This is a rough time of the year for writers. Sales of Kindle books are generally down, or so say my correspondents. Mine certainly are.
The solution, of course, is to write more books. But so many outdoor things are calling everything from attacking weeks to watering to summer trips. It’s not easy to motivate yourself and ignore as many distractions as possible!
The good news is that NEO: Near Earth Object is half finished. From now on the book takes on a life of its own and enthusiasm builds until I’m working those long days just before it’s ready for release.
Next month, with luck!

I’ve been neglecting my blogs for a couple of months, and there’s a reason.
On July 15th, I had knee replacement surgery. The surgery went well, the recovery less so. I ended up staying more than a week in the hospital and the rehabilitation hospital; as it happened, when I tried to exercise and use my new knee (painful!), my blood pressure dropped. But eventually I got out, then went through a rehab process that got me walking and climbing stairs. There’s still quite a bit of pain, but as long as I don’t overdo it, I can deal with the pain. And that without drugs, which is a major accomplishment.
I’m only now beginning to write, and the first thing I did was decide my work-in-progress needed reworking. I can eventually use most of the 50 000 words I had written by then, but it’s going slow.
Still, if I can just write a little something, maybe half a chapter a day, I’ll soon be back in the groove.

Is this the dreaded Summer Slump? Soon to be followed by the Back-to-School Blues?
No idea yet, but sales have shrunk to a trickle. Even my count of books borrowed and read is way down.That, by the way, is going fairly well. So far, I’ve recorded 25,862 pages read via Amazon’s subscription services. Near as I can tell, that puts me above most. It’s keeping my Author Rank on Amazon from dropping through the cellar.
Meantime, the solution to all ills is to write more books and hopefully keep quality up. I’m starting Chapter 15 of The Ship and it’s going well, not very fast but well. I’ve had too many recent distractions to write fast, but I write as time permits. The Ship will be my 8th novel, first in a third series, and I’ve also begun work on Siberian Wizard, the fifth in the Wizards-ESP series.
If you’re interested, all my books are available free through Amazon’s KU program, among others, and $3.99 or less if purchased.
http://www.amazon.com/Jack-L-Knapp/e/B00K35MWNA/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1429376991&sr=1-1

I’ve been watching Amazon’s new program with great interest. So have a lot of authors.
The KU/KOLL program allows subscribers to borrow books. Amazon gets a monthly payment from those enrolled, authors get paid for borrows but at a rate that’s less than we would earn from royalties on sales. It gives Amazon a regular income stream and since readers aren’t charged by the book, they’re more willing to borrow a book by an unknown author. For those of us who don’t have a following, we get readers.
At first, authors were paid a set amount for each book borrowed. That created dissatisfaction, because the length of the borrowed work wasn’t taken into account. Writers got the same amount for a borrowed short story that they did for a full-length novel. Amazon’s new system intends to change that; authors are now being paid for each page read. Granted it’s not much, about $0.005, but that can add up.
Meanwhile, it’s giving writers information we’ve never had. How many people read our book all the way to the end? How many read a page and abandoned it? Or perhaps read ten percent (the trigger for Amazon paying an author for a borrow) and then gave up?
But counting the number of pages read let’s the writer know. So far, I’m quite happy. Readers read 10,700 pages in the first two days. Today’s count looks to be about the same, although it’s early. Actual sales of books aren’t great, but borrowing looks likely to pick up the slack. I’m cautiously optimistic.