We are pleased to announce that Sugar & Spice is now available on Waterstones as an ebook for all other e-reading devices other than Kindle.
Get it now:
POI
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Sugar & Spice now on Waterstones
Posted by Saffina Desforges/Stevie Jordan on June 21, 2011
https://saffinadesforgesblog.com/2011/06/21/sugar-spice-now-on-waterstones/
Sugar & Spice gets its 100th 5 star review!
Wow! There’s yet another sentence I never thought I would utter, especially not a measly six months after publishing a book by a writing team that no-one had ever heard of and that had been described by agents as “the last taboo.” 100 people spent their money on Sugar & Spice and felt compelled enough to award it 5 stars. How cool is that?
Love it or loathe it (and believe me, there are plenty who can’t decide!) Sugar & Spice has now sold just short of 65,000 copies on Amazon alone. By the time we release Snow White, that figure should have reached a staggering 85,000 copies.
This is without new sales coming (hopefully) through new ebook distribution channels such as Tesco, Apple (ibooks), Waterstones and Kobo.
I haven’t included Smashwords sales in this figure either, although they remain pedestrian at best.
Needless to say, we are chuffed to bits (if not a little shocked)… 😉
So, thank you to all of those people who have bought and read it and thanks to everyone who bothered to leave a review, good or bad. You’re a reader, your opinion counts; much more than ours.
Posted by Saffina Desforges/Stevie Jordan on June 21, 2011
https://saffinadesforgesblog.com/2011/06/21/sugar-spice-gets-its-100th-5-star-review/
Fathers’ Day: It’s a man’s world
Happy Fathers’ Day to every bloke in the universe that deserves the title.
Some don’t. (but we’ll not go there)
I am torn on this subject. As an independent gal, I kinda don’t hold with the whole “Behind every great man…” scenario.
I grew up thinking I was a feminist – I’m not.
Just because I don’t rely on a man to support me, doesn’t mean that I think they are all useless; far from it. I am not going to break a nail putting a shelf up when I have one of them to do it. 😉
Seriously. I mean, read this:
http://blogs.news.sky.com/familyaffairs/Post:d4047fad-68e6-4c9c-b0b2-783c9ae5dfbf
If you have read Sugar & Spice, you’ll know what page we’re on.
My Pa is the proud father of three (great, may I add) girls. He also has 5 grandchildren, 2 of whom are girls.
He told me how awful it was that he couldn’t bathe my three year old niece without feeling guilty.
We recently went on holiday and shared a house. I stumbled across him semi-naked.
He was more embarrassed than I was, and why? I am a grown woman of thirty eight (ahem) and he is my dad. He has washed my bum, seen me in various stages of undress over the years and has blown raspberries on my belly numerous times.
When we were little, we had a game. Me and my two sisters would take it in turns to get in the bath with my dad. He was fit in those days and had a six-pack. He used to rest a pouring beaker (that we used to wash our hair with) on his belly and we would guess which way it would fall. Innocent.
These days, you can’t even sit a child on your knee if you’re Father Christmas without being CRB checked. What has the world come to?
That said, men are evil.
I don’t make that statement lightly.
I spent two hours today researching a list of bad men to post on here. Guess what? Not many of them had kids.
Bin Laden
My original list looked like this:
Hitler
I could continue with a veritable feast of names of bad guys…
How strange that the TOP monsters didn’t have children.
Is that why women are so peaceful? Is that why when you switch on the news and watch the daily horror stories and atrocities, that it is usually men behind it?
Don’t start getting pissed off.
I am not being sexist, nor am I slating blokes.
It is fact.
Wars, religious/terroristic battles, murders, rapes, child abuse… all down to men.
The only thing I can’t pin on them is natural disasters. But hey, if we are to believe that God is a man, then I can’ pretty much hang that one on them too.
I jest.
I love my pa, my brother-in-laws, my nephews and have had some great male friends over the years. Not all blokes are bad.
Not all women are nice.
But I defy anyone to argue with the case I have stated.
Hey, bring it on. You’re not allowed to hit me. 😉
Come on.
Our new book (Snow White – Book One of the Rose Red Crime Series)
has a male antagonist and a female protag. Typical you might think? Nah. Wait until you read it. Queenie is a right bitch and piece of work.
I wanted to make Red the bad guy, but my co-writer wouldn’t let me.
Did I mention that I write with a guy? Yup. Mark is so far gone over to the testosterone side that he has devoted the whole month of June to female writers. Check it out:
http://markwilliamsinternational.com
I hope you have taken this blog post in the spirit that it was intended?
Let me leave you with this:
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
It’s people that are bad.
Happy Fathers’ day (and if you promised to see your kids today, make sure you do. Never break a promise to a kid.)
We remember. 😉
Saffi
Related articles
- Top 10 Videos To Wish Your Dad A Happy Father’s Day (socialtimes.com)
- Fathers Day deluge follows good genes in a vial (genes2brains2mind2me.com)
Posted by Saffina Desforges/Stevie Jordan on June 19, 2011
https://saffinadesforgesblog.com/2011/06/19/fathers-day-its-a-mans-world/
The numbers game
Good morning!
