2,462 People Wanted Our Book. Now What?

A few weeks ago, Tommy and I offered three paperback copies of The Sky Went Wrong in a Goodreads giveaway.

We are still very new at this.

New author. New series. Tiny publishing house. Two people working from an old log house in Norway and learning most things as we go.

So when the giveaway ended and we saw the final number, I had to look at it more than once.

2,462 people had entered.

Only three of them would receive a book, of course.

But more than two thousand people had stopped long enough to look at this unfamiliar novel, from an author they had probably never heard of, and say:

Yes. I would like to read that.

That felt rather wonderful.

Tommy, naturally, claims he expected it.

When I asked what number he had secretly hoped for, he answered 4,492.

Which is conveniently almost twice what we actually got.

Still, I think he was pleased.

So was I.

Then came the less glamorous number

Attention is lovely.

It is also not the same thing as selling books.

Publishing gives you a surprising number of numbers to stare at.

Views.

Clicks.

Impressions.

Giveaway entries.

Rankings.

Downloads.

Sales.

Some seem exciting without telling you very much at all.

And then there are numbers that are a little harder to share.

During our first month, Book One earned approximately $46 in reported royalties.

Not $46,000.

Just $46.

It certainly does not cover what we have spent creating and publishing the book.

It does not pay either of us a salary.

It probably would not keep Tommy supplied with coffee for very long.

But I don't think it is nothing either.

Those dollars came from people we have never met who chose to spend their money on something we made.

Every independent author has a first sale.

A first reader.

A first month.

This was ours.

And I think there is something worth remembering in that.

What does 2,462 actually mean?

That is the question we are trying to answer now.

The Goodreads giveaway tells us there is interest.

But interest is only the beginning.

How many of those people will eventually read SOLSTORM?

How many will enjoy it?

How many will leave a review?

How many might come back for Book Two?

How many will simply forget the title by tomorrow?

We don't know.

And I rather like being honest about that.

When we started Building SOLSTORM, I did not want to make a series where we looked back after everything had worked and explained how clever we had been.

Because we are not there.

We are right in the middle of it.

Trying things.

Paying for some of them.

Occasionally getting a good result.

Occasionally wondering why we thought something was a good idea in the first place.

And learning that publishing the book was only the beginning.

Running a very small publishing house

When you do this yourself, the jobs do not disappear.

They simply become yours.

Tommy writes.

I paint.

Then there is editing, formatting, cover design, distribution, audiobooks, the website, videos, marketing, metadata, social media and a growing collection of things we did not know existed six months ago.

We are still figuring all of it out.

Sometimes that can feel slightly overwhelming.

But The Sky Went Wrong exists because Tommy started writing before he knew exactly where the story would go.

Forsberg Multimedia exists because we started learning before we knew exactly how publishing worked.

I think there is something comforting in that too.

You do not have to know every step before taking the first one.

Starting small still counts as starting.

Then we went outside

This week's video is not only about publishing numbers.

We also went back into the landscape that became SOLSTORM.

That is one of my favorite parts.

Water matters enormously in these books.

So do wood, distance, winter, daylight, weather and whether a boat can reach the next safe harbor.

Tommy did not have to invent those things.

They were already here.

I asked him why he created the fictional island of Yggsøya rather than using a real Norwegian island.

His answer was, essentially, that it is a real island.

He changed the name because he did not particularly want SOLSTORM readers arriving there and frightening the people who actually live on it.

Which is probably considerate.

The burial ground is real.

The landscape is real.

The waters are real.

The island simply carries another name inside the books.

Seeing Norway differently

I also asked Tommy something I have wondered about for a while.

Can he still look at the Norwegian landscape normally?

Or does he automatically imagine what it might look like after the world of SOLSTORM?

Apparently the answer is the second one.

He sees roads without maintenance.

Dams and dikes beginning to fail.

Animals moving differently when fences disappear.

Beavers returning to waterways.

Vegetation reclaiming infrastructure.

A world with fewer engines, fewer roads, fewer aircraft and far less human pressure.

Nature taking space back.

It is one of the things that makes SOLSTORM slightly unusual.

Nature is dangerous in these books, but it is not the enemy.

Often the more frightening problem is how distant modern people have become from it.

Many of us no longer need to understand where our food comes from, how weather changes a journey, how to find water, how to repair what we rely on, or what our surroundings can provide.

Until suddenly we might.

I think that idea has found its way into the books almost without us noticing.

One reader at a time

When Tommy first began writing SOLSTORM, neither of us knew there would be six books.

We certainly did not know we would create our own little publishing house around them.

And we did not know that one month after publishing the first book, 2,462 people would put their names down for a chance to read it.

Only three received a giveaway copy.

But each entry was still a tiny moment when somebody came a little closer.

That is what we are trying to build on now.

Not one enormous breakthrough.

One reader.

One video.

One review.

One book.

One decision at a time.

And somewhere between all those numbers, Book Two is waiting for me to finish the line edit.