesterday; before, the file was just a jumbled, out-of-order series of notes. Now it's a four-page treatment of awesome, and today I can see the book clearer than I did last year. This novel will have a different feel to it--at least that's how I intend it--and I'm planning on starting it next Thursday, after I get back from Cape Cod. What I may do is similar to what I did for Ticket: write a short story leading into it that I'll give away here on the blog, one that doesn't have the pop of the novel proper but gives the reader insight to what's happening, then start the novel proper.

Fourth, I've already started doing some brainstorming on my next series, which I plan to release under the D.L. Boyd name. Can't say much more on that right now.

And finally... I've lowered the price on The Peg-Legged Privateer's digital version, i.e. Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iBooks. I had it listed at $4.99 from its December 12 release until earlier this week, and at that price, I only sold 15 copies. While I am grateful for those who bought it at $4.99, I hadn't sold a single copy in about a month, and let's admit it, folks: this is a volume business. I've expressed misgivings in the past about being able to command a price higher than $2.99 and do so with regular volume, and I think this experiment proves that I can't command a higher price. I feel this book--my return to the fantasy genre--is better than anything in The Obloeron Saga, and should have a chance to perform well, especially if I want to write a second book using these characters. At $2.99, I'm hoping to do volume sales. If you haven't taken Paulina and the Good Queen Bess out for a spin yet, you can do so at this link. A good price for a good book.

Enjoy your weekend, and by all means, pick up a solid read.

www.seansweeneyauthor.com

An Author's Resolutions, 2017

Over the last few days (hell, the last month), I’ve begun thinking about not only the 2017 business plan, but also my resolutions for the new year.

I have to be honest: I didn’t do well with my 2016 resolutions—I will blog more in 2016? Blogs were down from 41 to 29, not including this post. Significantly reduce my time on social media? You’re having a laugh—and I wondered if I would even do a list of resolutions because of this. Besides, I already did a post in early August about my goals for the next 12 months. I didn’t really need to do one.

But the great thing about setting goals and resolutions is that you have the ability to re-evaluate them at certain intervals, adjust things, and move on. And that’s what I’m doing today. Away we go:

I will write 250,000 words in 2017

I wrote approximately 219,000 words in 2016 over the course of two-plus books (the last 17,000 or so in The Peg-Legged Privateer, plus 101,437 in Ticket Agent, and the first 100,000 in Persuaded By The Reflections). I expect I’ll get another 25,000 words in Persuaded written before I wrap it up, but at 70,000 words I thought I would need only 50,000 more to finish; we can re-evaluate that when we get closer. It’s quite possible that Persuaded will surpass Redeemed in published words (132,000+), and maybe even Redeemed’s first draft total (140,177); I think it might. I don’t really know where the count will end up, and I’m hoping the first draft will be done by the end of February. That’s not a drop dead deadline for the book, but that’s my hopeful ending point. The end of February will mean a late summer edit, i.e. July or August, and a late December release. For March through June, I’m planning on writing the ninth Jaclyn Johnson novel, and I’m still up in the air about what I want to do in the second half of the year. Quite possibly the new series I mentioned this past August.

I want to publish two books, along with freshening up some of the back list, in 2017

Ticket Agent is currently with Kim—it’s her birthday, by the way, so happy birthday to Kim!—and I’ve given her until the end of January to get back notes and corrections to me so we can have a February release, much like we have had for Chemical (mid-February 2016) and Ticket (late January 2015) in recent years. Persuaded won’t be ready until late 2017, but I’m not going to publish it until it’s absolutely perfect. I’m also not going to go up against the holiday season. My hope is that the book will be published before the year is out, though. It could need some work after I do the editing, or it could be one of the greatest things I’ve ever written (after taking seven months to write the first draft, it might be). But not only that, I want to take some time to freshen up some of my older work; I may give Royal Switch a pass-through, mainly to see if I can fix the opening to the story and move that sluggish info dump somewhere else. I want to go back through two of my old John Fitch V titles and see if they can be fixed up and brought into my current writing level; I also want to freshen up the cover for A Galaxy At War, and possibly re-title it. And I want to get Furball & Feathers re-issued by the summer, too. I’ve done a sketch of potential cover art for it, but is it good enough to be published? I’m not too sure.

I want to learn how to do wrap-around covers for paperbacks in 2017

You’ll recall in August I declared that all of my work needs to be in paperback following my successful appearance at the Plastic City Comic Con on July 31. The second one is coming on July 30, 2017, in my hometown of Fitchburg. So far, 12 of my titles, including the entirety of the AGENT series, are in paperback, and I wanted to have the entire catalogue out in paperback by Thanksgiving in order to sell for the Christmas holiday. That didn’t happen, and that’s my fault. Honestly, I should know how to do a wrap-around; I can do a flat cover easily, and do it on the cheap, but not making it look cheap. So what I need to do is look for a tutorial in my spare time—what’s that?—and learn this important book creating tool.

I want to have The Obloeron Saga out in single copies for ebook and paperback in 2017

Pretty easy to do. I need covers for those, and I need the money to buy the artwork. That will happen when I can afford it.

