This is the second book release I’ve done, and in the middle of all the frantic last-minute “gotta get everything done in time” chaos, I found myself asking, “How will I know if this is successful?” Of course the answer, like so many things in life is that I needed to define success for myself. It’s not something anyone else can do for me. Really, I was looking for a measurement I could use not only for this particular book launch, but for those that would come after as well. After some careful thought and dealing with the issues that were bound to happen due to my still-inexperienced nature, I came up with two goals that are at the heart of a book release for me:

1. To get the word out about my new book.
2. To sell more copies on release day than I did for the previous book.

That’s it. Those are the only criteria that I personally need to gauge whether or not a book launch was successful or not. And taking those two things into consideration, The Desert Heat release was most definitely a success. I’m actually quite pleased with how things turned out, and have more ideas that I plan on implementing next time.

When I released Tempest, I learned some hard truths. You can read them here if you’d like. I sold exactly one copy of the book on the day I released it, pretty close to midnight, even though I did what I could with the limited marketing knowledge I had to build hype for the book. This is something new authors *need to know* - because it’s normal, and even though it feels like all your efforts went to waste and this whole publishing thing just isn’t what you thought it would be…patience is the key. You’ll note in the comments of that earlier post that a traditionally publishing friend had a similar experience – this is not limited to self-publishing. Know and expect that your first book probably isn’t going to leap off the shelves at first. Could I have studied marketing and started off faster? Maybe…but I’m glad I took my time and opted for the slow build. It’s less stressful, for one thing.

Six months later, Tempest has sold over 140 digital copies in January alone – and the month isn’t over yet. Time, persistence and experimentation pay off.

Back to Desert Heat. Having learned my lessons with Tempest, I did not expect much in sales for release day. My personal goal, as per above, was to sell 2 digital copies (I publish in print more as a novelty for those who like keepsakes, and for contest prizes – I really don’t push my print books, so that doesn’t really factor into my sales goals at all).

- Five days before the release (on my birthday), a reader pre-ordered a signed print copy off my web site.

- The day after I uploaded Desert Heat to online retailers (4 days before release), I sold 2 digital copies.  

- Release day I sold four more digital copies, plus one signed print copy.

That’s a total of 6 digital copies and 2 print copies sold before and during release day. And the book description isn’t even up at Amazon yet (they’re very slow on that - it's annoying).  

To say I’m happy about this is a serious understatement. It may not seem like a lot, but until you get into this business of publishing and marketing your books, you really don’t realize just how hard it is to sell even one copy of your book. Sometimes you literally have to ask for each individual sale. I missed out on a lot of things I could have done to get the word out, but this went far better than I’d hoped, overall.

I’m going to be guest posting at Self-Publishing Central , John Betcher’s blog about how I orchestrated this release, and what I’d like to do in the future to make the next one a success as well. I’ll post a link when that’s up for those of you interested in my basic marketing strategies (in the meantime - go read his blog, it's chock-full of great information). Suffice it to say, I feel good about how all this went, and honestly, there is *nothing* more motivating to me as a writer to know people are out there buying my books (although knowing they’re waiting for the next serial chapter is a very close second).

So what’s next? Write more books, and market these two as well as I can.

I think because my focus is on my (admittedly weak) attempts to garner reviews, I’ll post my experiences with that next week. If there’s anything you’d like to see discussed here, don’t be shy – we’re all learning together.

What are some of the strategies you use when you're planning a book release? And what do you consider a successful release?