Icon of the Indecisive (Interim Goddess of Love #3)

Available today!

Buy now from Amazon

College student Hannah Maquiling, also temporarily working as the Goddess of Love, has had enough of everyone asking for her help when it comes to relationships. It's her turn to find romance! She deserves it, after serving as matchmaker and confidant to everyone else in Ford River College for the past year. She's had a crush on handsome senior (and God of the Sun) Quin forever, but he's destined to fall in love with an extraordinary mortal woman, so she's figured her chances with him have pretty much dropped to zero.

It's not like she doesn't have any options for a classic college romance though. There's Diego, God of the Sea and Quin's best friend/enemy. And regular guy Robbie is stepping up, making sure she knows how he feels about her. How hard can it be for a goddess to find someone to love, and be loved in return?

And when you're done reading the book, you might want to check out the free audio commentary, where I discuss all sorts of IGoL backstory with some book blogger friends.

Every aspect of producing the Interim Goddess of Love trilogy has been amazing. From writing to publishing to designing to reader feedback, seriously, every single thing about doing this series has been such a joy. Thank you so much for the support, encouragement, and love. Hugs, everyone!

We're number 2000-ish!

Yesterday and earlier today, I was in meetings with soon-to-be author/publishers and telling them that watching your own ebook sales rank is the ultimate in unproductive timesuck. Now Amazon goes and does this -- check out Author Rank, where they list the most popular authors on an hourly basis.

If you have an Amazon Author Central account you can actually see where you are as stacked up against the greats. And when looking at a graph like this, an hourly account of your winning and failing, you can:

1. Be depressed.
2. Be excited.
3. Even more obsessively hit Refresh.

So the screenshot above is my best number. That is, I am currently the #2,919 Contemporary Romance author in all of the Amazon Kindle store. I peaked this week on October 4 at #1,956 (alas, I didn't even know it! I should have basked in the glory). In all of Amazon, when lumped together with nonfiction and paperback-only, I drop to 140,000-ish.

Am I depressed? Not at all. I live in a city with 12 million people. Being #2,919 means something to me.
Am I excited? Yes. I wonder if I can do anything (that I'm not already doing) to make this a more impressive graph.
Am I even more obsessively hitting Refresh? Um, yeah.

Congratulations to the 2,918 contemporary romance authors more popular than me, at this hour! And to the many authors, a lot of them indie publishers, who are doing so well on this list! Any of you willing to share secrets in exchange for a cupcake? :)

Ebook retailer sales in 2012 so far

 

When I first started tracking my ebook sales, Amazon accounted for 97% of my sales. Now, not so much. The other players (Barnes and Noble especially) are really kicking it this year.

Lessons learned/reinforced:
Be everywhere.
A small slice of the pie should not discourage me -- it just means there's room to grow.
Focus more on readers who love to read, and less on people who have the device to read the ebook but don't really read on them. (Because they may contribute a sale, but if they don't read the book then my original goal -- that of being read -- isn't met.)

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who bought, read, shared, recommended my books. Thank you thank you thank you.

No Strings Attached, now on Amazon!

Guess which one of my books now has a shiny new Kindle edition?

OK, you don't actually have to guess. No Strings Attached, about Carla and Dante and their lack of strings, is now available on Amazon for $3.99 US, $5.99 Asia-Pacific. 

Off to update the Where to Find My Books page...

Interim Goddess of Love - updates!

If you live in the Philippines and prefer paperback books, look here! Interim Goddess of Love the paperback (Philippine edition) is now available via my Multiply store. It's about the size of a Summit Book (4.25 x 6.75 inches) and is P300. (Add about P50-P100 for shipping.)

Last week, I experimented with making IGoL free on Amazon for two days, thanks to an Amazon promo. I announced it only to the mysterious mailing list, but eventually word got around, and more people were able to try out this little YA/romance/fantasy/Filipino novella.

How did it do? Amazing. It peaked at #5 in the Top Free Downloads for the Romance/Fantasy genre. Its 2-day download rate beat Fairy Tale Fail's best month. (And FTF is my achiever!) I'm still figuring out the lessons learned from this new experiment, but here are a few things:

1. The potential is huge for Filipino writers out there (in the Amazon jungle).
2. Free is another way to get noticed and "bought." Whether it leads to anything, will have to wait and see.
3. I will probably do this again.

PS. I'm writing IGoL #2: QotC now. Right now. There will be more.

February Report Card

I should learn to make cuter charts!

