I need to add up the other retailers, but I did one last week and got about 6k downloads (3600 the day of the ad, and the remainder over the following days) on Amazon. The book got to #28 on the US store. Read through on Amazon isn't as much as the other sites, but I was really happy with the results.

The other thing you can do to convert to mobi is to use the Kindle preview program. It turns epubs and docs into mobis to display them and gives you a mobi at the end of it.

I'm trying to decide between Scrivener and Vellum (which evidently does allow TOC at the back but isn't flexible about other things) and wondered about doing this with a Scrivener compile. When you say "used to do," have you switched to something different than Scrivener? And if so, would you say what and why?

I switched to Vellum (and yay now you can move the TOC to the back easily!). The Scrivener compile worked fine, but was a bit fiddly when it came to doing customised backmatter. I like Vellum, it saves me a lot of time. It's not as flexible though there are still ways to make your book unique like using custom scene separators by adding images. I just use the standard settings though. And I love how it just spits out the books for each vendor without having to screw with it.

I haven't seen anything from iBooks, but I did get this in an affiliates email the other day.

As of 30 September, Apple Music, movies on iTunes and iBooks are now available in China. There is a multitude of curated quality content catering specifically to the Chinese market.

I picked out the word curated and figured it's a maybe as to whether books get there or not. lol

But ... Vellum's pretty inexpensive in the grand scheme of things and remarkably easy to use, so I'm now convinced there's an ROI there. I'm still uncertain whether most readers will notice a difference, but I think it's worth it for those who will.

For me, the value has definitely been in the time spent/hair pulled that I used to have. My process was pretty basic to start with.  Write in Scrivener, compile to word doc for editor, import final word doc back into Scrivener, compile to epub and tweak in Sigil. I'd make unique backmatter for different vendors so that was a bit fiddly.

No I take the final word doc, import to Vellum, copy the backmatter from the previous book as the product IDs carry over, select the options for formatting and generate the files. As far as I'm concerned it's already paid for itself by saving my sanity.

I don't think stand alone books are pointless. I've spent the last year working on my series and four book in my next book is going to be a stand alone before I go back and do book five.

I'm going to mix it up too, I think I've been so involved in my series and enjoying working on it, but it becomes harder to pick up new readers along the way. Some people see that series number and don't see past it even if the book is a stand alone within the series, at least that's the feedback I've had.

Today is the first day this month that I've had nothing. It's been trucking along as normal up until today. But I have noticed that sometimes sales seem to arrive in a lump, so we'll see what tomorrow brings.

I had a beta reader catch that I had a 24 year old baby in one book, not 24 hour. lol

When a word is fairly unique to the locality I think there's no escaping spelling it as the locals do. It probably doesn't exist with the same meaning in US English anyway. Thinking of words like bache or crib again here. We also wouldn't be looking to find an American spelling for Kia Ora or chilly bin, for example.
 
A great resource for Kiwi phrases is www.chemistry.co.nz/kiwi

That's a great page. I was asked when I was in Australia at a writer's conference what a ranchslider was. I had no idea that was a Kiwi thing.

I have been using it, and it's an awesome site. But, yeah, after August 28th they're going out of ebooks and I haven't found any alternative that comes close to the data you can get from it.

At first I put it all back into my books. Then when I earned a bit more, I bought a Macbook so I could do direct with Apple and a washing machine. My washing machine was 17 years old, so that felt really good.

Beautiful! Love the colour.

Can't get it outside the US, it's $93 for me. lol