Every Indie is curious about sales, but that's hard to talk about because it's individual. Sales were good from my standpoint as someone who had never been published before, but the number of books sold is only a piece of what determines what you really get paid on those Net 60 or Qtrly statements. Money per book sale varies by channel, by country, by titles put on sale, discounts, VAT fees, returns, yada yada--the list goes on. Trust me, you will just have to learn about your sales as you go. After 10 months I have concluded that book sales numbers only provide the author a snapshot of their work's popularity with readers, or at least that's what I tell myself. I consider my numbers to be a good start on my Indie publishing career and can't wait to see what happens when I get more books published in 2012.
Certainly I saw ebbs and flows from March through December. For example, there was an unexplained resurgence in Amazon UK downloads of Dating A Cougar in December totaling 15,587 before month's end. Sept-Nov saw a range from 2582 to 5922 for that book in the same channel. I looked like crazy for the magic because I wanted to capture it and replicate it if I could, but I never found it. So in January I merely thanked the invisible Amazon marketing elfs who obviously did something to boost downloads of my free book. Was what happened luck? Maybe. Was it good for sales? Definitely. Not huge jumps in numbers mind you, but enough to make me realize that the free book continues to help readers find me. (Thank you Brian S Pratt for the idea. Brian is a Young Adult book author who's blog interview with Mark Coker about his first year or so of Indie publishing really helped me.)
If my numbers keep growing, I probably won't be able to do this kind of tracking activity in 2012 without hiring help, but I thought I would try to do it this first year because the first year is extremely scary for newbies like me. Putting that first book out is hard when you're worried. My choice to make one of only two books in existence in March free was like pouring-gasoline-on-a-fire frightening for me.
I made $35 the first month, $215 the second month, and not much more the third month from Amazon. My work was not exactly setting the publishing world on fire in those early months. I reread posts with numbers like this. All them urged perseverance. I finished Book Three of the first series. I started a second series. I stepped up my efforts and finished Book Four of the first series which readers were continually asking me about. In October, eight months after I began publishing, I finally saw what passed for genuine income you can use to pay bills. It simply takes time and you have to have faith in the future and keep going.
Looking back to before I published, it was sometime between December 2010 and January 2011 that I found my first JA Konrath post. It contained numbers and facts that encouraged me to consider self-publishing. I followed reading his post with two more months of researching him and other Indies like him, and learning how self-publishing worked. Then it took yet another month and a half of work to put my first books up at Smashwords. When I got nervous about what I was doing in giving up my traditional dream of being discovered by someone who would make me famous and beloved as an author, I would show Konrath's post to friends and ask "What do you think?". In the end it was just me deciding that with the pile of rejections mounting on books I knew were funny and good I really had nothing to lose and something to gain by getting them to readers.
So it is with an attitude of gratitude I now send my own "newbie at self-publishing" book sales data out into the Indie author ether in hopes it helps others. I know how hard it is to keep believing and writing.
Okay, to start here are the download numbers of my free book--Dating A Cougar--to the best of my calculation capabilities. Some totals are "fuzzy" because I don't have records for all of the downloads in all of the sales channels. I even left a few channels out of this data, but I think the numbers are close enough for you to get the gist.
Amazon: 156,528
Smashwords: 8,050 (includes Smashwords.com, B&N, Sony, Kobo, & Diesel)
Apple: 75,000 (estimated**)
**Apple is my second highest sales channel. They did not report the numbers to Smashwords for Dating A Cougar downloads. To estimate a rough number, I used the Amazon sales (156,528/21,493 = X/11,328) to solve for a potential X. . .okay, Bruce helped me. There were good reasons I majored in English in college. I haven't solved for X since high school. The potential number came out to be about 72,376 downloads at Apple. Bruce said since it was just a "guess" that it would better to use a range of 55K to 90K. I love guessing, so reverting to Donna math, I rounded to a middle number close to "the solve for X" with a 5 in it (muwhahahahha). That's why I decided to use 75K. The number could be higher, could be lower. The point is no matter how big or small the free download number actually was at Apple, the point is the readers liked the free book enough to buy the others in the series which continues to validate the "free book" decision.
So here's a quick rundown of the number of actual books sold last year (no fuzzy Donna math):
Number of Smashwords distributed titles sold, and I thank Mark Coker and his team for their excellent support and for always answering my emails and questions (just FYI, for business reasons I researched five other ebook distributors, none beat the deal at Smashwords):
(More numbers came in and I updated the following totals on 1/23/2012.)
- Smashwords.com: 263
- Apple: 11,328
- Barnes & Noble: 7146 (first series via Smashwords)
- Diesel: 47
- Kobo: 372
- Sony: 4046
- Amazon: 21,493
- Barnes and Noble: 243 (second series and single-title)
5 comments:
Great numbers, Donna! I still remember your sharing your early figures at the May chapter meeting of our writers group. I had pretty much decided to go the self-pub route, but you gave me confidence that it could be a career rather than a hobby. My sales were more like 10,000 books in four months, and I also started with low royalty payments those first months, but by the third month, was getting $2,700 from Amazon and B&N and it just keeps going up. Not phenom status, but all I want is to make a living (and that's more than I made at my old day job). So it looks like this is the way for me to make a living. :)
Hope your sales go through the roof in 2012!
Kally
Thank you Kally. I hope they do as well, but I will still be content if I continue making a living doing what I love. Anything more than that will be more icing on the cake.
And you are going to outpace me this year. Just watch :)
WOW, I had no idea that self-publishing could be so lucrative. I know Kallypso posted about self publishing a few weeks ago on a writers' site we belong to. I suppose fear holds me back.
I have two books under contract for release February and April. I thought I would see how that goes. Possibly, after I have my first release, I might invesigate self-publishing for subsequent books. That way, I have a couple on the market for purchase, from publishers, and maybe a self-pub offered for free? What are your thoughts on that ladies? The free offering of a title I self-publish could boost sales of books I have already listed?
And, do you primarily use smashwords for self-pub? What about lulu.com?
So so so so much to learn.
thank you both for your candor and such detailed information.
Davee, choosing which company to work with is one of those decisions that is contingent upon your career goals. I chose Smashwords mostly because they do not charge fees. They offer tons of support and guidance and only collect a percentage of what you sell. However, if you note the numbers for sales at the Smashwords site, you will see it is small. I consider them primarily a distributor, though enhancements to their retail site are planned (based on Mark Coker's Smashwords blog).
I did research lulu.com, but chose for my own reasons not to use it. I have known people who did. Some are happy. Some are not. The same is true for Smashwords.
What I found most challenging is Smashwords pays quarterly + Net 30. So you essential wait four months for your first payment. I started researching other potential companies because I was used to Amazon's and other's Net 60 payments. What I found was all other sites charged fees for this, that, and everything they did for you. So I am staying with Smashwords.
All of them are businesses, and any self-publishing author needs to see what they do as a business too. So research, research, research and then make your decisions. One good way is to search for "XXXCompany complaints" or reviews. However, know there are no companies with perfect records. I read EVERYTHING on the Smashwords site they offered concerning publishing and their process before I chose them.
As to where you need to market your books, well you'll have to decide that and how to go about it. If you are a romance author, Indies are a growing phenomena--like Kally and me. LOL. But many multi-published well-known authors are self-publishing their backlist work themselves.
Congrats Donna! I found you from Dating a Cougar, so the freebies do work. I then purchased the rest of the series which I really enjoyed. I will get to your next series eventually as my TBR pile is getting longer and longer...keep up the great work!
Post a Comment