And in the End: 527

I suppose the title of the post is a little premature, but given I have no idea why the sales of my books took such a big jump yesterday, I don't expect the trend to continue today. Although so far this morning, fifty-eight books have sold.

I went to a bull riding event last night, and periodically checked my sales on Amazon, by the end of it, total book sales were at 494. I really wanted to hit the 500 mark, but again, not knowing what the impetus was behind this surge, I certainly wasn't going to complain about the number.

By the time I went to bed, around midnight, it hit 527. On top of that, almost 100 were read on Kindle Unlimited. For anyone unfamiliar with the publishing industry, these numbers are huge for an independent writer who has had books on the market for less than eighteen months. While I started writing my first book in August of 2012, the first book I published went on Amazon on September 30 of 2013.

From a ranking standpoint, AND THEN YOU FLY ranked the highest yesterday, coming in at #57 on the paid romance list. I can't remember the highest it got on the all-paid list. I think it was in the low six hundreds. It's up this morning to #68 on romance and #911 on all-paid. 

As I said yesterday, I'm assuming Amazon ran some kind of promotion, but I have no idea what it was. As with everything else about this process of becoming an author, I want to remember yesterday and what an incredible rush those twenty-four hours were. The feeling of having over 9,000 books downloaded for free, and hitting #6 on the free romance list with AND THEN YOU FALL was amazing. There isn't any question that I'll run a free book promotion next year on Black Friday. But this was so different. These are paid books. 

I know that a percentage of the people who download free books, download every single free book there is, and will never read them. The Kindle Unlimited numbers are a little more optimistic because they don't show up until the person who downloaded the book has read a certain percentage of that book. Also, authors get paid for the KU downloads. 

But again, this is so different. These are people choosing to BUY my books. February of 2015 was far and away the best month I've ever had for books sales, even if I took yesterday's numbers out of the equation. Someone asked me a few days or weeks ago if I was making a living as an author. Uh, no. Unless they're James Patterson, or someone on his level, authors make pennies on each book that sells. When you're selling millions and millions of books, you make money. In fact, it's within argument's reach that James Patterson too, makes only pennies on each book sale. Hard to say, but I doubt he makes much of his $5, $8 or $9 ebook sale. Much of that goes to his publisher for marketing and other costs. 

So, if you're thinking about writing a book, or books, know upfront that it takes something extraordinary, like selling your books to a movie production company, or getting hit by literary lightning, like EL James did, or John Green.

Today I hope to celebrate . . . a little . . . maybe. At least inside my head I will. Even my family has become anesthetized to hearing about my book sales. Numbers run together and have become meaningless to them. It's hard to stay excited about the meager sales that have me walking on air. But it's me doing the walking on air, and I don't need anyone else to understand the euphoric feeling for me to own it.