Another month, another time to report book sales. I could go with the good news first.

The good news is that my book sales increased by 50 percent over February.

The bad news is that means they went from 2 sales to 3 sales. I was more aggressive in talking to people about my books, and as a consequence I sold one copy of Operation Lotus Sunday, to a woman in my writers group. I also availed myself of the $50 coupon Facebook gave me for running ads, and have put four ads up. So far I’ve spent a little more than half the budget, have had 43 clicks to one of the book websites, and have had one sale of the advertised books. Whether that sale came from the ad I have no idea.

So, here’s the two tables, the big one for easy viewing and a smaller one to link to in my self-publishing diary at Absolute Write.

I didn’t report my book sales in January. There wasn’t much to report. Nor is there much more to report in February. But I don’t want to hide this information, so here I’ll post it, and comment after.

Yes, that’s right. Two sales in January and another two sales in February, four all together. The best news is they are of four different books. One was a print book, the other three e-books.

I still don’t do much by way of marketing. Occasionally I make a post on FB, or tell someone individually (online or in real life) that I have books for sale. At some point, perhaps next year, I’ll have to quite taking all of my writing life time for writing and instead use some of it for marketing.

Below is a smaller size of the table, for linking to from the Absolute Write forums.

An interesting discussion is taking place at the Absolute Write forums about recent comments by Hugh Howey, author of Wool. Hugh is fairly confrontational and controversial. He’s said some things in the past concerning women that were vulgar. Because of that, some people won’t listen to a word he says. The discussion is here: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=283374. But see his point 13:

What Hugh Howey wrote:
13. Monthly payments and speedy sales data. Authors enjoy money and they enjoy metrics, and right now they have to wait too long for both. At New Harper Collins, we pay royalties every 30 days. And whatever sales data we have, you have. Simple as that. If self-published authors can have this, then our authors should have this. No more waiting six months to pay people. That’s history. No more wondering how your book is doing; you have access to all the data we can cull. Share your results in the Harper Collins Author forums.

One of the moderators at AW, Medievalist, responded to Howey’s point 13 as follows:

13. This one is really silly. Bookstores order books but don’t pay for them until they sell them. This is, if you think about, fair. It’s not their fault if a book doesn’t sell. Bookselling is a business run on credit, and it’s not likely to change any time soon.

Libraries generally have 90 days, though some distributors and publishers allow less. Publishers aren’t sitting on piles of money, hoarding royalties. There’s a reason they pay an advance you know, an advance that the author keeps even if the book doesn’t do well. Mind, the P & L from an experienced publisher is generally fairly solid, so that the publisher isn’t losing money on a book, but the idea is to make money for the publisher and the author. That way the author will do another book with the publisher, and that one too will make money, and increase the sales of the first book.

I don’t think I’ll respond again at Absolute Write [Edit: They have now locked that thread there], but will instead do so here, and provide a little context for discussion of this point 13.

I must respectfully disagree with you, Medievalist. Surely publishers and booksellers work on an accrual accounting basis, not cash. Revenue and profits are “booked” the moment an item is shipped or an invoice sent, not when payment is made. That’s the same as our engineering business. We send out an invoice for October’s work on Nov 10. The client doesn’t pay us for seventy-two days (the industry average), which will be January 22. But that invoice accrues as income, and the profits represented in that invoice accrue as profits, from the invoice date. So we pay taxes on that profit (it’s still assumed profit, not realized) in the current year when we send in quarterly taxes on Jan 15 even though the cash doesn’t get to us till a week later. If it turns out the client stiffs us the invoice, we delete it in two stages from the next year’s accruals.

Sales accrued and royalties paid based on accruals can be taken away and deducted from future royalties. That happened to me recently when B&N over-reported sales on one day, a day I sold three copies of one e-book and accrued $6.00 of royalties. B&N later corrected the over-reporting and deducted $4.00 from my accrued revenue. That’s the equivalent of a return. And I’ve had e-books returned at Amazon after the close of the month in which it was bought. The royalty on the return is easily deducted. It’s all a software thing, very easy to accomplish.

But even if it were as you say, and trade publishers are so unsophisticated with accounting in this modern era that they can’t provide monthly sales statements.

In January:
We shipped X books to Bookseller A
We shipped Y books to Bookseller B
We shipped Z books to Bookseller C
We had W returns from prior shipments.

To fail to do even this small gesture, which will allow writers to judge the effectiveness of whatever promotion they might be involved in, is inexcusable. Yes, perhaps publishers aren’t set up to do that right now, but they surely have computerized records of what’s been shipped. If it’s been shipped it’s been billed. If it’s been billed then royalties are accrued. If you want to delay royalties until you’re certain of the returns situation, I could buy that. But give writers all the data you have. It’s their book. It’s not a trade secret.

