Keep on keeping on

Continuing my journey through my personal writing experience,  I had Ieft off in February. February left me feeling pretty elated. I had an entire box of books out in the public.I knew ... they were going home and digging right in, and then the reviews would be tumbling in. 

A little side note; when you are an Indie Author, most advertising companies find you unaccredited. You are an unknown name in a vast sea of thousands of very well knowns. Some of the advertising companies want you to have a certain amount of reviews to advertise for you (even if you're throwing money at them). This is a lot harder task than it sounds. Out of that box of books I sold, to my close friends and clients, a total of one of them ... seriously only one of them wrote a review. I had heard some great verbal feedback from some of them, but no one would take the time to write a review on Amazon for me. Don't get hung up on the fact your friends and family will help. I hate to say it, but sometimes family might not take what you're doing serious. You have to reach out in other places as well.

Back to March. When I published, I had no clue on the different platforms and where and how to get my book other places. I used Createspace, and Kindle. That was it. Kindle Direct publishing, however, does have a "perk" that you can sign up for called Kindle select. When you self-publish you can create your own prices, but using Createspace you do have a minimum price you can sell your books for, but when you sign up for Kindle select, you have the opportunity to do two different deals in a ninety day period. The first deal ... you have five days in that ninety day period you can offer your kindle book for free, zero dollars. Who wants to give their hard work away for free? When you are a new Author it's a great way for readers to see what you're all about. Free promotions can be very advantageous. The second deal you can do is a Kindle countdown. This starts out on the day of your choosing at a lower amount than what your book is selling for and then each day the price raises. For example, if your book is 6.99 and you decide to run your deal for three days you could start it at 2.99, then 4.99 then it will go back up to the normal price. People like deals.

My personal experience for March exceeded my expectations. I decided to do a Kindle free promotion and ran it for five days consecutively. I am new to all of this, so everything I do is trial and error. It was amazing to see my books being downloaded. I had almost made it into the top 100 on Amazon in one day.
This is a little chart to break it down what I did for March:
In the US:
I sold 2 books, had 2 Kindle Unlimited downloads, and 1,239 free downloads
UK:
I had 1 Kindle Unlimited download, and 49 free downloads
DE(EUR):
5 free downloads
FR(EUR):
1 free download
Japan:
2 free downloads
CA:
36 free downloads
IT(EUR):
2 Kindle Unlimited downloads, and 4 free downloads
IN:
6 free downloads
AU:
10 free downloads
MX:
1 free download
Yes, that is a lot of mumbo jumbo, but for March I had a total of 1,360 books downloaded. I might add that it was literally all over the world. My book has been seen all over the world. I was absolutely ecstatic.

Some of this information is very private to me, but I really do want to help others the best I can. Please don't judge me on the numbers I put out for you to see. They may be of little value to some, but this is my journey... my life.
Thanks again everyone

RJ Heaton