Self publishing news and revelations!

It's been another hugely exciting week for me since my last post here, with much progress in Eden's climb of the Amazon charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Firstly, the new chart positions;

In the UK Eden is now in the 600s, moving about a bit but holding steady. In the USA it's in the 1,500s and doing much the same. These new chart positions represent a huge leap on last weeks' and show continued growth in sales that is much greater than expected: i.e, sales have actually doubled again due to the continued rise with almost 2,000 copies sold and no sign of a dip ( so far ).

I have also appeared in Amazon.com's brand new Top #100 Authors list, which is based on all copies of all books sold by authors, and updated hourly.

This is immensely exciting as the Amazon site in the USA is absolutely vast, with some 2,000,000 Kindle titles available. To appear in this new chart is a huge milestone for me and I can't believe that it's happened. I'm rubbing shoulders with HUGE names from both sides of the Atlantic, and really hope that this author list is taken up by Amazon UK and becomes a permanent feature as the exposure to new audiences is potentially immense.

Further news involves my decision, based on Eden's success in the USA without any publicity, to purchase some advertising. I recently realised that due to the furore over authors buying or creating fake reviews for their books ( so-called sock puppets ) I had neglected to consider buying genuine advertising space on major websites for my books. Far from being hideously expensive as I had feared, and following in the footsteps of other self-publishing authors more experienced than myself, buying advertising space in on-line publications in the USA has proved both easy and relatively affordable. The adverts have not yet been published, but I'm eagerly awaiting the effect on Eden's chart positions on Amazon.com to see what, if any, impact they have on sales. If things go as well as they have for other authors, I may consider purchasing more, perhaps here in the UK too. I'll update here on the blog as soon as I have anything to report.

I've been working hard on a brand new project, along with a crime novel for my agent and plotting the sequel to Eden, but have contracted a cold from nowhere despite the sunshine we've been enjoying in the UK so have been slowed down a bit ( yesterday I wrote 3,000 words, a quarter down on my usual output ). Hopefully I'll get better soon, but due to still feeling rough this is the end of my blog post for this week. Hopefully I'll have more exciting self-publishing news to add soon!