This and That

No sales this week.  I do have on event scheduled this coming weekend.  It is a local event at a retirement center.  Apparently the director of the festival has been talking up my books, so hopefully that will generate some decent sales.  I'm glad I've got something scheduled this month as I was feeling a bit antsy about not having anything this month.  I've been trying to contact the museum to get my books in there but every time I call, the person I need to speak to is out or not there.  Maybe this week before the scheduled event I can get my books in the gift shop at the Belton Depot Museum. 

This is the last week to get your raffle chances at the special price of 2/$1.  The drawing will be held December 1 and the afghan mailed out about the 7th of December.  If you purchase any book, you still get the 5 chances in the drawing. 

See you all in the postings - E :)

This and That

First, Happy Mother's Day to all my readers who are mothers and hope your day is extra special. It's definitely spring as my allergies are acting up and I've had a hard time with the runny nose and itchy eyes; one reason I try to not to go outside too much.

Yesterday's welcome center event was pretty successful on several accounts. First, one of the folks there was a representative for a hotel in Greenville, which is the town where our local Sisters in Crimes group meets and he gave me contact information for the owner or person who books their meeting rooms. Hopefully we can get the room booked when we need to for months that we can't have the Runway Cafe without paying a fee to book the meeting room. What's even better is they have a restaurant on site.

I did make a sale of Finally HOme from my car to same representative for his niece when I was packing up some of my things (but that is a hush hush sale since we aren't technically supposed to sell anything at the welcome center secondary to it being a Federal Right of Way). When I got home I checked my kindle stats and noticed I had sold a copy of Finally Home.

That leads me into sales for the week. I sold 1 physical copy of Finally Home as noted above, 1 kindle copy of Finally Home and someone apparently ordered a print copy of Finally Home from Amazon as per my createspace accounting. I had a copy of "The Proposal" sell for kindle during the week and yesterday a copy of "The Tulip Kiss" sold in the UK - pretty good week for me - considering that I've not sold any copies of Finally Home since March at the SCASL conference.

All my ebooks are now available for all ereaders - nook, smashwords (which includes the Sony, Kobo, and computer files to read online), and kindle, except "Bride-and-Seek" as I'm waiting for Heather to get me a correctly sized cover for the nook and reformat the interior for smashwords. When Butterfly Halves is released, during my half a century celebration, I'll offer free downloads of several of the stories from smashwords. (My 50-day giveaway postings start June 5 and run through August 2, minus Sundays and holidays (but I may run a special giveaway for the 4th of July, after all, my JGDS series all about the United States, and what better giveaway than red/white/blue themed one.))

I hope to have at least 2 more afghans completed this week which will be available at the SC Book Festival next weekend. I'd like to have most of them completed, but I took some time away from them to work on a special order and with work and crazy things happening, I just haven't worked on the afghans steadily like I should have. If anyone wants to order an afghan that isn't completed yet (so far Bonbon print is the only completed one but Primary is half completed and Melonberry is started), I will be happy to complete that one before the others. Now is the time to start thinking ahead for presents for the holidays. Afghan orders can be made through my author website or the JGDS website under the gifts tab. Bookworms are still available in all colors and I'm still running my special of 25 bookworms for $30 through Thursday of this week.

Don't forget that chances for the red, white and blue granny square afghan are available throughout the year as well. These can be purchased on either website under the events or calendar of events tab.

This week coming up, tomorrow I'll talk about "website promotion versus book promotion, are they really that different?". Wednesday will be an open day as I've exhausted my WWYWWQ questions and didn't realize I had another week to go before taking a break. Thursday will be a pre-SC Book Festival posting. Saturday evening will be an update of the day's events and Sunday will be a 2-posting day as I'll post my This and That posting and then probably upon returning home after seeing what the event held as far as sales and what not goes. Hope you all have a great week. See you all in the postings - E :)

Afghan drawing is now a raffle

I've been steadily working on my red, white and blue crocheted afghan and have half the rows sewn together. I had originally planned to make the afghan for a drawing for the JGDS series only but have decided to do a raffle instead of a book purchase related drawing. Raffle tickets will be $1.50 each or 10 for $12. You can find the raffle buy buttons at both the JGDS website and my other writing website. Pictures will be posted by the end of the week. Drawing will be December 1, which is after my final event as this is a year-long raffle. I need the afghan to show at my events so that folks can purchase tickets in-person as well as online. Good luck to everyone - E :)

This and That - end of week report

So here it is the end of the third week of January and sales have been nil across the board, although I do think I had one view this week of one of the books on smashwords. I don't know what else to do to increase sales. You would think with 9 titles available and one almost available (which by the way will only be available for the Kindle when I do get it published) that I would have some sales. I'm trying to put myself out there and advertise my blog postings and my websites. (UPDATE 01/24/2012: When checking through all the kindle sites for the month-to-date reports this afternoon, I found a copy of "The Proposal" sold in the UK on the 21st, which would have been when this posting originally went up. So that makes 1 sale for the week ending 01/21/2012. - nothing to brag about really but a sale is a sale.) -

I went to the food bank Thursday and ended up spending over an hour there talking with one of the ladies whom I've known a long time but have lost contact with and found out she is now homeschooling her daughter and that she belongs to the Homeschooling Association in our county seat. I handed her a pack of bookmarks to pass out the information to the association members and we talked about possibly doing a workshop for the kids or even having me do a 6-week co-op instruction thing. Fingers crossed that something comes of that.

On the state story side, I'm doing my afghan drawing again this year; see my JGDS blog for more info about that. I have completed 54 granny squares for that and will be spending the week putting them together. I'm also working on finishing up daughter's afghan that I started before Christmas so those two projects are going; I'm kind of shifting between them but will probably work more on daughter's now since i still have 8 squares to crochet and then put them together. I may need to get some more yarn to make another row so her lap throw will be 6 squares per row by 5 rows - I'll have to decide when I get the 4th row completed.

When I finish the red/white/blue granny square afghan and I've finished daughter's, then with my left over red/white and blue yarn, I'll finish the round ripple afghan which will be for the drawing next year, and I'll do a varigated red/white/blue Alternating V Shell afghan. I'll be collecting my yarn throughout the year to make that one since it is only available at Hobby Lobby and is rather on the expensive side (at $3.99 per skein, not something I can afford) and I will have to get several skeins every other payday using their 40% off coupon and making several trips to town to get the yarn. I'll also have to pass funds to daughter and every time she goes have her pick up a couple of skeins too. The pattern says roughly 3 pounds of worsted yarn (the skeins are 5 ounces each) so if I've calculated corrected, hopefully I can get by with 8 skeins which is only 40 ounces, which is 1/2 pound shy. I will end it with just 8 skeins.

So that's what's been happening this week. Hopefully I'll start seeing some incline in my sales over the weeks. If anyone has any input as to how to increase my sales, I'm open to suggestions. Leave a comment and tell me something you'd like to see me doing that might help me boost sales - thanks all - E :)