December sales thread

Mine were pretty good for my second month of publishing. They started out strong, had a bit of a lull in the lead up to Xmas, then started to pick up again in the final week of December. January's where sales have really improved for me though.

Only 4 Units Sold this month so far:

2 A Very Ugly Story
1 Very Ugly Stories Bundle 1
1 What does the early worm get?

One title: 703 sales/borrows. (With the caveat that 400 came on a one day ENT .99 ad that saved my bacon.)

It was 900-ish across thirty or so titles (short stories and novels), but a bunch of them were $.99 sales, so I don't think I made very much money.

Is that an estimated income, Sarra? *runs off to see if Amazon has released reports early.*

My December was crap. No fabled "Christmas boost" whatsoever. It's been a while since I had such a bad month.

sarracannon said:

I was very happy with December's sales numbers. I was actually happy just to survive finishing and finally releasing the 6th book in my series. Whew! It took long enough...

Beautiful Demons: 4179 Free Downloads

Inner Demons: 569 Sales

Bitter Demons: 494 Sales

Shadow Demons: 463 Sales

Rival Demons: 463 Sales (spooky, yes. Very odd to have two books the same exact number.)

Demons Forever (released 12/21): 2596

Total Sales (Not including smashwords and apple): 4585
Income: $10,965

Click to expand...

Congrats, Sarra! I was one of those 2596 - reading it right now.

I surpassed November, with over 500 sales across mainly two titles - the second and third book of my series. I had a smattering of sales with my shorter works, and just under 5,000 free downloads of book one.

So - very happy with sales. Especially since things just started taking off for me in November.

Here's to a profitable January! Looking good for me so far.

~Cate

11 shorts sold over 3 titles. December was my first full month.

I sold close to 800 copies in December, thanks to ENT and BookBub.

Right at 1,700 sold and about 230 borrowed. Best month ever for me. (Plus about 1,500 downloads of my perma-free title.)

December was interesting. I sold 136 copies during the first two weeks. I published my second novel in the series on the 15th, and then the novella prequel on the 22nd, and ended the month with 670 sales.  That's my best month yet in the three full months I've been published.

Currently on pace for a 40-50% jump on that this month. The prequel just went perma-free, so the handful of sales from that vanish; time will tell if it carries over to increased sales of the other two.

This is almost exclusively Amazon.com; I've sold maybe 10 copies total on other Amazon sites. Hoping to get Amazon to price match free in other regions to see if that spurs any sales. My first book just left Select, and since then I've been working on getting the titles up on other sites. Not too much noise just yet on any of those fronts.

January will be very interesting to watch.

I debated whether to even post this or not, so here's the deal. Last December I sold 6 books and made $5.04. Got that? If you're a person who feels the need to compare yourself to others and you feel bad about it afterward, just hold on to that thought, okay? You shouldn't feel bad, because we're all doing this for our own reasons, goals and at our own pace, and luck is a big factor, but if you feel bad after looking at high sales numbers, just think about that number because it's safe, and unassuming. And those of the rest of you who want to be inspired, well, you can't do much worse than my December last year, so...be inspired. If you want the rest of the story, just hover your cursor over the spoiler text, and you'll get a different kind of inspiration, maybe.

RobertJCrane said:

I debated whether to even post this or not, so here's the deal. Last December I sold 6 books and made $5.04. Got that? If you're a person who feels the need to compare yourself to others and you feel bad about it afterward, just hold on to that thought, okay? You shouldn't feel bad, because we're all doing this for our own reasons, goals and at our own pace, and luck is a big factor, but if you feel bad after looking at high sales numbers, just think about that number because it's safe, and unassuming. And those of the rest of you who want to be inspired, well, you can't do much worse than my December last year, so...be inspired. If you want the rest of the story, just hover your cursor over the spoiler text, and you'll get a different kind of inspiration, maybe.

