Surprise

One of our morning visitors.

The trio of coyotes came by again, at almost exactly the same time. Tomorrow I'll have my camera ready and try to get all three. They look like a mom and two teenage pups. Completely fearless. Beautiful and yet...

It puts me in mind of this:

Deliver my soul from the sword,
My darling from the power of the dog.

That's from Psalms, but it came to my attention as the flyleaf quote in Thomas Savage's The Power of the Dog. Really wonderful book, if you've never read it.

I like that as an analogy - the power of the dog in our lives, the shadow that lurks, that we close the doors to. We turn away and think about other things.

So, here's an other thing.

Author Jim C. Hines often interesting statistics on his blog, about his publishing history, etc. This is an fascinating one that he cross-posted to SF Novelists about the myth of the Overnight Success. If you haven't looked at it, it's well-worth the time. Inspiring, even.

In that spirit, I thought I'd share some statistics on on Petals & Thorns. (Like Jim, I'm a graph and stats geek, too. Apologies if you're not one of those.)

This shows my sales since the release day in July. As you can see, there were a lot of initial sales, which then tapered off. I pretty much expected that. The numbers were higher than I'd anticipated for a first-time author in the genre, no name-recognition, etc. These were all sales through Loose Id. When I saw my October statement, I though, eh, it's run its course.

So, what happened in November? All Romance Ebooks started selling it. Quite the sales jump there. They were kind enough to give it a top rating and a staff pick, which I'm sure helped a great deal. You can see my royalties per book aren't quite as high with the reseller - it's about 20 cents per book less - but the higher traffic is certainly worth it.

I don't know how this system works, if Loose Id typically sells a book exclusively for four months and then offers it to All Romance. My statement from Loose Id also includes columns for other resellers: Lightning Source, Fictionwise, Amazon, Sony eBooks and Barnes & Noble. It will be interesting to see if they are gradually added.

At any rate, I'm close to making RWA's criteria for published author status. Nice return for my little 26K erotic novella. And replete with irony, I know. Petals & Thorns might get me there where my essay collection and two novels have not. I'll take the promotion, however.

One thing I've learned, and as Jim Hines' graph illustrates, too - the road to our goals seldom unfolds the way we think it will. Every success is another step, another brick in building the palace.

It's only in fairy tales that wishes make palaces appear overnight.

In life, we build them through persistence and endurance. Always guarding against the power of the dog.