I'm celebrating this week because I've sold my 1,000th copy of my book! Wow. It's amazing to think that a thousand people have purchased something that I wrote. I'm both humbled and extremely excited.
For those of you who are wondering how long it took me, here's a quick recap of my sales by month. I uploaded my book on April 20th, 2010.
April - 7
May - 151
June - 456
July - 176
August - 106
September (so far) - 143
As you can see, the bulk of my sales came from June. I attribute this to being featured on some great blogs, and my book was still priced at $1.99. I priced it low for the first three months, which allowed me to gain momentum and get some reviews under my belt. Sales fell dramatically in July when I raised my price to $2.99.
Now, do I feel like I made a mistake raising my price? Maybe. However, I did make a little more money in July than I did in June. Why? Because Amazon raised their royalty rates to 70% in July for all Kindle books priced between $2.99 and $9.99. Before, at $1.99 I was making 35% royalties. ($.70 per sale) Starting in July when I raised my price to $2.99 I began making 70% royalties for all sales in the US. ($2.04 per sale) That's a huge jump in royalties.
August, however, was a very slow sales month for me. I'll never know if I had kept my lower price, if I would have kept my sales momentum. In the end, I am happy with how well it's been selling. I'm very excited for my next book, The Overtaking, which will probably be ready for the Kindle around the end of the year. I do think the secret to success on the Kindle is having a loss leader, so I plan on making The Overtaking mine. I'll price it at 99 cents, at least for the first three months, in hopes that it will sell like crazy and draw some attention to my higher priced book.
I'll let you know how it goes!
Vicki
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts
-
I love crunching numbers. So I decided to take some sales numbers of indie authors over time to see the growth. I hope you find it as inte...
-
I've heard, many times, people say things like: "Most self-published books only sell a handful, to family and friends." Or: &q...
-
These are the reasons why I've heard you should not self-publish. (And my answers to them.) Reason: You'll publish crap. You'l...
-
I've had quite a few people ask me how I marketed my book. Since this comes up a lot, I thought I would spill all of my secrets. Here ...
-
There's a lot of confusion out there about romance novels. It's easy to see why. Your book might have two people who fall in love, a...
-
If you've written a book and haven't sold it to a publisher, you may be considering selling your novel as an ebook on the kindle. I...
-
So you've worked and slaved, polished up your book until it sparkles, hired an editor and cover artist, and now it's finally publish...
-
Since my book made the New York Times best seller list, I've had a lot of people prodding me to tell them the secret. How can they have...
-
I've heard it said many times. Self-published books are not worth anything. They're badly written, poorly formatted and not edited. ...
Congratulations! That's terrific!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Ellen!!
ReplyDelete