Sunday, May 29, 2011

Sale Fail and Word Count

Let's see 33,766, is the word count currently, but I hope to add another thousand to that before the day (and naptime) is over.  The word count went pretty good, but I totally failed on Wednesday and Thursday.  I was up until very late (for me) Tuesday and just could NOT face the idea of waking up at 5:30.  Of course, my kid woke up at 6:30, but at least I got that extra hour.  And a nap.  And slept in again on Thursday, when he slept in until the unheard hour of 7:15.  Holy cow!  How did that happen?
Kicked butt on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, though.  Hoping to reach 40,000 this week.  Oh, and guess what... I think this book is going to be longer than 70,000 words.  I have been suspecting as much, as it was being written, and I'm now fairly certain that Aeris will be at LEAST 80,000 words, but I'm thinking it may get to 90,000.  I don't know.  But this is going to blow my plans for having two books written by the end of August, dammit.  It might end up being 1.5 books.
In other news, there has been quite the firestorm in the Amazon author world this week.  It all started with Gaga and her servers crashing because of that Gaga album for 99 cents.  Literally no one had sales on Tuesday and Thursday, and if they had ANY sales, it was like 18 instead of 100.  Seriously.  And people were freaking the heck out.  I mean, I don't sell 100 books a day.  EVER.  But can you imagine selling 10% of what you normally do?  Holy cow.  And this went on FOR DAYS.  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.... And people were flying through the forums questioning the book selling gods.  "Where did all the people go?  Did the rapture happen and only the Saints bought my books before???"
To top off Gaga, several other things went all weird.  Tags disappeared.  Also viewed percentages went missing. Also bought bars disappeared. Listmania stopped letting you vote if the list was helpful.  It also stopped telling you how many people had viewed the list previously.  Then there was the free book phenomenon.  People who downloaded tons of free books (like me) were much less likely to need anything else for a while.
And no one could tell if it was the server mess or Amazon being itself and changing things up. And because so many many things happened at the same time no one could tell what it was that threw their sales off.  It was all so confusing.
Today it is still a mess.  Half the people have sales that are back up to normal.  Half the people have not recovered one iota.  Tags have appeared and disappeared several times.  Also boughts have been flashing in and out.
I love it when the voice of reason comes out to try and help.  It's like, people are watching stuff fall from the sky and there's a person standing out in the middle of the street saying, "They aren't bombs, I swear.  It's just paper balls."  But they're so high up, that no one can tell, and they believe the worst, in their total confusion.
Anyway, that was my interesting end to the week.
Happy Reading!

6 comments:

Nadja Notariani said...

I think it's great that your novel is coming together so nicely. I also surpassed my original word count estimated goal...but who's complaining? Ha! It seems you are adding quite a bit more than I did, but I take it as the story is becoming more involved, more detailed, more intense. It sounds good.
I hope Amazon gets its bugs worked out soon. ~ Nadja

Robin M said...

Wow! I hadn't heard a thing about Amazon. Amazing. Sounds like your writing is going well. I don't think I could face getting up at 5:30. I have a hard enough time getting up by 8:00. But we home school and my son doesn't get up til 9 (we're nightowls) so that's my quiet time to write. Good luck with your writing.

Vicki Keire said...

Well that explains an awful lot.
Thanks for your post @ Amazon. I truly had no idea. I *would* pick Amazon Apocalypse week to release my second book. No wonder everything was so messed up. Seriously, though. Lady Gaga????
Congrats on your word count. That is some serious, kick-butt composition. Do you ever do Twitter sprints?

LMKee, LLC said...

You mean I missed the deal on Lady Gaga (LOL)
I was wondering what had happened to the Amazon tags.
Boy, did you really kick butt this week with your word count ~ congrads are in order.

Good luck on the coming week and I hope Amazon fixes their bugs.

Claudia Lefeve said...

Wow, glad I was out of town for the whole Lady Gaga/Amazon Affair. Thank goodness I average about 1 sale a week, or I'd be a nervous wreck!

Good job on your book! I am slowly pluggin away and hope to reach at least 50k for my WIP.

Mandy Boles said...

They were definitely not prepared for Gaga! I feel bad for everyone that lost sales and hope the digital marketplace prepares for the next time something like this happens.