Publishing a book has a funny way of making you celebrate and question everything at the same time.

As of today, Sovereign Knight has sold 11 copies.

That feels good to say.

The problem is, I have absolutely no idea who bought most of them.

They were all sold in the United States, and some are probably family and friends. Maybe all of them are. Maybe a few came from people who found the book on Amazon. I simply don’t know yet.

And that uncertainty has become one of the more frustrating parts of trying to market my first novel.

I’ve been running ads on both Amazon and BookBub. The strange part is that my BookBub ads have gotten a better response outside the United States than inside it. Canada has shown the strongest interest so far, the UK has produced a few clicks, and the U.S. campaigns have mostly stared back at me with a giant zero.

Meanwhile, the book keeps selling in the U.S.

So apparently somebody is finding it.

I just can’t prove how.

Today I finally stopped trying to force the U.S. BookBub campaign to work and launched a dedicated Canada test using the original ad that performed best there.

That may sound backward for an American author whose sales are all happening in the United States, but at this point I need data more than assumptions.

I want to know whether the ad itself works.

I want to know whether the audience works.

And most importantly, I want to know whether I can get Sovereign Knight in front of someone who has never met me, has never heard of me, and decides to buy the book because the story actually interests them.

That is the milestone I’m looking for now.

Not another sale from somebody who already knows me.

A stranger.

One reader who sees the cover, reads the description, and thinks:

Yeah. I want to read that.

Eleven books sold is still eleven more than I had before I published it, and I’m grateful for every one of them.

But I’m learning that publishing the book was only the first campaign.

Finding the readers may be the harder one.