First quarter book saleswanking

On March 31, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing7 Comments

Behold, the Spreadsheet of Doom! Clicking to enlarge is basically your only option.

I’m borrowing the quarterly roundup idea from Gene’O here; I’m doing book sales today and will do site traffic sometime later this week. As always, I’m not bragging (because tons of people do way, WAY better than this) or whining (because tons of people don’t do this well,) I’m presenting the information so that people who find it useful or interesting can look at it. I figure that I would find this really interesting if someone else posted it, so surely someone will find it interesting when I do.

Note, as always, that I’m going to be using the word “sales” a lot; as far as I’m concerned any download of my books is a sale even if it’s a free book. I have not made a lot of money this month, especially since a number of my Skylights sales were KOLL sales and I don’t even know the payout for that right now. I’m not worried about it.

tl;dr version: I’m pretty pleased with myself at the moment.

Some things about March:

I’m currently three books shy of tying January’s sales. As it is still March 31 for several hours it’s not unimaginable that I might tie it, but it doesn’t feel likely. I’d have to have the best day of the month two days in a row to pull off a tie.
March featured my longest string of days without a no-sale day since I started paying attention, from the eighteenth to the 28th. The 29th was a no-sale day, but the 30th was the best day of the month.
March also featured my longest string of multiple-sales days since I started paying attention, from the 21st to the 27th.
Probably related, March had the fewest 0-sale days since I started paying attention, at 7.

Skylights sales were a little disappointing this month; 7 ebooks and one print sale. The story this month was Benevolence Archives, which clocked 45 downloads between Amazon, Smashwords and OpenBooks.com. Actually, the real story of the month is OpenBooks.com– not only did BA 1 move 26 copies there in March after a total of four in January and February, it’s currently the top-selling science fiction book on the site and #10 in all fiction books. Now, granted, the site’s new, but that’s still awesome. Sales are down at Smashwords, but that’s probably because as I’ve noticed momentum over at OpenBooks I’ve been shifting my promotion over there accordingly.

Actually, this might be why Skylights is a bit down as well– with The Sanctum of the Sphere hitting next month, I’ve been pushing BA 1 harder than Skylights anyway. Preorders will show up with first sales next month; I can’t really calibrate how I feel about pre-order numbers until I see first-day sales. We’ll see what happens.

As far as the quarterly numbers:

In all of 2014, starting when BA 1 came out in May, I sold 477 copies of Benevolence Archives and 47 copies of Skylights.
In the first quarter of 2015 I’ve sold 119 copies of Benevolence Archives and 63 copies of Skylights, and those 119 copies of BA were without the benefit of any free promotions at Amazon. Nearly half of the 477 downloads at Amazon were in a single day.
There have been 90 days in 2015 so far, meaning that I’m averaging nearly exactly 2 sales a day. I was hoping to average one sale a day in 2015. I’m quite happy with that number.
This means that, total, I’ve sold 596 copies of Benevolence Archives and 110 copies of Skylights. I feel like that’s pretty damn good for someone who was a total unknown less than a year ago. Could it be better? Sure. But once Sanctum comes out, I’m going to start doing signings. So April and May are going to be real interesting.

Feel free to ask questions, if you’ve got them.

Sigh.

On March 31, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching11 Comments

In which nowhere is safe

On March 30, 2015March 29, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Television1 Comment

I’m writing this at 9 PM on Sunday.

Be aware that as of the time you read this I’m about 11 hours into a 24-hour internet blackout. I won’t be posting again or even looking at the blog until after I’ve seen THE WALKING DEAD, and notifications for all my interwubz apps except for text messaging are turned off on my phone.

OMG RUN WILD EVERYBODY

Creepy Children’s Programming Review: OCTONAUTS

On March 29, 2015March 29, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, Television19 Comments

6630bc3207651991e913e0e48d119eeeaa360e59 So here’s the new hotness: Octonauts, a show about British (mostly) animals (mostly) who live underwater in a giant octopus and Do Science. Most of them, as I said, are various flavors of British, and their accents are region-specific. Then there is the one with the southern accent (and by “southern accent,” I mean “southern US”) and what might be an attempt at a Mexican accent, maybe, since the character’s name is Peso? Only they’re all done by British voice actors, and they are perhaps done by British voice actors who have never met southerners or Mexicans, because the southerner (“Tweak,” the rabbit) sounds like the worst stereotype of a toothless Mississippi white-trash hick you’ve ever heard and the Mexican accent sounds so un-Mexican that I thought the character was supposed to be Asian at first.

Here are the Octonauts. They are so, so, so British, even the ones who aren’t British.

You’ll recall I said they were mostly animals. Note the plant on the right. His name is Tunip, but I thought it was Turnip until seeing it in print just now. The rest of the characters have personality and agency; Tunip and his other plant-based lifeforms appear to be either vegetable-based Oompa Loompas or actual slaves, and they really don’t fit into the rest of the show very well. It’s bizarre.

At any rate: Every episode involves the Octopod tooling around in the ocean and dealing with some sort of sea animal’s problem, or sometimes the sea animals are the problem. The animation is kind of cool and the ocean backgrounds are really neat even without the massive, Thomas the Train-level Britishness.

So goddamn British.

