I was a little shocked when she told me that Ingram only had eight books in stock, and that Baker & Taylor had none, with none on order. I called my publisher in a panic and asked him what the hell was going on. He told me to relax. First off, he was shocked that Ingram kept eight books in stock at all, because that meant they expected to sell them, and would probably be ordering more. And the fact that Baker & Taylor had no books was a good sign, because they had preordered quite a few, and given this is the season where distributors start making their returns, Swiss Chocolate was doing pretty well in that department. My publisher said to tell her to order the books through Ingram and Midpoint would ship the copies within a couple of weeks.
I still have no idea how many books I have actually sold, but my publisher told me to relax and keep promoting as much as I could. Writing the book was not easy, getting published was a matter of persistence and luck, but promoting the book once it came out is where the real work began.
I am a nobody. People know me on Facebook and other social networking sites, but who in America knows that I wrote a book? Quite frankly I am shocked that my blog gets so many hits, but I have yet to figure out how many of those equate into book sales. And despite the number of hits I get on my blog, jamesweil.com, gets hardly any hits at all. This surprises me because there is a lot of content on my site with plenty of samples of some of my best writing.
Persistence pays off. I will keep hammering away at promoting my book. There are a lot of ideas my publisher gave me, and I am going to try a few of them and see what happens.
Wish me luck, and love to all!
James M. Weil
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