Claire Ridgway

Best-selling author and blogger

Jun
18

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I Made the Top 100 Indie Authors List!

Category: Books, Self-publishing, The Anne Boleyn Collection, The Fall of Anne Boleyn Tags: , 2 Comments

As this is my website, I’m allowed to boast a little every now and then, aren’t I? Well, my good news is that I made it on to the June Top 100 Indie Authors List for sales in May over at ireaderreview.com. I’m at no. 86 and it really is an honour to be listed with some of my favourite authors, writers like Melissa Foster, Tracey Garvis-Graves and C J Lyons – see http://ireaderreview.com/2012/06/18/top-100-indie-authors-for-june-67-authors-to-watch/ for the full list.

As you know, I have self-published two books – The Anne Boleyn Collection in February 2012 and The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown – and since February I have sold over 12,000 books. I was aiming for 1000 in my first year, so I am amazed and delighted. Thank you to all my readers and those who have spread the word about my books. It’s been a wonderful journey and I am grateful for all the support I’ve received.

Feb
23

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The Anne Boleyn Collection’s Progress

Category: Self-publishing, The Anne Boleyn Collection Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

If you have read my previous post, you will know that the Kindle version of my first book “The Anne Boleyn Collection” went live on Amazon.com on the 17th February. This was quickly followed by the paperback, although the listing kept disappearing as Amazon worked on it. It’s now the 23rd February, less than a week later, and I wanted to report back on a very successful first week. Here are the figures…

Sales

The sales in the picture below are the results taken from my Createspace and KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) dashboards first thing every morning from 18th February 2012 to 23rd February 2012.

So, by 9am this morning I had sold a total of 323 books – 260 Kindle versions and 63 paperback copies. All of the paperbacks come from Amazon.com because the paperback is not available yet on the international sites.

Amazon Rankings

Here is how my Amazon ranking looked at the end of the first full day, the 18th February:-

It was also a nice feeling when I was No.3 in Amazon’s Hot New Releases in History England, beaten only by the two versions (Kindle and paperback) of a book on Wallis Simpson.

Reviews

As of today, I have eight 5 star reviews which is a wonderful feeling. I did send out some beta versions of the e-book to some members of The Anne Boleyn Fellowship to review for me but three of the eight reviews are from other readers so that was wonderful to see. I’m bound to get some bad reviews, every writer does, so I’m enjoying these reviews at the moment!

Success

I don’t know what constitutes success in publishing but I was aiming at selling 100 books in my first month so to sell 323 in six days is wonderful. I’ve also been receiving emails and comments on my Facebook page and Anne Boleyn Files website from people who are reading the book and loving it, that’s what success is really, isn’t it? People enjoying what you write.