i think you put a 3 where it should be a 2 in that second example... so, where can we see how many e-books have been sold by any particular author?
An acquaintance of mine on the internet Hugh Howey, who I first spoke to before he completed his first book, has been very successful via Amazon self publishing . He'd written a bunch of young adult oriented SF books which were moderately successful, but had a huge hit with a short story he put up on Amazon ebook self publishing. It is called Wool, he expanded on it until it was novel length and it became a New York times best-seller. He sold the film rights to Ridley Scott and Lions Gate Entertainment. He's since gone on to write sequels to it. So, how many do you have to sell to be a New York Times best seller?
no clue... you'll have to ask the nyt... that's quite a success story, though... especially given that he raked in half a million from s&s and only started the series 2 years ago! problem is, his becoming a virtually overnight success is one of the so rare exceptions that it would be beyond foolish for other new writers to count on being the next one... knowing it can happen is certainly heartening, however... proves again that aside from escaping death and taxes, nothing is impossible... thanks for sharing this, sm!
I've seen the success story behind Wool. There are others, and you don't even have to rise to that level of success to make it worthwhile. I know someone who made six figures on self-published books and was later picked up by a traditional publisher for those same works. The vast majority aren't going to attain that level of success, but then the vast majority don't seem to attain it going the traditional route either (and I know at least one traditionally-published mid-list author who doesn't even make enough to support herself without outside income, so getting a traditional publishing contract is no guarantee of financial freedom).
One of the things other than his talent that I think that set Hugh Howley apart is that in self publishing he was very professional, he asked a lot of people to beta read his work ( I was one of them) and he even paid for a professional editor out of his won pocket. He seeks and listens to his readers suggestions. He's told me that with Amazon ebook self publishing, people are too quick to press the upload button. A lot of writers do it before the book is anywhere ready to be sold as a product. People feel ripped off if its full of typos or is unresolved. They will comment the on facts and that can be the death knell for sales of the book. Conversely, if its done professionally and is an interesting story everyone will come to hear about it.
Hi, I'd be a bit sceptical of some of the numbers. A couple of my books have made it into the top two or three thousand in rankings, and at that time they were consistantly selling forty or fifty a day. I have no idea at all how many you'd have to make it into the top hundred. But many of my books have made it into the top one hundred in the sub categories as listed in Sci fi writer's post. (Not those particular subcategories however.) Some subcategories have only a few books in them, some have tens of thousands or more. It's a lottery. Cheers, Greg.
Getting into the real top 100 is hard. Getting into a subcategory top 100 is pretty easy. I've hit a subcategory top 100 in Germany by selling one book. Not sure how high it got, but it was #42 when I noticed it. I've got a story in the First Contact top 100 right now on Amazon.com, and it hasn't sold that many copies. That said, it's dropped from #77 to #92 in a few hours of no sales.
Sub categories ranking doesn't really matter. #10 best selling in a certain sub category might be #50,000 overall for example. Though there are popular sub categories where #10 in that sub categories might be #100 overall. For example, at this very moment #10 in New Adult sub-category is #101 Paid in Kindle Store. Here's a source for Kindle Sales Rank, based on the author experience. It will give you a "ball park" figure. http://www.theresaragan.com/p/sale-ranking-chart.html Code: The numbers below are based on MY experiences... I'm sure you can find other authors whose numbers are different from these...but the following s/b pretty darn close. The whole idea is to give you an approximate number of books you would need to hit the OVERALL Kindle List only. Amazon Best Seller Rank 50,000 to 100,000 - selling close to 1 book a day. Amazon Best Seller Rank 10,000 to 50,000 - selling 3 to 15 books a day. Amazon Best Seller Rank 5,500 to 10,000 - selling 15 to 30 books a day. Amazon Best Seller Rank 3,000 to 5,500 - selling 30 to 50 books a day. Amazon Best Seller Rank 800 to 3,000 - selling 50 to 150 books a day. Amazon Best Seller Rank 500 to 800 - selling 150 to 200 books a day. Amazon Best Seller Rank 350 to 500 - selling 200 to 300 books a day. Amazon Best Seller Rank 100 to 350 - selling 300 to 500 books a day. Amazon Best Seller Rank 35 to 100 - selling 500 to 1,000 books a day. Amazon Best Seller Rank 10 to 35 - selling 1,000 to 2,000 books a day. Amazon Best Seller Rank of 5 to 10 - selling 2,000 to 4,000 books a day. Amazon Best Seller Rank of 1 to 5 - selling 4,000+ books a day. Another one is the Kindle Sales Calculator http://kdpcalculator.com/ Oh, a self-published author just wrote about how many sales it took for her to hit #1 on Paid Kindle. http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,163161.0.html For those of you keep tabs on how many sold to hit #1 on Amazon It looks like the # of sales to hit #1 fluctuates. Most likely by timing and competition.
Sales in general fluctuate dramatically through the year. In my experience, the big selling months in the US and UK seem to be November to May, then sales drop off substantially through the summer.
There are many self publishing success stories. There is a list on the bottom of this post with actual sales figures. http://www.firebrandpublishing.com/much-money-can-make-self-publishing-book/
that list does not indicate over what period of time those sales were supposedly accumulated... nor is any source cited, which makes me have to question their validity... sorry to be so skeptical, but since your avatar and sig info are ads for same, and all of your posts so far have been only in re self-publishing, i have to ask... are you posting on this site just to drum up business for your 'self'-publishing company?
