Thursday:

International BookBub starts tomorrow. In truth, it's already Friday the 13th in Australia. It's probably going to be a lot harder to earn back the investment since the book is only 99 cents. (Amazon reduces the royalty from 70% to 30%, plus the much lower price.) I figure I have to sell at least 800 copies. I don't know what will happen. But "Deadfall Ridge" was already having a good month, so I might be halfway there under the usual price.

I'll be haunting the Australia, UK, and Canada Amazon lists for a couple of days.

I'll be working at Pegasus on Friday through Monday so Sabrina can go to the Portland comic convention. That will be my first four-day stretch in a long time. I'm having to relearn to pace myself. I have a tendency to blow all my social energy in the first couple of hours and ride on empty for the rest of the day, so I need to watch that.

That said, I'm really enjoying it. I'm fully engaged in the new book ordering, and that is keeping me interested. I did about 60% of the debt reduction I wanted to do this summer--on the other hand, I did that without scrimping in the slightest. That is, I could have gotten the other 40% if I'd just stopped buying anything the last couple months, but then the store would be depleted going into the slow months, so that's Pyrrhic victory, at best. If I can get 2/3rds of the debt reduced by the end of the year while keeping the store fully stocked, that would be fantastic.

The debt has proven to be worth it: sales on new books and graphic novels fully justify it. That's a level of sales that will pay off for years, long after the debt is repaid.

Saturday:

Haunted the webs yesterday. It took awhile for the promotion to take effect in England and Australia. Reached the top hundred in Canada and Australia, the top ten in suspense novels in Canada. But didn't quite displace Stephen King's new book. Heh.

I used the enthusiasm of the moment to sell my books in the store. "Look!" I point at my computer screen. "I'm the #7 bestselling thriller in Canada!'

Anyway, sold about 12 paperbacks. I probably won't try so hard today, because it's exhausting and I am never totally sure if I'm taking advantage of people. I always try to give them an out.

Apparently, my publisher thought I was going to get a different promotion for the US, and I assumed that he was going to do it. Miscommunication. Probably because he did BookBub on his own, so when he mentioned other promotions, I figured it was his thing to do. So having the book for only .99 in USA might have actually hurt a little. (The book had been selling as well or better at the full price.) Was told by publisher we need to sell 570 copies.

Anyway, that was fun. Nice to see my name in lights.