This is the report card for my ebook sales over the past year, now taking into account sales from Smashwords, Sony, and Apple. (Yes, I now have a sale from Apple!) I also changed the way I track this so I can compare Fairy Tale Fail and Love Your Frenemies over time. As it turns out, Love Your Frenemies did great in Week 1 -- much better than Fairy Tale Fail's Month 1.

But in FTF's Month 1 I was just figuring this out, so of course LYF has an advantage.

Looking at this makes me want to write more.

FTF Kindle Report Card: An update

I posted a few months ago this Kindle report card for FTF. At the time I was amazed at October's figures, but this update is just to show how November and December totally kicked October's butt. (And January 2011 has so far kicked December's.)

Fairy Tale Fail isn't a bestseller yet, not by Amazon's standards. On any given day it can be ranked anywhere between #1,800 to #8,000 on their list. I'm thankful for the buzz that book bloggers and reading groups have given it, which likely help -- along with Amazon's recommendations feature -- in keeping the book alive and thriving as it nears its anniversary on the Kindle store. I'm aware that book sales dip in the months after the initial launch and marketing push, but that's not necessarily true now. At least, not for Fairy Tale Fail.

The point of this? Go finish that novel and publish it on the Kindle. Do it do it! And when you do, don't be discouraged when the first few months are tough. It'll get better.

The God Equation and Other Stories by Michael A.R. Co

The God Equation and Other Stories (Kindle Edition)
by Michael A.R. Co

Mathematics and religion duel in an award-winning tale about the true nature of faith and free will. ("The God Equation")

Two soldiers share the unsavory task of killing someone worse than Hilter... over 500 years ago. ("Waiting for Victory")

A popular childhood belief can have sinister results, when a rapist gets the short end of a bargain. ("The Off Season")

A mysterious website allows users to see the whole world in an uncomfortably honest way. ("In the Eyes of Many")

A beautiful faerie finds herself trapped in a tropical paradise, and there's only one way out: a young man and his shovel. ("The Sweet Stranger")

These thought-provoking stories, collected together for the first time, offer a taste of Filipino-style science fiction and fantasy that transcend cultural boundaries and expectations.

My husband writes science fiction and fantasy stories. Not often, but in the past few years he's managed to come up with amazing stuff. "The God Equation," which shared first prize at the first Philippine Graphic/Fiction Awards, was actually his first published short story.

I've been encouraging him to put a compilation up on the Kindle for a while, and now it's here! You can get the entire thing for just $0.99 ($2.99 if you're using a Philippine credit card/billing address on Amazon). Whether you're into sci-fi or just want to support Pinoy authors, this'll be a great read.

Year-end Ebook Store Report Card

Apparently not all ebook stores are equal. At least as far as my ebook experiment is concerned.

When I decided to publish Fairy Tale Fail digitally via the Amazon Kindle Store in April 2010, it wasn't because I did my research and found it to be the best platform. I didn't care, and just wanted the book to be available to as many people as possible, and Amazon made it relatively easy for me to set everything up.

I was told that through Smashwords I could sell the book in more formats and gain entry into ebook stores that were competing with Amazon. So a few weeks later I put up FTF on Smashwords, also easy, and reformatted my manuscript so it would qualify for Premium Status and be accepted into the digital stores of Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, and the just-announced Apple iBookstore.

Now it's nearing the end of the year, and looking over the sales reports, I see an obvious leader: Amazon. Then again I never did doubt its reach, but looking at the comparison now I see that for me as an indie author Amazon has done the best job of getting my book, and name, out to their public.

Sony's second-place finish is surprising -- I don't know anyone who owns a Sony Reader or buys books from its store, so when I started out I pretty much ignored them in my marketing plan (sorry about that). I'm glad and thankful that Reader owners would take a chance on a title and author they barely know.

On the other hand, Barnes & Noble and Apple iBookstore -- what's up? I thought they would be Amazon's closest competitors, not just in e-readers but book sales as well. Maybe Nook owners aren't into chick lit written by a Filipino indie author, or the ones who might be bought their epub from Smashwords instead. Maybe iPad owners would rather download apps. Or they're reading their ebooks on the Kindle app, like some of my friends, which means Amazon needn't worry about having the best device, as long as they can evolve and be compatible with whatever device their buyers want to use.

What have I learned from this?

#1 - Releasing Fairy Tale Fail digitally was a great decision, and I really should release another one in the next few months.

#2 - Amazon rocks as a distribution channel.

#3 - Since it's not that much effort anyway, I should continue to release my next ebooks on other stores too.

I will never get tired of these posts I guess

November has beaten October as Fairy Tale Fail's best month ever. Amazon also launched (finally) a way to give Kindle books as gifts, even to people who have never opened a Kindle account, so this might even get better. (I hope!) If anything it's taught me that momentum is a big part of the ebook success thing -- a big promo push in the beginning helps, but also constant buildup.

