Lessons learned...

Well, it has been over a week since the release of Breaking Lacy and after some wound-licking and deliberation, I'm ready to reflect on the experience now.

In terms of sales,  Breaking Lacy: 

1. Not quite as well as I had hoped
2. But definitely better than I expected.

That may sound contradictory. You must understand that I am a realist. I know I am a realist so I constantly try to force the optimist face to keep myself motivated and sane, but deep down I am a realist to the core. So even though I had my fingers crossed and hoped for the best, I went into this prepared for and expecting the worst because:

1. I am a debut author.
2. Readers have never heard of me.
3. This is my first book and readers had no idea what to expect from it.
4. I made the mistake of not planning ahead to get advance reviews.
5. More importantly, I wasn't able to sign up for Amazon Select like I had planned, which really hurt and had the most negative impact of all, I believe. 
6. Because of 4 & 5, I knew I should have postponed the release, but I chose to roll the dice instead. 

So, with the odds so unevenly stacked against a successful release, the fact that I sold any copies at all is an accomplishment. Despite what so few reviews might suggest to the contrary, sales were indeed, surprisingly, much better than I expected, which is a solid middle finger to the realist in me. But, I'd be remiss not to acknowledge that I had set goals and numbers that I had hoped to see by the end of the week, and I didn't see them, which is a solid middle finger to the optimist in me. 

If nothing else, this is a solid lesson in what I did wrong, and also the things I did right. For my next book, I won't be bumbling in the dark and making these same novice mistakes and shooting myself in the foot because now I have a better idea of what I'm doing, along with what worked, what didn't work, what to do, and what not to do.

Book One was an exercise in Murphy's Law.

Book Two will be Yhprum's Law.