I’m learning that it’s always best to err on the side of caution.
You see, I was planning to publish The Sea Rose—to surprise-drop it on everyone—on my birthday, the 14. It seemed, at the time, like a manageable goal. After all, since I had been posting relatively polished chapters on Vella first, there was not a ton of editing to be done; it was just a matter of stitching the rest together and slapping a title on.
Then I did my research (tip: always do research, you do not know everything) and found out that December is not a great time to release an indie book. Everybody is so preoccupied with Christmas shopping, and they don’t have as much leisure time to sit and read, and if someone is going to read by the fire they’ll probably choose that new Colleen Hoover book over me (I’ve never read Colleen Hoover. However, it seems that everyone else has.)
So instead, I set my book to pre-order. I needed an ‘anchor’ to keep me committed to the publishing plan, because if I don’t take some form of action, I’ll just end up rewriting it again. The slow response to The Sea Rose pre-order proved to me that, for whatever reason, the month of December is hard for indie authors. We have a tough enough time selling books anyway; Santa typically doesn’t have our paperbacks in his sack of gifts.
Publication date for The Sea Rose is now January 2. Meanwhile, I will try to breathe life back into this blog and do promotion for the novel.
If you are feeling generous, I would be overjoyed to have you pre-order The Sea Rose for $2.99 by clicking here! It has not been changed much from its Vella version. I did add new material and change some details, such as a few place names. It is a smoother read as a novel than a Vella.
All things considered, it’s best that I did not go ahead and use December 14 as a publishing day. The proof copy from Amazon hasn’t arrived; when I first placed the order, it said the copy would arrive on the 13. Since it was delayed, it isn’t arriving until (hopefully) tomorrow (and you will be thrown dozens of photos of the thing, since I’ve been working on it for so long!)
Here is my update then! Thank you to all who left me birthday wishes. The moral of the story, I suppose, is to be cautious and do your research—even if you think you know most of what there is to know.
Stay tuned for more updates, and have a happy Advent!
Mariella Hunt 
I did not know your birthday was coming – I must have missed that. Congratulations on that!
That’s … interesting. I know someone who published on Christmas Day last year and now seems to be doing pretty well, but it may have nothing to do with the publishing on Christmas but all with other things. Also, *my* sales this month have been … not great, but better than they sometimes are. If December is not a good time for indie sales, that is an even better sign than I had hoped it was!
I also have never read Colleen Hoover. I don’t even know what genre that is. I’ve never even *heard* of them until now.