I was going to write, “My book has reached its first milestone,” but it’s not really that, is it? There were so many: enough words written to know I’d be able to do this book thing; halfway through; first draft completed; first opinions saying “yes, this is good enough to polish and publish”; beta reader feedback and revision, editor feedback and revision; publication on Amazon; first sales; first reviews there and on Goodreads; publication on IngramSpark (that finally happened just last week!). So this isn’t that.
It is a big one, though: My book has paid for itself! That’s counting editor, cover design, ISBN number, and registration of copyright. I’m not counting purchases that contribute to multiple books, like Scrivener, and definitely not counting the laptop I bought when I retired – that gets used for other stuff too. I’m also not tracking incidentals like buying copies to hand-sell or buying bookplate stickers to sign and send to friends, though those are probably covered too. (Or self-indulgences – it’s pretty tempting to buy a nice new pen for autographs. I have some nice fountain pens, but don’t want to lug along ink, and my best rollerball is in our wine logbook, since that’s the place I do most handwriting.) But it paid for itself, and literally hundreds, as in more hundreds than one hundred, people have read my book! (I figured that by adding orders plus the number of KU pages read, divided by the number of pages in the book.)
Also, Kindle Unlimited is the gift that keeps giving, to an author. Only pennies per page read but they do mount up.
I have some decisions to make now. I’ve already started working on a webpage (paulabermanauthor.com), but it’s still in work. I do not think the addition of AI has made webpage creation much faster! More like, more to argue with. At what point do I set up a separate Author profile on Facebook? When (if ever) should I set up a FB group? Do I need a blog on the author webpage? (Probably, at least for status news and announcements.) I don’t think I’ll ever link this blog to that page, though it’s not particularly hard to find.
Oh, and I have one reading scheduled at the local library, with the possibility of one in Eugene!!