The Amazing Million Dollar Ebook Experiment: July Sales

Amazing new stupendous ebook developments this month!Okay, maybe that's a bit of an overstatement, but I have discovered that "free" sells. Or at least it leads to numerous downloads. About the middle of June I made this book free on iBooks and Smashwords: And now it's free on Kindle (just click the above image but click right now because this offer is only good for 12 10 9 minutes--kidding, I was going all slap chop on ya). There is a trick to this because you can't actually just choose "free" on Kindle. Instead Amazon will set your price to the same as the competition. So once Amazon "noticed" that Draugr was free on other websites it automatically made it free on Amazon kindle. Even though I'd read about other people having "free" success, it isn't until you see it for yourself that you believe it. The book became free on Kindle somewhere around July 6th. Within a day it had shot up the "free" charts to as high as #52. By that time there had been 2000 downloads. In the next two days there were another 3000 downloads. Then it began to drop out of the top 100 and the downloads have slowed to about 100 a day so that the total for July is 7402 copies. To put this in perspective the book first came out in 1997 and sold 5000 copies in the space of a year. It took 4 days to "sell" that same amount for free. So Amazon's distribution model really does work (no surprise, eh). In that same time only about 80 copies were downloaded free on iBooks and 0 on Smashwords. What? You want to see a chart? Okay!

This chart shows the # of total sales I've made in the last six months (it's the tiny column second from the right) and the green column is the total free books I've given away. Now how to get those "free" people to buy books? Ah, there's the rub and the dub (and why I did the little experiment). I hope that over time there will be an increase in the sales of the other two books in the series: Aren't they cute? Don't you just want to take them home and cuddle them (on your eReader that is)? Anyway, my theory is that this massive # of downloads will lead to more sales of these two books in the next few months as people read Draugr. Or those thousands of copies of Draugr might sit unloved on people's kindles. Poor electronic words...just waiting to be read. I was pleasantly surprised that there was an immediate increase: Drang sold 4 copies in June and jumped to 18 copies in July on Kindle. Loki sold 7 copies in June and leapfrogged to 16 copies in July on Kindle. So that's a nice increase for both the books. Obviously, I'm not going to get rich from that (it is an extra $69.36 in my pocket, tho, since I make 2.04 per book--they sell for $2.99).

But what about my total sales you ask? Ah, I knew you wanted to see another chart. Consider yourself charted:

As you can see by that chart sales stayed steady for July. Here are the totally exciting numbers:

Feb: 12 March: 43 April: 377 May: 274 June: 139

July: 148

So there hasn't been a huge jump. In fact DUST sold 77 copies on Kindle in June and 79 in July. Gee, that is consistent! I still plan on keeping DUST at .99 cents until I've sold 1000 copies (it's at 727 right now). As a point of interest 126 copies of my books were sold on Kindle this month and 21 on B&N (0 on Smashwords and 0 on iBooks--hmmm guess buying every Apple product in existence doesn't help e-book sales). I don't know what that means other than, well, Kindle is king obviously. The good news is I've nearly sold 1000 copies in total. That should happen next month. Oh, and I haven't included Kobo numbers in this because they don't send me my report until mid way through the month...but I only expect 4 or 5 more sales through them.

By this point I had hoped I'd be making enough money to be on a beach somewhere with my feet up while I hired retired ewoks or sasquatches to bash out my novels. I mean isn't that what the internet promised? Easy riches? But I'm satisfied with chugging along. I've done all the experiments that I can think of so far (other than releasing a brand new book--which is in the works) but I may make other books free (there is a theory that if you make a book free and then switch it to "paid" status it will jump up the charts--there are many theories in the e-book biz, I'm finding. Amazon.com is like a bunch of pig entrails that we're all staring at to find the future).

Anyway, it's still fun. And yo! Look over there--it's a  another rainbow to chase!

