Whatley Passes 500

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So, after almost exactly seven months, The Adevntures of Whatley Tupper has passed 500 sales through Amazon.  I’m not sure how others will take this.  I’m sure some will think, ‘That’s it?  After seven months?’  I’m not sure.  But, considering that the book tends to hover in the #20 000 to #40 000 range of the bestsellers list, that means that are a lot of books selling less.  So, I think it’s good.  Like I’ve said before, I had low expectations.

I do, however, have bigger hopes and dreams for The Redemption of Mr. Sturlubok, which is just about ready.   Right now, although there are other choose-your-own-adventure ebooks for adults out there (about 7 or 8 now for the Kindle, that’s it), The Redemption… will be the first follow up book.  It’s not a sequel, but it’s clearly part of the same series from the name and cover design.  I would hope that some people who purchased and enjoyed Whatley Tupper will do the same with this.   We’ll see.  It will be my first big test of the effectiveness of building a fan base.

And within a few weeks, I’ll be offering free preview copies of the book.  I hope some of you are interested.  Who doesn’t like free stuff, anyhow?

Another review for Whatley Tupper

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Big Al’s Books and Pals review’s The Adventures of Whatley Tupper today.  Here’s the review:

The concept is simple enough, a “choose your own adventure” book for adults. Is this great literature, the next Hemmingway, Dickens, or Fitzgerald? Of course not. Is the plot, actually any of the many potential plots, a fantastic story? No, not really – at least none that I found.

But all these questions miss the point. What Whatley Tupper aims to be is fun (it is). Funny (that too). One review I saw called it a guilty pleasure, a description I can’t argue with either. It’s strange, ridiculous, and downright weird at times (if you pick the right – or is that wrong – choice). If you don’t like how it turns out, just try again. For a bunch of laughs and a ton of fun Whatley Tupper may the perfect choice.

FYI

Adult adventure means “not kids.” Don’t read too much into the “adult” tag. Although there are a few sexual situations those I found were tamer than a typical bestseller and many YA books.

Kerhoven and the mysterious Mr. Pitts are co-authoring another choose your own adventure book, The Redemption of Mr. Sturlubok, with a planned release of April 30, 2011.

Format/Typo Issues:

I found very small number typos. For a book of this type, formatting along with a table of contents (normally not much use in fiction) is critical. The formatting and table of contents is top notch. Everything works as it should.

Rating: **** Four stars

Six Months to the Day

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So, it’s February the 20th, which makes it exactly six months since The Adventures of Whatley Tupper went live on Amazon’s DTP (now KDP).  I started this blog primarily so that other unpublished authors interested in self-publishing could have an idea what to expect.  So, how are things going?

First, an updated sales graph:

You can actually see the slope of the graph change from Christmas onwards.  It begins a little to the left of the last big spike, which was my Kindle Nation Daily sponsorship.  Overall, I’m pleased.  I never had great expectations about how my ebooks would sell–honestly, I expected one a week, or so, at least for the first few months.  So, now that I’m averaging a couple a day since Christmas, I’m pleased.  I think anyone who is self-publishing for the first time should be pleased with that.  Yes, there are the Amanda Hockings and Victorine E. Lieskes and H.P. Malloys who went from complete unknowns to extremely successful writers in a matter of 6 months, and rightfully serve as an inspiration to many.  But, they are the outliers.  They’re the outliers of outliers.  The Adventures of Whatley Tupper has sold around 450 through Amazon.com, and it’s generally been in the #20 000 – #50 000 ranking range, which still puts it ahead of almost three-quarters of a million other ebooks.  If you’re a self-published author, that’s how much competition you have.  So, like I said, I’m happy with what The Adventures… is doing.  I didn’t get into this to make money.  I self-published to get my writing out.  Anyone who’s written for a long time and suffered through countless rejection letters knows what I mean.  You just want to get your work out.

I should make a point about The Year We Finally Solved Everything.  Unlike The Adventures…, there’s nothing gimmicky about it.  It’s not genre fiction.  I’m not sure what genre it fits into, perhaps on the edge of Literary, which is why it sells much, much less–probably at a ratio of 1:10 compared to The Adventres….  If you look at all the top self-published books, they are all genre books, with thrillers and paranormal romance (of course) being the biggest sellers.  I do feel (although this is just what my gut tells me) that Kinde owners don’t represent a complete cross-section of readers.  I think the people who would be more inclined to buy a more ‘literary-like’ novel are the same people who are reluctant to give up paper books.  Combined with the fact that such books are rarely ever big sellers, I expect The Year We Finally Solved Everything to continue selling like this.  That said, I’m still planning on releasing another similarly-non-categorical novel later this year, and I have no expectations of it selling a lot.

So, six months in, I can’t complain.  The entire process has pushed me to write more than I have in years, which is perhaps the most important consequence.  I feel like I have a voice, even if it’s a small voice, and that’s fine.  I never wanted to yell.

