There are some 200 plus books on the online store front and take a look at that all time views number above -almost 116 thousand views.
The question has to be; were these just 116K bored people?
As with my other blogs, say Comic Bits Online, the readership here is international. Okay no one comments but you really do tend to get used to that because...well, it's the internet! The biggest mystery is why, when it is so simple to order books worldwide with no overseas shipping, not one of those 116K people has even purchased a copy of the cheapest book published?
Black Tower Comics and Books should be my livelihood but if I sell three books in a year it's a miracle. All the usual social media outlets get BTC&B news and those posts get high hits but sales from all that work (often until 0200hrs)? I have always been open about the publishing business.
Whether in the United States or UK publishers have always hidden true profits and losses for various dubious reasons so I may be an idiot but I want people, especially anyone wanting to get into publishing, to see what the reality is.
Take a look at my current sales....
And I am not alone. John Hanson has spent a couple decades researching and publishing The Haunted Skies series of UFO and related phenomena encyclopaedias. Books that, back in the 1990s, we would have grabbed like crazy. Now? Very lows sales and no profit for the amount spent on researching those books.
Another person I know had his comics mentioned on a big comic site in the United States and a great recommendation. Sales? None.
My own interview on First Comics News is still up after a decade or so and the QRD interview is still there as are other online interviews I gave. Sales? Nope.
Attending conventions is ridiculously expensive in the UK and with table and travel costs anyone would need £200+ (say $210 US or 233Euros) that they can afford to throw away. Also the smaller zine (small press) events are not open to having a comic publisher present as they tend to be very cliquey, local and usually consist of friends and on two occasions I have been told my books "are too professional looking" (?!)
Now considering that everyone wants my decades of experience and advice for free you'll understand why I do not give it any more after this. I hope so. I'm too old to start branching out into another career and to dumb to just delete every book from the online store and retire (because retiring requires money...something they never explained to me when I was younger!).
For fun -the countries from the all time stats page.
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