$Hallelujah!$

[Amica]

Rejoice with me, my friends: my vanity-published novel has paid for itself in two months. !thumbsup!

It came out Jan. 31, and when I checked my Feb. and March sales, I discovered that it has earned back all of the money I put into getting it printed, plus a little over. I went with the "diamond" package at Outskirts Press, (www.outskirtspress.com) which offered the most services... and it has been worth it so far. Now I just have to sell about 55 more, and that'll pay for the cover art as well. ;)

Of course, most of my sales have been on Amazon, so the novel's continued success depends heavily on what Amazon decides to do about the self/vanity publishers.

But I'm not letting that get me down, because I've already broken even on it, which was my main goal... and I'm building up a readership, which was my secondary goal. For my second novel I'm going to go the commercial-publication route, but in the meantime I'll quite happily accept royalty checks for this one. I'm just amazed that it only took two months -- I had expected not to get back my investment for at least a year!

[tneeley]

Amica, way to go! Praising God with you for His blessings in your journey.

[lynnmosher]

May the Lord bless all your efforts in a big way1

[David Meigs]

Congrats! !thumbsup!

[DrRita]

Your success puts you in that small, small percentile (about 5%) who actually do okay with self publishing. Congrats. Did you have a small readership before you published? A platform? Lots and lots of marketing? Just curious.

[Amica]

I did have a readership, yes. I had originally posted the story on a fan fiction website (it is based on the original "Phantom of the Opera" novel, so technically it did count as fan fiction; but it's out of copyright so it's safe to use as a source), and it was received very well. Over 800 positive comments, many of which urged me to get it published so they could have it in book form. I finally decided to take it down, revise it, and get it published by a vanity press. When it came out, I started emailing the people who had left me a positive review. I'm assuming they were the ones who ordered the first few copies. After that, word started to get out and last month the sales had more than doubled.

I haven't done all that much for marketing; most of my marketing has been word of mouth on the internet. I am a member of a couple of "Phantom" discussion forums, so it was simply a matter of telling them "Hey, my book is out." Also, I had commissioned a cover artist from a HUGE artists' website, so when the book came out several of her fans bought it just for the sake of the art. And then it started to get positive reviews on Amazon so people felt safer buying it. An awful lot of the published Phantom books aren't worth their weight in crap. (I've read a few, so I know). The fact that mine actually has a storyline and minimal typos apparently makes it stand out. :)

I do expect a plateau sometime soon, since most of the people who originally urged me to publish it have now bought their copies, but in the meantime, it's all paid for. :) Life is good.

[Xenia]

That is great news! Congratulations..

[Amica]

Thank you! Yes, I'm very happy. :) It feels great to achieve one's goals... and my main goal with this was to get it out there, and to at least break even. :D

[jacks girl]

Congrats...

Great news.

Jacks

[obwanocolby]

Congratulations, that's awesome. Your just getting started to. You should do well, Colby

[tlm]

Great news!

[Amica]

Thank you!

[WritingChaos]

That’s radical!

*Hugs.*

Always nice to see hard work pay off.