Publishing my First Novel…
Yes, that is a 3D printed model of Seventeen from The Re-Emergence - my dad is awesome :D
Thoughts, observations and feedback from my experience publishing From the Grave of the Gods.
Launch week for From the Grave of the Gods was incredible. The outpouring of love and support from so many places has been overwhelming in the best possible way. I’ve posted sporadic live reactions to various updates surrounding the launch of the book on my social media channels throughout that week. So I thought I’d gather things together here on the blog and take you through what happened since day one, noting a few observations about the experience and things I wasn’t expecting.
Prior to Release
The weekend prior to launch day was a mix of emotions for me. I was bouncing around making sure I had all my launch day materials prepared and ready to go - blog post, email newsletter, posts for Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and plans to do things like an author AMA and a reading from the book - all plans to hit social media hard (well, hard relative to my usual postings). I updated the home and books pages of my website, and then finally set the KDP version of the paperback to publish (more on this later).
At the same time as getting all this practical work out of the way, I was desperately trying not to let my anxious mind get the better of me, to not convince myself that the worst would happen. But throughout the weekend I did find myself becoming pretty despondent. I checked my KDP pre-orders page for the ebook and saw that I still had only 3 (which had been there for the last couple of months by this point), and when I checked IngramSpark’s pre-order report page for the paperback, there was still absolutely nothing on there at all!
It seemed that despite all of my pre-order marketing, it hadn’t worked. By Halloween night I had managed to convince myself that despite everything, the launch of my novel was going to be an absolute disaster and it would sell less than The Re-Emergence. Everything was topsy-turvy; it wasn’t supposed to go this way. This isn’t how book marketing is supposed to work!
Monday 1st November - Launch Day
You can imagine what kind of a state I was in when I woke up on Monday morning. I knew my book had gone live, as my Writing Community friend and fellow SF author, Glenn R Frank, pointed out that the US version had swapped over from “pre-order” to “buy now” early - sometime during the night for me - for some unknown reason. Oh well, I’ve learned to just roll with these things - Amazon are weird. So shortly after waking I checked KDP and… I saw my very first ebook sale! But wait a minute… the three ebook pre-orders hadn’t delivered yet, so there were actually four ebook sales. Respectable for a first novel on launch day, I thought.
A sneak peek at the KDP sales and Kindle Unlimited page reads graphs.
But, what about the paperbacks? There were no pre-orders listed there even though a couple of family members told me they had pre-ordered. So I checked IngramSpark and I was entirely unprepared for what I saw on the sales report. There were 29 - yes, TWENTY NINE - launch day sales. Whether they were being picked up by retailers fulfilling pre-orders or just to hold some stock, I don’t know, but it hardly mattered. In one day, in only a matter of hours, From the Grave of the Gods had surpassed The Re-Emergence’s lifetime sales massively!
This wasn’t the end of it either. I set my plan in motion and posted everything up, shouting loudly about my launch, and I received such incredible support from the Writing Community on Twitter, helping to push the news out even wider. Throughout the day I saw the paperback counter tick up to 31 and the ebook sales go up to 8. Plus since From the Grave of the Gods is on KindleUnlimited, I started getting KENP page-reads, which by the end of the day were at 30!
Moving away from the sales figures, something pleasantly unexpected happened. My wife sent me a message about halfway through the day to say that she had found the paperback version of the book being listed on more retailers than it had been during the pre-order period. I was even more surprised to find that those retailers included the BIG ones: Waterstones and Barnes & Noble. I had previously been led to believe that neither of those retailers would list indie books unless the authors jumped through a very specific set of hoops that essentially mean we have to pretend to be traditional publishing houses. Nonetheless, there it was, listed on both of those sites ready to order. Later on, more research determined that the book was pretty much listed everywhere. What excellent news!
By now, the KDP paperback of From the Grave of the Gods had gone live and I was expecting that in the next few days I would start seeing grey bars appear on the KDP reports page as well.
Since Monday is a working day for me, I sadly didn’t get the time to run a Twitter AMA. But I tried to upload the reading I had recorded the night before and I discovered to my dismay that it was TOO LONG! So those plans were scuppered for the time being. As it got towards the end of the day, the love and support just continued; various sci-fi Writing Community members told me that they had bought the book, I received lots of compliments for the cover art and description etc…
Then I attended Drew Wagar’s weekly sci-fi writing livestream on Twitch. As well as the usual entertaining waffle and chatting about Dune, Drew spent a good ten minutes or so giving me and From the Grave of the Gods the mother of all shout-outs and recommendations. I was utterly blown away! I am so grateful for all the kind words that Drew and the other writers in the chat gave to me that evening. My heart was full and I had a stupid big grin on my face for the rest of the night.
After that I decided I really needed to give that reading another go. So I re-recorded it using a different part of the book and managed to fit it in the Twitter time limit then posted it up on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram where it was pretty well received and made for the perfect end to an awesome launch day celebration.
The Rest of the Week
I’m very happy to report that the celebrations didn’t stop with the Monday. I received a further three sales on the Tuesday, and by the end of the week I’d had yet another three. People started reading their copies, keeping me apprised of their progress, and my KENP reads shot up massively, so much so I got nearly 600 in one day! I did other things like starting to post in Writers Lifts to keep the momentum going, and even posting the reading video to TikTok - my first ever (and only so far) video on that platform - and it got much more attention than I had expected.
KENP reads and sales continued, and The Re-Emergence wasn’t left out either because the amazing Kevin Carlson of Writing in Obscurity posted his review of the novella, giving it an in-depth literary analysis and a 5-star rating on Goodreads. I’m pretty sure this is what led it to get another couple of sales in the last few days!
I was also treated to the amusing story from Glenn of how he was tracking his paperback copy of From the Grave of the Gods as it meandered its way to him, and apparently briefly hyperspaced the width of the United States (going in half an hour on a trip that should have taken several hours) before coming back and finally reaching its destination.
Oh and I wanted to mention category rankings! I had a look at these for the ebook on Amazon and I was amazed to see that From the Grave of the Gods got as low (high?) as #133 in Hard Science Fiction (Kindle Store) in the UK. I would absolutely LOVE to see it break the top 100 and be in the esteemed company of Adrian Tchaikovsky, Isaac Asimov, Martha Wells and Liu Cixin. Only time will tell on that one!
*Excited pterodactyl noises*
Observations… Well, observation.
Going back to the KDP version of the paperback. When I set up the paperback on IngramSpark in order to do pre-orders, I thought that when I set the KDP version to go live on launch day, it would supersede the Ingram version (I can tell the difference because I picked different paper for both) on Amazon. But it turns out that it has not. The paperback sales are still going through IngramSpark, which is not a problem per se, but it is affecting the category rankings on Amazon and I don’t get to see the nice little grey bars on the chart alongside the orange ones. I’m not sure why it hasn’t superseded it. Perhaps once things settle down a bit something might change on Amazon’s system, but it’s something I will be aware of for next time.
I have a few more thoughts and observations about the process of self publishing generally that I think might be helpful for aspiring authors to be aware of. They might make a good little blog series. So watch this space…
That was the first week after the launch of From the Grave of the Gods. So many heart-warming experiences and I thank you all for your support thus far in my writing journey. There is much more to come!
