April Reading and May Goals

[osprey_archer]

After a blockbuster March in which I steamrolled through a complete draft of Sleeping Soldier, I didn’t do a lot of writing in April. Some Sleeping Soldier edits, some ficlets for Patreon, publishing some of my books wide with Draft2Digital… D2D sales have been sloooow, although this is partly because I started with two f/f works. Last week I put up an m/m short story, and you will be unsurprised to hear that it has already sold four times as many copies as the two f/f stories, which have been up longer.

This is atypical only in that my m/m sales overall are seven times my f/f sales. Is this pretty representative of the relative sizes of the m/m and f/f markets?

(You might imagine that there would be some overlap between the f/f and the m/m audience - this was certainly my hope as I started out. But it seems to be pretty small.)

So part of the reason I haven’t written much in April is that I’ve been contemplating my career direction. For philosophical reasons (and also I DO WHAT I WANT reasons) it feels bad to focus solely on m/m, but for “earning enough money to go to France” reasons it’s clearly the right choice, and as I commented to littlerhymes, the choice is not set in stone… can always change course later…

Although the math in favor of all m/m all the time is only going to get stronger the more of it I write.

***

Anyway, my goals for May:

1. Finish the first round of edits on Sleeping Soldier and send it to a second round of betas. (Is that an excessive number of betas? Maybe. I’ve just been working on this book for so long… I want it to be perfect…)

2. Cover for Sleeping Soldier! Contemplating whether I ought to find a new cover artist? Yes/no, and if yes, any cover artist recommendations?

3. Continue to put things on Draft2Digital. Contemplating whether to start putting up the Jennifer Montgomerys… I want to release the Christmas book close to Christmas, but if I did one every three months, say, that would work. Or would it be better to wait and release them all close together?

4. Start a new book project. I’ve been poking at a couple things but nothing is demanding to be written right now.

Comments

[littlerhymes]

Although the market for f/f is small I do hope that if you had a f/f story you really wanted to tell, you'd still consider writing it! For yourself but also for your readers (me).

I have liked your covers! I'm neutral on the idea of changing artists, though I do think there's something to be said about having a similar feel. Each of them is different but the books do look nice next to each other.

Releasing one every 3 months would let you do a round of promo for your name in general each time, so that might be advantageous?

[osprey_archer]

Part of the reason I have hesitated to make this decision (even though the writing has been on the wall for some time) is that there are some f/f stories I want to tell... but does it make sense to spend months and months working on Fritzi & Magdalena or 1910s college girls Goblin Market when it will probably make about $300? Perhaps no.

Maybe I should keep the same cover artist but come up with a cover concept a little more on trend with the current m/m covers. A man in a Civil War uniform snuggles close to a man in something that reads really 1960s! Trying to think of something really sixties that isn't hippie tie dye, as Caleb is not really a hippie tie dye type of person.... Okay, maybe Caleb is just in general mid-twentieth century clothes, but the surroundings are very sixties? Volkswagen Beetle... neon signs... the two of them leaning over a milkshake like a dating couple in a Norman Rockwell painting...

I like the idea of releasing a Coffee Shop Romance every three months, partly because that means I get to release The Caramel Macchiato Kiss next month, as a trial balloon for m/f on Draft2Digital. Also that gives me a few months to revise The Italian Soda Summer... I have decided to take out the sex scene, as all the other books in the series are sweet romances with nothing more than kissing, and it makes more sense to make them all the same.

[asakiyume]

If you don't mind writing m/m, you're certainly good at it--the stories are always great. And I guess if you do well enough, you can sometimes finance a book that you just feel like writing, commercial considerations be damned.

[luzula]

I see that a few of your books have now gone up on places where I can buy them (which I can’t on Amazon, sigh)! So I guess I'll keep an eye out for the ones I've been interested in. : ) Er, or would you be willing to sell me a couple of them over e-mail, and I can PayPal you? ETA: Er, sorry for asking if you'd rather not do that! I can totally wait--it's not like my to-read list is short anyway...

(I am amused that the next hit under your actual books is The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle by J. Glenn Gray, which does not seem that far off from your interests...*g*)

[osprey_archer]

I like writing m/m, but it bugs me to feel that I HAVE to write it because it's so much more popular than f/f, you know? In a perfect world, wouldn't there be more parity...

However, if one wishes to make money to go to France and Japan, at some point one must simply face the sales numbers and make the obvious choice.

Having said this I have not managed to obvious next step of "start a new book," and all the resolutions in the world are worthless if you don't manage to WRITE THE BOOKS!

[osprey_archer]

Oh, sorry, the email notification for this post just got lost in the shuffle when I came back from my camping trip! Too many emails to catch up on...

Anyway, I've sent you a PM!

[asakiyume]

>>sending moral support<<

Judging from cats, sometimes you need to circle round a thing a few times before you pounce.

(and yes, ideally there WOULD be more parity--or we could even just cut out that "more"...)