A Week In

It’s been a week since the release of Can’t Go Home Again, and it’s been an eventful week. Not just because of the holiday, although that’s certainly a thing… ours involved a small peaceful day at home munching leftovers from the work feast on Wednesday, and there will be another feast with friends today. There was travel, as the First Reader nobly volunteered to drive the Little Man the ten hour round-trip down to San Marcos to drop him with his sisters, as we were unable to get the kid a photo ID in time for him to use the plane ticket… but he will be able to ride the train back up. That’s a whole saga in and of itself, but a tale for another time.

I’ve been trying to promote the heck out of this book. A lot of people have joined in on that, and I am terribly grateful for their backing. As a result of their help and readers finding it, the anthology was sitting at #1 New Release in Fantasy Anthologies for a few days. Not a small category!

Rankings climbed almost from release, as Blasters and Blades pushed out their episode interviewing Col. Christopher DiNote and I when we let them know the book was live.

That last at #7 in Fantasy Anthologies & Short Stories was the peak on Nov. 25. As we see, ratings and reviews were slow to come in, and unfortunately the first review was an attention-seeking troll with a non-sequitur. However, both publicly and privately, the feedback is coming, and it’s overwhelmingly positive.

Real numbers? This represents one week, during which we have sold 154 copies of the book, five of those being paper. I won’t have figures on the KU reads for quite some time, since this is running through PubShare and I don’t have the access to the data like I would if I were running it directly. Tradeoffs – I don’t have to shoulder the extra time and work of the accounting, but I don’t have the visibility or control. Which is why the authors aren’t all showing up on Amazon yet, and phone calls have been made to the ‘Zon trying to get them connected with their work. I’ve also learned that this is a thing for anthologies – more than ten authors causes Amazon to balk and it takes time to get them added to the book.

For a new release from an unknown publisher (me), I think we’re going pretty well! It’s a great collection. I was blown away by the level of the submissions I received to this book, and I’m looking forward to more reviews coming in.

Will I do another anthology? Uh. Whew. I don’t know yet. This was very much a passion project. The crisis of mental health among our veterans, and among those who struggle with PTS for other reasons than military service is near and dear to my heart. If I can help someone find hope and work toward healing, that’s all I can ask for, and the authors contributing to this book all had the same thoughts. The resources at the end of the book give further steps as well. I don’t think I could have made the time this year for something that didn’t mean this much to me. Another? Ask me in a year or so when life finds its groove again.

In the meantime! Read! Review! And if you already have, thank you from the bottom of our hearts.