March 27th 2019

Today I sold the 20th copy of my novel. That’s about 17 more copies than I expected I’d sell, so I’m pretty happy with that. I haven’t been incessantly checking my Amazon Bookshelf reports as often as perhaps one might expect, but it’s nice to check back every few days and see that sales are still slowly ticking by.

What it also super heartwarming is I keep getting messages from unexpected people saying that they’ve bought the book and are looking forward to reading it. I got an Instagram DM from a girl I went to University with and have barely spoken to since of a photo of her and my book.

Some people I’ve never even met have bought it. Some of my closest friends have bought it. It’s all very, very… weird. I’m still anxious over it and worried that none of the people who bought the book will enjoy reading it, but I guess that’s not my problem anymore. Of course I feel responsible for it, and I’m super hard on myself. The one person who has told me that he’s already finished reading the whole thing said that he enjoyed it very much, and I’m inclined to take his word for it, though of course it’s completely possible that he lied to appease me.

What’s also been weirdly nice is that there have been a few people who have bought it even though they have no intention of reading it. I have friends who aren’t readers, they just bought it to support me. And that’s wonderful. As are the friends who aren’t readers, but bought it and will try their best to read it. Everyone is wonderful.

It’s reception has far surpassed my expectation, and I’m happy that I finally made the decision to release the book into the wild.

Until tomorrow, happy but still a bit terrified.

Jacn