It’s now been two weeks since the launch of Hybrid and it’s been a definite learning curve. I knew it was going to be tough as a debut author to make a name for myself and build up a fan base, but the last fortnight has really reinforced that.

Due to the tight deadlines with the work for the school I mentioned in my first post, I just haven’t had enough hours in the day to market Hybrid as much as I wanted (and needed!) to. The school work is also the reason this second blog post is so late – I did mean to write it in the days following the launch but in the ongoing chaos I struggled to find time. My world has literally been all work and no play, with many long days and three all-nighters to meet deadlines. Now the work for the school is finally over I can look to focus on my writing career at last. That may be harder than I first thought but the challenge I’m facing has only made me more determined.

My first hard lesson – don’t rely too heavily on friends and family. I am lucky to have the support of so many great family members and different circles of friends, and some people have been really amazing at helping get the word out there about Hybrid. Others, I must confess, I’ve been a little disappointed with. I had hoped that more people would like and share my Facebook page if nothing else, but Facebook shares have been much fewer than expected. Given the number of different people in my life, I hoped if everyone could just share my Facebook posts and help get the word out, and if maybe some of their friends and family would share posts, etc, I’d be off to a great start and I’d get around 100 sales through friends and family alone. It didn’t happen, and the last I heard from Wild Wolf was that I’d sold just 43 copies. 43 is a respectable amount for a debut author, especially considering I haven’t been able to really start my marketing campaign in earnest yet, but it was something of a disappointment to learn the sales figures were much lower than I’d hoped.

The second lesson – don’t sit back and expect readers to come to you. This might seem obvious and that’s not to say I was under the illusion that people would just discover me without any effort on my part, but I did hope to start building a fan base through the starting point I thought various circles of friends could give me.  It seems I’ve had a couple of sales in America from people I don’t have an immediate (if any) connection with, but most sales so far have probably been down to friends and family. Even though I knew I would need to work hard to get my name out there to new readers and potential fans, the last two weeks have definitely served as a reality check. I would have done more in the way of marketing from the get go if it hadn’t been for the demands of reports, so now that work is finally over with I intend to do more to reach out online, as well as in the real world.

And the final lesson I want to share in this post – don’t make too many assumptions based on Amazon’s bestseller rank. I spent three glorious days following the release of Hybrid in the top 100 teen and young adult horror category Amazon have put me in, when friends and family were all buying their copies. I made the mistake of daring to hope that meant my book was doing really well and I was getting some of the word of mouth sales I’d expected. It’s frustrating that there doesn’t seem to be any way for authors to see the actual sales figures for ebooks through Amazon which means I’m in the dark until I get any further updates from my publisher, and all I have to go on as an indication that I’ve had another sale is my Amazon bestseller rank. At its most basic it seems the rank jumps up if you get a sale, and steadily continues to fall the longer you go without a sale. There is much more to it than that though, and as an author you can’t really rely on it to estimate sales.

I hope this post doesn’t come across as too negative because I am really enjoying the experience of being a newly published author and there have been some great moments in the last two weeks. Seeing my first review appear on Amazon and that it was five stars was an amazing feeling, and judging from the reviews now trickling in and the feedback from a few of my friends it seems I’m having a real impact on my readers, which is what makes all this so rewarding. But getting published was only the beginning, and in some ways the hard work has only just begun. If anything though it’s only served to make me more driven to do whatever it takes to make my writing career a success, and with that in mind it’s time to get to grips with marketing both online and in the real world. Oh, and hopefully write some more of book two in the coming weeks as well. Let the chaos continue!