Selling words #2

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to enjoy an experience that few writers get in their professional lives, I made real money from my work. It’s not the first time I’ve sold writing, that was my short story Gathering Senses a few years ago, but it’s the most I’ve made from a single piece of work.

I’ve been selling How to Meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 for a while now and chalking up a few sales each month. It’s a non-fiction book that explains how websites can be made to work better for people with disabilities. It’s an important issue and one I feel strongly about. I’ve supported the book with a series of blog posts and various resources deigned to get traffic to the sales website. On May 9th I was able to help support something called Global Accessibility Awareness Day by dropping the price of the book to $1. The resulting kindness of people on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook saw over 100 sales at $1 and several more since the discount ended.

Seeing that money in my PayPal account made me feel like a writer again, something that I’ve lost track of in the past year. I’ve been working hard on loads of projects but spent little time writing single pieces that might sell. I was over the moon with the small success I had earned and returned to writing immediately.

I’ve since worked on a new short story, which I hope to finish and send out to some early readers this week.

Best selling books – sales over 100 million copies

Where better to start a new blog off than by looking at some of the best selling books of all time. These are the time-tested books that it is impossible to deny are anything but legendary. You can no more judge the artistry of a book by it sales that you can its cover (and these have had many of both), but it says something that over 100 million people have felt compelled to read these novels.

Is there an element of self-fulfilling prophecy here? Almost definitely. The best selling books of all time are listed all over the place, especially in places where readers go to find new material. On a smaller scale it is why we have the ‘Best sellers’ section in bookshops, not to showcase the best books but the ones that people are most likely to buy. It’s social proof at work, we read what others are reading so we don’t feel stupid.

Two of the best selling books have felt significant boosts from film adaptations, but the rest are conspicuous in their absence from the silver screen in any meaningful sense. The rise of ebooks has no-doubt served to solidify the list, by presenting books in sales order to most people by default.

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Starting a blog

Starting a new blog is harder than starting a new story. There’s more pressure to write something useful, rather than interesting or beautiful.