First Cup of Coffee - September 25, 2023

A slight divergence into thoughts on fashion and how the pandemic affected that. Also, being a hedonist. More on topic: why do book sales vary so much by platform? Some books sell only on certain retailers and I don't know why.

You can find the creepy story I mention, BIRDWOMAN, here https://www.jeffekennedy.com/birdwoman

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Transcript

00:01.65
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Ah delightful Today is Monday September Twenty fifth last week of September sorry to alarm those of you who hadn't realized I have realized because I got sheet for word count last week as reported on Friday um. I got something like 4000 words for the week which I know is for some people great yeah forty two fifteen. Um, so you know at least I made progress give myself some credit for that.

00:58.81
jeffekennedy
Killian's dragging stuff around. He's on here out here on his leash off to go rescue him all right? So oh I'm not seeing oh I am seeing the game this time very interestingly. When I went to adjust the sound beforehand. It had stayed where I put it last time like why did it stay this time when it never did before I don't get it but I was glad that it stayed so um. So yeah I didn't get 15000 words last week I didn't even get 10000 words or 5000 words but I got some words and we have a new dog I reference Friday's podcast where i. Told you everything. So Mary Robinette is flying home this morning and we are we are settling into a semblance of routine again which will be quickly shattered because we have a friend coming to visit tomorrow. I mean this is where I do a little bit of my marital bitching because this friend is we haven't seen this friend in 1516 years from back when we lived in Wyoming and he's coming tomorrow and he's staying with us for a week for a fricking week.

02:33.66
jeffekennedy
And I've always had this rule that 4 nights 4 nights for me to stay with someone else 4 nights for someone to stay with me. Um, but this has gotten thrown out lately with David's brother or other family coming to visit. Um. Which actually is fine David wants a longer visit. That's fine, but um, yeah, it's just like going to disrupt my week but hopefully he's really coming to see David so hopefully they can go. They're going to go fishing every day and all of that. I was seriously considering um, staying going away this coming weekend and staying at like an in somewhere just to get my head back in this book and to give myself a little bit of a loan time.

03:31.27
jeffekennedy
But the place I wanted to stay is no longer available. It was also expensive and I think maybe I'll just hang out home. It's so beautiful here. You know it's like my garden. My home is as beautiful as any inn. Um, yeah, maybe I'll go to a pool somewhere but I also 1 thing that I got done on Saturday that I was happy to get done is my yeah twice yearly turning over of clothing. So I put all of my summer things away. And got out all of the fallen winter things and am reminded I think I may have said this last year and reminded at how lean my winter wardrobe is now I think there's a few reasons for this one of them is as a result of pandemic. There has not been. And and I'm sorry if you are here for insights on industry and publishing I will get to it ah and writing ah but for now it's it's girly fashion um ah ah fashion is still weird. Ever since pandemic it's like everything got behind everything's been sitting on container ships. It's I don't know I'm not sure if it's better this fall but it occurred to me that instead of spending the money on going to an in that I might go.

05:03.93
jeffekennedy
See if I can do some clothes shopping um, see if if the selection is better. 1 thing that's been the case for a while is that I do most of my shopping with my mom when I visit her in Tucson. And and so it's all warm. Weather clothes. So the winter wardrobe has really suffered so we shall see I I might go just do solo shopping. Um.

05:40.81
jeffekennedy
Yeah, yeah, funny thing somebody even said that they were going to put that in their script was a woman because I was complaining about that a woman complaining that everything in this store smelled like it had been on a container ship for 2 years which is true. It was interesting because that same person had ah it was guy and he had said that ah clothing is just a necessity and that it's no more important than you know like.

06:15.33
jeffekennedy
Remember you know like food and shelter and clothing and that nobody really cares about it and I said well that's stupid clothing is art. Ah of course food and shelter can also be art. It's all what we decide to make of our basic needs right.

