As hard as I worked for this book release I still wasn't really ready. I think I rushed it a bit, simply because I was so excited to have a book out in the real world!

I should have developed a team to review the book out of the gate. I still don't have a single review on Amazon yet. That was a mistake. I have broken the top 500 in one category, but gains are fleeting unless you keep selling. I did get one 5 star review on Goodreads from a professional reviewer, so that was incredible and affirming.

I am still recruiting people to do book reviews. I've opened an account on Bookfunnel and StoryOrigin. If you contact me on my Facebook page you could get a free book to review that way even. Reviews actually carry weight in the algorithms on Amazon, so it's pretty important to grab those as quick as possible. I've read that 50 seems to be the magic number but that isn't verified, if that is even possible.

I learned a lot about Facebook ads, and Amazon ads and Bookbub ads. I should've prepared sooner to do a build up on Bookbub prior to my book release. They have a decent book launch program, but it all costs money.

I learned about building a mailing list and how to grow it using list sharing and giveaways. I don't have a lot to give away quite yet, but that will come as I write more books. I'm several thousand dollars in the hole at this point, with editing costs and ad costs, and ISBN costs, and distribution costs at Ingram, but these are all up front and the book is alive now and will be forever. I'm proud of what I put out and hopefully this will be something that will pay me back for a long time to come. But if not, it was certainly worth lessons in cover design, formatting, distribution, and marketing that I will take with me for the next book.

I am going to work on creating a how to self publish guide while it is all still fresh in my mind.

This part of the journey is almost over. Just pump the ads occasionally and do a couple of promos. Speaking of which, there will be one coming up next month where the book will go on sale for $0.99 on Amazon. It will run from March 8th to the 15th. Hopefully, I can arrange for a Bookbub promotion at the same time.

I am pursuing an audiobook version on ACX, which will be available on audible at some point. More on that as it develops. I did send out my first newsletter today, so that is a milestone. If you aren't a subscriber there is a link on the top right. And here.

In the meantime I work on the next book, Vim Dicaré, Book One of the Mészárosa Trilogy. I would love to have you onboard as part of my street team for the next launch!