I wasn’t online much on Monday thanks to an afternoon doctor’s appointment but when I looked at my download numbers for He’s With the Band on Amazon I was floored. when I saw Monday’s final numbers I tanj near fell out of my chair. more “Finagle’s eyes! I can’t believe the downloads I’m getting on Amazon this week!”
Tuesday marked one year since I published He’s With the Band and it’s been an amazing year. I had no idea that within a year I’d have two more ebooks published, be available in so many stores, and have my ebooks downloaded so many times! more “Can you believe it’s been a whole year?”
… Twenty-four little hours
That song by Dinah Washington got cued up in my head as I was checking the stats on my books today. Not only have I seen He’s With the Band downloaded 80 times just this month, over the weekend someone bought Somewhere… and More over at Amazon. Of course that’s good news but I didn’t realize how much difference a single sale would make in my stats in the Kindle Store. How big a difference? Wow. more “What a diff’rence a day made…”
I’ve lived in Boston for 25 years now and didn’t know a lot about Franklin Park, part of the Emerald Necklace of public park space Frederick Law Olmstead’s firm designed back in the late 1800’s. But earlier this year I discovered Julie Arrison’s book Images of America: Franklin Park (Arcadia Publishing), about the design and creation of the park. There’s a whole lot more park than I had any idea about.
That’s how I start describing the book I’d like to make on the project’s Kickstarter page. Over the next 30 days I’m looking for people to help me raise $2,900 to fund the purchase of a new laptop and a smartphone to use to take pictures of Boston’s Franklin Park over the course of the next year.
Of course there’s more to pay for in that $2,900 bucks, like some really great premiums for people who help me fund the creation of the book. If you back me with as little as $25 US you will get a free copy of the ebook version of the book as well as access to a funders’ area that will have a lot of the pictures for the book as they’re taken. If you can donate more there’s some great added goodies waiting for you, including a signed copy of the paperback edition of the book when it comes out if you back me at the top level with $250.
The book will be published as an ebook in Fall 2015 both as an ebook via Smashwords (and their partner stores) and Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, as well as a print on demand paperback through Amazon’s CreateSpace. But you can get a free copy if you’re one of the book’s backers.
There’s only 30 days to get this done so if you can help you can’t wait too long to do it. Head on over to the project page and see what you can do to help make this book real. I promise there’s going to be a lot to like in it, even if you don’t live in Boston and don’t plan to visit. Our park really is that beautiful.
One of the things I love about Smashwords distributing my ebooks is that they give me great statistics, and they even let me get daily download numbers for my ebooks on days when I’m not able to get online thanks to their graphs that show the stats for each day. But Smashwords isn’t my biggest online partner in terms of sales, that’s Amazon and their Kindle Direct Publishing Program (KDP). The only problem is that if I can’t get online on a particular day I have no way of seeing how many downloads I got from day to day on Amazon.
But as of yesterday evening that’s all changed. more “Thank you Amazon for charts!”
I love looking at the stats for my ebooks every day. Even when there’s not much news I make a point to check the download numbers for He’s With the Band and the number of times the previews for Somewhere… and More and No Budget, No Pay got downloaded. It turns out that even eight months after I published WHTB I still see 200-250 downloads every month between Smashwords and their partner sites and Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program. more “We have a new milestone!”
