“Early Returns are In…The Farpool lifts off!”

My new science fiction novel The Farpool was uploaded with no previous marketing or fanfare on June 24.  It’s gotten off to a rousing success. 

The ebook, now available at Smashwords, Apple ibooks, Barnes and Noble and other retailers, went straight into Smashwords’ Main Catalog and after a week and a half, has been downloaded 267 times.  In fact, in the early days, it was being downloaded at a rate of 5-10 downloads an hour.  This is very gratifying for me, as an author.

Smashwords has helped by launching their own mid-summer discount with most retailers.  In this promotion, they’re recommending all interested authors discount their priced books as much as 30-50%.  In my case, many of my works are already free (I am a relative unknown, so I’m trying to build an audience), so I just set everything I have uploaded to Smashwords to free.  We’ll see what happens.

My latest weekly downloads analysis shows that downloads across all my titles from the week from 6-27-16 to 7-5-16 increased by 319.  Significantly, exactly 100% of that increase was in science fiction titles.  My other titles are, at the moment, flat in downloads.  I think this says something about the types of readers who browse, download or buy ebooks.  More on that another time.

I have also uploaded in the last few days the latest episode of my serial Nanotroopers, done on July 1.  Episode 9 is at 59 downloads, after 4 days.  It’s been a steady mover, this series, but it has been slowing down lately.  I have planned some 22 episodes in total, so there may be work to do in juicing up downloads in the future.  Total downloads for the whole series are now at 2038, presumably many of these are the same downloaders from one episode to the next.  As mentioned in this blog before, Nanotroopers is a new departure for me, as I have included the upload schedule in the front matter of every episode, with title and date, etc.  I’m attempting to generate reader interest and downloads this way.  It seems to be working fairly well, but there’s a long way to go.

Upcoming work: 

I will continue to upload Nanotroopers episodes on the published schedule.  Episode 10 goes up to Smashwords on July 22…I’ll be done with it in a few days.   Writing a serial seems to be a good discipline for me, with the schedule, the need to move the story along smartly and keep it interesting and on track.  Mostly I already have this outlined ahead of time, but I’ve not hesitated to veer off course if I think the story needs it.

My next major work will be the final installment, the final story in Tales of the Quantum Corps.  The title is “Johnny Winger and the Battle at Caloris Basin”.  It brings this series to a close after seven books.  This is the same character who stars in Nanotroopers but later in life and painted on a much broader canvas.  In essence, Nanotroopers is a slice of Johnny Winger’s life just as he joins Quantum Corps and becomes a nanotrooper.   Tales of the Quantum Corps is his entire story, from beginning to the end…?

The next post to Word Shed will be on July 18.  In this post, I’ll be talking about Tales of the Quantum Corps and what it will take to wrap this series up in story #7.  By the way, I expect to begin the first draft on or about August 11.  With any luck, I can finish the first draft next spring.

See you on July 18.

Phil B.