2018 sales thus far...

Ironically speaking, the summer (for me anyway) is always a slower time for book sales. You would assume with all those beach readers out there that the opposite would hold true, but I guess people spend less time indoors and therefor they don't have their faces stuffed in a book like they would in the winter months.

In any case, the question of sales came up the other day with my agent, Sam, and for the fudge of it, I decided to make at least a cursory check on what I had sold thus far in 2018. I'd never really performed a data check before because like my dad used to say, you should always be making money and striving to make more, so why bother checking on what you've already done? But then, by seeing what's selling and what's not, you're better able to make adjustments to certain books. If they are indie books, you might want to take them out of wide and put them back in KU for instance. That sort of thing.

Keep in mind, these number DO NOT INCLUDE paper (both hard and soft), nor audio, nor page reads (for those books in Kindle Unlimited). Nor do they include the numbers I did with the publishers I am presently working with. They do include my "rounded out" Thomas & Mercer numbers however. The numbers are not exact but as close as I could get without actually printing out statements.
 
Kindle Direct Publishing and Apub: 17,500+/- units
Draft2Digital: 2,100+/-
Publish Drive: 52 units (This is Google Play which I just joined last month)

Okay so for the first half of the year we're looking at around 20K sales. When you include the paper and audio,  etc. it's probably more like 22-23K, again not including the numbers from two publishers, nor the hundreds of thousands of page reads at .0045 per page read. Price points range from 0.99 to 7.99.

What's it all represent? Most romance writers would laugh at these numbers, or assume they read the opening wrong and I'm just talking about one month (although I have had instances where I've done these numbers in a single month). But then, for a hard-boiled writer, these are pretty respectful numbers for a half year. It means there are authors doing far better and probably plenty more who are doing a lot worse. For certain, my indie numbers have picked up a lot from last year, and that's what counts since this is a long game, not a sprint. It's also not a zero sum game, meaning I'm not competing with anyone. I'm competing with myself. It's also a living.  

I also have some income from the occasional journalism piece, three novels from the Chase Baker series that I produced and bestselling author Ben Sobieck wrote, plus there's the course I did for Writers Digest. 

The takeaway? Constant production and constant publishing over multiple platforms, both indie and traditional, remains of paramount importance. So is having a very good agent. I haven't done much with subsidiary rights this year but I plan to in the coming months. I also use AMS ads, FB ads (to a degree), apply for Book Bubs as often as possible, run a couple of flash sale promos per month, actively build my subscriber list with a permafree book (Moonlight Falls), and recently I've added a marketing dude to my team of editors and artists. We'll see if he delivers the positive ROI he promises.

But for those who believe it's impossible to make a living writing thrillers should think again. It's very possible if you're willing to work at it and treat it like a business. But then, in all honesty, I'd do it for free.

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM


 

Da Vinci

Dan Brown wrote his story about Da Vinci. I wrote the other story about Leonardo Da Vinci. The rarely told one about the cave he visited as a child outside his home in Vinci, Italy, and where, legend has it, he received divine power. Or, the talent to create works of art and inventions centuries before his time. Who knows what existed inside that cave that had the power to inspire him.

Whatever the case, to this day the cave has never been discovered. But then, that's not right either, because our intrepid adventurer and all around most interesting man in the world, Chase Baker has most definitely uncovered it. But let's hope he survives the ordeal...

Today's Book Bub feature is Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity. Grab it while it's hot at only 0.99...

And for gits and shiggles, check out my recent journey to Da Vinci's childhood home...

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM 

Grab CHASE BAKER AND THE DA VINCI DIVINITY at all stores, including Amazon, Kobo, iTines and Google Play: BOOK BUB

Hollywood Noir

A break in the filming for dinner at El Coyote

I'm not the first writer who's turned to film as another creative outlet. Countless word scribes like Norman Mailer, Sam Fuller, and Sam Shepard, have utilized the motion picture camera as an extension of their typewriters. Much of my work has been considered for film by companies like Dreamworks, George Clooney, and a bunch of others that I can't remember right now on a Sunday morning, my first steaming cup of coffee set out beside the laptop. Nothing has ever been produced, but that doesn't mean it won't be. It also doesn't mean I can't dabble in the medium on my own.

