On Saturday, July 13, 2013, Grey Gecko author George Wright Padgett was signing copies of Spindown at a Half Price Books store in Humble, TX. I was sitting beside him, happy to support the author of one of my favorite sci-fi novels. Neither of us knew, at the time, that we were making history with that second-to-last sale. At least, history for Grey Gecko.

Our first official sale was on May 4th, 2011. That’s 802 days. That’s an average of 12.47 books per day for a little over 2 years. Here are some stats from that 2 years:

  • 16 titles
  • 18 authors
  • 9,842 combined pages between all editions
  • 10,018 books sold
  • 750,000+ words
  • thousands of readers/fans

One of the things I’m most glad about in all this chaos and wonderment is that I’ve been able to make so many of my friends’ dreams a reality, as well as my own. That’s not something that a lot of people can say, I think, so it means a great deal to me.

A question I get fairly often is “Why did you start a publishing company?” I give standard answers much of the time, and they’re all true, but my favorite answer is also the funniest: “To offset Twilight.” You see, I can’t un-publish that drek, or that of 50 Shades of Grey, so my only option is to publish great books by great authors in an attempt to balance them out. I can’t speak to how well it’s working, but I do know that I feel pretty damned good about the quality of our work, and our sales and fans seem to agree.

In the end, though, in addition to all the hard work by our authors, editors, and artists, the people who got us here are those same fans; without their support in buying our books – and reviewing them! – we could never have come this far. So thanks to all our fans, friends, and readers – and here’s to another 10,000 books sold!
Jason Aydelotte
Chief Gecko