September Sales and Observations

I decided to launch a blog devoted completely to self-publishing and the business side of writing, but keep the blog separate from my website. Right after my last update, which cataloged my first four days of sales and marketing tactics I suddenly saw an upsurge of reader traffic to my website and blog. Not traffic from writers, but from readers who had read the book, or were looking for the book. Several of them emailed me through my website's contact page and several posted on my blog.

This really made me uncomfortable. I want to get into the nitty gritty of sales and marketing. (what has worked, what hasn't) But I don't want the readers to feel like a number, or even worse like a commodity. Nor do I want to bore them to death, and most readers aren't interested in the business side of publishing.

Hence this new blog, under a generic name. This way if someone googles my name, this blog will not come up in the first few hits.

So, on to business.

Forged in Fire, my debut paranormal romantic thriller went up for sale on Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes and Noble on September 7th of 2011. The book is listed at $2.99.  I'm going to give a breakdown by week of sales. I copied this directly from my Excel spread sheet.

                        Amazon S/R       B&N/S/R        SW S/R         Daily S/R         Weekly S/R

Wed 9/7 5 $10.00 0 0 1 $2.41 6 $12.41 6 $12.41 Thurs 9/8 4 $8.00 2 $3.88 0 0 6 $11.88 12 $24.29 Fri 9/9 9 $18.00 1 $1.94 0 0 10 $19.94 22 $44.23 Sat 9/10 5 $10.00 1 $1.94 1 $2.21 7 $14.15 29 $58.38 Sun 9/11 5 $10.00 1 $1.94 0 $0.00 6 $11.94 35 $70.32 Mon 9/12 3 $6.00 1 $1.94 0 $0.00 4 $7.94 4 $7.94 Tues 9/13 6 $12.00 1 $1.94 1 $2.21 8 $16.15 12 $24.09 Wed 9/14 5 $10.00 0 $0.00 0 $0.00 5 $10.00 17 $34.09 Thurs 9/15 10 $20.00 1 $1.94 0 $0.00 11 $21.94 28 $56.03 Fri 9/16 4 $8.00 0 $0.00 0 $0.00 4 $8.00 32 $64.03 Sat 9/17 4 $8.00 2 $3.88 0 $0.00 6 $11.88 38 $75.91 Sun 9/18 5 $10.00 0 $0.00 2 $4.86 7 $14.86 45 $90.77 Mon 9/19 3 $6.00 1 $1.94 0 $0.00 4 $7.94 4 $7.94 Tue 9/20 4 $8.00 1 $1.94 0 $0.00 5 $9.94 9 $17.88 Wed 9/21 6 $12.00 0 $0.00 1 $2.21 7 $14.21 16 $32.09 Thur 9/22 9 $18.00 1 $1.94 0 $0.00 10 $19.94 26 $52.03 Fri 9/23 11 $22.00 0 $0.00 0 $0.00 11 $22.00 37 $74.03 Sat 9/24 8 $16.00 1 $1.94 0 0 9 $17.94 46 $91.97 Sun 9/25 9 $18.00 0 $0.00 0 $0.00 9 $18.00 55 $109.97 Mon 9/26 8 $16.00 2 $3.88 0 $0.00 10 $19.88 10 $19.88 Tues 9/27 9 $18.00 1 $1.94 0 $0.00 10 $19.94 20 $39.82 Wed 9/28 7 $14.00 1 $1.94 0 $0.00 8 $15.94 28 $55.76 Thur 9/29 10 $20.00 1 $1.94 0 $0.00 11 $21.94 39 $77.70 Fri 9/30 13 $26.00 0 $0.00 0 $0.00 13 $26.00 52 $103.70
As of last night, the last day of September, I have sold a total of 187 books. I'm editing this post to admit that my total Kindle sales were incorrect. I am embarrassed to admit that I never realized until last night that United Kingdom and Germany sales are reported separately. I never clicked on the drop down menu, so I never saw the books that had been sold to UK or Germany. I thought the books listed in the US sales with the 35% royalty were from England.  Anyway, I discovered the mistake last night and suddenly had fourteen additional sales and somewhere around 28.00 additional dollars in royalties. So with that in mind I have actually sold 201 books and earned somewhere around $394.00 in royalties. Kindle- 176 B&N- 19 Smashwords- 6 The Amazon royalty figures are not quite accurate. It turns out that if a person from a foreign county buys the book through US Amazon, the royalty rate is 35% because of taxes and levies that Amazon passes on. So instead of $2.00 a book, I get about a dollar instead. From last week's royalty statement, it looks like eight books were sold out of country, so my Amazon royalty is eight dollars less for sure than what I have listed in the chart. I did take that amount off my projected royalties though. Here is the final tally for Amazon through September- copied directly from my dashboard #Title ASIN Units Sold Units Refunded Net Units Sold 1 Forged in Fire B005LPUCB6    162         0     162 This is Barnes