Sellin’ Paperbacks – My Amazement at the Support of Locals

My fellow writers and those random people who read my blog,

Let me tell you all about the virtues of standing proudly in your community. This weekend (Friday, to be exact) I received my paperback copies of The Kirkwood Project, which is available for eBook on Nook and Kindle for $4.99 and a very beautiful 406-page Paperback on Amazon.com for $9.99. Of course, I made the normal runs to the store my mother works at, expecting to sell one or two copies, and found myself taking money from four and five different directions so long as I still had copies to give out. Never had I expected to work out my writing hand so much in one location! Let me tell you, too, fellow writer and/or random person who stumbled across this blog, this same thing continued on even when I went to the neighboring city of Hayti, Mo., to sell the books to those who had been eagerly awaiting them.

When I first started writing The Kirkwood Project (for sale…just kidding, I already said it once. Did I mention I have business cards?), I talked to my cousin and fellow writer Robin Burks who told me about how her book, Zeus, Inc., was to be published. She told me about that fabulous new thing called Smashwords and said that if I wrote a book, I could do this thing called self-publishing and they would do all the work FOR FREE in regards to making the book available for Nook and Kindle. It sounded far too good to be true, but wasn’t!

Down the line, Zach St. Cin (my co-worker and The Kirkwood Project cover designer/promo video editor/business card designer/etc) came to me with a design he had been thinking about. Before I knew it, I was staring at a rough copy of what was to later become the cover of my debut novel.

So, here I am at the end of one writing journey, having since bought Adobe InDesign CS6 in order to typeset and publish a solid copy of The Kirkwood Project for Paperback, sitting here with a pen and the paperback in my hand while somebody rushes to hand me their money in exchange for the thriller I have spent the last six months perfecting. At this moment, I feel a bliss like no other for in this moment, I am famous. Long before both the positive and negative reviews rain down, I am the most popular man in the entire world – at least in my head.

I know what you’re thinking. Am I rich after selling all these books? No. With the 10 copies for the GoodReads giveaway I’m giving away, I’m going to more or less break even. But, guess what? Forty people will have been exposed to my work. At the time of writing, twenty-six people have received a signed copy of my newest novel this weekend alone.

Writing is viral, you should recall. At the end of this run, I will have shone a brilliant light on forty people. If I have done my job properly as a writer, they will likewise spread the light.