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A.G. Henley, Author

Happy Birthday, THE SCOURGE! Celebrate with cake and 1,000 candles.

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Joey Gannon / CC-BY-SA-3.0

Today is the first book birthday of THE SCOURGE. Wow. Has it already been a year since I hit that “publish now” button on Amazon? That was a frightening, amazing day, and it’s been an even more amazing (sometimes frightening) year.

Since THE SCOURGE was published it has:

  • Sold 17,500+ copies (but who’s counting?)
  • Been borrowed 1300+ times through Amazon’s KDP Select program
  • Garnered 289 reviews on Amazon, 207 of which are 5-stars
  • Promoted by Amazon as an Editor’s Choice
  • Given me a second career and a second income, joy, a few sleepless nights, a fantastic agent, new writer and reader friends on Twitter and Facebook, something fun to talk about at parties (zombies are always fun to talk about), bolstered my ego, shredded my ego, prompted the birth of a sequel, paralyzed me with fear, injected me with courage, and fostered the ramblings of my long-ignored imagination

A few weeks before I published THE SCOURGE last January, I read then-self-published author Susan Ee’s blog. She was excited about recently reaching 1,000 ratings on Goodreads.com for her debut novel, ANGELFALL, which I recommended here.

I remember thinking, 1,000 ratings on Goodreads??? I’ll be lucky if I get a couple from my friends. Well, here I sit a year later with . . . you guessed it . . . 1,000 ratings on Goodreads. It is humbling and wonderful to know that so many people have read my book and taken the time to tell the world what they think of it. I didn’t truly appreciate the power of reviews until this year. Thank you, thank you to all my readers.

Meanwhile, Susan Ee’s had a phenomenal year. ANGELFALL was a Cybils award finalist, she has a publishing contract with Amazon Children’s Imprint for her series, and there’s a film deal in the works. The sequel to ANGELFALL will be released this fall. ANGELFALL now has over 13,000 ratings on Goodreads (!) To all you writers out there considering self-publishing your novel, it can be done and it can be done with great success.

If I have even a quarter of Susan Ee’s success in my second year as a published author, I’ll be thrilled. So a very happy birthday to my third child and book baby, THE SCOURGE. And I’ll raise a glass to your sibling, the SCOURGE sequel, coming soon!

Aimee