It may just be a conversation starter or an ice breaker for them, but whenever people ask me, "So Andrew, how are sales for your book?", I think I'd rather they stab me in the eye with an ice pick. It's painful to admit the cold, hard truth -- I just don't know how many books were sold.
Well... not for certain.
In my mind, Anita my publisher has a team of dedicated professionals massaging data and running the complex statistical models needed to quantify sales of this book. In reality, she's got some sort of vague notion of how book sales are going. During one early conversation, a 20-25% figure came up; during a subsequent conversation, that became more reflective of the economic environment at 15%. So, I'm going with a guess that we've sold about 17% of our stock.
As a publisher, Anita was very excited by this number. As an author, I cradled the phone to my ear and scratched at the big question mark floating above my head. When the initial print run is 1000 copies, 17% means 170 books - which translates roughly into... my friends and family, doesn't it?
What about the many email campaigns I ran? What about the banner ad campaigns? What about all my fans on Facebook? There are more than 170 fans there. (Actually, maybe let's not look too closely at that - I'm just happy we have as many fans as we do!)
So here's the thing. I want to sell every one of my books. Every one. And I want to do it in a year.
Is this reasonable? How should I know. This is my first book. Besides, I've been called worse things than unreasonable, so I say - yes! This IS something we can accomplish!
Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention, please?
In this corner: wearing a black jacket and dripping with vampiric sexuality, hailing from a warehouse somewhere in Colorado - 830 copies of Bitter Things!
In the opposite corner, the challenger: armed with a glass of nice Shiraz and a whole lot of naïveté, the author.
The rules: the warehose must be empty of all 830 books by September 1, 2010. A healthy majority must be sold; a few may be given away as reviewers' copies, to agents, to producers, etc.
Why September? Becuase this is the end of August and September, that great Monday of months, is just a few weeks away - and I need some time for "training" - meaning, trying to figure out a game plan to take on my opponent.
There it is. On September 1, 2009 the bell sounds!
Wish me luck!