More than two weeks in, and sales have essentially flatlined. A book or two a day. Not impressive. It may not be just because of the non-promotion. There's no sex in this book, which a lot of reviews have mentioned, and sex sells, especially in m/m. So... possibly not what the market was looking for! I'm going to keep going with the series, because I want to see how things turn out. But I'm definitely not going to be retiring based on sales from this one, not unless things change dramatically!
Hi, Interesting. But I wouldn't give up yet. I've put out two books since KU2 came in and thus far they seem to be showing the same pattern. It takes about two weeks for the sales to kick in. Also I do recommend Select and KU for novelists these days. My latest urban fantasy - my worst selling genre - went up on the 15th. So in the two weeks to the end of the month I'd sold about 160 copies but also my pages read added up to the equivalent of another 170 books. And currently sales are just ticking upwards along with my book's ranking. Banshee Hunt is not yet on a par with The Arcanist, but I suspect it's heading in that direction. The next two weeks should be interesting. Cheers, Greg.
So, about a month after publication, and sales have been flat, flat, flat. I don't actually know how to get the precise number of sales per title from Amazon, and the book is available at multiple sources, so Amazon isn't the only measure, but I'm going to estimate less than 400 copies sold, total. I got a favourable review on Dear Author (one of the biggest romance blogs) today, but I've never really seen an immediate sales boost from DA reviews, so... we'll see. On the plus side, Book 2 is done and ready to go to betas, and I'll try to get it published by early March, probably... maybe late February. That may give the first a bit of a boost. And on the even plus-er side, I'm still enjoying the universe and the characters, so it's still fun to do the writing, and that's the most important part!
Is that #23 with sales of 119? Or did you miss the comma and it's 23,119? EDIT: After reading the rest of the thread, it's obvious you didn't sell 23,119 copies. So, is that the standing (or whatever it's called) on Amazon?
Joining the thread late, but I'm curious about how book number two will affect it! What's the book called? I'll go check it out on amazon.
The first one's the one in my avatar - Feral, by Kate Sherwood. (And now that I think about it, of course that's the one you meant, since the second one isn't available yet. Sigh - my brain is tired).
Good Luck Bay, and thanks for doing this experiment for all of us. If anything, we are all going to learn with you. Just want to say I admire you for taking all that writing time and doing this.
The second book came out a few days ago, and I ran a $.99 promo on the first book on one of the larger non-Amazon bookstores (AllRomance e-books) on the release day for the second book. Really, I should be doing more on Amazon, but I hate giving in to the monopoly! (Honestly, rather than an experiment in non-promotion, this has been an experiment in ignoring common sense and doing whatever I feel like). A few interesting (at least to me) points: The release of the second book definitely brought the first book up in the rankings (even at Amazon, where there was no sale). There's a chart I got from novelrank.com... let me see if I can paste it in...hmmm. No, apparently not. And I can't even figure out a way to link to it directly... Okay, for anyone who's interested enough to go through the trouble... go to http://www.novelrank.com/user/katesherwood and then click "charts" from the menu line directly below "Kate Sherwood's user page". This MAY take you to a page with some charts! [the following discussion is based on what the chart looks like on March 5, 2016 - it'll probably be totally different after that date] The chart on the left is a sales rank chart, showing my current top-three selling books. It shows rank, so the goal is to have the lines closer to the bottom, not the top. The lowest, fairly level line (mint green on my display) is a book I put out through a publisher - it's about eight months old, and still outselling both of these more recent self-pubbed books by a wide margin. (this is why I keep going back to publishers! Less work AND better sales). Now, this is an e-first publisher that keeps their prices really low, low enough to compete with self-pubbed books, so high sales don't necessarily mean high profits, but it's interesting. Anyway, the other two lines on the chart are my recent self-pubbed releases. The jagged baby blue line is Feral, which I put out in December with no promo, and the short navy (black?) line that just shows up on the right side of the chart is Lap Dog, which came out a few days ago, also with no promo. You can see how the Feral line jags down into slightly more respectable territory with the release of Lap Dog. I've got the second book in the mint green series coming out in a week or two, so it'll be interesting to see if it gets a similar upswing from its new buddy. Anyway, TL;DR version: releasing a new book in the series prompts sales of the first book (as expected) and self-pub sales, for me, with my no-promo approach, are still way lower than sales with a solid small publisher.
Wow Bay, this is great stuff. I did not realize you published so many, great job. I am writing a multiple books for my story and your info gives me some optimism moving forward. I am going to try traditional first so lets see how it goes. It was great to see your increase in sales for book one after book two was released. Do you think it is because the reader's see that book 2 was released so they come to the conclusion that book 1 must be good? I know a lot of readers like series so I wonder if that is their thinking when they decided the next series they want to read. Again I cannot thank you enough for running this experiment. I am going to check out Feral sometime next week, looking forward to the read.
I think the jump with the release of book 2 may just be because people are reminded that book 1 exists! It really is hard to get anyone's attention in this cluttered publishing landscape, so possibly it's just a question of awareness, rather than any assumptions about quality? Just speculation though - I really have no idea!
I am in work now, but later I will check out Feral. Don't worry, if I don't like it I will just give you crap in a private message here. Of all the books you published, what one do you consider your baby? I would also like to read what one you really loved.
Hmmm... I don't know. Dark Horse was my first and I think it has the most of my pure emotion in it, but I'd love to go back and fix a lot of the technique... Mark of Cain has a central conflict I really like and probably has the best reviews of my m/m books... Sacrati is fun because it's speculative fiction and I got to really play with world-building... but these are all m/m romance - don't read 'em if you're uncomfortable with somewhat graphic man-on-man action! From my m/f side, I have fondness for the MC of Playing Defense, but it's not out for another week or two. But don't feel like you have to read any of them! I'm just doing an experiment, not trying to drum up readers!
Thanks Bay, my story is kind of world building so I might give Sacrati a look to see how you did it. Would definitely be first m/m romance for me. Crap like that never bothers me. A good story is a good story even if I don't prefer M/M or F/F. The story to me is everything. I am kind of laughing right now. This would be my first I guess you would say gay novel. My wife usually reads what I read so I am not going to tell her, can't wait to see her face when she reads it. She will probably think I am going through some kind of change of life. I will let you know how it goes. I don't feel like I have to read them, I see you all over the forums and I respect a lot of your opinions. There is a lot of talent here on this forum. Reading something you wrote will tell me more about you. Good and bad. I think with my writing I can be a little long winded, reading others work helps me with this.
Hi Bay, Good that you're getting some traction. Four hundred sales is ahead of the average for an indie books - most estimates say less than two hundred is the norn. But one other thing to consider, while your sales may be less than those of an author with a contract to a solid small publisher as you say - your income shouldn't be. You get bigger royalties per book as an indie and most authors with smaller publishers get small advances. Personally with fourhundred sales I'd be looking at a grand US income - that's with my books priced at $3.99 earning me $2.76 per sale. And KU should help more. Also, your books out there and it stays out there for life. There's nothing to stop it taking off in five months or five years. My second book out - Maverick - went up in 2011. Initial sales were reasonable - it probably sold around fifteen hundred copies in three or four months - there was no KU then. But about two years later after I published another epic fantasy - wildling I think - it's sales went from life support to really quite good and it sold maybe another two thousand copies. And in between then and now sales on it tick over adding up. Currently it's total over four years is north of five thousand sales and heading for ten. It's a sad thing to say but not a lot of trade published authors - especially small publisher authors - achievethat. A print run is only a few thousand copies. Hang in there. Cheers, Greg.
But we have to count the expenses for self-published books as well - can't just look at the income. I went pretty cheap with these, so they probably only cost me $400-$500 - but that's $400-$500 I don't spend on my books with publishers. And the self-publishing took more time, too, although not a LOT more. I agree, but this is true of my books with publishers as well. Or for some of them, I might claim my rights back after the term of the contract and self-publish them then, with the editing AND the publisher's promo efforts already done for free! - well, some prints runs might be that small, but I think the general print run is larger than that - I've only had two books that had print runs, but both of them were over 10K, and there was no reason for the publisher to believe they were going to be big sellers... Thanks! I'm not discouraged - this is just an experiment. I like to keep at least some of my books self-published in case the market changes (good to have flexibility) but I mostly prefer to work with publishers. I'd rather be a writer than an entrepreneur! So, really, this experiment is giving me the results I want, telling me I should keep sending my books to publishers! (But I don't think I'm letting bias get in the way, because I'd ALSO be very happy if the books took off and made me lots of money!)
Thanks for doing this, Bay. It's really informative to people without your experience (i.e. all of us). Now that you've pretty much established your results, are you going to do anything differently with these books?
Hmmm - good question! I think I'll probably leave them more-or-less alone until I'm done the series (I'm thinking two more books, probably finishing sometime this fall). I might play around a bit more then, maybe with KU (blech) maybe making the first one free or putting it on sale again... maybe actually contacting a few blogs and doing a bit more promo (blech again). I don't know. I like have the self-pubbed books out there so I can take advantage of opportunities that arise, but then I rarely look all that hard for opportunities, so...
Do you not like KU because it's Amazon or because it's not great for authors? I'm still using KU heavily at the moment (actually I have one of your books waiting on my Kindle) but I don't know if I *should* be, as someone who wants to support authors.
Mostly just because it's Amazon - and I don't have a problem with Amazon, exactly, so much as I have a problem with any one entity having that much power in the marketplace. I'd be happy to sign up for KU if it didn't require that I take my books off all other sites, but as it is, I feel pretty damn guilty when I contribute to the monopoly. (Not saying I don't do it - as you say, I've got a few books on KU right now. But... I don't like it!)
Yup. But I don't see either of those ruining small businesses the way Amazon does. I mean, it's not like there's a long tradition of Mom-and-Pop search engines or social networking sites, right? And neither one of them is nearly as aggressive against their competitors as Amazon is - the rules of Kindle Unlimited would be like Google saying "we'll give you access to this really great search engine, but if you use it you aren't allowed to use any other search engines." The Kindle Unlimited rules seem specifically designed to hurt other sellers. I don't like it.
Related-ish note - I was just announced as a finalist for a Lammy award, which is the biggest award in LGBT literature... and I have seen not a single uptick in sales. I mean, it would have been a stretch if I got improved sales for my self-pubbed books, maybe, but even the book that's up for the award hasn't sold anything extra. What's a girl gotta do to sell some books around here?!?
