The Blackbirch Series One Year On: How It’s Going

Welcome to part two of a blog post celebrating the first anniversary of the completion of my debut series, Blackbirch.

In this post, I’ll cover how the series is going, four years since the first book was released, and one year since the fourth and final book was published.

In part one, I shared lessons learned and fun facts about paying for writing assessments and line editing, building an author brand, querying and rejections, signing and giving up a small press contract, becoming an indie publisher, and my thoughts on the best time to release a book. You can read it here.

Now for the rest…

How It’s GoingSales

I debated whether to include numbers here. Not because I don’t want anyone to know them, but because it’s a triggering topic. My numbers may be well below other authors, or well above. My numbers may make someone laugh/feel sorry for me, or they may make someone question why they should bother because they haven’t reached the same figures.

There’s a reason why the end of the month on social media can be a hard place to scroll when you see other writers posting about their hundreds of sales when you haven’t sold anything in months. I get disheartened by those posts too, and that’s because we generally don’t know what we should be selling. We have no idea or expectations, or we have the wrong ones.

When I released The Beginning, the numbers surprised me. I expected to sell to family, friends, and maybe a handful of followers. I sold more than that. In fact, the first book in the series is still the book that sells the most.

When that book came out, many people told me that series sell more as each book is released, or that it’ll all take off once the last book is out because readers prefer to wait until a series is complete. I was also told that ebooks sell the most.

I listened to and held onto these expectations because I didn’t know any better—and those expectations messed with my head.

I’ve always sold more paperbacks than ebooks. This isn’t a complaint. I prefer paperbacks too, and my covers are stunning on the paperback version. But ebooks barely selling, especially when everyone said they’d be the biggest seller, made me think I was doing something wrong. That I must be terrible with my marketing, the price is too high, or that I’m not reaching the right audience if I’m hardly selling any ebooks.

But the hardest advice was that each book in a series sells more than the last. If that’s true for you—fantastic. It has not been true for me. Neither has the series “taking off” once all the books are out. My series has been completed for a year now. The first book is still the one that sells the most, and that is one copy every few months, if I’m lucky.

Now, you might think that must mean books 2-4 aren’t as good as the first. Based on reviews and how much I’ve grown as a writer, I don’t believe that’s true. I’m proud to say each book is better than the last, and I hope that one day the number of sales and reviews posted will reflect that.

Now for the numbers. In 4 years, I’ve sold 399 books (paperback and ebook) through IngramSpark, bookstore sales, and direct-to-customer sales. Almost 400 copies of my books are being read by readers around the world, and I’m extremely grateful for that fact. If you are one of those readers, thank you, and I hope you enjoyed/will enjoy the book/s.

Table 1 is the total sales (IngramSpark, Dymocks, Direct). Table 2 is from IngramSpark’s sales dashboard.

As you can also see from the Year/Print/Digital graphic, which is taken directly from the IngramSpark sales dashboard, the numbers ebb and flow. 2020 was the release of the first two books, so the numbers were high. 2021, there were no new books. 2022 was the release of the third book, and 2023, was the release of the fourth and final book. 2024, is no new books, but the whole series is there for any readers to buy and those 13 sales are a mix of all four books.

Reviews

Most people will advise you not to look at reviews, and I think that is good advice. Even if most of your reviews are good, there will always be that negative one that becomes the only review you remember. I do look at reviews to get content for promo graphics, but if I didn’t want to, I know my husband would get the quotes for me.

Not-so-fun fact: the very first publicly posted review I ever received was a blog post and Goodreads 3-star review that summed up everything wrong with my book. It left me in tears on the day of release, and after the stress and mess I’d been through with the small press and getting the book out, it really was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Funnily enough, this review was based on an ARC, and the reviewer bought the book when it came out, reread it, and updated their blog review a few weeks later, saying I’d improved some things. Reader, I had not.

The only difference between the ARC and the published book was typo corrections. I hadn’t changed the story or characters, and now this reviewer was saying the published version read better. Color me confused.

Thankfully, the next handful of reviews were high praise, and they’ve steadily grown in the years since.

Goodreads is the place where most of my reviews are posted, and once again, book 1 has the majority, which makes sense as it is the best seller of the series.