Spoiler

This December was a different story. 7,467 books sold across all outlets (though 4,296 were in the UK) and I made roughly $22,500. I don't mean to understate this, but if things suck for you right now, it can be a very different story in 12 months.

Click to expand...

Right On!

RobertJCrane said:

I debated whether to even post this or not, so here's the deal. Last December I sold 6 books and made $5.04. Got that? If you're a person who feels the need to compare yourself to others and you feel bad about it afterward, just hold on to that thought, okay? You shouldn't feel bad, because we're all doing this for our own reasons, goals and at our own pace, and luck is a big factor, but if you feel bad after looking at high sales numbers, just think about that number because it's safe, and unassuming. And those of the rest of you who want to be inspired, well, you can't do much worse than my December last year, so...be inspired. If you want the rest of the story, just hover your cursor over the spoiler text, and you'll get a different kind of inspiration, maybe.

Spoiler

This December was a different story. 7,467 books sold across all outlets (though 4,296 were in the UK) and I made roughly $22,500. I don't mean to understate this, but if things suck for you right now, it can be a very different story in 12 months.

Click to expand...

Great job.

Roughly 520 sales for me .

January has fallen off a cliff (relatively to my rate of sales in the last week of December). I'm still on pace to roughly match what I did in December overall and am hoping my next title coming out in the latter part of December will give me a helpful boost .

RobertJCrane said:

I debated whether to even post this or not, so here's the deal. Last December I sold 6 books and made $5.04. Got that? If you're a person who feels the need to compare yourself to others and you feel bad about it afterward, just hold on to that thought, okay? You shouldn't feel bad, because we're all doing this for our own reasons, goals and at our own pace, and luck is a big factor, but if you feel bad after looking at high sales numbers, just think about that number because it's safe, and unassuming. And those of the rest of you who want to be inspired, well, you can't do much worse than my December last year, so...be inspired. If you want the rest of the story, just hover your cursor over the spoiler text, and you'll get a different kind of inspiration, maybe.

Spoiler

This December was a different story. 7,467 books sold across all outlets (though 4,296 were in the UK) and I made roughly $22,500. I don't mean to understate this, but if things suck for you right now, it can be a very different story in 12 months.

Click to expand...

That's a great post, Robert. And so many others could back you up on it. My numbers are slightly different, but the theme's the same.

It's a great time to be a writer.

December was my worst month since I've started self-publishing. Since April there has been an increase each month (alright, alright, by about one or two - all the way from 2 copies to 24). In December I sold 4 stories. I'm not sure if December was the slowest moving because it was the latest month and my sales have dropped, or because the holidays and people being busy/traveling had something to do with it.

RobertJCrane said:

I debated whether to even post this or not, so here's the deal. Last December I sold 6 books and made $5.04. Got that? If you're a person who feels the need to compare yourself to others and you feel bad about it afterward, just hold on to that thought, okay? You shouldn't feel bad, because we're all doing this for our own reasons, goals and at our own pace, and luck is a big factor, but if you feel bad after looking at high sales numbers, just think about that number because it's safe, and unassuming. And those of the rest of you who want to be inspired, well, you can't do much worse than my December last year, so...be inspired. If you want the rest of the story, just hover your cursor over the spoiler text, and you'll get a different kind of inspiration, maybe.

Spoiler

This December was a different story. 7,467 books sold across all outlets (though 4,296 were in the UK) and I made roughly $22,500. I don't mean to understate this, but if things suck for you right now, it can be a very different story in 12 months.

Click to expand...

Congrats. You're kicking ass. Did you really sell that many in the UK alone? That's flipping insane. I have never gotten traction like that in the other regions.

And big congrats to everyone else in this thread, too! Everyone's rocking it. Just remember, lower/higher sales number is not indicative of quality -- it just means folks are at different places in their careers.

I sold 7,608 books on Amazon in December. I don't know how much that is in royalties, but definitely not as much as Robert. Quite a lot of those are 99c because of my serial, so it's probably more like $10,000, but I'll have to wait for the December KDP report to know.