Thomas knocks it out of the park!

I recently wrote a thank you letter to Thomas after the big difference that the Book Launch Blueprint course made to my writing career when I did it last year. Thomas asked me to publish the letter I sent to him here, to encourage other newbie authors, so here it goes!


Hi Thomas,

I was going to send you this email on Thanksgiving Day, but then I realised that you probably wouldn't be working and would probably get hundreds of messages, therefore, it might not get noticed. So, I thought I would save it and send it today.

I wanted to thank you for all your good advice and wise counsel to do with book marketing. 

Last year, I joined your Book Launch Blueprint course, and I am so glad that I did. My first novel, Return to the Galaxy, was almost finished and would have been published within about six weeks of the end of the course. 

Without your marketing advice, it would have sunk without trace and disappeared into the morass of other science fiction books being launched at the time. 

 Instead, I held it back for nine months and published it on June 18th this year. 

I used the extra time to build up my mailing list, going from zero people in the middle of February to almost 5,000 by the book's launch date. Today I have close to 7,000.

I also wrote seven short stories and a novella which I published on BookFunnel and StoryOrigin. This helped to build the mailing list. I also built an ARC team, and this helped with reviews once the book was published.

I did have one serious problem put in my way three days before launch when an Amazon software issue cancelled my pre-order and I lost 100 pre-orders. Despite this, the launch was successful. 

I have since followed it up with another four books released at roughly monthly intervals so that I have released the first five books in my series in five months. 

I managed to secure two BookBub New Releases for Less and a BookBub Featured Deal, which apparently is quite unusual for a new author with a first book. Your advice was very helpful in securing these. They were a big boost.

Return to the Galaxy has reached number one in seven Amazon categories, including alien invasion, colonization, galactic empires, genetic engineering, space fleet, space marine, and space opera. These were all on Amazon.com. 

The book reached number 10 overall in the science fiction category and number 556 out of all of the books in every genre on Amazon. It is usually now in the 4,000-5,000 ranking on Amazon.com. As I write, it is in the #16 position in space marines on Amazon.com. 

 On Amazon UK, the series did even better. I have a screenshot of one proud moment when my first 4 books were in the top 7 in the Alien Invasion category. Even today on Amazon UK my 5 books are in the top 10 places in Alien Invasion. (I wonder if this counts as a category invasion?)

 I have attached a screenshot.

Two of the other books have also hit number one in their categories shortly after release.

The books are rated between 4.4 and 4.5 on Amazon and between 4.4 and 4.6 on Goodreads.

I am now selling between 250 to 300 books a day, if you count both direct sales and page reads on Kindle Unlimited. 

I am getting around 3.5 million page reads a month. 

I had hoped to achieve an income that would allow me to write full-time within a couple of years of starting to publish. But instead, within five months, I am earning more than double this, and I expect this to increase again when Book 6 is released in December and Book 7 in January. 

I am also now working with Bryan Canter to produce audiobooks, so hopefully they should be out in the new year. 

After that, I will pause for a while to start work on my next series.

Thank you again for all of your help and advice, you have made a very big difference to my writing career. 

I hope you have got your problems with the tip jar sorted. If you want to let me know how I can send you a tip now, I would be happy to do so. (Without you spamming hundreds of other people. 🙂)

I will look forward to meeting you in person at the conference in January.

With kind regards,

Brian

BA Gillies

A Gillies