C.B. Ward

Hi everyone, I published my first novel The Final Vendor on May 2nd of this year. I am a self-published author, so I wanted to be transparent on my sales and how I got there.

Amazon:

My novel is currently on Amazon, IngramSpark, and NoirPages (a black romance reader site). On Amazon, the formats available were paperbook, ebook, and Kindle Unlimited. I removed the ebook from Kindle Unlimited after 90 days in order to sell it on multiple sites.

• Paperback and ebook sales: I sold 62 copies. 7 of which were copies I bought because I had an impromptu event and needed copies quickly. 6 were purchased by my mom and gifted to her friend who gifted it to other people.
• Kindle Unlimited: I had 1741 pages read, which is about 5-6 books worth.

Author Copies:

I sold 40 author copies. They were mainly sold at my book launch, dance class, band rehearsal, and family events (cookouts, reunion). I had a few friends order signed copies from me personally.

Total: 102 books sold!

My original goal was 50, then 75, and I was able to hit 100.

Biggest impact:

I have 1675 followers on TikTok, and 105 followers on Instagram (375 on my personal Instagram). I believe TikTok led to 2 copies being sold. I’m unsure how much Instagram helped, but I did sell to a few old friends who saw me cross-post to my personal account. Most of the sales and pages read came from in person sales and word of mouth.

Lessons learned?

In person sales are the biggest market. Making TikToks can be fun, but it’s way more effort than reward. I learned how to efficiently talk about my book – I convinced a random server to buy it, which is probably my greatest achievement. In the future, I will try to get more readers upfront to leave reviews, sign up for more festivals, and work with small business owners.

Hopefully this was insightful. Happy writing!