May Update Post Book Launch

Hey!

Holy cow, this last month has been insane. I can’t believe we are staring down the barrel of another month already.

So what has been going on in my world?

Well, I launched the book!

I can’t believe that was less than a month ago. It has been doing well, at least it has been doing well in my opinion. As I sit here and write this newsletter entry, it has sold 140 copies as Kindle ebooks and physical books. It has also garnered more than 53,343 Kindle Unlimited Page Reads. Those Kindle Unlimited page reads are the equivalent of selling an additional 190 more copies of the book. The average independently published book sells about 250 copies, so I am well over average, and that makes me happy.

Furthermore, it is outpacing ad investments every day. So that means it is making money every day so far. It’s not a lot of money, but I am quickly recouping my startup investment, and I think within the month it will be a fully profitable venture. To me, that is good news. Part of this whole thing was figuring out how to sell books, and it seems to be a very scalable model as well.

So, thank you for making this such an amazing experience!

I have gotten a lot of great feedback on the book, and that feels good as well.

So now what?

I will keep tweaking the ads on Facebook and seeing how much I can fine-tune the sales funnel for the book.

I have also started on the next book!

Yes, I have started on the follow-up for Dead Station. Right now, the working Title is Dead Planet. We will see if it sticks. I am over 5000 words into the opening sequence of the book, and it picks up just a few days after Dead Station ends.

From a project perspective, I spent a year and a half learning and developing a process to do this and launch it. Now I need to see if I can fine-tune that process, make it more efficient, broaden my creativity, improve my craft ability a little bit, and repeat the whole process. My hope is to be releasing the next story before the end of the year. We will see if I get that done. I have not been great with my self-imposed deadlines so far. It might be that day job that gets in the way, but I dunno.

Anyway, it's such an amazing feeling having created this thing and launching it into the world. It blows my mind that it keeps taking on its own life and course. I keep waiting for it all to crash down, but so far it just keeps going further and further.

If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, I hope you do, and I hope you let me know if you liked it. Heck, you can even let me know if you hated it. It’s just nice to hear from people…

Shamon