T.I.E. (Entry 10): Little Mountains

I like the view here.

By Thio Isobel Moss

Today I learned why those first few sales are so important, even if they’re slow to come and few in number. Overnight, my rank in Amazon’s categories jumped by as much as 4,800 places. Because of single-digit sales. No, I’m not a bestseller, likely to be one soon, or even in the top 1,000, but I’m climbing the ranks!

If you’re an author and you see even one KU reader or one sale more each day, don’t get discouraged! That is progress! If you can maintain any momentum, keep writing, and adding titles to your name, you can get there. It’s a slog, for sure, and it doesn’t have the glamour of instant success, but it is real and far more concrete.

The other thing I learned today was that print sales don’t show on the reports until the books are shipped. However, it still shows up in the rankings. So, my KDP reports are being updated. My lone KU reader has kept reading, and I have another handful of sales to my name. And I’m doing a happy dance!

Twenty-seven out of twenty-nine of my reviewers have downloaded my book (huge ratio!), my Amazon ads have collected a few clicks, and ChatGPT says that my progress is healthy. Take that with a grain of salt—AI is known to hallucinate, but independent sources seem to support that opinion.

Sometimes, especially when we’re doing something new or momentous, progress isn’t always obvious. Success wears different colors than we expect. At that point, it’s on us to adjust. For my part, I’m beaming. The first few markers I assigned to gauge my sales have been blown out of the water. From the top of this little mountain, the big one doesn’t look so lofty.

Update:

I am absolutely thrilled to announce that Blind Spot: The Covenant’s Forfeit has reached #89 in Free Contemporary Fantasy, #291 in Free Romantic Fantasy, and #310 in Free Urban Fantasy!