Yesterday, I did a read-through of
Unrivaled before I sent it off to my beta reader Mellanie Szereto for her careful scrutiny, and I was surprised at how many tiny little errors I found. Nothing major--an extra space here, a missing word there--but those are things that used to annoy me as a reader. Not wanting those mistakes to annoy anyone else, I'm doing the best I can to weed them out.
After that, I critiqued two chapters for Nan and a synopsis for Sandy. Guess I've done everything I can to avoid judging those contest entries. Must bite the bullet and start on them. Soon. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised, but most of the time, I'm not. The trouble with contest entries is that you don't get to choose what you read. I found that out when I had to read a stack of books for RWA's Rita awards this year. When you get a book to judge that isn't the sort of book you normally read or enjoy, it's tough to be impartial--or even read it through to the end. I had to
make myself sit down and read them.
Next weekend, I'll be attending the IRWA meeting and will get my goody bag back from our wonderful chaptermate who drove to the conference and offered to take stuff back home for those of us who flew. I'll be doing a giveaway (maybe two) in the weeks to come, but I want to make sure I have everything before I run a contest. By that time,
Unrivaled will probably be available for sale, and I'll do some giveaways of that too. Just wish I had some good pics for you to caption. Not sure how I'm gonna do it. Those Rafflecopter things confuse the hell out of me.
Speaking of things that confuse me, here are some statistics that I find very interesting. Book sales seem to drop off at the end of the month, then pick up again on the first--even if the first is in the middle of the week. I was shooting for 100 net sales of
Undeniable on Amazon for July. I sold 105, but had seven returns, which left me with 98. I tweeted and posted links on Facebook for a couple of days, but no dice. Then yesterday, August 1st, I sold two copies. I hadn't sold anything on Nook for three days, then on the first of the month, I sold four. I'm guessing it has to do with the way people are paid or budget their money, or the fact that most new books are released early in the month, so that's when people go book shopping. I've also noticed that I sell the most books late at night on weekends.
Nothing too surprising about that, now, is there?