Cheers,

Art

Darn! Writing Doesn't Get Easier

I don't want this to be a depressing post but writing doesn't get any easier. I've just sent off the first "readable" draft of my seventeenth published novel (tentatively titled The Hunchback Assignments 4: The Island of Doom) and the whole process from beginning to end was no less painless than writing my first published novel (I should add that I had six unpublished novels before that, too). I don't write any faster than I did before. My prose doesn't need any fewer drafts in order to be legible (or, Muse forbid, actually creative). Dreaming up new characters and wrestling with plot lines doesn't become any more straightforward (part of that may be that I have never done an outline and my process is to write a very quick and dirty draft of the novel then rewrite it, and rewrite it, and rewrite it).

So my conclusion is: this whole process isn't any easier. And that's a good thing. Yes, every once in a while whole sections of a novel will pour out and settle perfectly in place. But most of the time I'm hammering away at the stone to find the statue inside. What has changed over those estimated 1,115,000 words is that my intuition is more fine tuned. I tend to intuitively choose the interesting characters and plots that are right for the novel (which I was not doing with my unpublished novels). And the one thing that hasn't changed is that I still am engaged by the magic challenge of creating these new worlds and telling the stories about the people inside.

And isn't that what it's all about? *

Art

*oh, and it's about the money, too. It's always about the money. : )

The Amazing Ebook Update: June Sales

Here's my monthly update on the ebook sales experiment. The totals below are from these six books. They are sold on Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, and iBooks. Feb: 12 March: 43 April: 377 May: 274 June: 182 And here's the handy dandy chart (you knew there'd be one, didn't you?):

As you can see sales were down for the second month in a row. This was partly due to Amazon having a massive ebook sale for the first two weeks of June. My sales picked up again after the sale was over, so I'm pleased that they reached the "heights" that they did in that short of a time. Again the majority of my sales were on Kindle (about 80%) with Nook being in second place at 10% and Smashwords and iBooks at the bottom.

One side note that doesn't show up on the chart above is the number of sales at 99 cents compared with the sales at $2.99. I sold 141 copies @ .99 cents. Since I make .35 cents per book that totals $48.85. But I sold 18 copies at $2.99. Since I make 2.09 per sale (70% royalty) that totals $37.67. So there's more money in the 2.99 books. They just have to start gaining momentum. I also gave away 49 copies of Draugr on iBooks and Smashwords, so I made nothing on them. But, of course, I see them as promo.

I'm not totally thrilled by the # of sales, nor am I disappointed. Things are steady and this month I have an ad for DUST in Kindle Nation Daily so that should help with sales. Also, though the extra money that is trickling in is nice, this whole experiment is about knowledge. I have learned so much about the ebook ecosystem and still intend to write a novel for ebooks only.  I am curious about the summer sales. I know people read more during these months, but do they buy more? Or are they all on the beach (out of wireless range?).

Either way, it's fun to watch.

Art

Jolted: Using Bookscan, Amazon, and NovelRank to measure success

If you're an author you've probably checked your Amazon rankings once or twice. Or every three seconds. And, perhaps you've stared at the rankings like you're trying to read your future in pig entrails. The great thing about the "modern" era is now there are even more ways to track things. Most of the time they're just charts that you stare at and learn nothing (and perhaps a little depressing) but I was recently able to track a "success" story to do with the my novel Jolted.

On May 17th or so the novel was chosen for  2011-2012 Florida Sunshine State Young Reader’s Award master list. This was great news. But because Amazon recently allowed authors (through their Author Central program) to see their Bookscan details, I was able to track the actual sales of the book from that day forward (I'm only concentrating on the paperback):

As you can see from the map, the darker the colour, the more sales. So obviously sales of the paperback had really taken off in Florida (and in one tiny corner of Louisiana...for some reason). The chart below shows the sudden increase in sales in bookstores in the U.S.:

For those of us who are chart obsessed (and really who isn't) Amazon also provides another chart to stare at (for hours at a time sometimes). This chart shows the uptick in sales through Amazon. So obviously the sales in the "ground" stores were also being reflected at the "virtual" store that is Amazon.

