On February 22nd I began the 21 Day Novel Challenge. I wasn’t sure if I could pull it off, and if I could pull it off I wasn’t sure if the book would sell. It was a scary experiment, but I committed to it.
I’m so glad I did. Destroyer turned out to be a blast to write, and the reviews have been largely positive. As of this writing it has 97 reviews, and 92% are either four or five star.
To contrast, No Such Thing As Werewolves took seven months to get this same number of reviews.
Destroyer is also my top seller, by far. In the first thirty days I had 927,793 pages read, and sold 3,836 ebooks.
One of the big metrics I tracked was sales rank. I boldly stated that Destroyer would crack the top #1,000 books on Amazon, and settle in somewhere under #10,000.
How did Destroyer do? The worst rank was #714, and the average for the first 30 days was #588 in the store. Wow. Just wow.
Finally, I was tracking mailing list subscribers. An author’s mailing list is the lifeblood of their career, because it gives us the ability to tell fans about new releases. I streamlined my process, using the short story Exiled as a reader magnet for the series.
The results were astonishing. My best month for subscribers was 150. When I started the 21 Day Novel Challenge that jumped to 500 signups. Destroyer’s first month brought in a thousand new subscribers.
So what are my conclusions? You CAN write a book quickly, and have it still be a good story. What’s more, if you write that story to market you can break into a brand new genre and make a good living doing it.
If you’re more of a videophile check out the 21 Day Challenge Videos and the Launch to Market series!
