Damn, January slipped by without a post!
In order to stop the rot, let me blog about having passed another milestone (likely on the road to obscurity, but you can't have it all).
Back in 2014 I posted about selling my first half million books.
And at the start of 2016 I blogged to remark that I'd sold my first million.
It's been a while and that same heady sales rate has not been sustained in the nearly 9 years since then. Plus, I don't actually look at sales figures - it's not good for anyone's mental health to watch the needle on what is effectively your popularity and livelihood flicker back and forth. However, I can say with confidence that I have passed the three million mark in global sales.
The bulk of those sales are in English, roughly evenly divided between the UK (plus Australia and New Zealand) and the US (plus Canada). Why that split isn't more in line with the population numbers, I don't know!
I'm published in 28 languages, but for some of them it's just a single book that sold poorly. Most recently I've had my first contracts for books in Bengali (A publisher in Bangladesh), Ukrainian, and Arabic (A published in Egypt). It was nice to get the Ukrainian deal after pulling out of my Russian ones to show solidarity.
You might think that this has made me rich. I'm certainly not poor, but fact is that 14 years of whatever flavour of "best selling" I've been means that at approaching 60 years old I could just about buy an average priced detacted house in London (in the suburbs). It's not exactly "rock star", though I am better off than most of the populace and have a job I enjoy doing. So, in short, it's been a blessing and one for which I'm very grateful.
I've alway strived to plan/live/save as if this writing business is something that could vanish in an instant. The trajectory of most author careers is a modest boom followed by a rapid return to the day job as sales trail back down to insignificant. I'm very aware that my next book might not sell and that opportunities can vanish swiftly.
The fact that at least three million copies of my books have found their way onto people's shelves and kindles and phones is ... well, it's at once both mind blowing and also largely academic. If there were instead thirty million, or three hundred thousand, or thirty thousand, it would feel much the same emotionally. Though obviously each of those figures leads to very different financial outcomes.
Anyway - thanks for sticking with me. And if I ever make it to 5 million, I'll let you know.