I want to do better convention prep in time for PCCC in 2017

This will be some of the things I do in the first half of the year: get the Square credit card reader, get book stands, and, little by little, buy product for the event, i.e. ordering 10-15 copies of Zombie Showdown by the end of January and having them on-hand and ready, buying X of Ticket Agent and all the others, etc. In order to have an even more successful con, I need to have all of these things ready to go.

I want to get the rest of the AGENT series out in audiobook in 2017

Not exactly something in my control: this is akin to wanting 10,000 or more book sales in a year, because that’s something I can’t control. Laura Jennings has done a marvelous job on the first five audiobooks in the series, and I’m hoping she’ll continue in 2017.

I want to advertise more in 2017

I’m still here. I’m not going away any time soon. But still—my sales numbers do not reflect the numbers a full-time author should make, but again, that’s something that’s partially out of my control; I can’t rip people’s arms out of their sockets and make them buy my books. While I can turn a phrase with the best of them, my marketing skills are dreadful. I’ve relied mainly on word of mouth, Facebook links, Twitter, and—before 2012 and meeting my wife—ebook advertisers in eReader News Today and Kindle Nation Daily to varying degrees of success. I heard recently that one author got a BookBub ad without the pre-requisite review numbers, and I’m hoping I can do the same this coming year. Also some Facebook ads to encourage mailing list signups, Amazon ads, Twitter ads, and ENT/KND/BookGoodies/etc. I desperately need to re-claim my audience!

We’ll re-evaluate as the year goes on.

www.seansweeneyauthor.com

Raise, or Hold: The Publishing Poker Game

Ever since the start of the Amazon vs. Big Six/ebook pricing war back in mid 2009, my full-sized books have been priced at $2.99. Some, well after their run, have been bumped up to $3.99. My AGENT series books, which have been my perennial best sellers, remain at $2.99 even after being on the market for nearly three years. I've pretty much done that for one simple reason: we were in the midst of a crap economy (thanks, President Bush), and the thought of building an audience by charging an arm and a leg for a book while people were trying to find a way to put food on the table, gas in their cars, and keeping the lights on rankled me. At $2.99, I was (and still am) at the bottom end of the 70 percent royalty. A book sold equaled two bucks in my pocket.

When MODEL AGENT hit the virtual shelves in February 2011, sales went well at $2.99. I sold quite a few in the first few days that my dear friend Deborah Levinson, in a message, told me to bump the price to $3.99.

I balked. I remained at $2.99, and still sold quite a few books.

A few months later, I tried an experiment. For one week, I had priced ROGUE AGENT at $3.99 after selling well at the $2.99 price point.

After that one week was up, I brought it back down to $2.99. I hadn't sold a single copy in that time. It made me wonder--and still does to this day--if I as an author could command a price higher than $2.99 and have it sell at a rate that would allow me to put food on the table, gas in the car, and keep the lights/cable on. Would my die-hard readers, the ones who have been with me from the start of this journey, appreciate a jack-up in price?

It's the question that has plagued me and so many other authors struggling to find "the sweet spot" when it comes to pricing our books. $2.99 has been mine. I know several other authors who have gone to $3.99 and have been successful. I had the TRILOGY at $4.99 and I still managed to sell a couple copies a month before I took it down in November for a complete re-write (which I still haven't gotten to do yet). Still... a couple copies at $4.99 isn't enough to pay for lunch.

But now, after a blog came out recently, I'm wondering to myself if it's time. Am I truly low-balling myself? Is my work worth more than it is right now? Can I make more money by charging a higher rate for my books? My work has improved; fellow author Rich Meyer called me, "A bloody indie superstar" on Facebook last week. Surely if this were true, my sales would be higher than they are now.

So... what to do about this conundrum? It's like I'm playing a poker game: Do I raise the prices (and, in poker parlance, the stakes), or do I hold? Do I risk alienating my base at the risk of more profit, or do I remain where I am to keep the readers I know I have happy? Do I turn off readers who I haven't reached yet, or do I try to reach the level of the big boys and girls and see what happens?

Decisions to make--all of which are tough ones.

www.seansweeneyauthor.com

Breaking It Down: REDEEMED by the numbers, Part 1

As you know, I'm in the second half of writing REDEEMED, a dystopian novel set in Boston. It's currently the year 2023 as I'm writing it, and some pretty epic scenes are upcoming this week. Things are shaping up that it will be my longest novel ever; it may not reach Kevin J. Anderson/doorstop levels, but it'll be my personal doorstop when I'm all done with it. I figured that if I can get it to 150,000 words, I'll be happy with that and that everything after 150K is gravy for the book. In addition, I believe that I relayed what my goals for 2013 are: 200,000 words written (I stopped 2012 at 83,550 in REDEEMED), three books published.

That said, a few numbers for you before I go grocery shopping and settle in for the NFC and AFC title games.

After a brief writing spell of 1,179 words this morning, REDEEMED checks in at 113,769 words for the project. It also means 30,219 words so far in January. I've really only taken four days off this month (technically five, but I did get some writing done two Sundays ago before heading home from the Cape).

That's an average of 1,889 words a day.

Boo ya.

www.seansweeneyauthor.com