Weekend Update Gets Paid!

[jon_chaisson]

"I just got my first purchase order notification for A Division of Souls. Yay, I'm a legit paid author now! BASK IN MY $4.69. #booyah"
--Me, tweeting yesterday. :)

So yes, I have made money off my book! I know of at least two friends who bought it so far, and hey, I'm okay with that! It's only been a couple of days since the drop date, and it's going to be available forever anyway, so I'm totally fine with being a slow burner. This is just the beginning.

[That's not to say I may have felt a passing twinge of "OH GOD I REALLY DO SUCK" the other day. I heard back from BookLife, who reviews books for Publishers Weekly, and they've decided to pass on reviewing. Granted, they get thousands of requests each day and can only select a tiny amount, so it was kind of expected. But I let that twinge pass. Onward and upward.]


Has anything changed, now that I have something to measure my writing career? On the surface, no, not really. I'm still Workin' for the Man during the day and slogging through my writing in the evenings and weekends. On the other hand, however, it's definitely changed my frame of reference. I may still be thinking about writing the next book, or simply enjoying the process of writing a novel, but I've now added the business side of it. I'm actively thinking about what steps I should take, where I can go with it, and everything else...taking it a little more seriously now. Like I'm finally working on it as a career instead of a pipe dream.

And I kinda like that. :)

Oh--and I think I'm pretty happy with first-day Smashwords numbers:
Sample (20% of book) downloads: 3
Full downloads: 3
Page hits: 100+

It's of course gone down since then, but I expected that. This is where shameless self-promotion comes in. I'm still working on that. ;)

Comments

[peartreealley.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! I'm kind of thinking of things as a slow burner, too. They'll be available forever, and I'm considering it more of a retirement/long-term investment than paying all my bills next week XD I read an article that pointed out that even if you only made $1-2k a year on a book, in three years you still will have made about what you would have gotten from a "typical" 1st novelist advance (that would take 2-3 years to hit the shelves). That was a sobering and encouraging perspective.

And hey, $5 is awesome. I mean, that's more than my novels with their hundred agent rejection have been doing for me in the last decade XD

[joncwriter.livejournal.com]

Thanks! That's exactly what I'd said elsewhere...it's not going anywhere anytime soon, and I'm not bound to any first week sales expectations. Plus, I realized earlier that I just need to sell a few dozen and I'll make back what I spent on the cover picture! :)

But yeah...that's a very good way of looking at it. A money maker at a much slower pace, but at the same time I'm doing at my own pace rather than the publisher's!

[cocoajava.livejournal.com]

You have a ways to go to beat my MIGHTY $21.01 check from Smashwords. I have yet to meet any Amazon thresholds for payments, even after nine months.

But we're here to get rich, right? Riiiiight.

[joncwriter.livejournal.com]

Heh! Just getting a purchase on Day One was enough to make me happy. Even if I did know who it was! [And no, it wasn't my mom. :p ]

The fun thing, if you want to call it fun, is finding new and creative ways to get the word (words?) out there. I've been quite unconventional about it, trying out different things such as being creative with Twitter and making it available for a finite time on NoiseTrade, and seeing where it goes. I'm definitely going the standard route as well, but I totally admit part of the excitement comes from the sudden "oh hey, this might work!" :)

[cocoajava.livejournal.com]

NoiseTrade is new to me. I'll educate myself on that. I had some good results from printing up bookmarks. I keep them in my purse and when writing comes up in conversation, I whip one out. People like them!

http://www.brassbrightcity.com/2015/02/07/brassy-marketing/

[joncwriter.livejournal.com]

NoiseTrade was originally just for music, but they started working with books a few years back. This site is more of a pay-what-you-want site, but I've seen a lot of indie writers going this route as a side path. It's not always a moneymaker, but it's another valid avenue to get new readers. :)