Selling My First Book

This morning started pretty normally.  I drove to work, got coffee, and checked my email.  Hazily noting five new messages, I sorted and deleted them appropriately.  Something nagged at the back of my mind.  I checked the folder I've been sending all of my ebook information.  A new email had arrived today containing "requested" information.  Click.

"As per your request, we are writing to notify you of a sale."

My fatigue dissipated in about .3 seconds.  I have sold a book.  I can't believe it.  I really did it.

That 82 cents felt like more than my entire check for the last two weeks of clerical work.  I really wrote and sold a book.  Maybe it was a short story, and maybe it was erotica, but I wrote it, and now I have made money off of it. 

I don't think anything could have motivated me more than this one, beautiful event.  I sat down and wrote half of another story, created a cover for it, and wrote up the short blurbs of information required for posting.  Now I feel like I have an idea of what I'm doing correctly.  I have plans to adjust the cover of my first piece, which honestly just looks tacky in comparison to the second work.  The third work easily fits the cover theme, and I'm really just moving along so much more smoothly than I ever would have thought.

Is that 82 cents going to pay my power bill?  No, probably not.  And maybe this seems insignificant to you, either as an author of hundreds or thousands of sales, or as someone who's never been drawn to writing.  And that's ok.  But to me, this is a special, precious moment in time.  For the first time, I feel like a professional.  I can say I made something out of pretty much nothing.

If you are looking into writing, let me tell you that is a wonderful, rewarding thing.  My first work didn't sell, in the way I had it prepared.  So I tweaked things in the second piece, listened to and watched advice videos, and came up with something more attractive to the world.  Just keep going.  If I can do it, so can you.