This past February, indie film maker Edward Alves asked me to write, direct, produce and star in (if you wanna call it that) a short noir piece that I could use as a promotional author trailer. It took us a few days to actually shoot the film down on Sunset Boulevard and at the close by Avalon Hotel, and many more days and nights in the production room, but here's what we came up with.

I think the film captures perfectly how I was living while writing Everything Burns...the paranoid, tense, living-on-the-edge quality of the life that flashes by day in and day out when you are writing all alone in a room with nothing but your story, and the invented people who occupy it.

Everything does indeed burn. So too does this trailer...

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM


   

Quality or Quantity?

As authors in this, the new golden age of writing, we find ourselves writing more novels than ever. It's all about the content, as they say. Who are they? The ones in the know. The ones who get the fact that the more books you have for sale as E-Book, especially Kindle, the better you will do in the marketplace.

And so we write...

We write without pause.
We write with abandon.
We write when we are inspired and when we are not.
We write like someone or something is chasing our tail, not the least of which is death.
We write because people find reading sexy again when you can do it bed with a digital device.
We write because we can make a good living from it.
We write because we have no choice but to write.

But just remember, we should not write if the writing is going so fast that it is not good writing.
You with me here?
Ask yourself this: Am I sacrificing quality for speed?

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Out On a Limb

We had a bad series of violent storms yesterday afternoon in upstate New York. The trees, especially the old ones, took major hits from some pretty dramatic lightening strikes. Now there's a crew of tree workers right outside the window of my fourth floor writing studio taking down a huge maple tree that's got to be seventy or eighty years old.

It's kind of a sad site.

But I keep focusing on this one man who is tied on to the branch above him. He's hovering like a spider about twenty-five feet above the ground and working in the pouring rain, with the occasional flash of lightening and thunder cracking all around him. He's wearing a hardhat and a pair of heavy duty gloves and he's operating a hefty chainsaw. He seems to be enjoying his work, at least from the vantage point of my open top floor window.

It dawns on me that this man could choose a safer line of work. Something more sedate and office-like. But he prefers the danger of the high in the sky tree work. He likes working in the rain and the violent weather. He likes the insecurity of it all, the way it makes his blood flow faster through his veins than that of the blood of a man who prefers to play it safe.

When I travel to a distant place like West, Africa to report on what's happening there or when I start writing a new novel with no definite plan in mind, I experience pretty much the same adrenalin fueled rush that tree worker is feeling right now. It's a dangerous job being a writer. You never know what will happen, and always, there's the chance of crashing and burning.

What about you? Are you willing to go out on a limb as a writer?

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Got What It Takes To Be A Writer?

Last evening I watched a new movie presented by HBO called Hemingway and Gellhorn. It offered a fascinating but sadly cliched view into the life of two of the 20th century's greatest writers. Both were portrayed as hard drinking, whiskey bottle by the side of their typewriter, bombs blasting in their bedroom, always traveling to exotic locales, wild sex with every sentence individuals. Like their novels, much of this is made up. But then, in some ways Hemingway and Gellhorn lived up to this over romanticized image.

Giving credit where credit is due, the literary couple were more than what was presented on the silver screen (or LCD TV in this case).

In reality they both struggled over their writing, and painstakingly wrote their articles, stories and novels, often wrestling with every word. Hemingway would produce on average no more than 250 new words a day and in the prime of his life, took three straight years off from writing altogether. That's how hard it was for him.

Martha would write alone, sometimes for three or four solid hours a day. Then she would toss it all out and start over the next morning. Like her lover, she possessed a very fine built-in shit detector and in this, she was her own worst critic.

Truth is, they never drank booze while they wrote. They didn't get hammered the night before and wake up fresh and write like the words were simply bleeding out them. This is the stuff of Hollywood. This is romance. This is pure bullshit.

The truth about Hemingway and Gellhorn:

Their writing came first.
It came before love.
It came before war.
It came before partnership.
It came before car payments and mortgages.
It came before children.
It came before health and sickness.
It came before leaky roofs and broken refrigerators.
It came before school PTA meetings and dinner with the neighbors.
It came before birthdays, anniversaries, funerals and graduations.
It came before Christmas.
It came before fun.
It came before happiness and sadness.
It came before God.

This is why fifty years after Hemingway's death and fourteen years after Gellhorn's (both of them by suicide), Hollywood is making movies about the couple. Because they were the best at what they did. And to be the best, you must make tremendous sacrifices.

