Book Sales

Happy Sunday! A lovely day out today and I have only blogging and washing sheets on my agenda.  What shall I do with my spare time?  Ah yes, I have a book on the go!! I shall definitely get to that today.

For those of you who waited with your breath held for a blog last week, my apologies.  I was in Nova Scotia enjoying some time with one of my cousins.  It was a great relaxing time--reading, sunning on the beach (love the salt water!) and catching a video on the TV at night.  We also did a bit of wandering the country roads, including visiting some places that I visited as a child.  A great time was had by both of us.  Linda Ann is a better cook than I, so she was the cook and I, the bottle washer.  A great combination.  And oh, the seafood!

Today, I am going to share my book sales story with you.  As anyone who follows me knows, I have written four Christian children’s books.  Each with six stories, based on Bible passages, but told from an animal’s point of view.  Sales were really slow, and I knew they were meant for a rather small readership.  But then came the call from my publisher!

I self published my books through AuthorHouse (you can also buy through Amazon and various other online stores--and even find them here:  www.janetkwarren.com).  One of the AuthorHouse agents called me at the end of June to ask if I was doing a sales campaign in Africa.  I am not doing anything specific, however, I do have nearly 10,000 followers on Twitter and many are in Africa.  It seems that someone from Nigeria was buying a bunch of my books!

The fellow tells me that they were purchased on a credit card and they were concerned that it was not legitimate. I know that Nigeria has a bad rap from various scams, but if I were to steal a credit card, buying Christian children’s books wouldn’t be the first thing I would think of to buy.  Mind you, as a priest, if I did have access to a credit card that had a really high limit on it, I would love to buy, or build, a church building for our Community Catholic Church of Canada, and a new hospice for Northumberland County.  Prayers...

I suppose that I probably spend far too much time watching crime shows, so the cynical side of me says that it could be a way to launder money.  It’s a stretch, but stick with me here.  What if dirty money was used to pay a credit card and said credit card was used to purchase anything in large quantities. Then say those items were returned to put the money back on the card.  It might seem like legitimate cash.  Mind you, it is only cash on a credit card, which is difficult to use, as if it is taken off the card as cash, I think you get charged interest, even if the amount is more than the limit on the card. You see where I’m going here.  It’s likely a real stretch, but you never know and there are, unfortunately, lots of people out there to make an illegitimate buck.

The bottom line for me is optimistic.  I want to believe that the sales are real and true, but I won’t know until I have the cool cash (well the check, actually), in my hot little hands and that won’t happen until some time in the middle of September, at least that is for the books purchased in May and June.

I have been going out to the AuthorHouse website and running the sales report from time to time, to see if the sales are still showing.  So far so good.  As a matter of fact, since I hadn’t looked in over a week because I had no internet in Nova Scotia, when I ran the report when I got home, there were 60 more books purchased, listed as ‘AuthorHouse Web Bonus’ and that was dated May 31, although the entry didn’t appear until July!  Wahoo!

So, prayers for a check to arrive. And prayers that sales continue!

May your prayers be answered, as you are hoping!  God bless!!