Ren and Ina ❤ (Autumn Chaos)
I’m not sure I should be an author. Yesterday was our release day, which stressed me the hell. You are giving your “baby” to the world, and you don’t know how it will be received or if anyone would even be willing to buy it. So I spent a whole day looking at the KDP screen and Ingram’s sales to find out if we got any luck.
I also fucked up the Newsletter. I wanted to give our readers something more than just a book to hold and included giveaways and other authors’ free books instead of our usual content … and got spam complaint. Thankfully, it was only one person out of a few thousand emails we sent and likely a lover of free books because the sign-up came from BookFunnel, where you get one of our free books in exchange for joining our readers’ group. Still, it was upsetting, and I ensured his email never appeared on our readers’ list.
I also used the new “time wrap feature”, which messes with statistics so much that I didn’t know if anyone got or opened our email. I definitely didn’t need all this stress on the release day.
Today I promised myself to take a step back and try to relax. I’m not in control anymore. The book is out there, a blog tour is on, and adverts are running. I asked my ARC group for reviews, and some of them have already posted them, making me a delighted writer. As for the rest, I hope reviews will come, and people will like Ina’s adventures, and I should move on to the next step.
The second book, WINTER DRAGON, is with beta readers now. I toyed with asking my readers to beta-read for me, but I went with professionals in the end. Mainly because I like to have large reader’s reports, and my questionnaire is quite extensive. Asking someone that reads for pleasure to answer 30 detailed questions doesn’t seem fair. And if everything goes as planned, we will have the book released on 22nd December.
Now I must sit down and focus on writing SPRING LOVERS. As for my peril, I’ve made the plot quite complex in the third book, and I’m struggling with some parts. Still, it is a good reminder of why I enjoy writing, because the marketing and the tediousness of little things that have to fall back into place before book release are soul-destroying.
Now I need to go and repeat my mantra for the day:
I MUST NOT LOOK AT SALES