So, that’s the end of my rant. Time to get back to work.

I’m a day late posting a writing/publishing plan for 2014. Actually, I’m a day late thinking about it. I started off yesterday in Oklahoma City with our daughter’s family. I had a chore to do, which kept my mind well engaged from 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Packed the van at that point, said goodbye to everyone, including E1, E2, and E3, our grandkids, put my sick wife in the van, and headed east.

You’d think with my wife sleeping and the van quiet and it being New Year’s Day I would think about what my writing career would look like in 2014. But I didn’t. I vegged, listened to the radio, and thought about other things. Even after arriving at home, and having the house to myself while the wife slept, the Fiesta Bowl seemed a better way to feed my mind than writing plans.

But today I’m finally focused. Beginning with the things left hanging from 2013, and looking ahead to what is occupying my mind now, even when I try to push my mind to think about other things, I came up with these as elements of my writing/publishing plan.

– Decide on what to do with “It Happened At The Burger Joint”, the short story that occupied so much of my mind for so many months I had to write it in December. It’s polished and probably one edit/read-through away from being ready to submit to a magazine or self-publish. I don’t really know what to do with it. I suspect this will take a week or two to finalize and decide.

– Fix the e-book cover for The Gutter Chronicles, Volume 1, so that it can be added to the Smashwords premium catalog. I want to achieve this in January if at all possible.

– Prepare and publish The Gutter Chronicles, Volume 1, as a print book. I have a number of people at work and in the industry who want this as a print book but not as an e-book. I’d like to complete this in January. Of course, this will mean a major step up in my cover creation skills, or perhaps hiring it done. Which brings me to….

– Figure out how to use the “lite” version of Photoshop that resides on my laptop. I believe this will do all that I need for covers. I even have access to a training video on it. I believe I will make this a priority in January. I don’t know that I’ll be able to learn this program, or, if I am able, to must sufficient artistic talent to make my own covers at the quality needed, but I have to try. I can’t keep begging covers, and my earnings haven’t been enough to justify paying for covers.

– Finish and publish the book on Thomas Carlyle. This is tentatively titled Thomas Carlyle’s Articles in the Edinburg Encyclopedia. It’s all public domain material that has never been aggregated in one book. The text is done, except maybe for an introduction. I actually have the e-book cover done on this as well. The print book cover will have to wait on my Photoshop activities. I’d like to complete this in the first quarter.

– Finish Headshots, the sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. This book is moving along, slowly. I’m at 21,000 words, heading towards 80,000. I was hoping to have this ready for baseball season. It’s possible, but not probable at this time unless I delay some other things.

– Write and publish Preserve the Revelation, which will be the second book in my church history series. This will be after all the above activities are completed.

– Work on The Gutter Chronicles, Volume 2. I have started this, still working on the first chapter. I have most of the fifteen chapters identified as to subject, and have brainstormed them a little. Depending on how I spend my early morning time at work and my noon hours, this should be doable to publish it in 2014.

– Write and publish one or two Danny Tompkin short stories. The next one is started in manuscript, and the plot is occupying gray cell capacity, so this may be a first quarter item.

– Write and publish one or two Sharon Williams short stories. Again, the plot for one has formed, and this could be a first half of the year thing.

– Work on Documenting America – Civil War Edition. This has long been planned. With everything else I want to do I think publishing it in 2014 is extremely remote, but getting on with the research would be nice.

– I have one other short story that is, unfortunately, refusing to release it’s hold on some of my brain. I suppose I will have to write it. I’m not sure right now when, or if, and if and when then whether to publish or not.

– And last, I would really like to start a writer’s newsletter this year, a way to build a readership and reach them. I’ve thought about this often in the past, but the time commitment has always dissuaded me. Still thinking about it.

This list has two big absences. It does not include my poetry book, Father Daughter Day, which is ready to be published except for illustrating. I don’t plan on doing anything with it right now. And it does not include any work on Bible studies or my long-planned Wesley books. I’d like to get back to those, but I have only so many hours in the day and days in the week.

Alas, retirement is still 3 years, 11 months, and 29 days away.

I’ll be back to add commentary. For now it’s just the graphs, so that I can link to it at a writers site.

So, 2013 was not exactly a stellar year. Only 4 items published, and fewer sales than in 2012, and fewer sales per title than both 2011 and 2012. And, if you discount the good month of sales I had in 2012 of Doctor Luke’s Assistant, I still sold half the number of titles per book in 2013 than I did in 2012.

I don’t plan on doing a lot different in 2014 than last year, except hopefully double the number of titles published. That depends heavily on my being able to learn how to do my own covers with a quality publishing software platform.