I honestly wasn’t expecting great things from the launch of my latest book, “Taghri’s Prize“, yesterday.
It had been almost a year since I’d last published anything, thanks to a prolonged bout of ill-health fighting kidney stones. (My creative muse goes on strike when pain levels get too high. It’s no fun.) I was expecting to have to rebuild my “name recognition” on Amazon, and build up a new readership cadre.
I suppose that’s still a requirement; but my existing readers clearly haven’t forgotten or abandoned me, for which I’m very grateful. After just one day on sale, my book’s statistics look like this:
That’s better than I’d dared to hope for. It’s also (at the time of writing) hit #19 on Amazon’s “Hot New Releases” list for Epic Fantasy, and #18 on the Sword And Sorcery list. That really pleases me! In the past, when I was publishing more frequently, I’d expect my books to break into the top 2,000 in the Kindle Store, and perhaps into the top 1,000 if they were particularly popular. This isn’t quite there, but it’s close enough that I’m very satisfied. It gives me a solid foundation on which to build. (Of course, the ranking will drop rapidly; the present numbers are in response to the launch, and will taper off quickly, but it’s still a good start.)
Meanwhile, Amazon has also released the new e-book edition of “Rocky Mountain Retribution“. It’s not yet linked to its hardcover edition, with all the previous reviews, but that’ll happen pretty soon.
The sidebar link to my Ames Archives series links to the paper edition, if you’d prefer that. They’ll be combined into a single link within days. The third, new book in the series, “Gold On The Hoof”, will be published during the second half of August.
All in all, I’m satisfied with progress so far. If I can complete and publish two more books this year, along with “Taghri”, “Gold” and the two re-issues of the earlier Ames Archives books, I’ll be a happy camper (not to mention writer!). I’ll also be working on a collaborative novel with a well-known author, and trying to update earlier editions of most of my books with more readable versions (thanks to the Vellum software I’m now using to format them).
Thank you again for your support. It means more than I have words to express.
Peter
Hey Peter;
You are a good guy and a good writer, so as they say here in the south "No Biggie" and you get bonus points for dealing with Old NFO 😀 I have started reading it last night, and will leave a review as soon as I finish.
Only 1 review 🙁
What other writers do is they have advance readers that do a review on launch, and add the words they were provided an advance copy in the review.
Amazon seems to have a magic number for reviews that pushes sales.
Started reading Taghri last night. Sucked me right in. Good stuff!
I read it yesterday. It is fast moving and overall a pretty good book – my only quibble is that things seem to go too well and too easy for Taghri; he never faces any setbacks and he has time to change plans when they fail.
Read Taghri. Good story. left a review.
Things did break pretty good for him, but that is what made it fun.
Looking forward to his further adventures.