Finally, I wonder what things will look like in 5 years.  I don’t mean in regards to my sales, but instead concerning the model of self-publishing.  Right now, Amazon dominates, and, honestly, I like it this way, because I think Amazon has a very good model that is good to authors.  But, who knows what will change.   Because it will.  And hopefully for the better… hopefully…

Page 99 Test

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I recently learned of this neat site, the Page 99 Test, where readers are given only a single page from a book (can you guess the page?) without knowing what book it is from, and from there they rate the book and their potential interest, as well as have the options to write some comments.  Readers then are are told what the book is as well as given links to Amazon should they be interested in purchasing it.

http://www.page99test.com/

I put up a page from both “The Year We Finally Solved Everything” and “The Adventures of Whatley Tupper.”  It’s  a cool little experiment, and I enjoy getting the occasional feedback.  If you’re an author, I recommend putting up your own page 99 sample and seeing what happens.

A Week of Stat-Celibacy

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OK, I spend too much time checking my sales reports. Not that it takes a long time to check, but I check way too often. At least 10 times a day. Sometimes a lot more. When I first publishing “The Adventures of Whatley Tupper” in August, I would check so often that it detracted from writing. Now, that’s not the case anymore, but sometimes I think it’s a little sad… and perhaps a sign of some sort of addiction. Not that a sales-report-addiction should lead to missing teeth and emaciated ribs, but it certainly can’t lead to anything positive, either.

So, I’m not going to check for a week, starting Saturday at noon. It’s an absolutely ridiculous challenge to myself–ridiculous because it shouldn’t prove to be a challenge at all. But I think it will be difficult. I wonder if I’ll lose sleep? Maybe I’ll end up being much more clear-headed.

Or maybe I’ll give up come Tuesday.

Redeem Yourself

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Daniel Pitts and I have been busily working on a new choose your own adventure book over these last few months, and we’re now about a month into the revision stage.  What makes “The Redemption of Mr. Sturlubok” special is that it’s the first book that I’ve written since learning about e-publishing.  Daniel and I laid out a schedule for ourselves several months ago, culminating with the release of the book at Amazon on April 30th, 2011.  So far, everything is going to plan, although it’s starting to get a little nerve wracking seeing how quickly time is flying by.

The plan is to have a preview copy ready by the end of March, giving me a month to send out copies to reviewers and do all that I can to build up hype.  Well, ‘hype’ might be a bit of hyperbole there.  But I’ll do what I can.   And I will be offering free smashwords versions to anyone who will be willing to write a review for the Amazon.com site.   If you think you might be interested in a free copy and be willing to help out an indie author, I’ll give some contact information in the next month or two.  If you think you might be interested, check out the site late March.   I’m hoping to get a number of reviews ready to be posted as soon as the book goes live on April 30th.

Thanks to Kate the Book Buff

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A nice review for The Adventures of Whatley Tupper at Kate the Book Buff today.  It’s funny, because she admits that at first she didn’t care for it, but with time it really grew on her.  I’m glad she took the time to get into it.

Here’s the full review:

When I was a kid, Choose Your Own Adventure(CYOA) books were big, and my favorite brand was the Goosebumps ones by R.L. Stine because the plot lines were significantly weirder and more twisted than your average CYOA.  I think that is why I ultimately enjoyed The Adventures of Whatley Tupper–because it was super weird.  Honestly, at first, I didn’t care for it, in fact to put it bluntly, I thought it was dumb and I just didn’t get it.  The first storyline I happened to pick my way through wasn’t very zany, but quite straight forward with a neat and tidy little ending and felt a bit flat.  So I went back to the beginning and picked a completely different route and was happy to find myself reading about ridiculous alternate universes, Tom Selleck and Phil Collins obsessed custodians, and a long lost son named Whatlito with a Robin Hood complex.  The plot lines are ridiculous in the very best way.  The story lines are all fast paced and the flow of events is abrupt and awkward, but that is what makes it funny and entertaining.  I really love just plain old weird, off kilter stuff, and Whatley Tupper totally fits the bill.  After a while, I did get a little bit pooped out going back and forth looking for new story lines, but such is the nature of the awesome beast that is CYOA. Thankfully the authors provide a wonderful little cheat-sheet on their blog that helps you sort things out, if you want to take a peek.  Lastly, something I very much enjoyed was that after reading through several story lines, you start noticing that there a lot of inside jokes and references to the other story lines, which adds fun little layers of enjoyment to the reading experience.  I really enjoyed reading this book and rate it a 1, Pay Full Price, because for hours of disgustingly ridiculous fun, the book is a great price.

Whatley Loves KND

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So, the second Kindle Nation Daily Sponsorship for “The Adventures of Whatley Tupper” was on Friday, and here’s the updated sales:

About 80 sales can be attributed to the ad, which compares to 65 the last time.   Having more reviews surely helped this time around.  Again, I have to say that I am always impressed with the effectiveness of the KND sponsorship.  No other advertising tool that I’m aware of comes even close.  And these sales do not include people who would have downloaded samples and have not yet made a purchase.

Of note: I sold more than last time (which was in early October) but my sales ranking didn’t come near my previous peak (in October, my ranking made it into the 500’s, this time no higher than the 1300’s).  This shows that people are buying a lot more ebooks of late–which is good news for any author, except for those obsessed with their sales rankings.  I would guess that Amazon Kindle book sales must be close to double what they were back in the autumn.  I think that at this rate, in another year or two cracking the 10 000 mark will become quite an acheivement.

Finally, I have three more KND sponsorships lined up: Mid-March for “The Year We Finally Solved Everything,” early April for “Whatley Tupper” and April 30th for the release of “The Redemption of Mr. Sturlubok.”