Back in August, I self-published a short story without telling anyone (I’ve nicknamed it “stealth story”). I did it partly for practice so I could go through the steps of publishing, and partly out of curiosity. What would happen to a story if I didn’t do any marketing at all? The answer, as far as I knew from Amazon, was nothing. I didn’t sell a single copy. I checked there a few times after I published, and then I forgot about it.

When I went back to Barnes & Noble to upload Through The Fire, I got a little surprise. The short story “Chained” had actually been selling. A few copies here and there, but not bad for something I didn’t tell anyone about. I mean, how the heck are people finding it? They must just be stumbling across it in genre or tag searches.

Here’s how it’s been doing:

August (the month it went up): 3

September: 9

October: 4

November: 7

December: 5

January: 8

I can’t remember how much I paid for the cover image, around $5 or $10, so that means the story already earned out on its expenses. I’m earning a teeny little profit from something that had just been sitting on my computer. Go, little story, go!