MATTHEW KEITH

Well... I got the first round of edits back, and there's a whole lot 'o' red. As I anticipated, I suppose. It's always tough to have whole chunks of your book deemed unnecessary. I know it doesn't mean the writing was poor or anything, it just means the information in those parts didn't serve the overall purpose, or went against something else in the book, or was redundant, or...

It's like this every time a book gets to this stage, and I'm used to it, but I always struggle with removing anything because some of the parts my editor tells me to dump are near and dear to my heart. I (almost) always end up caving in, because she's always so frustratingly right, but still... any author reading this knows exactly what I mean.

I still think I'll be on track to hit "publish" by the end of the month. I have 8 chapters edited, there are 26 total. I think I can do it... lol. If not, then it'll be very early August. Hey- the wait only makes it that much sweeter, right?

I'm sitting here waiting for all the sales reports to come in from the pizza stores tonight, and it naturally led me to thinking about book sales. For the last hour or so, I've been browsing blogs and forums for information on sales results from using Bookbub and Bookgorilla. I wanted to compare my own results to those of others, but I'm finding that hard to do because if you aren't comparing similar genres, especially on Bookbub, then you aren't comparing apples to apples. Sure, a book is a book, but there are a whole lot more "Thriller" readers on Bookbub than there are "SciFi" readers. Like- a LOT, lot more. I'll have to do some more digging to come up with any real solid numbers. As for Bookgorilla, I have an ad going out on the 22nd of this month with them, and was curious to see how they do for others, but most of the information I'm finding is a year old or more. I've done $0.99 ads with them before, and they weren't terribly effective, so I'm curious to see if promoting FREE with them will do any better.

I was thinking about posting tonight with a breakdown of how I've done since my Bookbub promo, but I think I'll wait until after the Bookgorilla promo is done and compare the two, as well as a few others. I know most authors appreciate the information (I know I do!) and I don't mind sharing, especially if it helps other authors who are trying to figure it out like me.

Oh- hey! Got a new car today. Ford Focus. I'm a little ashamed to admit it... I've gone from over a decade of driving pick-up trucks, to 7 years of SUVs, to 2 years in an Impala, and now a Focus. Am I shrinking? I don't think so, because the Focus still seems like a really small car from the outside looking in. I had to do it, though. I put 3,000 miles a month on my vehicle. The Impala was only 3 years old and it had 113k already. It was on borrowed time. For fuel economy and comfort, it'll be hard to beat the Focus. It's a lot roomier inside than I ever would have expected and it has a lot of bells and whistles like Sirius radio and the hands-free link to my phone.

I sound like a commercial, don't I?

Maybe I'm just trying to justify buying such a small car. It's black- does that put my Man Card back in my wallet?

No, I know it doesn't.