Thanks To You, My September Has Been Amazing!

OK, I want to recap my last post. Milestones I hit this month.

33 A.D.: sold its 1,500th Kindle copy.
The Lake and 17 Other Stories: sold its 500th Kindle copy.
Saying Goodbye to the Sun: sold its 250th Kindle copy.
GRUBS: sold its 100th Kindle copy.
Total Number of Kindle Books Sold: passed 2,000, then passed 2,500.

How cool is that? 6 milestones in one month. Could September get any better?

Turns out the answer is a resounding YES!

When I woke up yesterday morning (9/28/10), I had sold 943 Kindle books for the month of September. 57 short of 1,000. I thought no way I hit 1,000 today, but I should hit it tomorrow.

Last night at about 11:30 PM, someone bought that 57th book. I couldn’t believe it.

1,000 Kindle books sold in September with two days left. How off the wall cool is that? It’s my fist 4 digit month ever. Other writers sell huge, massive amounts of Kindle books every month. Amanda Hocking, for example, has sold 20,000 books this year. Unless I’m mistaken, she published her first one around the same time I did. Let’s check the score.

Amanda Hocking: 20,000.
David McAfee: Less than 3,000.

Clearly, Amanda is beating the snot out of me, and she isn’t the only one. Writers like Joe Konrath, Karen McQuestion, D.B. Henson, Zoe Winters, and Willie Meikle routinely sell thousands of ebooks every month. Now, that shouldn’t be interpreted as bitter. Those writers worked hard to get where they are and they are all very talented. They deserve those sales if anyone does.

But even they once had a time when they didn’t sell 1,000 copies in a month. For some of them, that time was very short. For others, it took a few years.

What does that mean for me?

It means I’m on the right track.

Here’s to October.

Some exciting things coming up for me next month. First, my radio spots go live in October. Jennifer Alexander, the midday DJ for local radio station B97.5, will feature 33 A.D. as her Book Club Book for October. She’ll be giving away one copy per week, and I believe I’ll have two radio spots per day all month long that talk about the book.

Also, Amanda Hocking (who is super nice and a lovely woman – you should all buy her books and read them ASAP) informed me this morning that she is going to recommend my book, GRUBS, on her blog next month because “it was the most creeped out I’ve ever been reading anything AND it gave me nightmares, which books never do.”

How cool is that? Not that I gave her nightmares, I wasn’t trying for that, but that she liked the book enough to recommend it. That’s off the frickin’ wall!

Thanks, Amanda!

Thanks also to every other writer I’ve ever talked to, commiserated with, laughed with, gotten nervous with, and even gotten irritated with. I have learned at least one thing from each and every one of you, and I’m itching with excitement over writing my next round of Acknowledgements.

And thank you as well to every single one of you that has picked up one of my books or will in the future. That’s not a feeling I can ever fully explain. Words like awesome and incredible and amazing just don’t quite get there.

Awed, maybe.

Anyway, I should get back to work. Once again, thank you, guys, for making my September so amazing.

September Rocks!

September has been a good month for me. Not as good as August, but still pretty darn good. In August, I did my first bit of advertising, and it worked quite well. In September, I have not done any advertising, but still have sold over 750 Kindle books, and the month isn’t over yet. Could this be my first 1,000 book month?

Probably not. But it’s coming.

What did happen this month is I hit a few milestones. 33 A.D. sold its 1,500th Kindle copy, GRUBS sold its 100th Kindle copy, Saying Goodbye to the Sun sold its 250th Kindle copy, and The Lake and 17 Other Stories sold its 500th Kindle copy. Also, I hit the 2,000, and then the 2,500 mark for total book sales. To me, that’s pretty cool. 2,500 people I’ve never met have bought my books. With luck, most of them like it and tell their friends. That’s how word of mouth works.

Still, one of the coolest things that has happened to me this month was getting mentioned on author J.A. Konrath’s blog.. I haven’t had anywhere near the success he has, but he’s been doing this longer than I have and has 19 books out compared to my 4. Give me time, and I’ll catch up. OK, maybe not completely, but I do think I can at least close the gap a bit.

Some weird things happened this month, too. One reviewer on Goodreads accused me of trying to promote a Christian agenda with 33 A.D. Since I’m not even Christian, that was news to me. I wonder if she wrote reviews about Clash of the Titans accusing the producers of trying to promote a Greek Pantheon agenda. Probably not.

