Mon, 18 Jul 2005
Report from the trenches
I'm head-down in "The Jennifer Morgue", about 70% of the way
through the first draft and trying to get it nailed down. I was
aiming to finish by the end of July, but I think that's unlikely;
mid-August is looking more like it. On the other hand, it seems
to be working so far. Anyway, that's why the long silence.
It is now one month since I put Accelerando on the web,
and two weeks since it officially went on sale in the US. In that
time, I've had 54,000 downloads from my website; there are
probably thousands more that I don't know about. (As a random
comparison, Cory Doctorow reported 35,000 downloads in his first
month for "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" – but that
was a first novel and this, er, isn't.) Anyway, since the initial
release "Accelerando" initially peaked at 440 in Amazon's sales rank,
and has been happily bumping around the 2500-1500 range ever
since. This average level is about as high up the Amazon charts as "Singularity
Sky" and "Iron Sunrise" ever peaked – in both cases, with
transient spikes rather than solid sales – so I think I
can safely say that the early indications are that the free ebook
release hasn't prevented "Accelerando" from significantly
out-selling my previous novels.
I have about two weeks to go until Interaction
(the Worldcon that's about to land on my doorstep) and the UK
launch of "Accelerando", to be followed by a trip to Texas for Armadillocon 27.
It's funny how time is telescoping towards a collision between a
deadline and two cons ...
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