Just a quick note thanking all of you out there who bought my books in 2011. I have to say that months of planning and positioning for the holiday ebook buying rush worked out even better than expected. I’m happy to announce that Glenneyre Press, my little indie publishing company had an incredible holiday season. Simply put: we sold a LOT of books… even more than I expected.
Even back in 2005 when I founded Glenneyre Press, the writing was on the wall (so to speak). It was obvious things the winds of change were blowing in the publishing industry and I felt it was a perfect time to get in and start experimenting with ways to disrupt the norm. We put out some P.O.D. paperback books via Amazon and other online sales channels, got some mainstream attention thanks to Access Hollywood, caught the eye of some folks in NYC’s vaunted publishing community and became profitable by 2008. But it wasn’t until the ebook revolution came calling that things really got serious.
It was right after seeing our sales numbers from the 2010 holiday season that I realized exactly how quickly ebook publishing would become the most explosive platform available for me to exploit what it is that I do. By the end of February, I made a critical decision to make Glenneyre Press my full-time focus. By March, I had begun to put the pedal to the metal.
The Kindle, the Nook… these weren’t “devices.” No, they were platforms.
In April, “Where’s My F*cking Latte” had climbed to #1 on Amazon’s Kindle best seller list for books about Television. To date, it’s bee atop that list ever since. In July, “The Killing of Osama Bin Laden” became Amazon’s #1 book on terrorism and, in a very short time, sold incredibly well, becoming an Amazon non-fiction best seller in the process.
All in all, Glenneyre Press released twelve titles in 2011, five of which spent some time on Kindle sub-category best seller lists. Other titles spent time on various best seller lists for Nook and iBooks titles. Not bad for a tiny company like us, I think.
But the main focus had always been to begin building up the catalog for the holiday buying rush I knew would happen. I knew the more back catalog we had out, the more Kindle, Nook and iBooks downloads we could sell. I watched the sales numbers start to track higher starting with the first night of Hannukah.
Then came Christmas day.
December was a record-breaking month for Glenneyre Press. We sold more ebooks (and physical books) than any other time in the company’s history. The week between Christmas and New Year’s was incredible. Amazon announced record ebook sales and my push to be ready for the holidays really panned out.
We didn’t need to raise the profile of the company that much. All we had to do was be in the water when the epic wave hit. The sales rankings of our books stayed about the same, but the daily sales numbers exploded. That alone, told me all I needed to know.
And as many devices and ebooks were sold last year, it’s going to pale compared to what’s coming for December 2012, so you better believe we’re going to be gunning to have lots more titles ready by then. With the books we have planned, this year we go into our next phase… because I believe there’s still plenty of vertical growth yet to come.
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