I will probably do a longer blog post about some things that the reviewer made me think about in the coming weeks, but not today. Today is a happy blog post. Milestones. Thousands of books sold. Managed to get on J.A. Konrath’s radar…kinda. At least he knows I exist. That’s something, right?

Yep. Today is a happy day.

Oh, and I saved the best for last. Today we have another appointment for an ultrasound. 20 weeks. If we were going to find out the baby’s gender, this would be the one they would use to tell us. But we aren’t. We decided to wait until the baby is born.

Crazy? What do you mean?

OK, maybe a little.

Lots of searches for Neil Jackson and Ghostwriter Publications

I’ve noticed that many of the search terms people use to find my site have to do with Neil Jackson and Ghostwriter Publications. I guess that’s fair, since I spent a great deal of time ranting about them. I do get a lot of searches for “David McAfee Author” or “David McAfee 33 A.D.” I even get searches for “I never saw a wile thing feel sorry for itself.” Yup. lots of ‘em. Even a few for “Baby Bump.” It’s amazing what serach terms on the internet end up leading to me.

So far, no one has found this site by doing a search for “stupid piece of dog$#*@!” but it’ll probably come sooner or later.

After several years of blogging, by far my most popular post has been this one about Neil Jackson and Ghostwriter Publications. It’s been viewed well over three thousand times. Amazing. I guess people who are about to enter into a business agreement with Neil are doing their homework. Good. One young writer emailed me to tell me he’d stumbled across my page while researching Mr. Jackson. Apparently he thought Neil sounded a bit arrogant when he accepted the young man’s work and the fellow wanted to know more about him and his “publishing company.”

I’ve never seen so many Thank You’s in one email.

Neil might be doing OK by some of his writers, but I also know more have left GWP for other pastures. If he’s smart, he’s at least treating the “name” authors well: Willie Meikle, Scott Nicholson, Jon F. Merz, and Rick Hautula. There are probably more, but I haven’t visited the site in so long I couldn’t say.

All I know is the creep still hasn’t paid me, but that’s all right because I’m doing fine on my own.

In fact, I just checked 33 A.D.’s Kindle ranking in the Amazon UK Kindle store, and it’s currently #2 in horror, and #3 in Werewolves and Vampires. Neat, huh? Check the pic:

So, yeah. I guess I should say thank you to Neil. Why? Why would I thank that lying dirtbag? Well, because if he had honored any of his agreements with me or treated me with a modicum of respect, I’d have to share some of the money I’ve made selling over 2,000 books on Kindle. Granted, 2,000 books might not seem like much to a lot of authors, but it’s a good start. A damn good start.

On to 10,000.

Um…. WTF?

Take a look at this image. This is from my Blog Stats. It tells me what terms people keyed into search engines that led them to my blog. Look at the third one down.

Wow.

Just… wow.

How weird can people get?

Makes me wonder if there’s an “adult film” called Baby Bump out there about a bunch of very pregnant women running around being very, very naughty.

Heather Showing Off Her Baby Bump.

Took some pictures of Heather in one of her maternity outfits yesterday after work. She’s about 4 months along. Ain’t she cute?

David McAfee’s Rules of Writing: Don’t Sweat The First Draft!

Okie dokie, folks. It’s time for the second installment in the David McAfee Rules of Writing. Because, you know, so many people out there are hanging on every character I type. They want this info. Need it, even. Their lives will not be complete until I… oh, who am I kidding? I just like the sound of my own voice, even if it’s typed.

So today I want to talk about first drafts. Most of them are horrible. Awful, ugly things. That’s OK. Really. That’s the way a first draft is supposed to look. This is the stage where the writer is, or should be, having the most fun. There may be parts of the story that we get stuck on, but for the most part this IS the creative process. Right here. Getting words onto paper or onto the screen. And the words never come faster or with more intensity than they do at this point. At least that’s been my experience so far.

But too many writers worry about making everything perfect on this all important first draft, and that can suck the creative life right out of a story. Adverbs? Passive voice? Clunky phrasing? Plot holes? You betcha! In fact, this is where those things belong and – dare I say it? – actually serve a purpose. They help to grease the wheels between your mind and the keyboard, so don’t worry if they pop up through the story. It’s OK. You can worry about purging that kinda stuff in revision.

Pssssst: that’s what the revision process is for. Just sayin’.

I never worry about good grammar or adverbs or any of that stuff in my first draft. If I did, I’d never finish a story because I’d be constantly going back and changing things. I prefer to let the words flow while the well is full, if you know what I mean. To me, that’s the best way to write, and the most honest.

Of course, your mileage may vary.