The Perfect Deadline Storm

I guess I still have some residual tiredness from the Summer on the Road, since I was in bed asleep by 11 last night and still slept until past 9. I must be really getting into the story I'm writing now, as I dreamed about those characters and that world (one of the main reasons I slept late, as that was the last dream of the night and I was trying to hold onto it). Oddly, though, the dream also involved elements from Doctor Who, which just doesn't fit in any way, shape, or form. Still, it's not as freaky as the time I dreamed the gang from the Enchanted, Inc. books on board Serenity with the cast of Farscape.

It was nice to hear that I'm not totally out of the norm when it comes to mental fanfic, and I have more to say on that topic (plus, photographic evidence!), but I'll have to get to it tomorrow, as I have a sort of perfect storm of deadlines today with lots to get done that hasn't been done, thanks to me not allocating my time wisely.

I got royalty statements for the first two books yesterday, and it seems that the second book is only behind the first book by about a thousand copies, while the first book is still selling pretty steadily, even two years after publication. That tells me two things: The reasoning behind not buying book five was kind of bogus, and I need to find and shake down the people who bought the first book but haven't yet bought the second book and get them with the program. But then I also want to keep recruiting new readers with the first book, so it creates a vicious cycle. With a series, I don't see how you can grow the numbers so that more people read the later books than read the earlier books. It should be more about velocity, selling more of those copies faster. I wonder how the lifetime sales figures for the first Harry Potter book compare to the sales figures so far for the last one, for instance. The last one may have sold like a zillion copies in the first hour of release, but how many has the first one sold over ten years? I'm afraid that the book business has taken too many cues from Hollywood, and they're far more interested in that zillion copies in an hour than they are in a zillion copies over ten years.

But I don't have time today to dream up fabulous new marketing schemes, so that will go on tomorrow's to-do list. Today I have to write three radio scripts, write a column and judge a short-story contest (I've read the entries, but now I have to try to rank them). And I've now plotted the new story so I can get back to writing. I've decided to write the whole book instead of just a proposal, since I'm moving into a slightly different genre, so having a whole book gives me a little more leverage. Plus, I think having the whole book will make the first part of the book better, since that's what editors read first (duh!).