Happy Birthday, Blade's Edge!

Blade's Edge is one year old today!

Wow. It still feels like I just published it.

I honestly don't know where I thought I'd be a year after publication so I can't say if I've fallen short of expectations or exceeded them.

As part of my long term marketing plan for the release of the sequel to Blade's Edge I am currently listing Blade's Edge on Netgalley, something that I wound up not doing initially because I of the exorbitant cost involved. However, in the year since Blade's Edge's release I have learned a few tricks. One of which is that there are a number of organizations that buy Netgalley listings in bulk and then sell them to people for a one month slot at a time. Which is wonderful, because it greatly reduces the cost of Netgalley and still affords you all of the benefits.

You may be wondering, "what the heck is Netgalley?" And if so, here's a brief explanation: Netgalley puts your book into the hands of reviewers, librarians, booksellers, bloggers and other professional readers. Readers can browse and request books and then the publisher approves or denies their request. If the request is approved then the reader receives a free digital copy of the book in exchange for a review. (Librarians and booksellers are exempt from being expected to leave reviews as they generally read with the intent to decide whether or not to buy a book.) That's the nutshell explanation.

So, I have finally listed Blade's Edge with Netgalley and it seems to be doing pretty well. I say "seems" because as I've booked my slot through a third party I don't get up to the minute results on how things are going. In fact I won't get an actual report on how things went until the listing is done (which will be the end of February in this case). However, quite a few people have recently added the book the to their bookshelves on Goodreads, some of whom have noted that they received the book through Netgalley (even before leaving the review) and it has received one rating with no review attached and one new glowing review on Amazon (which pushes it up to 20 reviews there, yay!) that are direct results of the Netgalley listing. Plus, as I am a Netgalley member, I can see its listing whenever I like and the cover has received 23 thumbs ups so far and zero thumbs down. Since one has to click on the listing in order to thumbs up the cover this leads me to believe that probably something near that number of people have actually requested it for review (but that could be totally off).

It is my hope that this endeavor will get between 10 and 20 new reviews for Blade's Edge. If that's true that will be WELL worth the money paid for the privilege. If I generate fewer reviews than that... I'll be mildly disappointed, but still glad for any that are added to the list. Reviews are huge for independent authors, as I've mentioned a few times before...

Anyway, all that is to say that I think Blade's Edge is doing pretty well one year out. I think it would be doing better if I were better at marketing and publicity, but I'm working on it. I have a lot of faith in the quality of the book itself, I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from total strangers as well as people I know and love and all of that means a lot to me.

Thanks to everyone who has supported me along the way, and here's to another year of progress!

Artemis and Corey and I went skating on the river today. Mostly Artemis thought it was awesome, but clearly in this moment she did not. I thought it made for a funny shot. Sorry it's so blurry.