Written Wednesday...

I sold four books today. That's nice, but in itself not why I'm blogging.

At the end of the day, I felt blessed not by the purchases themselves, but the various routes people took to get their hands on my book.

Book #1: A good friend and colleague had asked for a copy several weeks ago, so I slipped it into his box at work. He showed up this morning, requesting a signature on the book for his nephew and a second book for himself. Having such support from a person I see nearly every day, whom I count among the reasons I love my day job? It's proper cool.

Book #2: My mother met me in Willmar to help me set up a table at the regional Education Minnesota (Go union!) Fall Drive-in. I wasn't allowed to sell books, but I could give out information to teachers about Skyping with me, getting free Kindle versions of the books for classroom use and discounts on class-set purchases, and such. The very first woman to approach our table squealed in glee, "Oh! I just bought that book from Amazon and it arrived this week!" (So she was the one, I thought.) We had a nice chat about how she'd heard of the book, which was a conversation she'd been in where others told her it was a wonderful read and recommended it to her. I blushed. I felt humbled. And proud. Random people in Morris are chatting about this little project on which I embarked a few years ago... And they liked it. Wow.

Book #3: Meanwhile, the mother of a current student, who is "me" for all intents and purposes at a neighboring district as she teaches the same curriculum there as I teach here, asked me to slip her a copy surreptitiously and vowed to send a check along tomorrow via the aforementioned student (her daughter). She is an amazing teacher -- one for whom I have so much respect and admiration. I don't know how people do my job and always have a perfect haircut and run marathons and raise families, but they do. And they do it well. She is such a person.

Book #4: The phone rang after 9:00. My first thought was, this will be a phone solicitor. Do I even want to crawl out from under the covers to check? On the off chance that it was NOT a phone solicitor, I did manage the crawling bit, and was delighted to see a local number on the caller i.d. Turns out it was a retired teacher who wanted a copy of the second book for her grandson in North Dakota. She offered to drop off a check at the high school in the morning if I'd leave her a copy in the office.

So. I've done a fairly meager amount of marketing, resulting in fairly meager sales. But each sale is a story that I enjoy hearing and making happen.

PS I tried having a nonpublicized "free" Kindle day last week, just to see the difference between the first free day, on which 238 copies of the book were downloaded, and what would happen when I didn't do any promoting. In other words, I wondered approximately how many of the first free day's "sales" were random ones from Kindle owners trawling the free books list and nabbing whatever sounded interesting. Turns out that number is 40. This means that most -- 200ish -- of my giveaways on the first day were from loyal friends and supporters. How cool is that?

Unveiling Cover #3!

Ryan and Sean (and I) have been working on and off for 5-6 weeks developing the design for the third and final volume of my series, Super Power of the Day: The Final Face-Off, which will (fingers crossed) be officially published in January of 2013.

Drum roll...

I have to say, this is the most fun project. I love working on it, talking about it, and sharing my journey with friends. So many life-hacking-type websites encourage people who want to be successful, or be happy, or whatever, to just DO whatever you want to do. We are living in a moment where, for writers at least, that is more possible than ever in history. Literally. And I don't use that word hyperbolically.

I am glad the stigma of self-publishing is slowly fading. Over a fourth of Amazon.com's current top Kindle sellers are self-published. Wow. That's a lot of happy people!

Open House

Thank you, Montevideo Public Library, for hosting my open house book signing! It was a pretty low-key affair, but I enjoyed the company of many beloved people and met a few fans...

This was my favorite part:

Nephew Ethan ("E" on the volume #1 dedication page) proudly sported my Chase Cooper super cape all evening, flying around the room helping people to free bookmarks and stickers. Doesn't he look like the cover illustrations?

I think the $5 I offered him to be the official mascot of the night, which he renegotiated up to $5.50, was money well spent.

How To Get A Free Book

Tuesday, August 28, to celebrate the publication of Super Power of the Day: The Hero Chronicle Continues, I am giving the kindle version of the first volume (Origins of a Sixth Grade Superhero) for 

No tricks or gimmicks. If you have a kindle, just shop as usual and the price will be $0.00

If you don't have a kindle but DO have a home computer (windows or mac), smartphone, or tablet, you can download a free kindle reader app and join the party. I'd love for you to have my book for free as well. 

You may be thinking, "That's silly. Why are you giving it away for free, Ann?"

The thing is, amazon uses a book's sales to determine how visible the book is to customers. If I "sell" a lot of books (even for free), my sales rank goes up. Then, when a random person searches for a book like mine, my book will show up on the 1st search results page instead of the 10th. Although I have to admit, my book does show up on the first page for this search: book for sixth grade boy. Probably because of the subtitle.

My goal is to get at least 30 downloads of the book on Tuesday. Please help?

Thanks!

Our Local Paper Rocks!

For the second time in a year, the local paper has placed a wonderful story on my novels on the front page, above the fold, with a colored picture. I feel so blessed to live a such a supportive community.

Here's what it looks like:

Thank you Montevideo American-News and thank you journalist Martin Christenson!

Continued Good News

Two posts in one week. I must be cramming in posts before The Day Job officially takes over every waking moment of my day.

First, check this out:

That's from amazon.com. Nice.

Second, check this out:

That's volume #1 and a PRE-ORDER page for book #3! I haven't been able to crack the pre-order code on the major sites until now. They must be getting info from Bowker (the ISBN regulatory company), which means the pre-order page should also show up for volume 3 over at amazon, at some point.

Good thing we're working on the cover for book #3. The "Image Not Available" thumbnail is rather sad, don't you think? But easily fixable.

The absolute best part is that I now have a firm deadline on the third book. I'm pretty good with a deadline. And it helps that volume 3 is written, designed, and in final copy edits. It'll need proofing, too. But I'm pretty happy with the text already. It's fairly clean. And fun to read. If I do say so myself.

Here We Go!

Drum roll...

And here it is:

Book number 2 in the series is officially on sale at amazon.com! I know it says "temporarily out of stock," but it is available. Trust me. If you order it, amazon will contact my distributor and they will contact the printer and... voila! You'll get your book. It's Print on Demand. They'll never actually have the book "In Stock."

This is actually a nice thing. It means there will never be a stack or box or pallet of my books gathering dust in a warehouse or getting remaindered or shredded, which is good for the environment overall. Fewer wasted trees and all.

I'm not seeing the book at barnesandnoble.com yet. It seems to take them a bit longer to get the information from the distributor. If you are a bn fan, be patient. It'll show up eventually.

I'm quite pleased with the book. The blues of the cover are especially striking--more than the thumbnail can accurately portray. Fingers crossed that my initial order arrives before the big open house and book signing on TUESDAY, August 28, 7:00-8:30 p.m., Montevideo Public Library. All are welcome!