Being a writer is not about being available to the world. It's about locking yourself away, at a great distance if need be, in order to work. Work alone, with yourself, without interruption. It's selfish and it is painstakingly hard work. In Hemingway's words, it is like "biting the nail."

Do you have what it takes to be a great writer?

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

So Little Time, So many Words

"Die hippy!"

I haven't had the chance to blog as much as I would to like lately. I'm in the middle of the rewrite for the third book in what will eventually be five books and five total rewrites as a part of my new seven book deal...

....Ummmm you following me here.

Suffice to say I'm so over the top busy I'm not sure if it's Sunday or Wednesday. Things are so frantic I sometimes feel like Dirty Harry trying to answer all those pay phones for that creepy hippy kidnapper/assassin dude on the streets of San Fransisco. But also like Harry, what I have to ask myself is this: "Do I feel lucky?"

I do feel lucky. Because this kind of frantic is a good kind of frantic. The new book deal kind of frantic. It's what we all wish for as writers.

As for the schedule: I have one more solid month at home and then I start traveling again. In that time I will have gone over and addressed the content edits for my noir thrillers Moonlight Rises, Blue Moonlight, Murder by Moonlight, Concrete Pearl and The Remains. The Innocent and Godchild have already undergone an extensive content edit when they were with Delacorte and Dell respectively, so no use in putting them through the ringer again. Naturally all these books will be copy-edited once more and what were some pretty big blunders in previous editions will no doubt be corrected. Hey, we're talking the majors here.

What this means for now is that Vincent Zandri, Noir Author is about to take a short Winter's nap (after hitting the gym) and then another couple hours of work. But then I'll take in some playoff football and cheer along my New York Football Giants as they crush the San Fransisco 49's ("You feeling lucky punks?".

It's good to take time off from the writing game in order to recharge. But sometimes you need to meet your deadlines. That's the life. As writers, these are the pressures we so crave. And it still beats having to get up in the morning to go to a job.

Hey Harry, if the phone rings, don't answer it!

Stay tuned....

GET MORE VINCENT ZANDRI, NOIR AUTHOR BOOKS: WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

The Kindle and the Ladies Book Club (Part II)

"Yeah, this pic is slightly off topic, but I'm a pig..."

If you recall I wrote a blog post for the Vox last year titled The Kindle and the Ladies Book Club in which I explained my personal experience of pushing my novel Moonlight Falls to a local ladies book club while at the same time, singing the praises of this new little clever electronic reading contraption called the Kindle. You might remember how resistant the ladies were to even the mere thought of giving up paper for reading something on a computer screen. "It will hurt my eyes," one of them said. "I love the smell and the feel of paper," said another. It seemed there was nothing I could do to persuade this crowd of a dozen educated, attractive, and for the most part, 50+ women (aside from one young woman who might be about 30) about the benefits of owning a Kindle, the least of which is being able to store an entire library inside something smaller than your average Denny's menu.

I revisited the Ladies Book Club this past week where the book of the month was The Paris Wife. Obviously I am not the author of that book, but I am somewhat of a Hemingway aficionado. So I was there to dispel the fact from the fiction. While we were talking about Papa and his affairs, somehow the subject shifted back to e-Readers and how well some of my novels had done in that market over the past year, The Innocent and The Remains especially. While one woman chimed in immediately, proclaiming that she would still never buy "one of those things," a couple of others pursed their lips, cocked their heads over their shoulders and, somewhat bravely I might add, announced that they were seriously thinking about buying one. One of the two was interested in a Kindle Fire, and the other a Nook. Since I more or less work for Amazon now, I tried to talk the Nook person out of it, and I think I succeeded. What came as a surprise, but shouldn't have, was that the young, thirty something woman, had indeed already bought a Kindle and she was beaming about it.  "It's awesome," she said. "So much easier to read than paper."

So I guess, my prediction that by this time this year all these women would own a Kindle or an e-Reader of some kind was a little bit off, but not too far off. After all, it's tough to break away from old tried and true habits, especially after 45. I should know, I'm 47. But I'm guessing all it will take is another few months before the Ladies Book Club becomes the Ladies Kindle Club. Has a better ring to it anyway.

GET MORE ZANDRI THRILLERS: WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM