It’s a weekend celebration for me this weekend as my recently released 6th novel, The Wabi-sabi Doll, is currently in the Top 10 Hot New Releases chart on Amazon US for Kindle eBooks in the category of psychological fiction. Hurray!

Additionally, it’s sitting at #38 for hardcover sales in psychological fiction through Ingramspark. Woohoo!

Why book marketing is always a mystery…

As much as I think I understand what readers want, I don’t. I’m an author, not a marketing expert, but as my own publicist, I try to gauge what my audience wants. As you might know, I wrote The Wabi-sabi Doll primarily because of reader demand; in other words, a handful of reviews mentioned that they wanted a follow up to Kimberly’s story in Japan. Most of these reviews were on Amazon UK. As a result, I was expecting to make it into the top 100 charts in the UK – but I’m not. My UK sales over the past week have not been enough to compete with all the new psychological literary fiction books released over this side of the pond. Oh well! I’m thankful to my UK readers who have bought copies regardless.

…and an unexpected surprise

I didn’t expect sales in the US to be so strong. This was an unexpected and happy surprise. It’s interesting that my psychological literary fiction books sell better in the US and my ghost books sell better in the UK. Does that mean we’re a spooky bunch over here? I’m in good company then I guess!

Posted by on September 20, 2025 in Books, Publishing and tagged , , , , , , .

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About Leilanie Stewart

Leilanie Stewart is an award-winning author and poet from Belfast, Northern Ireland. She writes ghost and psychological horror, as well as experimental poetry. Her writing confronts the nature of self; her novels feature main characters on a dark psychological journey who have a crisis and create a new sense of identity. She began writing for publication while working as an English teacher in Japan, a career pathway that has influenced themes in her writing. Her former career as an Archaeologist has also inspired her writing and she has incorporated elements of archaeology and mythology into both her fiction and poetry. In addition to promoting her own work, Leilanie runs Bindweed Anthologies, a creative writing publication with her writer husband, Joseph Robert. Aside from publishing pursuits, Leilanie enjoys spending time with her husband and their lively literary lad, a voracious reader of sea monster books.

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