Week Eleven: Finally past 100,000!

Week eleven was my lowest word count of the year. Between SC Comicon last week and NC Comicon this weekend, the bookends of two big cons shifted my creative energies away from writing fiction and toward the business and promotional side of my job. Last weekend I sold out of several titles and was low on others, and with a lot of cons coming up in the next few months I spent a good chunk of Monday figuring out my inventory needs and placing orders for books. Then, this weekend, I wound up selling out of more stuff and this morning had to put in an order for even more books. (It's been a freakishly good two weeks for short story collections and superhero novels.) Also, in between cons, I wound up creating a lot of new mini-signage to place around the books, laminated book covers to stand in for sold out titles, and order forms for people still interested in buying a sold out title. And this weekend I've really been admiring some signs on a table across the aisle, so there's even more sign design in my near future.

The good news is that I'm not simply spinning my wheels. I've learned from some great self published book sellers at cons over the years, and now sell far more books than the typical author at the events I go to. Cons are a lot of work, but they do generate an increasingly large chunk of my revenue. This is balanced by a big investment in time in effort, but I'm still convinced that actually selling my books directly has made me a better writer overall. Figuring out how to pitch my books has helped me figure out what's important about my books, and when my enthusiasm for a book gets picked up by a buyer, it's a pretty great moment.

With the caveat, of course, that the more time and effort I put into selling my books, the less time and effort I spend on, you know, writing them. So, this week, 4757 words, bringing me to 102,696 for the year. More than a fifth of the way there! And, while I have a lot of cons still to go over the next several weeks, NC Comicon is my last three day con for a while, which should help me get back on track.

Forward!