Jeff Kenney's "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth" sold more than 825,000 hardcover copies in the US in its first week!
This is 100,000 more than the first week sales of the previous Wimpy Kid book in October 2009.
Pretty good for a kids' book with stick-figure drawings! I'm not knocking the drawings, by the way, they're charming, it's just that they're very simple (of course, sometimes simple is hard).
Mind you, it was not an overnight process. On his website, Kinney says, "From the time I started until the time the book came out in print, it was nine years. I spent about four years just generating ideas, and another four years writing and illustrating the story. Then it took about a year to get it into print."
He's planning to write at least five books in all and Twentieth Century Fox have made a Wimpy Kid movie. Despite all this, Kinney still has a full time job designing virtual worlds.
To me the lessons are: don't worry if it's taking you some time to get your book or other idea together. Probably it'll take you less than nine years. Secondly, don't think a simple concept or a simple style can't succeed. Finally, nobody knows what's going to be a hit. This could work in your favor (or not!).
(For some help getting your book together, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," and check out my Writing Breakthrough Strategy Program--see www.jurgenwolff.com for details of the latter.)
