Wednesday, May 05, 2021

i've decided to be somewhat of a rolling stone; when marketing things don't work i simply move on to things that do work. but i'm a little obsessive about checking my ratings, sometimes every hour or two and actually sometimes they change in that hour or two. those ratings are not generally up to me. if i agree with someone to read all that's in my control is how much of theirs i read. meanwhile they may or may not be reading mine, or buying mine. very rarely buying mine.

one author actually showed me a totally blank screen - no sales for a month, and i told her, when this happens to me, i buy my own. which is somewhat true. i don't want to see a blank screen.

but now is better than most times; i have four books under a million, and i can buy a few if i so choose which would put a couple of the paperback ratings under a million too. the worst one is like seventeen million - no ones' bought that paperback for like seven years - but i think i'll wait, redesign the cover, and buy one of those for myself. boom, it'll be under a million, but will go back up soon enough.

when those ratings find their level they only increase by about 20 thousand a week, which, if you do the math, is about a million a year. that's the kindle ratings, which i'm more in tune to these days - who's buying the real books? no one, as far as i can tell. so i might as well take my time, redesign the real ones, but quick make the kindle versions good for the burgeoning kindle market.

i actually figure that people are reading more due to the pandemic. but they are buying less, and spending less money, due to the struggles from the crashing economies around the world. they may recognize kindle unlimited as a good deal at ten dollars a month (it is, if you read a lot) in which case, i need to find them and get them reading by books, all of which are on kindle unlimited.

but i'm tired of relentless marketing that seems to have very little result. sure, my ratings go from zero to three million now whereas they used to be six to eight when i got mad and decided to actually market stuff. i'm doing better now. i have a better sense of the market. but i still make only 20-30 bucks a month and spend hour upon hour refreshing the ratings.

also, i go through times like now where i'm kind of dry in the writing department. about ten projects on the desk and don't feel like actually writing any of them. some take research and i don't feel like doing that either. i read-exchange and i end up reading theirs, while they read mine - that's where my measly income comes from - but i'm not satisfied with theirs. i'd like to write the novel of the century but instead i sit here and watch the sun set slowly in the mountains. the puppy perches on my knees gruffing at the four-leggeds out in the woods.

one facebook word group post asked for the best novels of the last year - mine was not mentioned - but got about 120 responses which i copied down. that's my goal - that someone would just say this one is one of the better ones this year. as it is it's only been read what about thirty or forty times. i have a ways to get into the picture here and get my novel out there. but, patience patience, all things will come. if it's good, it'll get reread, i'm confident of it. i need to make novels that stand the test of time.

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