I didn’t go into this publishing project with an intent to make a ton of money or sell a million books. I didn’t have a goal at all. I just wanted to get my story done and make it available for anyone that was interested in knowing my journey. In some ways, it felt like publishing a journal, and unless you’re personally invested in the person who wrote the thing, why would you ever pay to read someone else’s journal?
Everything I read regarding “how many books should I expect to sell” pointed to this rather bleak result: The average self-published book receives about 100 sales. In a lifetime. A LIFETIME?! It’s on wonder writers are on the list of “starving artists.” You can’t make a living selling 100 books, when you’re lucky to make $5 per book sale.
Well, towards the end of the first month, I decided to push to see if I could how far I could get. I wanted to know if I could achieve a significant milestone with my book that would encourage me to put out another book. If my first book was a financial flop, it would be much harder to get motivated to go through all that work again.
As it turns out, I was able to achieve an important milestone. Between the Paperback (Amazon and in-store), Kindle, and the Audiobook, I settled in at 105 sales within my first month. Amazing! I’m nearly done with month two, now, and as expected, the results are nowhere near as big as it was for the first month. Without the big launch push, I’m probably only going to sell about 15 books this go-around, but I’m starting to explore some marketing via Facebook, so we’ll see how it goes.
Anyhow, this has been an incredible journey so far, and I really appreciate all of you who have followed along, both here and in my novel. Thanks so much – it means the world to me.
