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Sunday Update – March 26, 2017

What a long and tiring week!! I'm so glad it's over because this was definitely the last week of obligations for a while, and I needed to get through it.

The week started off rough. I pulled something in my lower left back on Saturday and it hurt all the way through Wednesday, finally ceasing when I went to the chiropractor and got an adjustment. Back pain can really take me out of commission but I know how to deal with it now. Lots of heat, rolling on the foam roller, and walking helps too. Walking loosens things up and as long as I stretch when I'm done, I can feel 100x better after a walk. Still, it definitely was a bummer to start out the week that way.

I *am* making great progress on my two novels-in-progress. I'm writing Daydreamer 4 and Hikoboshi 2 at the same time, cycling one book each day. The ideas are flowing and I'm enjoying living in both worlds at once. I think it helps that both books are very different from one another, so I'm not getting tripped up by going back and forth. By April 1st, I hope to get to the point where I'm writing at least 1500 words on each book each day, but I'm not there yet. Soon! My goal is to be finished with both books by June 1st.

A few other work-related things happened this week, besides finishing with all the teasers for THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE OPENS A TEA SHOP. One of my books, SUMMER HAIKUS, just has not performed well at all. I've spent hundreds of dollars, close to thousand, on this book between editing, covers, book tours, promotions, and sales, and it's made a grand total of $130 in almost two years. Sigh. Recently, I've been trying to revive it with Amazon ads, which are doing moderately well for my other books, and even those are a big fat loss. I've had some clicks and no buys. Someone recently asked me, when I talked about taking it off sale, “What's the harm of keeping it up for sale?” There are a couple of reasons why it's not good to keep this book up for sale. (1) Its sales rank is plummeting fast and some buyers pay attention to that. (2) Its also-boughts are beginning to disappear. This happens when a book doesn't get traffic or sales for a long time. It also makes the book less appealing. (3) I don't think I can revive my romance career. I don't think people want books about Asians in romantic settings, despite the cries for “diverse books.” It appears people only want diverse books of a certain kind.

So, I'm trying one more thing to bring SUMMER HAIKUS back from the brink of de-listing, and I plan to talk about it on the blog later this week once it's all ready. I hope you'll share the news once it's out there! If this doesn't work, I'll be taking both SUMMER HAIKUS and FACE TIME off sale in the summer. I've sold more of FACE TIME but it's been available longer. Still, it's also a hard book to sell.

Some of these thoughts about my career are coming because I'm moving forward with learning more about advertising and marketing. I just bought the Ad For Authors course from Mark Dawson & The Self-Publishing Formula and I'm learning how to focus my efforts on my brand and advertise to Facebook. I want to focus on my two better-perfoming genres, sci-fi and mystery, especially since my romance has never done well. But maybe with advertising, those two romances CAN do well. So I'm going to give it a shot. It's a last ditch effort, but I'm willing to try it.

To finish off the week, my oldest had her 10th birthday on Wednesday. Where does the time go? She was just a baby the other day! And then we celebrated yesterday by taking her friends to see Beauty & The Beast and then pizza and ice cream cake afterward. I'm glad the party went well and everyone had a great time! I'm also glad it's over as that was the last of my huge personal commitments for the coming months. :)

What else happened this week?

My park was still struggling to deal with all the snow we had the previous week.

You know what's going for a hurting back? A heating pad and a very strong drink.

I crossed the 10k mark in Hikoboshi 2!

I had sushi twice this week. It was needed.

The geese were very bold this week!

I enjoyed the first two modules of my FB Ads for Author course, with some Girl Scout cookies!

Coming this week on the blog: more information about SUMMER HAIKUS, and who knows what else!

4 thoughts on “Sunday Update – March 26, 2017”

  1. Sorry about your hurt back, but I’m glad it’s feeling better now. That also sounds tough with the book issues. I think sometimes it’s also the luck of the draw. Some books get lots of attention and others don’t, and it’s not always an indication of quality, but it still sucks. Hopefully your plan to save it will work though :-)

    Happy birthday to your daughter, and have a great week!

  2. Ouch that sounds painful that you pulled something in your lower back. Even if you know how to handle it I can imagine it doesn’t make for a good start of the day.

    It’s itnerestign to hear the writing two books at the same time goes well. I always read two books at the same time and don’t have trouble with it. So I guess it makes sense that it also works for writing. I am really curious about your new sci-fi series and the next daydreamer book!

    I feel so sad that Summer Haikus isn’t selling well. It’s one of my favorite books by you and one fo the best romance books I read and I can’t imagine why people don’t want to buy it. It’s so sad :(. I hope your last attempt to revive it will work.

    That facebook course you’re taking does sound promising and I hope it helps!

    I hope your oldest had a great birthday! Did you enjoy Beauty and the Beast? I’ve been seeing some comments this week from people who saw it and what they thought of it. I haven’t seen it yet. I hope you have a great week!

  3. I’m so disappointed that Summer Haikus hasn’t done well because I truly think it’s such a fantastic book—I honestly don’t understand sometimes why certain books click with an audience and others don’t. I’m really going to try hard to get some people to check the book out because it makes me sad that it doesn’t have an audience. :-(

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S. J. Pajonas