It’s that time of year again—time to review last year’s book
sales.
I can’t say I’m not a little disappointed with last year’s
numbers. I sold more books than I did in 2012, but I made less money (combination
of having a lower priced title and two sales over the course of the year).
Anyway, here are the stats. You can click the spreadsheets to the right to see the breakdown for each month.
2013 Sales:
Total Sales: 99
Total Royalties: $223.64
Total Sales: 52
Total Royalties: $148.65
Sales Channel
Breakdown:
Ebooks: 47
Amazon: 38
Barnes &
Noble: 3
Kobo: 0
Smashwords: 4
Paperbacks: 7
Amazon: 3
Extended
Distribution: 3
Direct: 1
Total Sales: 47
Total Royalties: $74.99
Sales Channel
Breakdown:
Ebooks: 35
Amazon: 32
Barnes &
Noble: 1
Kobo: 1
Smashwords: 1
Paperbacks: 12
Amazon: 7
Extended
Distribution: 0
Direct: 5
As you can see, between two books, I sold only 10 ebooks outside of Amazon, so in December, I decided to join Amazon’s KDP Select program, making my books available exclusively at Amazon in exchange for their promotional programs. I did a free giveaway of both books at Christmas, giving away 988 copies of The Clockwork Giant and 336 copies of Le Theatre Mecanique. Since the giveaway ended, I’ve received four new reviews on The Clockwork Giant, all but one favorable.
I also had a boost in sales in July
and December due to two sales. I reduced the prices of both my books by two
dollars for two weeks (with the free promo in the middle of my December sale). Sales
were slow, so it made sense to do the price-reduction. I can’t say if the boost
in sales is because people knew it was a sale or because the $2.99 and $0.99
price points are more attractive for a novel and novella. I’m averse to
reducing my prices permanently. I feel like $4.99 is a good price for my novel,
and $2.99 for the novella, but maybe that’s just my pride and feeling like I deserve that much. ::shrug::
Other than the two sales and free
promo, I didn’t do any promotion except the occasional post on Google+ when I
saw a surge of new followers. Of course, there was the novella release in
April, but it didn’t really affect sales of The
Clockwork Giant, so I wouldn’t really consider it promotional.
My hope is that 2014 will prove to
be a better year for book sales. I plan to publish two books, and one is the
sequel to The Clockwork Giant, so
maybe that will affect overall sales somehow. Maybe not. But maybe. I won’t
know until I release it. The other release is a standalone fantasy novel, so I
don’t expect much crossover between sales there.
I probably won’t do much promotion for
the new books except for what I’ve already been doing, in addition to Amazon
Kindle Countdown Deals every quarter. I don’t see the point in seriously promoting the Chroniker City
series until all three books are out. Until then, I feel like it would be
wasted. As for the fantasy novel The Wizard’s
Heart, I can’t say. It might be worth making a promotional effort, but I
have no idea what I’ll do, so stay tuned for that.
