Boss Lady & Bob: eBook Releases: The Most Nerve-Wracking Thing I Do as a Blogger

I've done it eight times now in the last year and a half and every.single.time I get just as nervous. Every single time I hit 'publish' to release a new ebook I sit there with a knot in my stomach and a lump in my throat waiting to see if people will buy.  Or if the hundreds of hours I've spent will come at an hourly rate that would make me swear I'd never go through the book-writing process again.

I've done eight...so...yeah.

Yesterday, we launched an early release of my newest book Cutting a Profit. I'm so proud of this book. It's the first big project Bob and I have done together as a team.

Of course, I wrote the book - but he was instrumental in getting it done. I've been holding onto that title and the first 15 pages for over a year. I was never able to get to it. I didn't have the time.

But when Bob left his job to work with me only about 5 weeks ago we knew that book had to be the first priority. With every book release, we create a new source of residual income and when all goes right - a very generous one.   So....over the last five weeks with Bob now working with me, my job has been to get that book written... His job has been to make sure I've had the uninterrupted time to do just that. One hundred more pages, countless edits, lots of photos, lots of research, lots of sales page designing, lots of added commas, lots of launch strategy talk, lots of pre-release promotion...lots of nerves.

And it's out.

We decided to release the book to two exclusive groups first.  Cutting a Profit can be purchased as a stand alone ebook as well as part of a bundle with one or two of my other ebooks. Because those bundles are discounted, we decided to offer the stand alone book at a discount - for a limited time - for those who've already purchased one or both of the other ebooks.  That's about 10k people.

A second, smaller group, was also given the opportunity to buy the ebook early - and also at the same 10% discount.  Those are the 2500 or so who have subscribed to get the Cutting a Profit email newsletter. These are people who already said they were interested in this type of material - so much so they were interested in weekly-ish emails about running a Silhouette-based business.

So...yesterday - a Sunday - Bob drafted an email to send to these two groups.  And around 5pm I sent the email and held my breath. And then....I waited. Okay, I didn't really wait.  I think I waited literally like 22.5 seconds and I then I checked my Paypal and OMG someone already brought the book!! We had our first sale! Then our second...

I'm humbled to say that just 26 hours after I sent those emails, Cutting a Profit has already generated $10,000 in sales.  Umm....did I mention the book doesn't even officially go on sale until later this week.  Are you kidding me?!

The nerves quickly melted away as we saw sale after sale come through in just a matter of minutes - at one point it was more than one book per minute.  I can't tell you what it means to me - us - that people have so much trust and loyalty in our brand. I can't tell you what it means that when I look up a transaction I can see people who've bought book after book after book.  People spending their hard-earned-money on ebooks that I pour hundreds of hours into and invested so much more into.

It's crazy that this is how you can make a living..but I'm proud to say that's what we're doing.  Like they say on one of our favorite house-flipping shows, Flip or Flop: Time to find another book to write.



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