My First Fee

Well, I did it. I became, in some small way, a professional writer.

I’ve now exceeded my goal of selling 29 copies of my first novel, The Library of Lost Books. That was the magic number I had to reach to get $10 in royalties (29 books x $0.99 list price x 35% royalty = $10.05) and get my first royalty check from Amazon. For those of you who are following this blog for the numbers, I’ve sold 40 copies of Library so far. This does NOT include: books returned for a refund, books downloaded during free giveaways or borrows. Those 40 are all cash sales.

But that’s only half the goal. My other bigger is goal is to get the book into the hands of 1,000 readers. I’m close to this as well, I think I’m at about 790 right now. I’m hoping to reach this bigger goal by Oct. 10 my last day for Library on KDP Select. Again, I’ll keep you posted.

In honor of this milestone, I’d like to highlight the source of the title for today’s post: a short story by Isaac Babel.

The story, “My First Fee,” begins with one of my favorite first lines.

To be in Tiflis in spring, to be twenty years old, and not to be loved—is a terrible thing.

Of course, lucky Isaac’s “first fee” was a bit different than mine, being non-monetary compensation, and perhaps sweeter. But as for me, I’ll just take the cash.

Well that about wraps up today’s post, I’ve got to do some real writing today. Thanks to all my friends and fans for buying a copy and, as always…

Keep Spreading the Word,

Darius

Postscript. My first fee will take Amazon some 3 months to deliver (60 days after the calendar month in which the royalties are accrued). Strangely, in this day of automated and instant everything, authors still have to wait a long time for their checks to arrive.