Thank you, thank you, thank you.
What a weekend!
It’s Thursday in the aftermath and I’m just starting to get my head back into the real world. It’s definitely time to wrap what was my favourite of three amazing Sydney Supas.
Firstly, the lead-up. It was crazy. I was launching Apocalypse: Diary of a Survivor 4 and I didn’t want a repeat of last year’s missed-Sydney-launch-window-by-24-hours fiasco. For those that don’t know, my launch copies of Apocalypse: Dairy of a Survivor 3 were sitting on a printing press floor in Melbourne, when they should’ve been on my table in Sydney. I’m mostly over it now… mostly.
Anyway, given there was no way I was letting that happen again, there were some very late nights in the lead up. That meant one 3am and another 1am finish in the lead-up week. In the end it didn’t matter, I was headed to Sydney with my new book right alongside me on the red-eye flight Friday morning – with fellow exhibiting indie author K E Fraser and non-exhibiting (just there for fun) author Andrew Irvine.
I was excited to be back at Sydney Supanova – an event that means a lot as it was my first ever interstate event (2017). I was also excited to have a new book and excited to have a complete series for the first time ever.
It was a cab from the airport to Olympic Park to set up in time for the Friday afternoon action.
I can’t quite explain what a cool feeling it is when your first sale of the day is someone coming back to buy again in a series (really, coolest feeling there could be for an author) and, sure enough, I had a sale of my brand new book in no time. And so it began.
The next three days were a mix of talking to people about my books – I so have my elevator pitch down these days. There were so many people who happened past my space on the weekend that my throat was rather raspy come Sunday afternoon. It really is good just to talk to anyone who’d care to listen about my work. Some bought, some didn’t. And while I’m completely grateful for those who did take a chance on this indie author (truly, truly am), it was also nice to just chat about what I was doing.
Of course, seeing all the awesome readers who came back again was fantastic. I can’t say enough how your continued support means to me. It’s a lot, that I can assure you.
This year I tried a couple of new things. For a start, I am numbering the first 100 sales of the new book. I am going to do this with every future title as well. Secondly, I had my guest book for those who have previously read my work to fill out. But stupidly, with all the excitement of having you come back to buy another book, I totally forgot to ask half of you to fill it in (idiot author, or man multitask fail). It’s fast becoming a very treasured possession of mine, so if I fail to ask you next time, please slap me and just grab it off the table.
It was also great to see the usual gang of indie authors there doing their thing, as well as the authors dinner Saturday night. It’s great to see what everyone else is creating and doing to promote their work, good bunch of people.
Anyway, before I knew it, Sunday afternoon happened and the event was coming to an end. I had sold out of four titles and only had a few copies left of Apoc 4. It was also my most successful Sydney Supanova – an event that has always treated me well. I honestly can’t thank the people of Sydney Supanova enough. I really can’t.
I’ll be back next year, with hopefully a new and awesome book or two for your consideration.
Thanks for all the awesome support, delightful guestbook scribblings, subsequent messages/social tags and even the ratings and reviews that have ALREADY popped up on Goodreads.com from the weekend – you are all amazing and make the ridiculous hours I put into this thing oh so worthwhile.
Happy author will see you next year.
Also massive thanks to the first owners of Apoc 4:
Canela, Wayne, Jade, Neil, Simon, Deanna, Peta,
Brock, Peter, Gemma, Jessie, Robyn, Malakai,
Meaghan, Candi, Lisa, Russell, Juanita, Daniel,
James, Ashleigh
Until next year,
Thanks again,
Matt