The final chart that I'll inundate you with is from Novelrank which also tracks sales on Amazon. It essentially gives you the same information, but with a slightly different appearance. Novelrank also can keep track of the # of copies sold per month (though this is a guesstimate on their part).

Perhaps I should end this with a chart of my geekiness (no, I better not...that would be jumping the shark). The sales in this time period might only amount to a thousand copies (so I won't go out and buy a new car), but I do find it interesting that I now have the ability to track all of this information. I won't know the actual sales until I get my royalty statements about six months from now. How to use the information is perhaps the tougher part of this exercise. It's not like I can fly down to Florida (or Louisiana) and start pitching my book (though I am beginning to get requests for Skype visits in Florida). Right now I'm filing it under the title: Interesting to know.

Plus, Jolted has been out for nearly 4 years now. It's nice to see it suddenly get zapped back to life (sorry, I couldn't resist).

Art 

The Hunchback Assignments wins Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire 2011

I'm extremely pleased to announce that The Hunchback Assignments has won Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire 2011: Roman jeunesse étranger (The Grand Prize of the Imagination, Youth foreign). This is the most prestigious fantastical fiction award in France and it is proof that my novel's translator, Marie Cambolieu, is brilliant. The official award website is here if you want to see the other categories. The book is called Les agents de M. Socrate, Tome 1 : La confrérie de l'horloge in France and is released by Le Masque (loosely translated as The Agents of Mr. Socrates: The Brotherhood of the Clock). The award was presented at a festival in Saint-Malo, France. I nearly was able to attend in person, but had to stay home to watch the NHL Playoffs (I'm kidding, of course, great effort was made to fly me out there but the scheduling didn't work out). Instead I sent a short video of my acceptance speech:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lgcCvG8bZg]

The other award nominees in the same category were:

Roman jeunesse étranger

Le Sortilège de pierre de Cornelia Funke (Gallimard jeunesse)

Voraces de Oisin McGann (Mango jeunesse)

Alcatraz (Série) de Brandon Sanderson (Mango jeunesse)

La Confrérie de l'horloge de Arthur Slade (Le Masque)

Léviathan de Scott Westerfeld (Pocket jeunesse)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Les Portes de John Connolly (L'Archipel)

Entremonde de Neil Gaiman et Michael Reaves (Au Diable Vauvert)

Un endroit où se cacher de Joyce Carol Oates (Albin Michel jeunesse)

Jenna Fox, pour toujours de Mary E. Pearson (Des Grandes Personnes

Frankly, I didn't expect for my book to win. There are some very heavy hitters on that list (and I'm especially intrigued by Oisin McGann's Voraces. Irish steampunk!). But I'll take the prize and run (actually I don't know if there is a prize--the honour is enough). The book has been selling briskly in France, so this should help it sprint to the finish line.

If you'd like to see a few photos of the event just click here.

As you can tell, I'm very excited about this award. Last night, at dinner club, we raised a glass of French wine in honour of Grand Prix de l'imaginaire (and had Beef Wellington, which also fit the theme since Modo used the name Wellington as a code name).

Au revoir,

Art

Odd Questions Students Have Asked

I do a great number of school readings. And when I get to the end of my presentation I say, "Now it's time for the dreaded Q&A. You ask the questions and I'll attempt to answer, though I don't do mathematical questions." Often I get asked, "Where do you get your ideas?" "From a factory in Pennsylvania." Or "Which book that you wrote is your favourite?" "Dust...because it made the most money for me."

But here are a few of the questions that I didn't expect:

"Do you own a tractor?" From an Aussie student on Skype (I was wearing a John Deere t-shirt at the time).

"Does your wife think you're funny?" No.

"Are you in the military?" Huh?

"Did you have any friends in high school?" Sometimes.

"Do you wear briefs or boxers?" Hmmm, I think this student may have received a talking to after I was gone.

"Are you evil?" This was in a "bible belt" area school. I had just read the first chapter of DUST. "Uh, do you mean do I write horror scary type stuff?" "No...are you evil?" I actually had no answer. Other than a demonic chuckle...

Art