06:38.69
jeffekennedy
I've always thought that was something about hedonism is just the savoring of daily life savoring of you know? Yes, you need to eat but can food be fabulous. I thought it was interesting having Mary Robinette here for a week and taking her to different places where I like to go and yesterday morning we went to Cafecito here in Santa Fe which is one of my favorites. And I was just telling her that the good things to have are well my favorite one of my favorite things to order. There is the doltra de letche latte and and I told her about that and I told her about the hot chocolate which is an amazing experience because they bring it to you with. Steamed milk and a chunk of chocolate and you melt the chocolate in there. So but she opted for the adultler da lache latte and so when it came and they bring it to you with a little spoon a little demiass spoon and I said so what you do is. There's. Adultre diletche is on the bottom I said so you can savor it for a sweet hit at the end or you use the spoon and stir it up in there to you know blend in as much of the sweet as you want and she said I like going places with you.

08:04.63
jeffekennedy
And I realized that like the whole week I'd been advising her on like the cool thing to order from the menu and I'm like oh and they'll let you do this and this and to me that's the same thing. It's like yeah you have to put clothing on your body. Um. But why not have it be something that makes you feel good and already excited about life ah things that have been ontatorships I mean it was really a weird thing because you know fashion plans ahead several years just like publishing industry. You know they've got their projections out a couple of years and you know so that they can get everything manufactured so you know like the clothes for next fall I don't know they might be already made you know or they're making in China and then they'll put it on the container ship and ship it over and so when. We had the worldwide lockdown all of these clothes sat in the container ships and didn't get sent and then when they finally got sent. The stores were glutted and they were glutted with things that we no longer felt like wearing I think they could not get. Rid of these clothes because and I don't know if you all remember this but you know when we could finally shop again right? You know a pretty woman I remember that summer of 2020 ah, when we could you know we still had the mask up but we could go into the stores again.

09:38.26
jeffekennedy
Ah, and they had come out, especially that fall with all of those like ruffly peasant blouses and things and it was like no we had had enough of homesteading but we had had enough of baking our own bread and um. It was just like the wrong thing but they couldn't possibly have predicted that right? That's like comes back to the idea of the black swan event which is from finance but I love it. It's the disruptive event that people cannot predict right? They don't Know. Um, it. It's it's unpredictable I was trying to think of a stronger word for it than that. But that's what happens with some of these words we overuse them right? but for something to be completely unpredictable, right for the arise of a novel. Virus. Um, and that there's going to be a worldwide lockdown because of it completely unpredictable and you don't know how people are going to feel coming out of that but I could tell you what I and every other. I I hesitate to call myself a fashionista but everyone else I know interested in Fashion. We all took one look at those roughly peasant blouses and long skirts and we were like no f No. So anyway.

11:08.97
jeffekennedy
That's a lot of talk for clothes on and asstensibly writing podcast one of the other things I got done. This weekend is I um finished I caught up on my royalty crunching I try to do it as it comes in because different platforms pay at different times of the month First 1 is Google Google play comes in usually around the fifteenth of the month ah next to come in is Kobo next to come in is generally smash words find away voices for my audio books comes in right around them.

11:45.97
jeffekennedy
And I think that's all of the ones and ideally the one that takes longest to do is Amazon and that's at the very very end of the month Amazon reports are ready usually on the last working day of the month um but ideally if I can. Do these as they come in and what I do is they have the royalty spreadsheet for that payment and I go through and I sort by title and then I do a summary of number sold for that title. And amount sold for that title now some of them allow you to do this Um, like report by report. But when you have like me 64 published titles I'm not going to go through freaking report by report. So what I do is I do a spreadsheet. Um. Just export to excel and then I can do my data sort I do my filtering and I get these numbers for each book and then I record those in my big excel workbook which I've been keeping from the beginning of of my sales.

