What Happened After My First Book Was Published?

What Happened After My First Book Was Published? Learn what I learned through six years of writing and publishing. I’ll cover my failures and successes, and what led to an exponential growth of sales and revenues.

The First Year 2016

My book Zombie Turkeys was published in ebook and paperback formats.

Oddly, Kindle did not accept my paperback cover. It was “too bloody”. I had to change the colors. So I have these two covers:

Events: 1. Book launch at the Peoria North Library on October 31st. I had about 20 people and sold 5 books. Combined with 5 presales and I had ten in October.

2. Wheel Art First Friday – My wife made pottery here and I set up a table to sell books with their permission. I sold 4 books.

3. Peoria Library Author Fair – Sold 1, but I also made some author friends

4. Chambanacon in Bloomington – My first book fair. I sold 5 books. I made more author friends.

5. I started my newsletter in November, using addresses I picked up from my events.

Year total: 28 books, 27 paperback, 1 ebook.

Got questions? Ask me.

What Happened After 2016? 2017 happenings

I started writing another book in November 2016, My Undead Mother-in-law. It came out in August 2017.

Events: 1. I Know You Like A Book author signing. I sold 6 books.

2. Lit-on-Fire bookstore author reading and some sales.

3. I joined two author groups and sold some books to other authors.

4. I went to Her Majesty’s Tea Room and sold 4 books.

5. I sold 3 books at the Book Nook.

6. I sold some books to Barnes and Noble.

7. My Undead Mother-in-law launched at Barnes & Noble and I sold 1. I also appeared on TV here in Peoria.

8. I went back to Chambanacon and sold 8 books, 5 ZTs and 3 MUMs.

9. I published an audiobook version of Zombie Turkeys on 11/1/2017. You can get it for free by clicking here. I sold one later that year.

Final results for 2017: 96 Zombie Turkeys sold and 37 My Undead Mother-in-law.

This post is long enough. Let me show you my sales chart to date and I’ll write another blog post soon. Notice my sales have increased every year except 2021. I sold so many in 2020, that my number of sales declined. 2022 isn’t over, but I expect to pass both 2020 and 2021.

The circle size represents the percent increase (or decrease) from the previous year.