There’s a weird colonialism thing going on here, too: the white … polar bear? in the middle up there is Captain Barnacles, who has the Britishiest of the accents, and he’s in charge. He’s supposed to come off as this nineteenth-century naval captain dude. In practice, this means that he assumes in any situation that whoever he’s dealing with will understand and assume that he’s rightfully in charge and what he says is the best thing for everyone. Even if it’s a indigenous culture species of animal they’ve never seen before, obviously everyone ought to just agree with what the white animal thinks. He’s the Captain! Don’t you understand what that means?

Then there’s always a song at the end. It’s the Creature Report. It lives in my brain now, and I hear it all the time, everywhere I go, no matter what, forever. Let it be in your brain now:

I like the show. It makes me crave crumpets, and I don’t know what crumpets are, but I like it. That said, if I try to drift off to sleep one more night with the Creature Report running through my head, I will kill a substantial portion of the Midwest’s population.

No big deal.

STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On March 29, 2015March 29, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing

Hi! I’m Luther Siler. I’m the author of Skylights, available for $4.95 from Amazon, and The Benevolence Archives. You can download Benevolence Archives Volume 1 for free from Smashwords or OpenBooks.com, and Volume 2, which comes out April 28th, can be pre-ordered from Amazon here or added to Goodreads shelves here.

This post is a bi-weekly service for new folks who might want to know where else to find me on the Web. Regular folks, if you see the STATION IDENTIFICATION tag, feel free to ignore it.

So here’s where to find Luther Siler on the interwebtron:

You can follow me on Twitter, @nfinitefreetime, here or just click the “follow” button on the right side of the page. I am on Twitter pretty frequently; I use it for liveblogging TV, whining about anything that strikes me as whine-worthy, and for short, Facebook-style posts. I generally follow back if I can tell you’re a human being.
My author page on Goodreads is here. I accept any and all friend requests.
I have a Tumblr! I don’t actually know what Tumblr is, because I’m old, but I’ve got one.
My official Author page on Amazon is located here.
Feel free to Like the (sadly underutilized) Luther Siler Facebook page here. It’s mostly used as a reblogger for posts.
And, of course, you’re already at infinitefreetime.com, my blog. You can click here to be taken to a random post.

Thanks for reading!

THE SANCTUM OF THE SPHERE comes out in a month!

On March 28, 2015March 28, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing7 Comments

Sanctum_72dpi It’s coming.

My new book, The Sanctum of the Sphere: The Benevolence Archives, Volume 2 releases one month from today, April 28th. As of right now I am a tiny bit behind schedule in finalizing the manuscript and the print and ebook versions, but nothing I can’t overcome, especially since my Spring Break is the week after this one. I’ve been (mostly passively) advertising the book around here for a bit now, and have had a couple of formal posts (like this one, the full print cover reveal) about it, but it’s time to start thinking about more “official” marketing efforts.

Specifically, I’m asking for help.

Two different kinds of help, in fact:

Day One Reviewers. Or, at least, first-week reviewers, although the more reviews I can have up on Amazon on day one the better. If you’re interested, drop a comment in the post and let me know. I’ll send you a free ebook once the copy is finalized; it has to be done (the book, I mean, not your review) by the 17th but my current plan is to have it finalized a week earlier than that. You read it and leave me an honest review: at least on Amazon, but a Goodreads review is also appreciated. Folks who reviewed BA 1 or my alpha readers are automatically approved; if you don’t fit into either of those categories I’ll probably send you a book anyway if you interact with me here or on Twitter enough that I recognize your name.
Rebloggers, well-wishers and interviewers. I’ve already got a couple of most excellent people who are planning on doing interview posts as promo around release date; anybody else who is interested, regardless of how much traffic your blog gets, is gratefully appreciated. Consider it an Ask Me Anything, only without Reddit. So long as you post sometime around release date and link to this blog and the Amazon page for Sanctum, you can literally ask me whatever you want. Let me know you’re interested via comments here, send me an email with your questions, and I’ll answer ’em and get back to you as quickly as I can. I’ll also link to the interview from this site once the post goes up. Rebloggers and well-wishers can have at it as they see fit. I have been known to return favors, too, by the way. 🙂

One note on the request for reviews: I do not, at least not officially, participate in review swaps, although there are examples out there of authors where we have mutually reviewed each other. If you’re an indie author and your book comes to my attention, I may well review it anyway, but I won’t lock myself into reviewing something just because you review my book. I will probably help you out with promo later if you do an interview, though.

(Does that make me a dick? I hope not.)

It should go without saying, but: I genuinely appreciate anyone who is willing to help out here, despite that last paragraph. Thank you in advance.

The Sanctum of the Sphere is available for digital pre-order from Amazon here. You can also add it to your Goodreads shelves here. If you haven’t read Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 yet, you can get it for free from Smashwords or Openbooks.com, or you can pay $1.99 to get it from Amazon.

Thank you!

WALKING DEAD recap up; begin chewing your nails

On March 28, 2015March 28, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, Television

Right here, at Sourcerer, as always.

As of right now…

On March 27, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized4 Comments

…I’m taking today off from blogging. Which probably means that sometime tonight something will piss me off and I’ll write a 2000 word screed about it. But it’s been a long week and my thinkybits are sorta melty, so I’m gonna use tonight to recharge.