Shadowlight E-xperiment Update

While dodging work taking a break from my latest round of edits on two novels, I thought I'd do a new update on the Shadowlight e-ARC experiment.

Silver of Silver's Book Reviews coaxed me into doing an interview at her place as well as posting a review of Shadowlight here. She makes me sound a lot more interesting than I am, btw.

More on the latest reviews I've read:

B&N.com reviews/Nemhain ~ harstan ~ Zeek319 ~ lxz ~ CatsMeowAZ ~ Chad ~ Pandababy

Blogging by Liza/Liza

Chocolate Reality/Steena Holmes

Items of Interest/Mad Scientist

Just Erotic Romance Reviews/Mireya Orsini

The Collected Ramblings of Keita Haruka/Keita

Library Thing reviews/miap45 ~zeek319 ~ csayban ~ Pandababy

Maryse's Blog/Maryse

A Multitude of Books/Milady Insanity

Pandababy/Pandababy (I think Pandababy was the first blogger to post a review; I just didn't get to the e-mail and linkage because of the inbox shuffling that sometimes happens when I hit the wrong sort key)

Reality Bypass/Jana

Smexy Books/Mandi

The Top 5 Reasons I Do What I Do/Sherri, also at Powell's and Paperback Swap

Welcome to the Strange Frontier/sakinah ; also at Symetry of Old Pain; Pomme de Sang and Good Reads

The e-mails that have been coming in have been almost unanimously friendly, supportive and helpful to me, especially the constructive criticism and the exchanges I've had with those of you who wanted to discuss some point(s) from the book. I know I don't volunteer a lot of info, especially when my editor's choices are involved, but I like to know what didn't work and why (especially as I'm finishing up the edits on Rowan's book this week.)

Some of the e-ARC readers were kind enough to post reviews on more than one site, and this is what I consider effort above and beyond what I asked in return for the e-book. I also appreciate all the booksellers out there who are handselling the book and/or are featuring the novel in Staff Picks, end cap displays or a prominent place in their stores. While my internet following is strong, the majority of my sales still come from the brick-and-mortar stores, and no one can help you there better than an enthusiastic bookseller.

To my knowledge there have been no bootleg copies of the e-ARC posted on the internet; I really doubt there will be. I think the readers and bloggers in the online writing community have a lot more integrity than they get credit for.

Some of you have asked me about how the book will fare on the lists given the absence of print ARCs and the way-early shipping. Don't worry about it. It's nice to have a book appear on the lists, but I'm paid according to my sales, and that's where you've all helped the most. I care about earning out. Besides, I made the top twenty last year with a book that shipped out late during a holiday week; I figure that was the one miracle I'm entitled to as an author.

And that's the latest. I'll do one more update after the print edition releases, and then I'll see if I can put together some useful stats on the results.