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| My "2025" Novel |
As is tradition around here, I'm posting my sales for the first half of my fiscal year, May thru October. The purpose is to chronical my experiment in publishing. I decided from the onset on three things. First to reach, and hopefully, entertain as many readers as possible. Second to do so without losing money, but also without any concern for making money. And thirdly, to only do the things I enjoyed - writing - and the things I found interesting, challenging, and didn't mind doing like making paperback books, tinkering with covers, and different formats, while avoiding doing all the things I hated, which is to say self-promotion. The key to these goals was, and is, producing my books in-house, with the help of volunteer beta readers, and to then sell the ebook versions at cost, which to say, for free. I let their free price and wide and easy access do my promoting for me. I've published 20 books over the course of the last 9 1/2 years. The sales numbers are below. And according to Amazon, I've made $1002.51 so far. I've spent less that that, mostly on paper books, some of which I send to my beta readers for their efforts. I'll leave it up to you to decide how successful I've been.
Cutting to the chase, the first half of my 10th year in publishing was solid, but not spectacular. Below are my monthly sales totals, including ebooks, print books, and audiobooks. Nearly half of my sales now come from audiobook sales.
May June July August September October Six Month total
1014 844 1637 1544 1356 1,406 7,801*
This total compares to 9,177 in the same period last year, a decline of 16%
Headlines For This First Half of My Fiscal Year
I released my "2025" novel, Chateau Clare, early - on October 17 and the 24th, so it's initial bump in sales is reflected in the October sales. It's 470 copies sold kept sales for October at September's level. I have muted expectations for this title. It represents a different direction in my writing. Still, I can't kick about either its sales or its initial reception. I'm hoping that it will find new readers, but that might take some time.
All but three of my titles have been finally released as Apple audiobooks. The Lost Star's Sea shows it was accepted, but it's not currently available for some reason. Who knowns with Apple? A possible explanation for the unreleased three is that they did not have a proper table of contents. That was fixed a month ago, but they've yet to make their appearance. That said, Apple's audiobook version of Chateau Clare appeared only a week after the ebook version. You just never know with Apple. As for audiobook sales on Apple - I'm happy with them - not Google level, but good enough. It was worth the hassle.
In June I pulled my books on Smashwords and now sell them there via Draft2Digital. The move revitalized sales on Smashwords for several months, likely because the books appeared as new releases on Smashwords' home page, making them far easier to come across. Visibility, visibility, visibility is the key to sales. Sales have since settled down, but this move explains July's bump in sales.
My two bestselling books, The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea were too long for Amazon's auto-narrated audiobook program, so I broke them up into a six book series; The Lost Star Stories -- The Captain, Enemies, Ghosts, Castaways, Islands. and Secrets of the Lost Star. While I've sold only a modest number of the new versions, I wasn't selling any of the two omnibus versions since they went full price on Amazon, so the move was a minor win. I've reformatted The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea to reflect their omnibus status, and will continue to sell them via Google and D2D - since they are audiobooks on Google and Apple.
On the other hand, I pulled distributing from Draft2Digital for my titles to Kobo in October because I could not find my titles, or my my name, when I searched the Kobo site. It seems that Kobo doesn't want to sell free books. I hoped that by listing them myself with Kobo they would actually turn up in the search results. They now do, sometimes. Early sales are modest - 40 in the first month. I can't say if listing them directly made any difference, since Kobo never reported free sales to Smashwords or D2D. Now I'll know. I took the opportunity to list the six book Lost Star Stories series instead of The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea when doing this. I will review my Kobo free sales before the end of the year and if they are fairly insignificant, I may raise their prices to match my Amazon prices in the hope that this might make them more visible and appealing to users of Kobo's version of the Kindle Unlimited lending library.
The Numbers
Below is the complete breakdown of sales by book and format for the period May 2024 thru October 2024.
