So, yesterday was the big day – Something in the Cellar, my debut eBook, launched. If you’re interested, then have a read of this. Otherwise, I’m going to talk about the process of publishing an eBook, so that you know exactly what it entails and what to expect/mistakes to avoid. But first, a look at just how Something in the Cellar performed.

Sales

Thanks to everybody who bought a copy of the eBook yesterday. I hope you enjoyed/are enjoying it, and felt it was 77p/99c well spent. What can you buy for 77p these days, anyway?! If you did enjoy it, please consider leaving a short review. Word of mouth is so important to the success of authors, so a few honest reviews really help drive interest and increase legitimacy.

As for the sales themselves, I am pleasantly surprised. Being a short story, and having only announced it on Sunday, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it seems to have performed well. In fact, I sold two copies right after publication on Monday evening, before I’d even announced it to friends or family! Whoever you two are, get in touch – I love you.

At its peak, Something in the Cellar sat just outside the top 6,000 books in the UK Kindle Store. To put that into context: there are over 500,000 items for sale, by authors published and unpublished. I was also just five places away from a place in the Kindle  Top 50 for Short Stories, battling it out with my pals Stephen King and Chuck Palahniuk.

After such launch day excitement, sales are evening out now, of course. I’m still inside the Top 100 Kindle Short Stories, but slipping away as the buzz dies down. Overall though, I never expected to crack the Top 100 Short Stories, let alone the Top 30 Suspense Shorts, so that was incredibly flattering. Thanks to all of you who made it happen.

Lessons Learned

My biggest advice to new writers submitting to KDP would be to make sure everything is absolutely spot on before your hit that ‘Submit’ button. I had to go back a couple of times and make changes to the description and categories, so that delayed updates for around twelve hours or so. Don’t make the same mistake, as tempting as it is to rush through things just to get your book out there.

Remember, every little KDP update takes around six hours to implement. This could harm sales, so be careful and scrutinise every last detail before you publish.

Another piece of advice would be to make sure you link directly to Amazon when marketing your book throughout the day. I linked to my blog post, which explained the deal, and feel I perhaps lost a few potential sales because of this. If you do link to your blog, make sure every store link is working, and that places to purchase are clear.

Also, as expected, sales in the UK were high, mostly because a lot of contacts reside there. American sales are currently disappointing, sat just outside the Top 100,000, in contrast to a current Top 10,000 UK standing. I guess a way round this would be to make sure you link to your Amazon US page, too. I’m not too disheartened by this, as I suspected most interest would be UK-based, but I’ll think about the prominence of my US links some more in the future.

Where Do We Go From Here?

On a whole, I’m so pleased I released Something in the Cellar. I’ll be hoping for a few Amazon reviews over the coming days and weeks, and have a couple of giveaways planned, one of which will be very soon.

After that, well: there’s What We Saw, which is currently being edited. I expect that to launch sometime around November/December. Definitely before the end of the year, anyway.

I’m also in the planning stages of another top-secret project, which will make itself a little less top-secret over the coming weeks.

Until then, if you enjoy Something in the Cellar, please leave a review via this link if you’re UK-based, or this link if you’re in the US. It only has to be a couple of lines, but that would be fantastic.

I’ll be in London over the next couple of days, so Friday’s blog post may be pushed back to Saturday. You’ll be kept updated via the Twitter feed, anyway.

Have a great day,

Ryan.