The Golden Ring sales

After completing the original manuscript for The Golden Ring, I couldn’t find an interested publisher. Undeterred, I decided to self-publish it. I designed the cover, laid out the book and typeset every word using QuarkExpress software. I contracted with a printer and originally had 5,000 hardcover books produced, selling all 5,000 ($15.95 Retail) between October and the end of December 1999, going door-to-door at bookstores in Maryland, D.C. and Northern Virginia doing book signings.

The Golden Ring became the number one bestseller in many bookstores, including a number of Borders Bookstores in the Baltimore-Washington Area - even outselling NY Times Bestseller Tuesday’s With Morrie. That year, I had an extremely successful book signing at a Borders Bookstore in Maryland where I sold 226 books in about 3 hours, clogging isles of the store. A total of 308 copies of my book were sold in that single store during the week of December 19th through December 26th 1999 making it THEIR #1 BEST SELLER FOR THE WEEK - AND A TOP SELLER FOR THE MONTH (CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE).

Because of the book’s success, I was able to get the world’s largest book distributor (Ingram) to distribute my book the following year. In preparation, I mortgaged my home and had 30,000 (hardcover) copies printed. I sold the subsidiary rights to Family Circle Magazine and they published a nine-page condensed version in their December 2000 issue. The book garnered national publicity (CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE) and I sold 22,840 copies of my self-published edition in 2000 between October and the end of December, participating in 92 book signings in three months all over Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Washington, DC, Virginia and Alabama. Between October and December of 2000, The Golden Ring was either #1 or #2 in sales out of 3,000 publishers and 7,200 titles in its group at Ingram Book Group.

This caught the eye of several publishers and in 2001 I signed a book deal with Warner Books, one of the nations top publishers, selling an additional 26,073 copies during the Christmas season of 2001, despite limited distribution. Warner Books also sold the foreign language rights to Deutscher Taschenenbuc Verlag, a German publisher and the book was also published in Germany (No sales figures available).

I negotiated the rights back to my book from Warner Books in 2004. I also purchased their remaining stock and have been selling them on my website ever since. Total sales for The Golden Ring number over 52,000.