I Don’t Need Awards…

…when I receive these kinds of reviews from actual readers.

Making Writing Work

A while back Joe Konrath put out a call for guest posts for his blog. This was mine. Unfortunately the day before I was going to send it to him he ended up writing a post with a similar message. I decided to go ahead and post it here anyway. It’s geared toward other writers, like most everything else on this blog. Hope you like it.

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My name is Brian J. Jarrett. You’ve probably never heard of me.

I’ve never been published in a magazine of any kind. I’ve never had a story published in a collection. I’ve never had a novel published by anyone.

I’ve never once sent a query letter to anyone. Ever.

I wrote my first short story in grade school, then started writing more seriously in high school. After graduation I wrote a bunch of short stories and a novel. I thought about trying to become an author, but ultimately I gave up on that dream. I ended up going to college and becoming a computer programmer instead.

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

Into the Badlands is succeeding far beyond my wildest dreams. Of course I wanted it to do well, but I also want to win the lottery when I play. I don’t ever expect to actually win anything.

Here’s a screen shot of today’s rankings:

The book broke the 3000 mark in the entire Kindle paid store for the first time ever today, reaching #2,819 out of more than 750,000 paid titles. It also remains for more than two weeks in the top 100 Psychological Thrillers bestsellers category, reaching a new record of #59.

To make this even better, the book has also broken into the top 100 Kindle Horror bestsellers and the top 100 Horror bestsellers overall (including non-Kindle releases). It’s done this before on one or two occasions, but #79 and #90 (respectively) are all-time highs.

This means that I’m sharing the top 100 Horror list with some of the authors I most read and respect. Want to see something mind-blowing?

“Into the Badlands”…Now in Paperback

I wrote this audacious post back in September about how I didn’t see any reason to publish on paper. At the time I felt pretty strongly about it. Despite selling more books than I had expected, I wasn’t selling boatloads of them, so it seemed a bit vain to go through the trouble of making a paperback no one would buy.

Then something happened; a couple months passed and I sold my 500th copy of Into the Badlands.

After that I rethought things. By then more people had asked for a paperback and since the book was actually selling on the Kindle it seemed like there might be some demand. It seemed less vain to do it. I also felt more compelled to make the book available in every format possible, so as to not alienate any potential readers.

Transparency In Indie Publishing, Dec. 2011

Last month I started a series I’m calling “Transparency In Indie Publishing”. The purpose: to provide insight into one independent author’s experiences. Back in November’s post I mentioned how things had gone up to that point and where I thought things would go in December.

I’m glad to report that my predictions were way off.

I predicted I might sell 300 copies of my novel, Into the Badlands within the month of December. I felt that was a generous estimate. Turned out, it was low. In total I sold 411 copies across all channels in December, more than the prior three months combined.

Virtually all of those were sold through Amazon. Nook sales did increase a little, but in the end Into the Badlands only sold 5 copies, an increase of 1 from the prior month. The Nook continues to disappoint compared to Amazon.