100 copies sold

The Shetland Witch hits three figures of sales in under three weeks

The Shetland Witch has had a magnificent start to its life in physical and ebook form. It went on sale on 9th September, and now, on 26th September, I’ve sold 100 copies. For a self-published novel with no marketing budget, that’s pretty amazing.

I am sure that many of the sales were generated by the first review, from The Fantasy Hive, which was a bowling-over experience for me.

And then this came through today via a friend (who I’ve never met) of my daughter. They didn’t have to read the book, but they did, and this is what they said:

Reader, I felt SO seen. It was great.

Last night I realised that I should be alerting the archaeology community to the novel, seeing as it’s set on a dig, so I posted something spontaneous to BlueSky. This morning I’d sold three more copies, had a load of new followers and caused a bit of chatter on that particular feed.

In October or November I’ll be on the BBC Radio Shetland books programme with noted Shetland linguist and cultural doyenne of the Northern Isles, Mary Blance. I am hopeful that the Lerwick Museum retail team will place an order for some books soon, as Shetland Wool Week begins on Saturday and the Isles will be awash with keen and eager knitters who are also readers. A pivotal scene in the novel takes place in the Museum, after all.

I’ve had a generous review posted in Amazon itself, and I am pretty sure that word of mouth is beginning to do its work. The loyal suscribers of this Substack have done so much already to encourage me to get this novel out into the world. So thank you if you’ve been part of that. My goal is to sell enough books to cover the production costs, and I reckon I’m about a quarter of the way there. So let’s crack on. Every little helps.