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I’ve reached a stage I’m sure is common to many self-published authors: the decision of whether to invest in a second print run. I had a great first response to Room Full of Strangers. Between book sales and trades with the other writers I graduated with, my initial supply of 100 copies has dwindled to fewer than 20, which I am thrilled about. However, 20-odd is still a stack of copies, and I’ve reached out to the obvious circles of friends, co-workers, church family, and so on. I do have a few ideas up my sleeve to put my book out there, but the question, “Is it enough?” is a tough one to face.
Arguments for: shows greater faith in book, eliminates ‘limited copies’ as an excuse to avoid readings
Arguments against: it would cost about 3/4 of the money I made from book sales so far, I don’t have a concrete plan for how to sell an additional 100 copies
I haven’t made a decision yet, so I’ll put it out there: what would you do in my place? (Or, if you’ve published and marketed your work, what did you do?)
Jessica Jonas 
Have you considered using some (5-10 maybe) of those as review copies to expand your potential audience?
This would leave you a buffer if the reviews started to generate more sales to get another run.
It depends how you’re selling the books and how quickly the first print run has sold, but if you have an eBook organise a blog tour (yourself- don’t let anyone charge you!) and be prepared for mixed feedback. If you’re willing to you could let bloggers in the right target areas give away a copy of your book as a promotion, or you could send copies for review in local newspapers and magazines to see if they will do a feature on their local order. Assuming that you can turn around a quick print run, you could estimate the size of print run according to the dues (pre-orders of the book) but you might also want to look at where you’re printing your book. Production costs *should* be substantially cheaper on the reprint.
Thanks for the information, Siobhan! I’ve been selling them hand to hand, and the book’s been out since May 1st. I declined to buy an ISBN for the book due to expense, so I’m not currently offering it as an ebook or in stores. I hadn’t considered a blog tour or offering copies for other bloggers to give away, but those are great ideas!
That’s okay. I think the best thing for you to do at the moment would be to start selling eBooks through the various platforms that are available- readers aren’t willing to pay much but you might reap the rewards of blog tours (and reader reviews on Amazon) which might help finance another print run if you decided to do it.