I’ve seen books that have been out for mere weeks get thousands of reviews, while new ones for my books (and many others based on the posts I see on Threads) are months or even years in between. It’s one of the most frustrating things about being an indie author. You need reviews so readers will take a chance on your book, but getting readers to leave them is completely out of your control.

Lesson learned: you can’t control what others write about your book or if they’ll even leave a review. For my books, the reviews reflect that the majority of readers like the plot and characters, and that’s all that matters. To gather reviews, all you can do is ask and make sure you do it via a page in your book.

Eternal thanks once again to anyone who has left a review for my books, with a bonus thanks to those who post reviews on multiple platforms. It is very much appreciated.

The current Goodreads ratings.Promotion

Another indie author rite of passage is self-promotion, although traditionally published authors are now also finding most of this falls to them too.

Like a lot of writers, I use Canva to make graphics for book teasers, reviews, cover reveals, and book trailers, and I post these consistently on social media.

For the release of The Beginning and The Collector, I also funded swag items for comps and beta reader gifts via Vistaprint.

This promo approach worked for The Beginning. A celebration giving away copies of the book, a tote bag, bookmarks, and a mug got the word out and was shared around successfully. A similar promo to promote the final book and entire series attracted less fanfare, but this was in a post-pandemic/tanked algorithm time when friends who’ve been following me for years never saw the giveaway posts in their feed.

At the one book launch I had, I gave away tote bags, wrapped chocolates, tea, and bookmarks. For the release of the last book, I sent beta readers bookmarks, a tarot card mentioned throughout the series, and an enamel pin as a thank you for their feedback and support.

I’ve sent a paperback of The Dark Half to a lovely reader in America because he was so supportive of The Beginning after reading it (Hi, Dave!). I’ve given free ebooks to people I’ve met at writing events who’ve expressed interest in the books, and I’ve done ebook giveaways as part of anniversary celebrations and put books on sale whenever a new book was added to the series.

Sadly, most of the time, I couldn’t even give a book away, let alone sell a book when it was on sale.

Lesson learned: I enjoy doing giveaways because they’re fun and I get to give something back to readers and those who have helped me get my books out there. I think for giveaways and sales to make an impact, you need a big following and an algorithm that will show your followers the giveaway/sale posts.

Does that mean promo isn’t worth doing? Not at all. Like everything, you can only keep trying and hope the next time it works like it’s supposed to.

The first Blackbirch giveaway, themed chocolates for my one and only book launch, and the final Blackbirch giveaway/beta reader gifts once the series was completed.The Art Of Letting Go

I’ve heard other authors talk about how a book isn’t yours once you’ve released it, and I used to think, how can that be? A book you’ve thought about for years and put everything into will always be yours. But it’s true. Once you release a book, it really doesn’t belong to you anymore.

Your opinion of the book also changes over time. For me, this series was something that saved me through some big life events, entertained me, and got me through rejections. It was my first taste of success but also failed success when my small press contract evaporated.

When the books sold more than I thought they would, hit #1 on various Amazon’s Hot New Releases charts, and became a favorite series to people I don’t know in real life, they reached heights I never dreamed of when receiving rejections and battling self-doubt. These were all things I never took in and appreciated at the time, and I wish I had.

The series is also something that never met my lofty expectations, and I hate that too. It’s now morphed from what I was convinced would be my big break to my backlist. It might not have taken off like I hoped it would upon release or completion, but there’s always hope that one day it will find a bigger audience.

Lesson learned: follow your own heart. Get your books in the world the way you want, whether that’s through indie publishing, a small press, on your blog, or with a traditional publisher. Strive for what you want, but also know your limitations and your own expectations. It’s okay to be disappointed if a book release doesn’t hit the milestones you want, but don’t let it stop you from striving for those same goals with each subsequent release.

What’s Next?

So, where to now that my series is complete? On to the next book, of course! After taking a well-deserved break from fiction writing this year, I will release two non-fiction books early in 2025, and start work on a new fictional book that I began outlining in 2017. I’m excited to write about new characters and situations, but I know I wouldn’t have gotten there without everything The Blackbirch Series taught me.

Thank you so much for reading my look back on the series for its first anniversary. It was fun and reflective for me, and I hope you got something out of it too.

If you have any questions about the topics raised in this post, please let me know in the comments.

— K.M. Allan

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