Dateline 25 February 2024
Blog day tomorrow, and here I am on Sunday afternoon without anything planned. I did a thoughts-along-the-way post for last Friday. This coming Friday will be end-of-month progress and goals for next month. But what about today?
Something I haven’t spoken of recently is book sales. That might be a good topic. I think many people believe authors have lots of book sales. Not true. Or at least not true for most self-published authors.
Most of my sales come from Amazon. Fortunately, Amazon has a good book sales tracking system. Alas, that means it’s easy to see just how many sales I don’t have. I transfer those sales to a spreadsheet, along with any sales from Smashwords (now merged with Draft2Digital), Barnes & Noble, or others. I just did a check of those sales last year and added them to the spreadsheet.
So, what are my sales. Here they are. Promise not to laugh.
- 2023 – 151
- 2024 – 23 through Feb 25
- Lifetime – 1483
Several times over the years I saw sales ramped up, only to crash after a few months. It seems that Amazon constantly changing their algorithms. Sales start to increase a little each month, then they go down to fairly low. They were growing last summer, then plummeted to single digits in each of Sept, Oct, Nov.
Since last December, they’ve been in double digits, with February being best of those a few days before the end of the month.
I suppose I should take the advice of other writers and just ignore sales, but I’m a stat man. I have to keep on top of sales. It may be an obsession, justifying counselling.
My highest selling series is, by far, my Documenting America books. This keeps me working on them. Hopefully I’m just a couple of weeks away from having the next one finished. I should be rushing it, I guess. I’ve been running ads on Amazon, and am staying ahead on royalties vs. ad cost. Possibly I should be running a few more.
In February I’ve sold 12 books: 8 e-books, 3 paperbacks, and 1 Kindle Unlimited borrow. They are six separate titles. That’s out of 41 published titles. I know, kind of pathetic.
So there you have it. Not a great report, but better than nothing.
I like stats too and check mine at least daily — bad idea, I know. I always get excited when I put out a new book, with high hopes — which are usually dashed. Oh well; the life of an author! Your sales aren’t bad I don’t think! Most of us indie authors understand totally. Keep on keeping on.
Susan: Thanks for the comment. While I wish my sales could be higher, I’m grateful for the sales I have, and that they are increasing again. I’m hoping the next Documenting America will give sales a boost the next few months.