I mentioned the other day that I had sold the same number of books in February that I did in January.  Turns out that wasn’t true.  But more than that, I didn’t have the right numbers for my sales for about the last five months.  My spreadsheet was off, because I didn’t change the formula to account for more rows ( I have more book titles than I did), so it turns out that I’ve actually sold about 40 books more each of the last five months than I thought I had.  That’s pretty cool.  I had thought my total sales number was about 10,006, but in actuality it is 10,236.

I spend way more time calculating my sales than is actually warranted, I guess.  I have spreadsheets of monthly and yearly sales and of my free downloads– which have hit 705,178, not including samples.  But it helps keep me focused on my goals.  You have to do whatever you can to stay focused.

You also have to remember that most books written don’t sell– at all, really.  Of those that do, most sell very few copies.  It’s easy to get discouraged.  I would easily become discouraged if I had only one book out there, or was selling through only one bookstore.  For instance, The Young Sorceress just hit its 100th sale.  I’ve sold 1 at Sony Ebookstore, 4 at Kobo Books, 13 at Smashwords, 13 at Barnes and Noble, 27 at Amazon, and 42 at Apple iBookstore.

So, every book sold, every email, every blog comment, every blog follower– each of these is a success for me.  And I keep plugging away.