I've Got to Work Harder

I never thought I'd get rich off my first book, a collection of short stories called, (C)rock Stories: Million-Dollar Tales of Music, Mayhem and Immaturity. I paid my money to Booklocker, including some extra for a second proof copy (my bad) and figured I would make that investment back within a few months, maybe six at most.

I have 154 friends on Facebook, so I foolishly figured that at least 100 of them would buy my book right out of the chute, and then I'd work a little bit to sell another 50 and -- BANG!! -- I'd break even.

From that point on it would all be gravy, I thought.

Well, it turns out that despite my near-constant pushing of the book on Facebook, and the efforts of many friends and family to share my links on the site with their networks, after nearly two months, I've sold only 31 copies. More copies might have sold through Amazon and other outlets, but I won't get those figures for a while. So for now, I'm going with 31.

Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely grateful to the people who've bought my book. And even though all of them are friends or family, they will definitely learn something about me through their reading of the book.

But I'm realizing that in order to sell more books -- and I'm shooting big here, looking to move 500 copies by the end of the year -- I have to work harder. And I shouldn't rely so much on Facebook. That's one of the reasons I joined Goodreads.

So if anybody reading this has ideas about how and where to promote my book, I'm all ears. And if I do ever get rich off this book, I'll buy one of those fancy ear trumpets so I can hear you even better.