How I Sold More Ebooks Than Stephen King (for 48 hours)

We interrupt regularly scheduled blogging for an ebook update. To my surprise and delight my epubbed novel

has shot up the Kindle charts in the US and UK and is outselling Stephen King. Yes, that Stephen King!

I blame him and Ray Bradbury for turning me into a writer (and Tolkien and Frank Herbert and...). I'll explain how the sales jump came about in a second, first a few braggardly details: Currently the book is #680 on the Kindle US store and #158 on Kindle UK. It has made several bestseller charts including #15 overall on the Kindle US  Horror charts and #4 in Children's Spine-Chilling Horror (who doesn't love chilling the spines of those children?). In the UK the numbers are even higher (it's a smaller market): #1 in Children's Horror and #2 in Horror overall.

Actually, that #1 spot deserves a graphic:

Now let me attempt to explain how it was achieved:

I sacrificed an organic carrot to the god of ebooks.

Oh, wait that's not it.  Dust has been for sale as an ebook since February and has once before briefly cracked the top 1000. At the start of September I priced the book at free (who can refuse free?) on iBooks as a brief promotion. This was discovered by Amazon (okay, I told them) and since they have a price matching clause in their epub agreement they matched the price. On iBooks I had given away about 5 free copies. Amazon Kindle beat that in the first five minutes.  In the course of a week I gave away about 8000 books on Amazon UK and 11000 on Amazon US (that's a swack load of free books). The book reached #32 on the US free charts and #5 on the UK free charts. For me it was free advertising (the vast majority who have downloaded a free book likely won't read it...assuming they're hoarders like me). More reviews began to appear within days on both websites. I changed the price of Dust to 1.49 on KindleUS (Dust had previously been .99 cents and not doing well, so I chose 1.49 because...well...because Seth Godin's book was 1.49 and it was in the top 10). Then I chose .99 for the UK price (I chose the .99 pence for the UK because most of their top 20 bestsellers were in that price range...I have to sell 2 ebooks to equal the royalty I receive on a paperback). I changed the price to $1.99 on iBooks (anyone bored of all these geeky details yet?) and emailed Amazon to let them know that the book was no longer free on their competition's website. They changed the book back to the prices I had chosen.

And, blammo (that's an official epub word for wow), it shot up the charts. A real chart? Sure, I've got a chart for you:

This is Dust's kindle sales in the US over the last month. The lower the number the better the sales. Like golf. But more literary. Dust started at #849 on AmazonUS paid 48 hours ago and #736 on Amazon UK and has been climbing ever since (warning here are even more geeky details: it takes about 67 copies sold in the space of 24 hours to climb from #849 to #700. To add more perspective Dust sold 48 copies last month...so that's more sales in a day than the book had all month). I don't know exactly why when it switched from free to paid status it ended up in such a good position on the charts. Is it because several people downloaded it accidentally thinking that it was free (Amazon does warn when a books price is changing)? Or is it some kind of magical algorithmic kindly thing? That part is beyond my limited IQ.

I don't expect this to last. I think Dust is successful because it has been on Amazon for over ten years in one format or another and has 20 reviews that average 4 stars. This lets prospective buyers know that it's a good gamble. I think that the fact that it's for young adults and doesn't have a romance angle or vampires, will limit the audience in the long run. I just want it to find its happy "sales" place.

And I'm enjoying the ebook ride right now. Go Dust go!

Best,

Art

The Brobdingnagian-sized Ebook update!

Yep, I'm going all literary with this update on my ebook sales. We all know from Gulliver's Travels that Brobdingnagian means giant-sized.* And this is a giant-sized report! Well, actually it's kind of small. It's more Lilliputian. But, really, who would click on a headline that says, "Author shouts out about lilliputian book sales!"? Anyway let's start with a chart!

Eeek! My sales have gone all Lilliputian! I was warned about the doldrums of August by other ebook publishers. Apparently sales do drop in August. Get off the beach and buy books everyone! Anyway, here are the numbers.

Feb 12 March 43 April 377 May 204 June 139 July 154 August 72

Abandon ship! That's it mateys, all hands off deck and swim for shore. Oh, wait there were some grand developments. I crossed the 1000 sales barrier. That's good.  And my little experiment last month of giving away this Norse horror book for free worked:

I gave away 7545 copies. But when I switched the book back to "paid" status Amazon's magical algorithms made it shoot up the charts and it sold 33 copies in two weeks (the highest it had averaged was 18 copies in a month). So there was some small immediate benefit to giving it away (plus it now has several new positive reviews). And I hope over time those 7500 readers will look kindly on the other books in the series.

Hey and there's other good news. I released The Hunchback Assignments  and The Dark Deeps in the UK.

That's one of the clever things about ebook publishing. My agent sold the rights to these books to several countries, but the UK hasn't picked it up yet. So, with the click of a button, I can invade the UK. My hope is to make a little noise over there. So far...3 copies sold! C'mon Britain, remember when we Canucks helped out with that Boer war thing? You can finally pay us back!

I am doing a few experiments at the UK amazon with free books...which I'll update at a later date (see, I'm trying to make this all sooo mysterious).

Overall, I had hoped to be further ahead in the ebook world after 7 months. I think the real test of this experiment will come over the next few months which are traditionally the busiest in book sales. And, as I've said before, every copy sold is a copy I wasn't selling before. All of these books were either out of print or not for sale in selected countries, so I'm making money on them now.

And someday that Brobdingnagian load of royalties will come my way, right Gulliver! Right?

Cheers,

Art

*next time you go to Starbucks refuse the Grande Latte and demand a Brobdingnagian latte. That'll shock their organic socks!

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

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

Ebook Update (Warning Graphs ahead)

Well, I have all my ebooks up online now. Here are the fancy covers (with clickable links, of course): And here's my updated report across all platforms:

February: 12 copies March Sales: 43 copies April Sales: 377 copies May Sales: 273 copies That's a drop of over 100 copies since last month. Here's the handy dandy graph (the different colours match different books...DUST is the blue book):

The drop for sales between April and May is even bigger than it appears because 70 of those copies in May (of Draugr--more on this later) were free copies given away as a promotion. Many epublishers reported a drop in sales last month, partially due to Amazon having a massive giveaway of free ebooks and, about mid-month, Amazon changed their format for "tagging" books. Well, actually they deleted the way books are tagged, so this affected which bestseller lists my books appeared on. One assumes the tags will return with a revamped tagging system in the future.

All in all I'm happy with the sales. April was a bit of an anomaly because DUST had several mentions in influential kindle websites and that really affected sales. I still hope that the book will, over time find traction on its own (and my other books, of course). Plus I think the YA/Kids market is still a year away from reaching its true potential. I am pleased that I now have an account with Barnes and Noble, so my books can be bought and read on the Nook (love the app for my iPad). The Nook market isn't as big as Kindle, but it's the second largest of all the markets. Plus they have a really easy interface for keeping track of your books and sales.

Free Horror!

Also, for the month of June, I am giving DRAUGR away for free. So if you go to iBooks or Smashwords you can download it for nada. I can't lower the price past .99 cents on B&N nor Amazon (though Amazon may drop the price to zero once its "robots" recognize the book is on sale in other places). It should soon be free on Kobo, too. This is my way of introducing readers to the series (and hope that they pick up the second and third book). Plus, if you've never downloaded an ebook before, there's no risk in downloading a free one.

Update over. Art out.