I got a nice surprise today.

Barnes & Noble sold three copies of Sovereign Knight.

If I have my numbers right, that brings me to 14 books sold so far.

Fourteen is not exactly a number that is going to frighten Stephen King.

But I’ll take it.

What makes these three sales especially interesting to me is that they came from somewhere other than Amazon.

Most of my attention lately has been focused on Amazon and BookBub advertising. I have been testing campaigns, changing targeting, adjusting bids, staring at impression counts, and occasionally wondering whether book advertising was invented specifically to test an author's patience.

Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble quietly sold three books.

No dramatic dashboard.

No frantic bid adjustments.

Three people simply bought Sovereign Knight.

That feels pretty good.

I still have no idea who most of my readers are.

Some of the first sales were almost certainly friends or family. I know people close to me have supported the book, and I am grateful for every one of them.

But as the number slowly grows, it becomes harder for me to account for every purchase.

And that is exactly what I have been waiting for.

At some point, someone who does not know me personally has to look at the cover, read the description, and decide:

“That sounds interesting.”

Then they spend their own money on a story written by an author they have never heard of.

For a new independent author, that is a pretty significant moment.

I also like seeing sales come from another retailer.

Amazon is enormous, and obviously I want Sovereign Knight to succeed there. But I never wanted the book to exist in only one place.

Barnes & Noble gives readers another way to find it, especially readers who still enjoy buying physical books from an actual bookstore.

And Sovereign Knight is a physical book.

Actually, it is two of them.

Anyone who has followed this blog already knows about my adventures discovering that the spines on Volume 1 and Volume 2 didn’t quite match what I expected.

Independent publishing has provided an impressive number of opportunities to learn things after I probably should have learned them.

But today I am not complaining about spines.

Today three more books found readers.

That brings the running total to approximately:

14 books sold.

It is still a very small beginning.

But it is a beginning.

A few weeks ago, Sovereign Knight existed mostly on my computer.

Now copies are sitting on bookshelves and nightstands in places I have never seen.

That is a strange feeling.

And a very good one.

So, to whoever bought those three copies through Barnes & Noble:

Thank you.

I probably do not know who you are.

And increasingly, that is exactly the point.