Congrats! Even at 50 months that's a heck of an accomplishment. I wish AMZN had an easier way to track lifetime sales. I have no idea how many I've sold over the past 4+ years.
How to Sell 10 000 YA/Kidlit eBooks in 50 Months!
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I did post this on my blog at: http://arthurslade.blogspot.ca/2015/05/10000-copies-sold-now-i-can-retire.html. But I also want to share it here.
10,000 Copies Sold! Now I Can Retire
Well, my total eBook sales across all platforms is now 10, 016 copies. I'm happy to have reached this magic milestone and have now ordered a yacht for my backyard. All hands report on deck! Or perhaps I should write about about how to sell ebooks for the YA and Children's market. It could be titled: How To Sell 10,000 Copies in Fifty Months!
All kidding aside I'm glad that this ebook adventure has been (sometimes) a tidy little addition to my regular income. All of the books that I'm selling are either out of print editions that I've re-issued in various countries or collections of new work (for example my short stories). And the work I did at the beginning of this experiment has paid off. Basically, I don't have to lift a finger to keep that income trickling in.
Oh, why don't we look at the handy dandy chart?
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It does look a bit like a patient who has flatlined, doesn't it? Except for that little burst of life at the end there. To quote Monty Python: I'm not dead yet. I think I'll go for a walk. The basic story to the graphic is this: when I started selling eBooks in 2011 you could give away free books then when you switched your book back to being paid it would (sometimes) rocket up the charts. That's why there are those two big mountains at the start of the chart. But in 2012 Amazon changed its logarithms so that this "trick" didn't work as well. And from that point on the books sold whenever someone stumbled across them. The smaller "mountains" are when I lowered the price to 99 cents and the book gained a bit more traction then went back to selling 10-30 copies a month again. And that's why the graph begins to rise at the end. One of my books (DUST) was on sale and briefly went up the charts. The graph will drop back down again this month. I'm certain of it.
I have 16 different books for sale and the majority of my sales (90%) have been to Kindle. Dust has sold the majority of the copies (6500). I think that's because it's a book that crosses over from YA to adult reading and the majority of ebook sales are to the adult market. And it has the most reviews.
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The Hunchback Assignments are in second place. My self published versions are only sold in the UK (because publishers in other countries own the erights). The four books have totalled 1600 in sales. That's a tidy sum over time for very little extra work on my part.
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Anyway, as I said, I'm pleased to have reached this milestone. And it's still my experience that in general books for younger audiences sell a lot more copies in paperback than they do eBooks unless they are able to attract adult eyeballs online. I do plan more experiments in the future, including a How to Write Kid Lit book and other "manual" type books to test out that part of the market.
Until then...tally ho!
Art
10,000 Copies Sold! Now I Can Retire
Well, my total eBook sales across all platforms is now 10, 016 copies. I'm happy to have reached this magic milestone and have now ordered a yacht for my backyard. All hands report on deck! Or perhaps I should write about about how to sell ebooks for the YA and Children's market. It could be titled: How To Sell 10,000 Copies in Fifty Months!
All kidding aside I'm glad that this ebook adventure has been (sometimes) a tidy little addition to my regular income. All of the books that I'm selling are either out of print editions that I've re-issued in various countries or collections of new work (for example my short stories). And the work I did at the beginning of this experiment has paid off. Basically, I don't have to lift a finger to keep that income trickling in.
Oh, why don't we look at the handy dandy chart?
It does look a bit like a patient who has flatlined, doesn't it? Except for that little burst of life at the end there. To quote Monty Python: I'm not dead yet. I think I'll go for a walk. The basic story to the graphic is this: when I started selling eBooks in 2011 you could give away free books then when you switched your book back to being paid it would (sometimes) rocket up the charts. That's why there are those two big mountains at the start of the chart. But in 2012 Amazon changed its logarithms so that this "trick" didn't work as well. And from that point on the books sold whenever someone stumbled across them. The smaller "mountains" are when I lowered the price to 99 cents and the book gained a bit more traction then went back to selling 10-30 copies a month again. And that's why the graph begins to rise at the end. One of my books (DUST) was on sale and briefly went up the charts. The graph will drop back down again this month. I'm certain of it.
I have 16 different books for sale and the majority of my sales (90%) have been to Kindle. Dust has sold the majority of the copies (6500). I think that's because it's a book that crosses over from YA to adult reading and the majority of ebook sales are to the adult market. And it has the most reviews.
The Hunchback Assignments are in second place. My self published versions are only sold in the UK (because publishers in other countries own the erights). The four books have totalled 1600 in sales. That's a tidy sum over time for very little extra work on my part.
Anyway, as I said, I'm pleased to have reached this milestone. And it's still my experience that in general books for younger audiences sell a lot more copies in paperback than they do eBooks unless they are able to attract adult eyeballs online. I do plan more experiments in the future, including a How to Write Kid Lit book and other "manual" type books to test out that part of the market.
Until then...tally ho!
Art
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Your How-To book would be a bit disingenuous if it no longer is able to be doneArthur Slade said:
But seriously, congrats
Congrats, Arthur! That is awesome news. I remember when you first climbed into this business. Way to stick with it.
And listen - all of you k-board-ites - if any of you are fans of Ray Bradbury or dig coming-of-age dark fantasy yarns you REALLY ought to check out that book, DUST.
You read it once and you'll want to read it again.
And listen - all of you k-board-ites - if any of you are fans of Ray Bradbury or dig coming-of-age dark fantasy yarns you REALLY ought to check out that book, DUST.
You read it once and you'll want to read it again.
Thanks for the kind words everyone (and, of course, extra thanks to Steve for the shout out for Dust). Right now I'm in "slow and steady wins the race" mode as far as my self published ebooks. It's still a great way to bring old books back to life.
And great to hear there is some book tracking software. I've just been painstakingly entering them into my little Numbers chart at the start of each month. A bit easier now that the numbers are smaller.
And great to hear there is some book tracking software. I've just been painstakingly entering them into my little Numbers chart at the start of each month. A bit easier now that the numbers are smaller.
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