My Latest Obsession

Not quite a month ago I got an email from one of my older publishers asking me what kind of promotion I was doing. Promotion? Not much at the moment. Why? I asked.

Well, because some of my old titles over at Amazon were selling quite a few more copies than they’d expected given how old the titles were.

I said, okay, that’s interesting and I checked it out and sure enough Promises To Keep, my first book in the Gaian series, was ranked around 1,200 over at Amazon. Even more, I was on a couple of best seller lists, including at number 11 on the Space Opera, just under one of Orson Scott Card’s Ender books, and above the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Okay, that’s just plain weird because I had no idea why a book I wrote in 2004 would be burning up the charts like that. It had good reviews, it had finaled in a published author’s contest but at its peak it never sold that well.

So I investigated a little more. First of all, it is the entry book to a series of four titles about a future time when a colony of Earth has gained its independence. Some of the titles take place during the war, some just after it ended. The premise is that some of the men from Gaia, the former colony, are desperate for wives so they start kidnapping women from Earth. You see unless a Gaian man finds a woman he matches he can’t have sex with anyone, so being guys they are pretty motivated to make that happen.

Add to it that Gaia has a shortage of women due to the destruction of one of their girl’s schools at the beginning of the war, so they have to look to Earth, even if the Earth’s military was responsible for the destruction.

This provides me with goals, motivations, and a lot of conflict for my characters since it is usually a guy from Gaia falling for a woman from Earth he might not otherwise want to be involved with. Also the guys tend to get very hot and bothered as soon as they meet the women, so it isn’t hard to add a sexual component, although I don’t write these books as sex romps the way I do some of my other books.

But these books have been out there for quite a while. The book Promises To Keep was published in 2004. Even with good, albeit older reviews on Amazon, it shouldn’t be outselling Hitchhiker’s guide.
So I have to make some guesses as to why that might be.

First there is the price of the first book: $2.99. That’s an interesting price point. Cheap enough so that people are tempted into looking at the book. The premise is interesting. Since most of the action takes place on the Gaian flagship “The Promise” I’ve sometimes referred to the book as “Mars Needs Women meets the Love Boat”. The cover is pretty good, a nice blue color and a half-naked hunk on the front. I think people are picking it up because there isn’t a lot of science fiction romance out there, the price is right, and the book shows as a recommendation when someone buys a similar book.

Which brings me to my latest obsession: Novelrank. Novelrank is a website that takes Amazon data and tracks it for different books, translating the data into approximate sales. If you are selling more than one book an hour, then their algorithm can miss some sales, but for books like mine, they claim to be pretty accurate. They update the data hourly as it comes in from the Amazon sales sites.

I’ve been following Promises To Keep for the past couple of weeks using Novelrank: http://www.novelrank.com/asin/B003XYEVIW as well as the other books in the Gaian world. Sales of the other books aren’t as good as the first book but for older titles they are respectable. Some of that might be that they are a dollar or two more than $2.99 and also some people will read the first book of a series and then not bother picking up the second or third or even fourth book.

But then there are the times I’ll see that there was a sale of all four titles in the same hour, and I just wonder. Did someone like my world so much they bought all four at the same time?

This makes me smile. You see, it isn’t really the money although when I get my next check I expect I’ll smile then as well. It is the thought that somewhere someone is reading my words and enjoying the world I built out of my head.

Next week on Wednesday I have chat to discuss the Gaian world on the NCP Network at 7PM EST. I'm looking forward to talking to people about my books.

RWA wants to know what I consider success? That’s success.

Janet Miller/Cricket Starr
http://www.cricketstarr.com

So Little Time...

Heart of the Highland Wolf is nearly here!!! The Highland wolves you've been waiting so eagerly for!

Can you believe it's the 7th book in the series already??? Actually, I've already written books 8, 9, and 10, so it seems like that's eons ago!!! I'm already in the Amazon jungle with the first of the jaguar shifter books right now, which means 4 books ago, I wrote Heart of the Highland Wolf!

Don't ask how I keep the characters all straight. I don't. :) I have to reread the books to do that. And I WISH they would become available in audio book form so I could listen to them in my sleep and through osmosis, I would remember every detail.

So little time...

In just a couple of days the BIG blog tour for Heart of the Highland Wolf begins. Be sure and check out my author blog for the days where I'll be giving away free copies of the books to lucky winners.

In the meantime...I uploaded some new books too. :)

The Dark Fae

Ebook By Terry Spear

Published: May. 13, 2011

Category: Fiction » Young adult or teen » Romance
Category: Fiction » Young adult or teen » Fantasy

Available at:
Amazon and B&N
and Smashwords


Alicia's always known she's different--that she can recognize the mischievous fae when they show up to "play" with the humans. Only now she's faced with one highly annoyed dark fae and she's certain he knows the truth about her. She can see him, which means her life is forfeit.

Add to that, his sister arrives, who wants to play, too. And their mother, the queen of the Denkar, will want Alicia's head, once she learns what Alicia can do.

And all because Alicia was attempting to rescue her friend, Cassie, on their beach excursion at South Padre Island, from the wicked fae. Now, Alicia has really gone and done it--and she's thinking she should have let the fae have his fun. Her friend's broken heart would be a lot easier to deal with, than Alicia losing her life.

But it is too late for regrets. As soon as she threw the soda at the dark fae's chest, she had declared war on the fae. And he is happy to take up the challenge.

The Dark Fae has been making Amazon's best selling list, along with Heart of the Highland Wolf!

***


Allan Thompson arrives in Waco, Texas for a mission of utmost importance--protect a terrorist's mistress from being the next victim on his hit list. But when the mission goes down wrong, Jenny Brant is nearly killed and Allan begins a new mission--protect her at all costs--as her faux husband until she can regain her memories.

Everything about the mission seems wrong--all starting with one Jenny Brant who doesn't fit the profile of the kind of woman Wilson usually hooks up with. Allan and his team must protect her, but at what cost to his own sanity or his heart?

Jenny Brant begins to regain her memories, but when she learns she has a huge inheritance that Wilson wants by marrying her, and the agent Allan Thompson will marry her instead to secret her money away with the Agency's protection, she still can't remember why she would have been a killer's main squeeze. When Wilson's thugs try to return her to him, she becomes less sure of who the good guys are and who she truly is.

The only thing she knows for certain--if someone doesn't take down Wilson, her life is forfeit.

The Tall Texas Order

Ebook By Terry Spear

Published: May. 23, 2011
Category: Fiction » Literature » Romance - Short Stories
Category: Fiction » Literature » Romance - Contemporary
Words: 6959
Smashwords
Amazon

Lisa has lived all over the States, but when she starts working in Amarillo, Texas, she's ready to settle down with the man of her dreams--if she can prove to herself she has the mettle to become a Texan.

From camping in the Palo Duro Canyon with rattlesnakes and scorpions and wild mustangs, riding the trail on a cantankerous trail horse,line dancing, and watching a friend devour a 72-oz steak, Lisa's having the fun of her life...mostly.

But can she learn to be a Texan? Inspired by several true incidents, the story revolves around a woman who's never settled down for long and a man who wants her to love his home as much as he does...fearing she's bound to leave him sooner or later as she has never been able to set down roots.

***
The story about the wild mustangs was true, only I'd heard them when I was camping in the canyon with Army ROTC cadets, and I've been to all the places described in the story. The only thing that I still need is that tall hunky Texan!

Wouldn't you like a shot at him too???


***

Hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! I'm actually taking off some days so that I can...write!!!

Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male."
www.terryspear.com