Three different books, or one?

I am writing this on the train, the only time I have to spend on this type of activity. It is the third priority in life after family and work, and it keeps getting squeezed. As it should be. 

I just realized that it looks like I do not regard what I am doing now, and when I write about stuff under my pen name, or tweet or Facebook (it is a verb now, a true sign of success) as work. But it is. This is a job no less than my day job. Actually, like all jobs, there are routines and procedures and ways and means and tricks and things you need to do. Perhaps I should be more serious about that.  

So by now I have been running the experiment for a year. My book has been on Amazon for a year. And it has sold - about seven copies. Hardly enough to make a living. On the other hand, I have gained almost 5000 followers on Twitter. That is not bad in a year. And they often favorite or retweet my tweets. Very few unfollow. So I am doing something right. 

According to my original idea, I would now have put the second book on Amazon and promoted it. But that does not make very much sense. So I will just retreat it from Amazon. 

Which is not that easy. When you enroll in Kindle Select, your book has to sit there for 90 days. You have promised to make it exclusively available to Kindle readers for 90 days, even if Kindle readers do not want it and could not care less. But in December, it is gone from the Kindle. 

It will soon be back. There is another thing I want to try: Publishing the book as a book, not an ebook. No promotion, just a real paperback book. Under the same name. I can let it sit for a year and see if it sells by itself. At this pace, I will have 10000 followers by this time next year. If 1% buys the book, I will have 100 customers.  Actually, the conversion rate is more like 0.5% on Twitter, but let us see. In a year. 

I originally planned to release the book under my pen name, but I want to see if the physical book format has something going for itself. I will do an ebook for the pen name, and publish the book I have as a physical book. Because I want to see what it is like as a marketing tool. You are also able to connect the price on Kindle to the price of the physical book. Otherwise, the price is capped at $9.99. 

Let us see how it works. I will test in December.