As I told my husband, after a year of writing and editing, "Don't be impatient, I'll probably only sell 5-10 books the first month, but I'll get better. Give me a year to get my name out there."
On Feb 1st I uploaded my novel in a very niche of niches (gay mystery/suspense). As of now my book shot up yesterday to number one of all gay and lesbian fiction on amazon.com (it's number 2 now I think) and it has over 45 reviews and 86 ratings on Goodreads. Most are great reviews. Really beautifully written and long reviews. Even one of the two star reviewers has written a long review on what worked or didn't for him. So it's awesome and amazing and surreal. I had to sit back today and stare at my screen, because it's a little overwhelming to think about, but, there you have it.
I don't believe this is a testament to self-publishing as much as it is to self-publishing the best product I possibly could. I had an editor, I had 4 beta readers (five, if you include my husband), I read the book at least 30 times myself. Yes, even after that there were still mistakes (oh wow two embarrassing ones - Jeffery instead of Jeffrey - thank goodness he was only in one scene lol - and marquis instead of marquee (i know better, I don't know how it was missed)). A few typos I missed. I think when I edited (edition 4 now) I found all of 6 mistakes in my 123k novel. None of them I could attribute to my editor or beta readers - wow were they fantastic.
I made the changes after they sent it back with their recs and I had deleted one word too many or added an extra word when I fixed a sentence structure.
Anyway, long story short (too late), I'm doing my happy dance over there *points*. No, you can't watch. Yes, I look ridiculous. No, I don't care.