seven years of self-publishing: posting word count

A reader asks:

“I noticed you update and share your progress/word count/status on books in a public manner on your blog and twitter. I was wondering if you had any specific reasons for this and if so, I’d like to hear your thoughts on it. Is keeping track of status/word count more for yourself or is it more for other people/readers?”

That’s a good question.

I do it for readers. For myself, I keep track of my daily word count in a spreadsheet. But for readers, I talk about book progress and word counts for two reasons:

1.) If people are visiting my website/social media, it’s because they want more information about my books and when the new books are coming out. So why not give it to them? “Give the customer what he wants” is one of those simple principles that really does work. (Too many business tend to shift to the model of “give the customer what I think he should want, and then overcharge for it.”)

2.) We all know That One Fantasy Writer (let’s not name names) who is very late on his next book, and yet somehow manages to post 200 times a day on Twitter, usually complaining about something. I regard this as a salutary example of what not to do. So it lets people know that I am indeed working on the next book.

So, in that vein, I’m nearly done editing SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY, I’m almost to the end of the rough draft of CLOAK GAMES: SKY HAMMER, and I’m 41k words into SILENT ORDER: IMAGE HAND!

-JM