Amazon (11), GoodReads (3), and Audible (6) gets me to TWENTY 5-star reviews in less than a month. Absolutely amazing. I am so blown away at the responses, I wish I could bottle up this feeling and keep it forever. I don’t even know what else to say, except that this is incredible. I’m over the moon.
I didn’t expected that my first in-store purchase and commission check would come from a local ANTIQUE store of all places! Courtyard Antiques in Olympia likes to carry local author books and they gave me a whole spread on their Facebook page. Amazing.
I walked into the store yesterday to check out the display, and walked out with my first official commission check for my books. How exciting!
A box of my books arrived! It’s so wild to see so many of them in person!
I’ve taken a batch of five to Browsers Bookstore and a batch of two to Orca books (that’s all they would take), and I’ve mentioned their presence to my friends on Facebook. In the next few days, they should officially hit the shelves, and I’ll stop by to see what they look like.
Even though I’m the one who put the books up for consignment in the stores, it’s still so neat to know that my books are going to be for sale in a bookstore!
I suppose I could have posted this back on the 10th when the book “officially” went live, but between the accidental early-release of the audiobook on Audible and the fact that Amazon’s version of August 10th is apparently the evening of August 9th in my time-zone, it doesn’t really matter. The book is live NOW and the the sales have taken off considerably more than I anticipated.
Because the novel is deeply personal to me, I was quite content to have a life-time sales of maybe 50 copies of my book. I figured that would cover the hard costs (the book cover, the ISBN, and maybe some initial copies that I’d keep on hand). I think the life-time sales of most self-published books is around 100.
Today, we are 4 days into the official launch of my book, and we’ve already broken 56 purchases across all three platforms (paperback, Kindle, and Audible), with a number of sales not yet reported. I’m absolutely blown away by the response, and I’ve had a number of people tell me that they’ve bought a copy for themselves AND a friend.
I have no idea how far this is going to go, but I’m extremely pleased. To have met my personal goal in less than a week is phenomenal, and it’s really just encouraged me to write even more. I’ve already started the preliminary groundwork for book #2, which will be the second story of the trilogy. I can’t wait to get it done and have you all read them!
Thanks so much to everyone who has followed me so far. It means the world to me!
Well… I didn’t mean for this to happen, but the audiobook just went live on Audible!
I really didn’t want it to go live until August 10th to sync with the Paperback and Kindle version, but I can’t figure out how to switch it off, so… here we go!
Well, almost complete. I’ll be done by tomorrow, as I have just a tiny bit of end-credits and an epilogue to record. I’ve been recording and editing for two whole months now, and it has been a TON of work. Exhausting. I can finally understand why audio book narration can end up costing $250 per completed hour.
Everything is moving forward as planned, and I’m currently running a simple marketing campaign on a few platforms, centered around the “… I wrote this book for you” theme. I’m eager to see what happens on launch day!
About a month ago, I ran a poll on twitter to see if people who consumed books were primarily interested in kindle books, paperback books, or audio books. At the time, only 10% of the poll respondents said they preferred audio books, and that sort of solidified my decision to not record an audio version of my book. But after reading some author reports that MOST of their sales came through their audio books, I’ve decided to go ahead and get a recording going.
Fortunately, I already own all the necessary recording equipment. Back in 2020, my wife and I ran a podcast about our life on a boat, and I got pretty comfortable with being in front of a microphone, as well as recording and editing. So… time to start recording!
After doing a bit of research, I’ve decided that it’s time to return to Facebook. As it turns out, the target demographic (people who tend to read books) hang out a lot on Facebook, and by not having an account there, I’m really limiting my reach. Additionally, Facebook is significantly better at targeted marketing, which allows me to specific exactly who I want to see any future ads for the book or for the NEWPROTEST Publishing company.
If you’re on Facebook and want to see updates on the project(s), here’s the link to the Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/joshuaculley.author.
Hope to see you there!
(There’s also a FB link on the footer of the site that will take you there as well)
I’m sure most authors hope to make a lot of money selling their books, but apparently there are some ways to really shoot yourself in the foot and make the process as difficult as possible. I’m happy to take the bumps and bruises so you don’t have to!
This week’s learning has to do with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). When you get your manuscript ready for publishing and you decide to hit “submit” for pre-orders of your newly written Kindle Book (you can’t pre-order print books through KDP for some reason), don’t do what I did.
Hey folks! You might have noticed some minor tweaks to the design of this site. I haven’t settled in on the branding yet, but I thought the stark black-and-white was a little too dark. Not very inviting. The mountain-theme banner was the default for the latest template, so it won’t stick around for too long, but it’s very pretty, so I think I’ll hang onto it for a little while longer.
Anyhow, pre-orders have been coming in for the book, and I’m very excited about it. Turtle Heaven got to #63 in the Christian Contemporary Fiction category on Amazon, just based on the pre-orders! That’s a fun achievement, and I hope that when the book comes out in paperback, I get up to #1. That would be fun to brag about.
I’ll keep tweaking on the site and see where this goes!
