Busy, Busy, Busy

Don't cry for me, Argentina!
But awful timing has me waist-deep in papers to grade this week.
I teach four classes at one college and two classes at another, and all six classes turned in papers this week. So my days are spent teaching and grading, along with pigeon-holing workouts in between.
Think fondly of me and any blog posts I might have been writing if I weren't busy grading.
But wish me a quick green grading pen and perfect student papers.

Here's a photo of a friend of mine who's on the Appalachian Trail and took a copy of my book with her.

My novel, The Summer of France, is on sale on Kindle for 99 cents Friday through Sunday. If you haven't read it, I hope you'll give it a try and spread the word to your friends who love reading.

Number 19 -- Something to Brag About?

One of my new obsessions is checking my sales numbers on Amazon.
Since my book The Summer of France was published last fall, the numbers haven't been amazing, but they've been climbing slowly. After the initial purchases by people I know, the numbers fell off. In February, I decided to get serious about marketing. I started advertising on Goodreads. (Friend me if you want. I'd love to read your reviews.)
I've sent some press releases to the local newspapers and I'm preparing for a tour on Francebooktours.com, which is, of course, about books set in France.
So in February I set a goal to sell at least one book per day and I surpassed that goal. In March, I was shooting for two books per day and surpassed that.
For April, my goal has been four books per day. I'm a little behind that goal, but I've sold more than three books per day, so maybe I'll get an upsurge at the end of the month to meet my goal. (I feel like public radio.)
My ritual for checking my sales numbers is to first look at the Amazon.com numbers to see where I rank. Next, I look at Amazon.co.uk numbers to see where I rank there. My numbers are almost always better in the UK than in the US. It might be my British sense of humor! I've risen to as high as #8 in Kindle books under France.
Today, I hit a low number for the U.S., coming in at #19 for books on France in the Kindle paid category. Top 20. If my book were a song, Ryan Seacrest would be announcing me on the Sunday morning radio. (That's today's Casey Kasem for those of us who are older; and today's Dick Clark for those who are even older.)
So, I'll keep plodding along, hoping that each book I sell will lead to another one, or another two.
After all, it took 18 months for Eat, Pray, Love to hit the bestseller list. (I read that somewhere and I haven't verified it because it gave me hope and I don't want to lose hope.)
Thanks for all your support as I continue to muddle through this writing/publishing thing.

Goals

As most of you know, I've been slogging along doing okay selling my novel, The Summer of France, although I'm nowhere near a movie deal or quitting my day job (yet!).
This month I decided to set a goal of selling 28 books, equivalent to one book per day. That seemed like a manageable goal.

This is an alternate cover that I did not use

I had my Kindle giveaway the weekend after Valentine's Day and 870 people downloaded my book, including more than 150 in the UK and 6 in Germany!
My number of sales were increasing slightly. I had 14 sales on Feb. 20, so I hoped I could still sell 14 more for the month to make my goal.
Today, on Feb. 22, I checked my sales and I have 22 total sales for the month. So for today anyway, I have met my goal of selling one book per day.
That makes me happy.
For people with bestsellers, this probably seems silly, but I'm thinking momentum. Who knows what could happen?
And I just checked on Amazon, my book is #59 under Travel/Europe/France. That puts me in the top 100!
Thanks for all of your support. (If you haven't read it yet, it's available on Kindle for only $3.99 or in paperback for $14 at Amazon).
I'm going to start thinking about my goals for next month.
Onward!