4 Years of Self-Publishing
Today marks the fourth anniversary of my first self-published item going live on Amazon. I wrote a blog post about it
here. It's not a profound post, just a simple report. I last posted to this thread with August 2014 sales. The summary of the statistics since then and for the four years is:
17 items published
345 total sales in 48 months
2014 Sept - 2 sales
2014 Oct - 2 sales
2014 Nov - 0 sales
2014 Dec - 0 sales
2015 Jan - 7 sales
These are net sales. I've had some purchases and returns in addition to these. The January sales come mainly from a couple of people at church who learned of my baseball novels and purchased the e-books. No feedback yet. Also, two surprising paperback sales of my first novel, on the same day.
The main thing I've learned is that I just can't promote myself. To make a post on social media about my books just about kills me; I hate it. Consequently I limit my promotion to about one post per month. I'll blame that on my parents, if a man 63 years old can still blame his parents for anything.
Meanwhile, some things in life have come crashing in on me, causing what I call The Great Time Crunch. In Aug-Sept I learned I have a previously unknown half-sister. Meeting and getting to know her, along with a new niece, nephew, and five grand-nephews, has taken time. Possibly there's a future book in that. My wife's home-based business is failing, and in October we began a serious effort to right that ship. As of now things are worse. It takes all my free evening time, and most of the weekends.
Hence, I'm not writing. I have four started works that lay abandoned, with no hopes of coming back to any of them soon. About the only good news is I found an artist to do a cover for my completed poetry book. She might finish it by the end of this week. If she does finish it, I'll publish it as a paperback, and maybe an e-book. Of course, given that poetry doesn't sell.... Beyond that, I have nothing at all scheduled for writing for the next year.
"It's always darkest before dawn." Isn't that what they always say? If so, dawn must be just around the corner.