May Month in Review – a good start for Ginger Gold
I decided to write these month-in-review reports for my own sake, so I could easily look back and recap the year. This may or may not be of interest to you, so read on if you like. Caveat: I'm not boasting, just stating facts. And yes, I'm happy!
May's been a pretty good month for me. In the New Year I made a career decision to change genres to cozy historical mystery. It was a risk, because I basically had to start from scratch to find a new audience and build a fan base. I spent months researching (it's ongoing) and developing the characters and plotting out story lines. I created a new business plan. It was a big risk – time and energy spent writing something new that I couldn't be sure would hit the right notes.
May 8th was the release of the first book, a novella prequel, and quite honestly, my expectations weren't too high. I knew, and still know, it takes time to gain momentum, both on Amazon and with readers. I couldn't be happier with the response to MURDER ON THE SS ROSA. Since it's release it's been ranking on Amazon in the #1000 neighbourhood, and has pushed me into the #2000s for author rank (that's for the whole Amazon book store!) Believe me, I've never hung out there before unless I had a Bookbub promotion and even with that, there's usually a pretty immediate drop off.
Murder on the SS Rosa
Amazon Author Rank
Not only that, Book 2 – MURDER AT HARTIGAN HOUSE is on preorder and selling well, too. I've run preorders before without much hurrah, but already this book is outselling my best preorder by 5 times!
I'm seriously stunned and humbled. And excited!
My strategy was to go out with a low price to make it easy for readers to give me a try, and it's working. Once Murder at Hartigan House is launched, I'll up the prices to a normal range.
Most of May was spent finishing Hartigan House and getting it ready for its June 6 release. I started work on Book 3, Murder at Bray Manor with a planned mid-summer launch. I know these are still early days for this series, but I'm looking to the future with cautious optimism.
On a personal note, my time in Germany is quickly coming to a close and I'll be heading home with a short stop in New York for Book Expo of America. I'll report on that in the June review.
If you haven't yet gotten your copies of Books 1 and 2 of The Ginger Gold Mystery series, make sure to grab them while they're still 99 cents (link).
Murder at Hartigan House is part of a Headtalker campaign. I'd love your help on spreading the word – Thanks a bunch!