post-publication stress

Well, I am officially a published author. It’s still a bit surreal. For the past two days, I’ve been obsessively checking my sales, and if it wasn’t for spending time with my goddaughter, my best friend, and my mother-in-law, I’m pretty sure I would have driven myself crazy. I think I’m holding it all together pretty well. There hasn’t been any hysterical crying… yet.

Really, I feel quite calm about the whole ordeal. I just feel like I should be doing something. I mean, I know people aren’t going to rush to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, foaming at the mouth wanting to buy my book, but I would like to encourage them to do so. However, I have absolutely no skills in marketing. I’ve tweeted, Facebooked, and Google+’d about my book. I started a Google Ads campaign, targeted toward Nook and Kindle owners. I plan on starting a Facebook ad campaign today. I have sent book review requests to several bloggers, a few of which who have agreed to review it. I’m in the middle of answering some interview questions for a blog set to go live next year, and I have another guest post to write for a fellow blogger. I feel like there is more that I could be doing, but I don’t know what. And I don’t want to overwhelm social media with promo tweets lest I become a spammer. That’s the last thing I want.

I know people are seeing my book around the interwebz. I know that people are interested in it. I just want to turn that interest, that exposure, into sales. I’ve had a whopping four sales since my book first went live on Monday—two for Kindle and two paperbacks from Lulu. I’m not necessarily disappointed, but I was hoping for a bit more. I have no idea how many copies debut self-published books sell during their first few days, or even traditionally published books for that matter. I still have the rest of the month to sell books (really, I have the rest of forever to sell books), and maybe I’ll get more sales around Christmas, when people are getting ereaders and gift cards for Christmas. We shall see.

I also wish that more people would add reviews to the retailers’ websites. One person has added a review to Lulu as of writing this post. I know of at least fifteen people who have read my book, or are in the process, and those fifteen reviews could really encourage someone to buy my book. That said, I know people are busy. I know that it takes time to write a thoughtful review. And they’ll get around to eventually, I’m sure.

And now, apparently Barnes & Noble's search engine has lost my book (and all other PubIt! books). Fan-freaking-tastic.

Cue freaking out.

/sigh

Any tips for coping with post-publication stress? Anything you think I could be doing to help promote my book?

And if you would like to purchase my book, there are purchase links in the sidebar of my blog (you can still buy the Nook version, you just have to use the direct link I provided).