Things slowed down in September, sales-wise. Although my perma-free book, Driftmetal, hung out in the Top 20 of the Steampunk and Cyberpunk categories on Amazon almost all month, sales settled into a trough. On the positive side, Driftmetal IV comes out tomorrow, and the book’s pre-order sales alone will be enough to eclipse all of September’s sales in a single day. “IV” has collected twice as many pre-orders as the previous book in the series had at the end of its run. This is a positive sign that, while things are slowing overall, momentum for the series is building. I’ve heard authors say that sometimes things don’t really take off until Book 5 of a series. In the case of Driftmetal, Book 5 will be the final volume, so we’ll see how that pans out. Read-through rate (from Book 1 to Book 2) in the series fell from 8% to just above 6%.
As for writing news, I finished the final one-third of Warcaster this month. I’ve set the ~92k-word manuscript aside for now and will take another look at it when I get ready to outline the sequel. I had originally planned to finish Children of the Wastes by the end of October, but Warcaster came about as an inspired diversion that pulled me off-task for around six weeks. My revised goal for finishing the first draft of Children is the end of November. Of course, I still have to write Driftmetal V, which is not likely to be done in time for the January 2nd, 2016 release date I set for myself months ago. So “V” will probably have to be delayed at least another month.
Here’s to an inspired October full of progress. Wishing you all the best in your own endeavors.