Hi All!
In this post, I'm going to document what my first 10 days as an Ebook Author have been like. I figured it would be valuable to make these kind of posts fairly regularly. I'm willing to bet there are lots of would-be authors out there who are wondering what they're in for if they decide to publish their work on Kindle.
So here are the headlines:
In this post, I'm going to document what my first 10 days as an Ebook Author have been like. I figured it would be valuable to make these kind of posts fairly regularly. I'm willing to bet there are lots of would-be authors out there who are wondering what they're in for if they decide to publish their work on Kindle.
So here are the headlines:
- I published my first book on 30 July 2017.
- I've since published 3 more books, leaving me with a bookshelf of 4 titles currently for sale.
- I have thus far Sold (wait for it) 3 books.
- I have had a total of 34 KENP pages read.
- I have given away a total of 56 free books.
- My total royalties at this point: US$ 1.09.
Right, so there's all the juicy info in a nutshell.
So, what's my thoughts on the state of things so far?
To put it as simply as possible: I'm utterly blown away. Remember, I've done little to nothing to promote these books. I certainly haven't promoted them on social media or anything like that - goodness knows most of my family would disown me if they saw most of the content of those books. For the free download promotions I ran, I did post some links on Reddit. I don't know if they translated into anything.
After publishing the first title, absolutely nothing happened for 2 days. This wasn't surprising. I decided to run a 3-day free download promotion on this first title, whilst also publishing a second title. The very next day, I started getting free downloads. Okay, great. I still wasn't selling anything though.
However, when i compulsively refreshed my "Reports" page on KDP, I noticed something...beautiful. Someone, somewhere, had read 15 pages of my book. I don't know how or why, but they did. That, all by itself, made me ridiculously excited. 4 days later, the unthinkable happened. A copy of my book was sold. Note that by this point, I'd had 3 titles published.
1 copy was sold for each of the next 2 days. I was beside myself.
I did quite a bit of reading before deciding to publish. I kept reading about how books in the erotica category "sell themselves" and it's a market which is practically insatiable. I saw this repeated so often that I figured it must be true.
Now let's be clear, with a whopping 3 books sold and a whole dollar-and-ten-cents in profits, I am very, very far away from considering myself any kind of "success". Here's the thing though. The feeling of having someone actually purchase your work is incredible. Sure, the paycheck you receive from your day job is far larger, but there is something special about being paid directly for something that you created.
Something that came entirely from your imagination.
After all, anybody who has an internet connection is bound to have a keyboard and a device with some word processing software on it. Yet, it was your work that they chose to hand over money for. This is the first time I've ever received any kind of financial reward for my writing. You can be sure I'm now on a warpath to ensure that it isn't the last.
As always, thanks for stopping by.
A.B.