13:02.45
jeffekennedy
And and then I end up doing that for each platform so this weekend I got it done for Google play which is usually the smallest kobo is um, right up there and Kobo has 2 different spreadsheets 1 for their Kobo reads program and 1 for their sales smashw words is just 1 spreadsheet, um, find a way voices I ended up not doing because even though they paid me their royalty report for that month was not yet ready. So. I have to make a note to come back to it seeing what the kitten has doing. He's thinking about wall even though he's unleash.

13:51.50
jeffekennedy
So because I am going through these reports for each book and I have a separate spreadsheet for each book and on there I do track um sales over time and I also track. Sales by platform. So the only one I don't really know in detail is Apple versus Scribd because the smash words one is what I used to distribute to those and so I could. Break those out because smash words does give me that data I just never have maybe I should I've thought about it. Um some authors have told me that they oh hang on. He was stuck now he is free. So um.

14:45.36
jeffekennedy
Yeah, so some ah oh some other author friends tell me that like Apple is their second biggest one. Ah I know that it's not because Apple is a subset not for me because Apple is says subset of smashw words and my second biggest is Kobo easily Kobo um which is funny because somebody had told me I think was a barnes and noble person told me that ah oh no, it was a smashwards person told me that Kobo was really going downhill and sales were dropping I was like um, not for me. Um, for me so because I have this spreadsheet set up for each book I am able to so because I have a spreadsheet for each different book and because I do this retailer by retailer. I can really see certain trends that I have not yet data analyzed and I'm wondering if anyone else has looked at this. Um I'm thinking I'm going to have to do it myself. But I can. There are some books. Debt like sell on Google play fairly well that barely sell on any other platform um like like so don't sell it all on Kobo and vice versa I mean it is weird. It's like Google play. Only.

16:21.32
jeffekennedy
Only certain books sell on there. Um, and other ones not at all, but those ones that do sell actually sell kind of nicely. Ah google play I think I already said is is my lowest of all the platforms. But I would. Totally stay on there because there are some books that sell on Google play that sell nowhere else and it's the same with kobo and often it's entire series and so I'm I'm wondering if it's like how I have my metadata set up on those platforms that they would sell better if I ah. Tweaked that metadata um I don't know it's it's a funny thing and some of them are like obscure books obscure enough. You know like older shorter. Um, like we could talk about bird woman. Ah, it's a good time of year to talk about bird woman because bird woman is technically. It's an essay because it's a true story. It's something that everything in that is absolutely swear to the stars above true. And it's it's a freaky story. It's about a kind of paranormalish encounter that we had in the pacific northwest and I will link to it. Bird woman is available for like ninety nine cents because it's short

17:54.91
jeffekennedy
Um, I originally had it published in a um literary magazine and then republished it later. But yeah, it's it's just a short and so I don't charge a lot for it. But it like I so like maybe a couple of copies a month and but only on certain retailers and the other ones never not a one and I can see it. You know like my column for that retailer. It's like no never so I'm very curious to know what that is um. You know it seems like a lot of the data analysis happens on Kindle unlimited that you know like the people who are really doing that kind of thing I'm not sure if the wide people spend much time on that sort of analysis. But um, I'm really interested to know. So I don't know maybe as I get caught up on things I might spend a little time doing that. Um, the other thing I worked on this weekend was doing my author info sheet for my new publisher. Ah. I think we might have the official announcement coming out like maybe next week my editor's out through the twenty eighth so but maybe next week that would be nice I saw one of my writer friends with my same agency just announced her book deal. Um.

19:24.78
jeffekennedy
I knew about back in April because she had told me about it then and what she announced I was like wow that took a long time to announce and she's like I know it's been driving me crazy. So I don't know what happened there. Hopefully mine won't take that long. So anyway, this author info sheet. It's 5 pages long before I started answering before I start putting stuff in. So hopefully they will use that information I always think I'm forgetting stuff right? You know because they ask things like you know, are there fan sites of your books and what all. So. Um, I'm going to go get to work I hope that you all have a wonderful week that you are equal to the challenges that the wake is bringing and I will talk to you all on Friday you all take care bye bye.