and Noble- I'm only pasting in the tally at the bottom of the royalty report because that sucker is long. It lists every book sold. lol I can't get it to copy correctly, but the 0 between the two 19s reflects the number of returns. Totals: 19 0 19 $36.86 This is Smashwords, but keep in mind that free downloads are listed as sales. I've actually only sold 6 books over there. Total Books Sold: 14 Account Balance: $13.90 Okay, so now onto marketing. Guest blogs. Guest blogs. Guest blogs. Hands down, guest blogs are the way to go. If you look at the sales data from the excel spread sheet above you can see the spike after guest blogs. Keep in mind I offer a free book for each guest blog. So the spike has occurred both times after the winner of the free book was announced. I did my first guest blog on Tuesday 9/13. The winner was announced on Thursday 9/15. Sales spiked that Thursday then dropped back down for the next few days. I got two emails from readers who had picked it up because of that guest blog and one reader stopped by and posted on my blog to tell me she had bought the book. My next guest blog was on Tuesday 9/20, the winner was announced on Thursday 9/22. Another spike in sales, only this time the daily sales didn't drop. They remained at that rate. They still haven't dropped. I'm on Goodreads now, so I was able to witness the domino effect of that last blog on the 20th. Prior to that blog post I had three reviews on Goodreads and three people who had put it on their "to read" shelf. Several of the readers who had commented on the blog were on Goodreads and listed the book on their "to read" shelf after the blog went up. One of the girls who had already started reading the book prior to the guest blog finished it the same day, gave it five stars and recommended it to the romantic suspense forum. One of the readers who had been at the guest blog picked it up, started reading it and recommended it to her friends. One of her friends started reading it, and they started commenting back and forth on the book as they read, which most of their friends must have been watching. Within two days I had 35 listings for it, four additional reviews and six additional rating. Word of mouth seems to have spread from there. I've had several people tweet me who have picked it up because of the last blog, or the recommendations over at Goodreads. And I've received several emails from people who picked it up because of one or the other as well. In other word of mouth news, my wonderful Beta reader Jolyn mentioned the book to a reader on the Black Dagger yahoo loop who was looking for new authors- and several other Black Dagger loop readers jumped in to say that they'd read the book, couldn't put it down and highly recommended it. Yeah, word of mouth is GOLD. Wattpad continues to bring me sales. At least two sales came from there this past week. But there may be more, the only way I know for sure if I made a sale from the Wattpad readers is if people email me or post on my Wattpad profile or within the comments of each scene. My reads are increasing every day as more people discover the story, and I am getting more and more fans every day as well. Right now I am up to forty fans and somewhere around 160 people reading the story. I think Wattpad would be even more effective if I was selling PDF files through my website. Alot of people still don't have e-readers, and they don't want to download the reader applications. I can't really judge with twitter anymore as to whether it is effective. I'm not promoting the book through there at all. But I am getting alot of people tweeting the book's title and telling me they loved it. I'm also getting alot of people friending me who have read it. I'll post more tomorrow on a couple of other things I have implemented, that seem to be having an effect in the review department. But I'm out of time for today. Here are some additional authors who are sharing their self-publishing sales/journey. And believe me, these authors have alot more sales and experience than I have. Check them out! Theresa Ragan Debra Holland Tori Scott