Phew! I had a pretty busy day yesterday (after work! My ‘day’ as a writer starts at 1700!) and didn’t get any writing done!
After seeing my accountant and spending some time on the phone to New York (get me and my rock and roll lifestyle) I didn’t even get time to check and respond to emails, log in to KDP (Amazon’s Kindle Publishing stats) or look at our chart position.
So what a nice surprise it was this morning to find this:
What’s that I hear you cry? Saffina Desforges has 2 books in the Top 50 Police Procedurals? #1 and #44?? Never!
It’s true I tell you! 😉
By the end of this month, the book that agents described as ‘the last taboo’ will have sold 75,000 copies.
Yup, you heard right and no, I didn’t hit the ‘0’ key one too many times. 75,000 copies.
In 6 months.
I visit Kindleboards regularly and I follow some inspirational indie writers’ blogs. I read J. A. Konrath http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/and Crouch’s exploits and follow with interest what is happening with Barry Eisler and their recent deals with Amazon imprints; I follow Amanda Hocking’s continued rise to stardom and salivate in wonder at Victorine Lieske’s staggering sales figures for her first book. They are all pretty awesome.
Then I look at the numbers.
Now some of these may not be exact (and don’t shoot me if I have got these wrong) and most, if not all, are for more than one book; some are across 5 or 6 (or more) titles.
The guys mentioned above (with the exception of Victorine, who’s sales for her first book are in excess of 100,000 I believe and obviously AH is even further out ahead) are talking of sales in the region of 35,000 ish for their titles on Amazon.
I read constantly that writers on Amazon.com are making the Top 100 with total sales of well below what we sell in a month.
OK, now I realise that we might not be making anywhere near the money that these guys are making and that their titles are selling for a lot more than ours, but I still find it hard to believe that we are uttering the numbers that we are for Sugar & Spice in the UK.
75,000 people paid for our book. Wow!
When Mark and I first started discussing the volumes we would need to sell to start us on the road to writing full-time, we worked it out that it would take roughly 4 -5 years on our then sales. We initially celebrated a month where we hit 150 (waaaaay back in January when we first started promoting and talking about Sugar & Spice) copies sold and said that if we could somehow make it 500 a month, we would be ecstatic! Hell, we used to drool at the mouth at the prospect of one day breaking into the Top 100 on Amazon UK!
6 short months on and we worry if we’re not hitting 400 sales a DAY with Sugar & Spice! Some time last week we had an issue with our book availability on Amazon for a short period and we fell out of the Top 20 for 24 hours. Man! What a day that was! Fortunately, it was quickly rectified and we shot back into the top 10 quite quickly.
It is amazing how things change and how quickly your goals change with it.
By August, barring something catastrophic happening, we should have sold 100,000 copies of Sugar & Spice. We will also have a new book out (you might have heard me mention Snow White and The Rose Red Crime Series) and who knows how that will do and what it will do for sales of our existing book.
We now have Sugar & Spice live on Waterstones, Tesco and Apple. (awaiting direct links)
Hell, we’ve even started to sell in Germany on Amazon.de!
Yesterday, we were contacted by an agency in Turkey, asking about the book on behalf of a publisher there.
You could even say, we are now International!
So what does it all mean?
Who knows? I don’t have a crystal ball and if I could see into the future, I would never have predicted this! But what I do know is this:
I now kinda feel like a writer.
All the money in the world, the highest rankings and the largest number of sales I can imagine don’t come anywhere close to beating that.
Saffi
Related articles
- Saffina Desforges – what is she doing? (saffinadesforges.wordpress.com)
- Fighting it out with the big boys: Saffina Desforges v Joe Konrath (saffinadesforges.wordpress.com)
- Be careful what you wish for: Saffina Desforges 100 days later (saffinadesforges.wordpress.com)
Posted by Saffina Desforges/Stevie Jordan on June 9, 2011
https://saffinadesforgesblog.com/2011/06/09/the-numbers-game/
Sugar and Spice by Saffina Desforges (via The Writings of Patrick Martin)
Wow! Came across this review today, fabulous!
Posted by Saffina Desforges/Stevie Jordan on June 7, 2011
https://saffinadesforgesblog.com/2011/06/07/sugar-and-spice-by-saffina-desforges-via-the-writings-of-patrick-martin/
Buy ROSE RED CRIME THRILLER BOXED SET FROM AMAZON
Buy Sugar & Spice from Amazon
Buy the French edition of Sugar & Spice (Paraphilia)
Buy Snow White from Amazon
Buy Snow White in PRINT from Amazon
Buy Rapunzel from Amazon
Buy London’s Burning from Amazon
Buy Ring A-Ring O’Roses from Amazon
Buy The Night Before Christmas from Amazon
Buy Anca’s Story from Amazon
Buy Anca’s Story in PRINT from Amazon
Buy ‘Awakenings’ – Book ONE of INDIGO KIDS from Amazon
Saffina Desforges 