My apologies for missing yesterday. Let me say, I’m doing much better today. Thank you for those that asked.

One of the things I’ve been saying all along, I want to be transparent on this blog. I’m going to show you all my behind the scenes numbers as we progress. This post may be dry for those looking for entertainment. It might be interesting for those writers looking to launch their writing careers. I’ll let you decide how it works for you. As always, feedback is appreciated.

The first April number for you is the magical number of 0. As I’ve said many times before, I’m starting from 0. What do I mean by that? I mean my total sales for April were 0. Yes, I sold a few in March and February. For April, that was a normal month. Zero. Nil. Zip. Nada.

I won’t cry over my 0. It’s entirely of my own making. This is where we’re turning this ship around and work on selling books. Each month I will report out how many books I’ve sold. If you really would like me to, I’ll break it down by book, but for the time being, we’re going to use one number for all book sales.

Short stories, also zero. This is no surprise as I haven’t published any short stories. This number can only go up, right?

Now, where am I not starting at zero from? Let’s look at the number of published books I currently have. For books I’ve Indie Published, we’re at 12. Well, 13 really, but one of those will be coming down soon enough. Let’s call it 12. To do along with those 12, we’ve got 2 that are traditionally published. When I report out books, I’ll lump them all together. When I give book counts, that will not include trad pub as I don’t know those numbers. Unfortunately.

Next, platform. Let’s talk all about platform. Where are people finding me and what I’m doing? As of the end of April 2021, here as my counts across all the platforms I’m currently active on (active to any degree).

Twitter	1227
Facebook (personal)	701
Instagram	314
LinkdIn	300
TikTok	177
Blog subscribers	104
Facebook (author page)	56
YouTube	40
Newsletter	31
Anchor	2
Tumblr	0

Nothing amazing or astonishing here. Why I post on Tumblr still, I have no idea. I’ve never had a follower and I doubt I ever will.

Anchor is a new platform that I’ve launched on. This is where the audio from my 5 a Day videos goes and gets distributed to places like Spotify (am I the only on that pronounces id Spot Ify?).

The newsletter and YouTube subscribers have grown since I launched 5 a Day With Jay and started blogging daily. To that end, so have the blog subscribers. The first two went from the low teens since August and the blog went from the low 80s. I’m convinced that posting with regularity has caused those numbers to go up all on their own without any effort from me other than doing the posting.

The rest, they’re fairly static. I’ve rarely looked at those numbers. But that’s what I’m going to start doing going forward. Track my Social Media stats and see how they’re growing and if they’re growing. I’ll be doing this toward the end of the month of the 1st day of the following month to get more accurate numbers.

I’m NOT doing this to encourage anyone to go follow me everywhere. I don’t want to flood you with the same notifications over and over again. Pick one, you’ll get a majority of my works. YouTube, this blog, and my Facebook author page are the best places to get publishing news. The others, follow me if you like. I don’t post much elsewhere, yet.

As I’ve said many times and I’m sure I’ll say it again, this is all a learning experience. If I post it here, I’ll be able to refer back to it should I need to clear my head and look to see where I’ve been and where things went right or wrong.

There you have it. The starting point for this stage of my writing career. I’ve had many false starts and it’s time to put my foot on the gas and not let up.

Until Next Time!

Stay Awesome!

Audio Only: https://anchor.fm/jr-murdock/episodes/5-a-Day-With-Jay—0125-evsosm