One month after publication – a success story

Just over a month ago, Brit in the Dominican Republic, Lindsay de Feliz, saw the publication of her first book, a memoir, What About Your Saucepans? With no previous experience but a determination that can be seen leaping from the pages of a story that includes attempted homicide, bankruptcy and politics, de Feliz leapt into action. Today I learned that What About Your Saucepans was Summertime Publishing’s bestseller on in both kindle and printed formats for the month of March. Here, Lindsay shares her success story:

I wasn’t a writer but I knew I had a good story to tell, so I wrote it down, got in touch with Jo and she and my editor Jane Dean helped me to turn my pedestrian account of the last 10 years of my life into a real book.  Jo told me the publication date would be February 27 and a few days before then I checked on Amazon.com and there it was. A truly amazing feeling. The next stage was to get people to buy it, although I was somewhat apprehensive in case they didn’t  like it, and I really had no idea what I should be doing, never having written or sold a book before. I decided on  a staged approach,  and I have just finished stage one.

• Setting up details on author central for Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
• Finding people to be local distributors. I used friends and family and asked Jo to send them 50 -100 copies of the book each. My mother for the UK, me, a friend in the east of the DR and a friend in Canada.
• I sent an advance PDF to a couple of friends to write reviews on Amazon.com as soon as the book appeared.
• One of them also posted a review on the main DR expat forum with details of how to buy the book.
• I posted on Facebook, not only my page but relevant group pages such as Dominican spouses and my blog/book page.
• I emailed everyone who has contacted me via the blog in the last 18 months, some 100 or so people.
• I carried on blogging and blogged about the book. I put a picture of it on the main page of the blog, linked through to Amazon, expanded the page about the book. I carry on blogging a couple of times a week and mention the book every other time.
• Once people posted on FB or on the forum that they had read the book and enjoyed it, saying they could not put it down, and when would the next one come out, I hassled and badgered them to write a review on the forum or FB so more people would buy it, and also on the place they had bought the book from.

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Stage one results

• I checked Amazon.com sales on a weekly basis and it appears that since launch at the end of February up to the end of March I have sold 50 books on that site. The site has sixteen 5 star reviews and one 4 star review.
• The book is regularly in the top 10 on the Canadian Amazon site in the Caribbean section, and has been number one in Kindle sales, Caribbean too. Every time it is number one I tweet it and put it on Facebook.  I don’t  know sales numbers yet.
• A week after launch, the book was number one in kindle sales and number two in book sales, both Caribbean section, on the UK Amazon site. It has dropped back a bit now though.
• My mother has sold 30 of her 50 to friends and family, many of whom have written reviews on Amazon.co.uk which has thirteen 5 star reviews and one 4 star. Friend in Canada has sold 22 of her 75 and is about to go to the national book store chains to ask them to stock it.
• Friend on the east coast of the DR has sold 7 of her 18, and has taken 10 to a local gift shop to sell.
• I had a sales and signing session at a north coast bar, as a lot of expats live there, and I sold 25 and two people took 15 to sell on for me.
• I have been asked to represent British writers in the DR at the Annual Book Fair in the capital city Santo Domingo

As the reviews were so good, my confidence began to grow and I am now carrying out the next stage.

• I contacted the newspaper where I grew up and they interviewed my mother face to face and me via Skype. I sent them a picture of me and one of the book cover and the article will be published on March 3. Readers will be told they can by the book on Amazon.co.uk, or via my mother while her stocks last. I will reorder more for her from Jo if she needs them.
• I have written articles for www.expatsblog.com, entered a writing competition there (didn’t win but had 500 FB shares) , article for www.expatfocus.com and www.britishexpats.com all of which have links to the Amazon sites at the bottom of my article. I haven’t heard if the British expat site will publish the article yet.  I will keep on with the articles for as many sites as I can.
• I have contacted a friend who has a PR agency in the UK and she is getting in touch with the BBC and Woman’s Hour to see if we can set up some interviews.
• I have been interviewed by Claudia of www.expatclic.com and that will be published in May. The book is now featured in the expatclic blog. That was thanks to the press release organised by Jo and Renata at www.expatbookshop.com .
• I have also been contacted by www.theculturetrip.com who want me to write articles on the DR and have agreed to sell the book via their website.
• I am going to get in touch with national press in Canada, the US and the UK and see if I can get them to review the book. That will not be easy but in order to make the next leap in sales I need national press exposure. They can only ignore me and I will nag until they say yes if needs be.
• I am going to send free copies/pdf/kindle version to fellow bloggers to see if they will read and review for me.

My goal is for the book to be a best seller and then a film. Oscars here we come!

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