Book Title/ Release Date |
Ebook Sales |
Audiobook Sales |
Paper Back Sales |
Total
|
Total to Date |
SALES PERIOD May 2024 – October 2024 |
|
|
|
|
|
A Summer in Amber 23 April 2015 |
224 |
245 |
1 |
469 |
10,573 |
Some Day Days 9 July 2015 |
153 |
207 |
|
360 |
6,935 |
The Bright Black Sea 17 Sept 2015 |
358 |
502 |
2 |
860 |
19,093 |
Castaways of the Lost Star (Initial Release -withdrawn) 4 Aug 2016 |
---------- |
withdrawn |
------- |
---------- |
2,176 (one year) |
The Lost Star’s Sea 13 July 2017 |
269 |
231 |
1 |
500 |
11,143 |
Beneath the Lanterns 13 Sept 2018 |
176 |
150 |
|
326 |
5,748 |
Sailing to Redoubt 15 March 2019 |
207 |
190 |
2 |
397 |
5,385 |
Prisoner of Cimlye 2 April 2020 |
155 |
156 |
2 |
311 |
4,048 |
Lines in the Lawn 8 June 2020 Withdrawn |
---------- |
------------ |
------- |
--------- |
174 |
Keiree 18 Sept 2020 |
150 |
186 |
|
336 |
3,659 |
The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon 11 Nov 2020 |
230 |
296 |
2 |
526 |
5,011 |
The Secrets of Valsummer House 18 March 2021 |
230 |
265 |
1 |
495 |
4,130 |
Shadows of an Iron Kingdom 15 July 2021 |
271 |
418 |
1 |
689 |
5,019 |
The Aerie of a Pirate Prince 29 Sept 2022 |
207 |
228 |
|
435 |
2,503 |
The Girl on the Kerb 6 April 2023 |
480 |
174 |
|
654 |
6,358 |
A Night on Isvalar 15 July 2021 |
277 |
167 |
|
444 |
537 |
Passage to Jarpara 16 March 2024 |
217 |
183 |
6 |
400 |
583 |
Chateau Clare 17 Oct 2024 |
357 |
113 |
|
470 |
470 |
Captain of the Lost Star 22 July 2024 |
9 |
|
-------- |
9 |
9 |
Enemies of the Lost Star 22 July 2024 |
5 |
|
-------- |
5 |
5 |
Ghosts of the Lost Star 22 July 2024 |
5 |
|
------- |
5 |
5 |
Castaways of the Lost Star (New Re-Release version) Oct 2024 |
4 |
|
-------- |
4 |
4 |
Islands of the Lost Star Oct 2024 |
3 |
|
------- |
3 |
3 |
Secrets of the Lost Start Oct 2024 |
6 |
|
------- |
6 |
6 |
Omnibus Editions (withdrawn) |
---------- |
------------- |
-------- |
---------- |
30 |
TOTALS THIS PERIOD |
3,993 |
3,711 |
18 (yr) |
7,671 |
|
| 1H 2023 | 6,049 |
3,130 |
|
9,177 |
|
| 1H 2022 | 4,480 | 4,574 |
9,054 | ||
LIFETIME TOTAL SALES
|
|
|
|
93, 607 |
1 H Revenue $139.59, Expenses Approx. $20.00 Profit Approx. $120
Paperback sales were for the entire year. I don't pay any attention to them.
Almost all audiobook sales come from Google and Apple. Amazon's contribution is insignificant at this point.
Passage to Jarpara, as the third book in a series is doing about as I expected - so-so, but Chateau Clare is off to a promising start. We'll see. Otherwise, this chart serves to illustrate just how important an author's back catalog is. The more books you have to offer, the more you can sell, since new books won't keep you afloat.
Looking Ahead
Steady as she goes for now. I will do my big re-think this spring, if I feel one is necessary. Currently changing Kobo to full price sales if free books aren't contributing much is my only ongoing experiment. I think I've done all I can to promote sales without actually going out, spending money, and promoting them. Ain't doin' that.
*As I mentioned in a previous report, you would not want me as your bookkeeper. We'd find ourselves in jail. Attention to details is not my strong suite. While the two totals are based on the same raw numbers, for some mysterious reason they never quite agree when it comes to making out this report. The 7,801 six month total at the top comes from my monthly composite tally. This is based on counting book sales each month, month by month. The 7,671 at the bottom of the chart, while based on those same numbers, are generated by adding up the six months total for each title for ebooks and audio at the end of the six month period. Clearly errors occur. Somewhere. However, since all this is just for my amusement, I'm not going to try to reconcile them. Take the numbers as a range only, the actual number is likely somewhere in between the two of them. Indeed, my grand total on the monthly composite tally is 94,494. I like that number better than the one at the bottom of the chart above. I have, however introduced a new, simplified accounting system for myself, so I'm hoping to improve my accuracy going forward.
