Palaces and Calluses

How a Self Published Novel Hit the Bestseller Lists

I launched Palaces and Calluses in Spring 2011 but, in an experiment to see whether an e-book could bring in a profit purely by spreading via ‘word of nerd’, only sold it through my blog. After two weeks, I was in profit.

In June 2011, I uploaded it to Amazon. As my social media market had already bought the book, I didn’t expect much. What actually happened though was that it hit multiple ‘new release’ bestseller lists in both the UK and US.

In February 2012, after also hitting best reviewed lists in the UK, I enrolled the book in Amazon’s ‘Select’ program. The program allows premium users to borrow the book as library users would. It also allows the publisher to make the book available on general release for free for up to five days during a ninety day period, as a promotion. In mid February, I did this for one day. Palaces and Calluses was downloaded by over 1,500 new readers, and hit the ‘free bestseller’ charts in both the UK and US. In fact, it reached #16 in the UK for Contemporary Romance, and #44 across all genres in the country…

and #28 in the US Contemporary Fiction chart!

 

Want to see what all the fuss is about?

You can buy Palaces and Calluses from the UK through this link:

amzn.to/rebeccaw

and from the US, you need this link:

amzn.to/palaces-and-calluses

You’re welcome to read a few pages of the book when you arrive, to see whether it’s your cup of tea or not. In any case, I’d be most grateful if you’d share those links around, or click ‘like’ when you arrive on Amazon. As the writer, agent, publisher, and publicist I value my online chums more than I can say. Your belief in my writing is what makes this all happen. Thank you!

 

Poetry

I’m not great at publishing my poetry. I’ve been published in a couple of poetry books (one in England, and one in Ireland) but most of the time I tend to write it on the fly and throw it into the ether. If you’re around when it lands, you win poems. I made this little video one day, however, and forgot about it. The next time I came back to it, I noticed that it was going viral. It is on Japanese sites now, and is being used to teach children about metamorphosis. I was thinking about network marketing when I wrote it!

What I love about writing fiction is that the literature happens between three places: the writer, the work, and the reader. Until it’s read, it’s not literature or art or whatever you want to call it. Until it’s read, it’s ink or pixels. Once you read it, though, you write the rest of the story. See what you can write into this …

From Coma to Columnist

This is why it means so much to me that I’m now an Amazon bestselling author, and a magazine columnist.

This is the video in which I ‘admitted’ my dream of reaching Amazon’s charts, and explained WHY it was such a big deal for me.