My expectation for the first month getting back to publishing after quite some time away was to sell exactly zero copies of anything. I fully expected my social media presence to also be stagnant. I’ve been away for a long time and haven’t put anything out for readers. Why, I thought, would anyone show up?

I read Dean’s blog post this week about not worrying about the numbers and just having fun. That’s a luxury I don’t have because I don’t have a staff to watch the number for me. That doesn’t mean I let the numbers drive my decisions on what I’m writing next. What it means is that I’m keeping an eye on things to see where they’re going and little else (at this point).

That doesn’t mean the numbers are totally unimportant. It doesn’t mean I’m doing nothing in the future to help those numbers. What it means is that I’m keeping an eye on things and tracking for seeing how progress is going. I won’t be dwelling on these numbers as if my life depends on them. I don’t check as frequently as I did when I first started this journey. Are they important? To a degree, yes. As an indie publisher, I want to know what’s happening. As a writer, no. They’re unimportant as the whole goal of doing this is to have fun. If I make money along the way, even better.

So, here’s the numbers for April and May

Month April May

Twitter 1227 1219
Facebook (personal) 701 702
Instagram 314 314
LinkdIn 300 300
TikTok 177 208
Blog subscribers 104 114
Facebook (author page) 56 56
YouTube 40 41
Newsletter 31 32
Anchor 2 4
Tumblr 0 4
Goodreads X 164

Published Books 14 16
Published Shorts 0 2

Orphan 0/0 0/698
Villain 0/0 0/207

Haircut 0 3
1010 1101 for President 0 2

So, that might be a little confusing. Here’s the gist. Social Media saw small growth over the month. Nothing major, just small growth. I expected stagnant growth, we had some growth (except Twitter). I didn’t track Goodread numbers from April, but I think I had one new “friend” on Goodreads. The fact that people started following me on Tumblr surprised me. I won’t lie about that. I’ve been posting there for YEARS and never had a single follower. Color me surprised.

As for sales, I know I’d said some time ago I was going to go wide. For reasons, right now, I’m staying narrow and we’ll revisit that discussion at a later time.

Again, 0 was the expectation. The first number is sales. Both Orphan and Villain, 0 sales both months. page reads, 698 for Orphan and 207 for Villain. This means at least 2 people read book 1 and one person read book 2. Hey! That’s a lot better than 0.

The two short stories, 3 for Haircut and 2 for 1010 for prez. Five short story sales.

Now, remember, expectation was 0. I’m nobody. I have a tiny following. The fact I sold anything at all amazes me. To no end! I’m delighted as can be. Any growth is the expectation. May was a good month for getting started.

For June, I’m doing nothing different. I’ll keep doing 5 a Day With Jay, and blogging daily. That’s it. I’ll make sure everything goes to all the different social media sites, but that’s all I’m doing at this point.

Speaking of announcements, GRPC2 is out in print!

I’m off to go make more words happen.

Until Next Time!

Stay Awesome!

Audio Only: https://anchor.fm/jr-murdock/episodes/5-a-Day-With-Jay—0146-e120u18