Sold 2000+ Copies of Zero to Sold in 2 Months

As incredible as this sounds, I have apparently sold 2003 books over the last 60 days. Two months ago, I released my book Zero to Sold through Twitter (and a day later, ProductHunt), and it was met with an unexpected but most welcome response from the community.

On day one, I sold 350 copies.
Within the first week, I sold 1000 copies.
Now, two months in, I have sold 2000 copies.

It's beyond my wildest expectations, and I could not be happier.

I have shared all the details in a Twitter thread, but let me boil it down here:

As of right now, I sold 2003 copies of Zero to Sold and made $16,385 in revenue.

  • Amazon: 1449 books, $10,371.10
  • Gumroad: 512 books, $5,754.86
  • Draft2Digital: 42 books, $259.04
  • IngramSpark: 37 books, $198.50

Total: 2003 books, $16,385.00 revenue

If you're interested in the full story of how I wrote and self-published the book, you can learn more on my blog and on my podcast.

If you have any questions about the journey, please let me know here! I am SO excited :D

  1. 3

    I signed up for your newsletter and am enjoying reading through the blog. I'll be buying the book next!

    If you had to name one thing that you think has been most instrumental in the book's sales, what would be?

    1. 2

      This community, hands down. If I hadn't written "for free" for over half a year and gathered a group of people around me who are interested in what I do, this would have gone nowhere as smooth. It also gave me great insights into what my readers would like to read about.

      1. 1

        Do you have any tips you can share on finding or creating a community for a product/service on Facebook (or any other platform)?

        1. 2

          There is likely already something on Facebook. Many tribes have long-established communities on Facebook, with clear hierarchies and structure. Try finding those by asking people who are your best kind of potential customers for the groups that they are in. Join those groups, and OBSERVE. Don't advertise, don't "build an audience", just listen and read for a while. Then, engage in discussions, and try giving valuable information for free. Make it clear that you're an expert, and make it equally clear that you're there for the long run. That way, you will embed yourself into that community, and you can eventually start talking about your thing in the context of someone else's problem.

          This works for any platform. Give more than you take, understand that this isn't hackable, it takes time and consistent effort.

  2. 2

    Congrats, Arvid. Listened to your podcast interview with Bruno, recently. Thoroughly enjoyed it!

    I'm soon to self-publish my book (about community building). I'm about halfway through writing, and starting to turn my mind to how to sell and distribute it.

    Is there any particular strategy you used when publishing across more than one platform. I've been thinking that I should go with either Gumroad or Amazon, but it seems that you can benefit from being in more than one place, if done right?

    1. 1

      The risk is that you alienate people if you only choose one platform. If you pick Amazon only, you alienate the people who don't want to (or can't) buy from Amazon, either due to ethical concerns or because they live in countries where Amazon is not present as much. If you pick Gumroad only, you alienate people who have a Kindle and want to keep all their books in their Amazon Kindle library.

      By supporting both (and a few more) platforms, you will de-risk your distribution channels. You can still heavily market only ONE channel but have the other available for the people who need an alternative.

      You can read more about my whole publishing journey here:

      1. 1

        This is really useful, thanks!

        And the article is super comprehensive. I'll be coming back to it many times over the next few months...


  3. 2

    congrats! keep going! you're killing it.

    1. 2

      Thank you! Community is where it's at. Something I've heard you say over and over, and I could not agree more!

      1. 1

        following your lead! keep going!

  4. 2

    I like your idea of creating a list of topics you wanted to write. I have done something similar recently to get myself started on a list of ideas.
    Thanks for sharing.

  5. 2

    Congrats! Just read up on the FeedbackPanda story in the SureSwift Capital interview. 👏 ❤️

  6. 2

    It's a great book. Congratulations on this milestone!

  7. 2

    I bought the book on Amazon and plowed through it in a couple of days - it's fantastic! Excellent job and I can recommend it to everyone on Indie Hackers.

    1. 1

      Thanks, that's wonderful! And very kind :)

  8. 2

    That's amazing - congratulations!

  9. 2

    Congratulations, Arvid! Hope to see another 2000 soon!

    1. 1

      Ha, thanks! I hope so too! :D

  10. 2

    Congratulations, Arvid!

  11. 2

    Thanks for sharing. Wishing you all the success.

    1. 1

      Thank you very much :)

  12. 2

    ¡Yeah! Congrats on that.

    Sincerely you have one of the best product/business book I've ever read. Down to the point, straight and with lot of powerful insights.

    Thank you and hope it gets to 3000 soon :D

    1. 1

      Thanks for the kind words! That's a great review :D If you find a chance to put that on Amazon, that would be great too! That'll definitely help with the 3000 ;)

      Thanks again!

  13. 1

    Congrats Arvid and thanks for sharing your journey with us!

  14. 2

    This comment was deleted a month ago.

    1. 2

      Sweet! I really enjoyed that interview. Omer is a hero of mine, so you can guess how excited I was to chat with him :D

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