That said, Amazon is a mostly American audience, and I'm never really sure how they'll react to a very obviously Pinoy story (though it's in English). This review by Holly of Book Harbinger came out recently and gave me an idea.

I also found out that FTF's older sibling My Imaginary Ex is still selling, more than a year after its release. Recent reviews by online communities and book bloggers have been significantly helpful.

Speaking of helpful online communities, a Goodreads page has been created for No Strings Attached. (Thanks, Chachic!)

FTF Kindle report card

This graph represents Fairy Tale Fail's sales figures on the Amazon Kindle Store in its first six months. It's not at all at the level of quitting my day job, but for an indie publishing experiment you can probably see why I'm excited. I don't know what accounts for the spike, but my theories:

- Changing the price from $1.89 to $0.99
- Tina at One More Page's review
- Joining Goodreads and the Goodreads Filipino group
- Amazon reviews from Laura and Vicki Tyley
- Amazon UK's Kindle Store opening in August (but based on figures, this isn't significantly the cause)
- Releasing a more expensive paperback ($7.99) drove people to purchase the ebook
- Amazon's recommendations algorithm

Maybe it's a combination of all of the above, only Amazon really knows, but this makes me want to release that next book project now. There just might be a market for it after all!

BTW - for FTF's early adopters who purchased at $1.89, you will be getting the next ebook project free from me. Working on it now. :)

Now that was a fun week

It's been eight days since the electronic publication of Fairy Tale Fail on the Amazon Kindle Store. Did I mention how much fun this past week has been? Oh right.

A few days later, the ebook was published on Smashwords, which makes things easier for the non-Kindle public.

I got some encouraging words from the lovely people at Kindleboards. And with that, some interest in my previous work, which makes me feel good that there was previous work, and that there will be future work. Putting myself out there was strange and a little scary, but I'll do it to show that I'm serious about my decision to write more.

So this: My Amazon Author Page. If all goes well, with proper blog syndication too.

Fairy Tale Fail got its first non-friend, non-editor, non-editor/friend review: "I really enjoyed Ellie's voice, and Lucas was adorable." (Link is spoilery. But Lucas is adorable, that's no spoiler.)

I appreciate any bit of feedback, but what tickles me right now is that the early readers didn't mind the occasional Tagalog words. I made a call to not write in Taglish, but use Tagalog if a translation would change the effect. Glad to see that so far, it wasn't too much of a distraction. (The comment about adding a glossary or some cultural endnotes is something I'll take into consideration though!)

Fairy Tale Fail is out!

Of all the twenty-something women who are hopeless romantics, Ellie Manuel is more “hopeless” than “romantic.”

Even after her Prince Charming broke up with her, she just won’t give up … because fairy tale heroines don’t live “happily ever after” right away, silly, they’re tested first!

Determined to pass the test, she spends the next year restoring herself to the girl Prince Charming had fallen in love with in the first place.

Until she discovers that life without him might not be so bad after all: her career is taking off, her confidence is back, and the cute guy at work is no longer a stranger.

So when is it okay to quit on a fairy tale?

My second novel, Fairy Tale Fail, is now available as an ebook on Amazon.com! It's another light romance for women in their twenties (or whatever, I won't judge!).

An account at Amazon is all you need to purchase it and start reading, yay. :)

Other fun stuff:

- You don't need a Kindle! Ebooks from Amazon can be downloaded and read via a special app for the PC, Mac, iPhone, Blackberry etc etc. Just install the app, purchase the ebook from Amazon, sync it up, and start reading.

- You can get a sample (equivalent to a chapter and a half) sent to you for free before buying.

- If your Amazon account is US-based, the list price of $1.89 will apply to you. Isn't that reasonable! :)

- Readers from Asia-Pacific will have to pay $3.89 (Amazon seems to be adding $2 as a rule for sales to this side of the world), but I hope you won't mind and try it anyway because you love me.

Update: Readers who use Stanza, Sony Reader, B&N Nook, Palm, and web browsers can now purchase Fairy Tale Fail for $1.89 via Smashwords.com!

All of this was made possible with the help of:
- Amazon and SmashWords (I love the Internet!)
- Bianca Pascual (for the cutest cover photo among other things)
- Louie Pilapil
- Michael Co (awesome husband, but I already said that)
- superfriends Chris Eugenio and Hazel Bernardo
- Ursula

And a shoutout to Vanessa in Trinidad, for making me consider other ways to publish. Hugs!