Six & 1/2 Years in Self Publishing

 

Once again, it’s time to report my first half sales – sales from May 2021 through October 2021.

Long story short: it was a good first half of my seventh year of self-publishing thanks to sales on Google.

I released one new book, a Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure series, Shadows of an Iron Kingdom, on 15 July 2021 and one novella, A Night on Isvalar, on that date as well, which I wrote for Amazon’s Vella serial fiction service. After 30 days in Vella, I was also able to release it on Amazon’s KDP platform for Kindle Unlimited. This novella is my only Amazon exclusive release. My thinking on writing and releasing A Night on Isvalar on Vella and the Kindle Unlimited was to use it as advertising for my other releases which, being mostly free and unadvertised, are likely never seen by most readers.. I don't think it worked. But we'll keep it in both services for now. On to the numbers.

My Sales Numbers

As usual, almost all of the sales are free ebooks sold through Amazon, Smashwords, Apple, and Google. My books are also available on Kobo, but they do not report free sales to Smashwords, and on Barnes & Noble which does report sales, but they don’t show up on my daily sales charts, so I don’t record those sales by the books – they’re just a rounding error anyway. In addition some books are also listed on other sites that offer free books. I don’t know how many, if any are downloaded from those sites.

Below is the chart comparing sales for this first half of my sales year to my sales last year for this period along with each books total sales to date from the companies that report sales. (Numbers are approximate. None of them ever quite match up. Very quantum.)

Book Title / Release Date	1H 2020 Sales	1 H 2021 Sales	Total Sale To date
A Summer in Amber 23 April 2015	370	223	8,039
Some Day Days 9 July 2015	163	209	4,305
The Bright Black Sea 17 Sept 2015	542	511	14,053
Castaways of the Lost Star 4 Aug 2016	Withdrawn	Withdrawn	2,176
The Lost Star’s Sea 13 July 2017	439	506	7,475
Beneath the Lanterns 13 Sept 2018	253	438	3,230
Sailing to Redoubt 15 March 2019	221	441	2,773
Prisoner of Cimlye 2 April 2020	240	391	1.268
Lines in the Lawn 8 June 2020	55	13	96
Keiree 18 Sept 2020	174	367	950
The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon 11 Nov 2020	n/a	648	1758
The Secrets of Valsummer House 18 March 2021	n/a	469	734
Shadows of an Iron Kingdom* 15 July 2021	n/a	679	679
A Night on Isvalar* 15 July 2021 (Amazon only – all $ sales only)	n/a	14	14
Total Six Month Sales * New releases.	2,217	4,909	47,550 Sales at this point 2020: 38,273 12 month Sales: 9,277

Comparing last year with this year, my my sales split between Amazon, Google, and Smashwords (including sales on Apple and B & N) works out like this for last year (2020):

Amazon 35%

Smashwords (Apple & B & N) 39%

Google 26%

This year in this time period the split looks like this:

Amazon 32%

Smashwords (Apple, & B & N) 18%

Google 50%

First the numbers. It was a good first half of the year. I more than doubled my sales compared to last year, helped in part by four additional books for sale. This total exceeds my record 2019 sales for this period which came in at 4,590 copies. Thanks to a surge in sales on Google, I moved 968 books in September and 1,236 books in October. Can't complain, but for both the monthly totals and the half year totals, it is important to keep in mind that this period has six more books for sale than I hand in the 2019 period. And I have to also point out that in the months after the release of my 4th book, Castaways of the Lost star in 2016, I sold 838 the first month and 1,324 books the next, and with the release of The Lost Star's Sea, in 2017 I sold 1,205 that month and 831 the next. These days I have 11 books for sale and my monthly sales are similar to what they were when I was selling three or four books. As I've been saying for some time, it gets harder every year to sell books that are not precisely targeted and effectively advertised. Looking at the numbers it is also clear that my newer books, the Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure stories in particular are carrying us along, especially on Google. Their numbers are being held back somewhat because they are not free on Amazon US.

Significant trends

The headline news of my first fiscal half of the year is the performance of Google’s Play Store Books, especially in September and October this year. Below is a chart of my Google sales for the last three years. As you can see, sales grew slowly for the first two years, started to takeoff at the start of 2021 and exploded in September and October.

I have no explanation for this phenomena. Looking at the Play Store, I can see no reason for this jump in sales. None of the books are in the top 100 free, and when you go to the genre listing for science fiction, many of the categories are simply jokes, filled with a strange collection of books that have nothing to do with the supposed sub-genre. How readers find my books, or any book, is a mystery to me, save that if they do find one and like it, they can search for the others. I don’t expect this level of sales to continue, but I think it is clear that Google will continue to be a major contributor to my sales going forward.

Smashwords, on the other hand, continues to fade as a source of sales. New releases goose sales for a month or so, but even these peaks are ½ to 1/3 what they were in the 2015-2017 period. Once the peak is a month or so behind us, sales drop to less than 150 books a month. Below is an incomplete chart from 2018 to date. Smashwords changed their storefront in January 2020 and my sales jumped and continued to sell well, until one day in October.. On the 6 October, something at Smashwords abruptly changed. I had no sales for that day, and when they resumed they were less than half of what they had been, and have continued that trend to the point where I sell as many books on Apple some months as I do on Smashwords. In the chart below you can see the spikes when I release a new book, which, as I mentioned are much reduced since the happy days of 2015 & 16.

Amazon is always a wild card. It is feast or famine. Amazon monthly sales in this period ranged from a high of 328 to a low of 130. As you can see for the 90 day chart below, you can go for a month with sales ranging from 0 to 10 copies a day and then get 50 sales in one day for no apparent reason.

Looking Ahead

I’m hoping to publish a new Nine Star Mystery/Adventure story in February or March of 2022. I would like to write a longer, more ambitious novel after that, but then, I just spent a fruitless summer trying and failing to come up with just that, so we’ll have to see how that goes. New books drive sales, and without new books, sales languish, so it is hard to predict what lies ahead.

In addition, there are several wild cards in play. The first is that I entered A Summer in Amber in the Self Published Science Fiction Contest. Depending on how far it goes and how well or poorly it is reviewed, the contest might generate interest and increased sales for it and my other titles as well. Plus, next spring I expect to enter Beneath the Lanterns in a similar Self Published Fantasy Blog Off contest, though any results from that contest are likely 18 months down the road. Finally, I am also toying with the idea of spending some money promoting my books next year as well, but more on that after the first of the year.

Summing It All Up

I’m very happy with the way sales are going, though the future, as always, is up in the air.