Thank you, readers

In a previous blog entry, I shared my sadness and disappointment about something: Receiving a royalty statement that showed zero sales of my book, 365 TIPS FOR WRITERS. I am immensely grateful to the commenters who took the time to share their support, especially to my publisher for addressing this matter in an e-mail, as well. Yet in the aftermath, I felt that something needed to be done to change this.

The question was...what?

What new things could I do for a book that was published four years ago? My publisher, the lovely Beth Erickson, likes to remind me that the book's subject is evergreen, and that the content included is still just as good today as it was four years ago. Still, I had no idea how to promote an old book. I was convinced people would see that copyright date and think...Meh.

How wrong I have been proven to be!

Not too long ago, my publisher had some news for me: The Tips book was now an E-book! Hooray! Granted, it could've been an E-book four years ago, but I am grateful that it's an e-book NOW because it's like making this four-year-old book brand-spanking-new again. It's like breathing life into an old book! And I was ready to go tell it on the mountain.

Now, I didn't expect the E-book to sell. Granted, E-books are THE big selling item these days (even outselling print books, last I heard). But I knew that the book itself is what people see, not whether it's print or electronic. If the print book wasn't selling, the electronic book wouldn't sell, either.

Still, I promoted this E-book, running on this new burst of excitement and energy over the book's "graduation" in the book world. (They grow so fast, don't they? Sniff, sniff.)

My publisher had another surprise for me: The E-books WERE selling. In fact, she sold more copies of the electronic book than the print book! How cool is that??

And when I read that it was "royalty time" again, I knew that this time around, a check would accompany that royalty statement. And that "0" number would be long gone.

When I received the royalty check today, I almost went into shock! It was THE biggest royalty check I have ever received so far. And I've been doing this author thing since 1993!

I was really psyched about this. And also very, very grateful to all of the people who bought the books.

And so, let me say here: Thank you, you lovely readers, for buying my book. Thank you for replacing that horrible, tearful experience I last had with a happy and hopeful one. Thank you for taking an interest in my book and for sharing news about it with people. I am so very thankful to you all! And I hope that you'll stick around, too, because my publisher and I recently discussed a spin-off title that will soon be in the works.

I am glad this royalty experience was better than the last one. It made me hopeful that maybe people DO want to read the books I write. And, say, maybe they're even good enough for people to actually BUY them.

But the most important message of all is the one I want to carry with me for future books. That maybe, just maybe, this time around, I did something right.