I had to gear myself up to write this. I have to say, I'm not in the greatest of moods. All month long I've been trying to block out my sales numbers. Last month was a good month and, of course, I thought this month would go up as usual. I especially thought so because this was the first month publishing my podcast. It turns out that my sales are down this month.
My ebook sales being down this month is hard enough, but what really makes me want to crawl into bed and hide under the sheets is the fact that my audio book sales are way down. In fact, yesterday was my first day when I didn't even receive one sale on my audio books. That's heart-breaking for me... especially since I started the podcast specifically to increase my audio book sales.
And it isn't like people aren't enjoying the podcast. So far I have gotten 4 five star reviews, and iTunes lists all of them as being the highest level on the popularity listing. That surprises me because I know how many listens I'm getting. I have gotten hundreds of listens and not thousands. Obviously its a relative scale, but still, it's a little heart-breaking that even with these hundreds of listeners I'm having a down sales month. I know that Easter and Tax day had a lot to do with it, but not everyone is down this month. With this increase in marketing, I feel like I should be one of them.
So this plus a few more things going on in my life is bringing me down right now. I decided not to kill myself on my production schedule this week and now I'm a full day behind schedule. Also, in spite of my latest release selling well, my other newest titles aren't selling well... except for the title that made me take a break to "find my soul". That is turning out to be my best selling book. The English version is selling like crap, but the German version is outselling all of my other books. Amazing.
Anyway, today is the type of day that I wish I were one of my characters and I could just crawl into someone's arms and lie there for a few minutes. On top of that, a friend offered me a job doing a light re-edit on his movie. I want to do it and probably will, but I will fall even further behind on my production schedule. I should be glad that I can take a break for a fun job, but in the mood I'm in, it just weighs me down even more.
Really, this mood I'm in is because my sales are down. And it is such a clique in my writing circles, but I can't help but think that my wonderful ride is over. I used to release new books and they sold copy after copy. When that stopped I managed to get the same result when I released the audio book. Now that that seems to have gone, all I have are the German books and the book I released yesterday hasn't even gotten a sale yet... I was expecting this latest German release to be a good seller. I'm feeling very defeated.
Tomorrow morning I have a podcast interview with a person who is probably the most successful erotica writer on iTunes. He was one of the people that inspired me to give this genre a try. But even though the questions are already written, I am feeling another failure coming on. I'm not sure how I can fail with the interview, but I feel like I'm emanating failure right now. And all of this failure is happening while I was supposed to be increasing my income so that I can afford my place without a roommate. I'm feeling very weighed down.
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