This release went a lot smoother than usual. I guess after thirteen launches, I must be getting something right. Actually, I remembered those previous launches and how stressful they were, so I set a schedule of things to do, allowing plenty of time for overages. Still, I keep waiting for a boot to drop. The manuscript breezed through beta reading, editing, proofreading, and formatting way ahead of schedule. Eleven full days ahead, in fact. The link to Fallen Hero is down on the right.
In terms of the number of books sold, the release was second only to Fallen Angel, last spring. This was due to it being released at half price, instead of the usual $.99. The difference in launch day sales was only about 10%. It also didn't debut as high as Angel, showing up in the Amazon ranks at #119 on launch day and slipping down into the 400s now, nearly three days later.
I expect it to hold steady in the 400-600 ranks for a couple more days. Then the BookBub New Release Alert will go out to nearly 2200 followers there. A few days after that, the Amazon alerts will start going out. I anticipate a climb up to about the #200 rank then, and hold there for quite a while.
I think that simply making that schedule and sticking to it, had a lot to do with the lower stress level this time. When I posted the schedule on Facebook, I still had 30,000 words to write and I set a daily writing goal to meet it. I went over that goal every day and it was a good thing, because the book ended up being almost 20,000 words longer than planned.
