Speaking of sales figures

I have just discovered that my first novel Speaking of Love (published by the utterly wonderful Beautiful Books) has sold five copies in a week, in my local cafe, Il Molino, on Battersea Park Road.

These sales figures will not, self-evidently, make so much as a mizzle in the mugglemist of today's HP publication celebration, but to me they are reason for joyous celebration. It's difficult to get first novels into bookshops because bookshops find it difficult to make space for first novels unless they have been reviewed, and first novels tend not to get reviewed unless the author or the publisher are well-known. Beautiful Books are not yet well-known, although they surely will be, and I do not wish to be well-known for anything other than my writing (asituation), but perhaps Il Molino will gently spread the word from the lavender hills of Battersea, sweet-s(m)elling bookshops on the streets of London, so that the trail leads to bookshop booknoses in other towns and cities, perhaps even in Auld Reekie.