April fool’s day. Easter Sunday. They fell on the same day this year. It’s also the first day of the new quarter; meaning yesterday ended the first quarter; meaning it’s time to report book sales. So, here it is; someone give me a drumroll.

In the first quarter of 2018 I sold 6 books.

Yes, six books over all venues. That’s none at Smashwords and the people they distribute to. None at CreateSpace, the printed books distributor. No personal sales. And six at the Kindle store. There’s always a chance another sale or two will show up at Smashwords from those sales outlets that are slower in reporting. Possible, though unlikely.

So this was my worst quarter, and my first single-digit sales quarter since 2nd 2016. During this quarter, I had no new publication. I did nothing to promote my books other than a Facebook post here and there. I had several occasions to meet with people at the office and urge them to buy a book. No one did.

Such is the life of a self-published author. “Discoverability” is the new buzz word we all talk about, and how difficult it is to achieve. I’ve thought about running ads at some places, and have been researching where. But finding time to complete that research and make a decision just didn’t materialize.

I’m not sure that time will materialize this side of retirement. That event is drawing closer, as my last post indicated.

The quarter wasn’t all bad, however. Three of the six sales were of books I published early in my career. One of them, Thomas Carlyle’s Edinburgh Encyclopedia Articles, was something of an affectation that I never really expected to have many sales of. The other three were of more recent items. The six sales were for six different titles. So having a backlist helped sales.

Also during the quarter I finished my latest work-in-progress. Yesterday I started my second round of edits on it. My beta reader has it, and will hopefully give me some ideas in a week or so. When will it be published? Right now I can’t say, but I sure hope it’s before the end of April.

In a future post, maybe on Friday, I’ll give an update on my writing plans.