Summary of e-book sales and royalties

Don’t be fooled by the title of this post. Nothing much has changed. Other than it’s July 25, and I’m already standing at my best month yet for both sales and royalties.

That doesn’t mean much of course, since I haven’t sold much at all. But so far this month I’ve sold 2 copies of “Mom’s Letter” and 3 copies of Documenting America. These sales have accrued $2.01 to my accounts at Kindle and Smashwords.

See, I told you these were not earth-shattering numbers. But the fact it’s still my best month so far. Previously my best month was 4 units sold and $1.68 in royalties accrued. So it is indeed a better month.

This is what the e-self-publishing experts say: More books on more e-reading platforms will result in more sales. That’s turning out to be true. In July I added “Mom’s Letter” to Smashwords. I’ve wanted to add Documenting America to it as well, but that’s a little more involved as I have to create an electronic Table of Contents. That’s not difficult; it just takes time. Maybe I’ll get a little time to work on it tonight.

That brings my total sales to 8 of “Mom’s Letter” and 7 of Documenting America. My accrued revenue stands at $6.28. That’s over five months for the former and less than three for the latter. I would love to have more, and I’d hoped the increase would come quicker than this, but I’ll take these for now, considering how little time I’ve put into promotion.

But, today I had a big surprise. I have three sales reports I can check: sales in the USA Kindle store, sales in the UK Kindle store, and sales in the German Kindle store. Normally I only check the USA one, but today I checked the UK, and discovered I have one sale of “Mom’s Letter” there in July! Surprise surprise. I earned 0.22 Pounds Sterling for that sale, which will work out to $0.35. I’m not quite sure how that gets accumulated and paid out, but it’s there in the record as a sale. I’ll take it.

So, I’m on a roll, albeit a very small and slow roll. I really need to get Documenting America up on Smashwords, and find something else to publish. Doctor Luke’s Assistant is more or less ready to go. I could probably have that on Kindle in a week and on Smashwords in two. I also still have to do the work needed to get Documenting America on CreateSpace, so that I have a physical book for sale. I don’t want to do a lot of promotion before having the physical book for those who don’t want an e-book. Then I’d better get busy finishing In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People so that I can slide over to another volume of Documenting America. Or maybe get serious with The Candy Store Generation.

That’s a plate full. Oh, well, better to have ambitious goals than to sit and watch TV all night.

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