Just passed 100,000 books sold in my career

I just realized I’ve now sold over 100,000 books!

Here's the breakdown:

MMT (2020): 30,274
HTS (2017): 28,595
D4H (2011): 17,770
ZET (2020): 13,202
WAB (2018): 11,635
HWH (2023): 376
Others (Various): 2,307
Total: 104,159

Notice there are six in the list of my “main” books (the last is brand-new). “Other” is five other books, of which I’ve sold a little more than 2,000 copies, combined.

Some are longer and were more work than the others (the top three). But the rest were more-or-less an equal amount of effort – yet one has sold more than 13,000 copies, and another sold less than 100.

I publish wide in my genre of Self-Help/Creativity (well, one of the top three is a trad-published Computers & Technology book). My strategy has been to write lots of “short reads” – from 40–75 pages, and every few years release a magnum opus, ranging from 140–330 pages.

My marketing consists of a blog, podcast, email newsletter, and social media (mostly Twitter). I now spend about $2,000/month on Amazon ads, and run a BookBub Featured Deal when I can get one, a couple times a year.

If there’s any advice to glean from this, it’s to make small bets to learn, and take what you’ve learned to make bigger bets.

Oh, and be very, very patient: About a year ago, I had only sold 70,000. So about 43% of those sales have come in the past year – of my twelve-year career.