A look inside Arthur's brain...
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Recently a librarian named Emily Mitchell passed away. She's right there in the center of the picture. For many years she was the librarian at the Chinook Regional Library branch in the village of Tompkins, SK, Canada (my hometown). By any measurement it's a small library, but it was made much larger by inter-library loan and by Emily's presence. She helped me become a reader and encouraged my imagination to grow. I have so many fond recollections of marching the six or so blocks from school to the Chinook Library downtown and perusing the shelves, looking for my next fantastical read. If I couldn't find it, she had suggestions. And, once I realized I could order books through inter-library loan, I would approach her with such varied topics as the Roman Empire, Medieval Torture Weapons, and Norse Myths. Despite my somewhat dark choices, she was always encouraging and supportive (she was like an early version of Google, I'd ask her a question and two weeks later the answer would appear in the form of books). The library was a warm place to retreat from the cold of winter or just to get away from the outside world for a few minutes. She made it that way. Her lifelong gift to me was the love of stories and the encouragement to visit all those worlds of the imagination. Again and again. Thanks, Emily.
I'm always looking for a clever title for these updates. If anyone has any clever titles please send one my way. I can't keep using Stephen King in my title! He'll come to my house and challenge me to a write off! I can't keep up with that guy! I figure people like the $$$ sign so maybe I'll just keep using that.
Anyway, here's the report on my ebook experiment for October. What you say? You're late! Well, I decided to move these reports to the middle of the month because that's when Amazon sends me my monthly sales records (up until that point it's a bit of guesswork as to exactly how many copies I've sold). So here is your first chart!
Aha, you say. Your sales dropped in October! Ha, so much for that yacht you were dreaming about when you sold all those copies of DUST in September. But wait, I say, let's celebrate the good news first. There have now been over 3000 copies of my self-pubbed books sold. As we speak 3000 people could be reading my words. Or playing games on their iPad. Anyway, that's a nice milestone to pass. It's also important to note that October was the second highest sales month so far.
I did expect sales to slow down after that first bump that I received in September. Mostly that's because I raised my prices. Dust was no longer $1.49 but was bumped up to $2.99. At that price I get the 70% royalty from Amazon. So for each 1.49 book I am making .52 cents (because any book priced at .99-2.98 is a 35% royalty), but for each 2.99 book I'm making $2.09 (or 4x as much). That means I only have to sell 1/4 of the number of books to make the same amount of money. That's math even I can do!
Ah, so let's talk about the money. And about the beautiful American dollar and the lovely British pound. Doesn't the image above make you all teary eyed? Anyway, wipe away the tears. In September my income from U.S. sales on Kindle was $557.64 and from UK Kindle £216.49 which, once converted, adds up to about $897.98 US (I won't further complicate this by converting to Canadian since our dollar is nearly the same as the US). That's a nice tidy sum for very little work (err, if you don't count the weeks it took me to figure out all the various ways to convert files and upload all that ebook "stuff"). So I made $898 dollars by selling 1467 books in September. In October I made $251.96 from US Kindle store and £339.35 from the UK Kindle store for a total of $785.12 U.S. Except this time I only sold around 493 copies. And obviously it's easier to sell fewer copies than it is to sell more.
Two other short observations. One is that the October sales were partially propped up in the UK store because I was giving The Hunchback Assignments away for free for two weeks of that month. The second is that I'm starting to have more sales through the UK store because I have 10 books available there and only 7 in the US (I'm publishing my three Hunchback Assignments books in the UK Store but they are published through Random House in the US).
The only problem with higher prices is that you drop out of the bestseller charts faster and therefore fewer eyes are seeing your books. Already I see that my November sales are slowing. I have yet to have a book "stick" in the charts for a long period of time.
What you want another chart? Look I don't just have charts up my sleeve! Oh, wait there's one right there:
This is the Amazon ranking for The Hunchback Assignments on UK Kindle charts. As you can see it was selling a copy every once in awhile, thus the zig-zag pattern. Then it went "free" on Sept. 23rd (creating that straight line) and became "paid" around October 16th and jumped up to about 1000th spot on the charts (which made it one of the bestselling kids books for a few weeks). It's continuing to slowly decline but it pops back up every once in awhile.
Does anyone have any glue? I'd like to stick it in the top 500 at the very least.
Until Kindle sticky glue is invented, I'll keep on keeping on!
P.S. I do refer to Kindle a lot. My books are sold on other sites. In October I sold 1 book on Kobo, 1 Book on iBooks, and 5 books on Barnes and Noble, so obviously it's easiest to talk about Kindle.
Here's a conversation I "found" on a bus heading for Toronto. Almost word for word.
(SFX: Cell Phone Ring).
Hello? Oh, yeah. Just riding the bus. Shift coming up.
(Pause) A stabbing. At a school. Been working at it for awhile, was off for a few days, now back on it. Have it all on security camera but no one will talk. Can't get them to. It's like we know you were there we see you on the camera, but they say they don't remember anything.
(Pause) Her? Yeah, she's trying to find a job. I guess. But she sent all the wrong cover letters with her application. I think she's just happy with a few shifts at the centre. And spending all my money. Our last credit card bill was 3000 dollars. That's why I'm taking the bus. I figure it saves me $250 a month. But she just thinks she can spend that money, too.
(Pause). Out there. That must be nice. No. No holidays coming up. She thinks the parents should come down to babysit while she goes out. That's an hour drive for them and hour back so she can go out for an hour. That doesn't make sense. But I did get to come down and her and I went to a movie but when I came back there was a torn plastic bag on the floor. That stupid dog had been at it. My parents tried to hide all the evidence cause they know that I beat the crap out of it when it does that stuff. But I asked them what happened and they said it got up on the table and found the treat bag and ate all of it, even the bag. It's a stupid dog. How do you fix that? I figure I'll just put mousetraps on the table loaded with those little wieners, that'll show him. He won't go up on the table again.
(pause) Yeah, okay. See ya. (Click SFX).
It's quite the character study. Truth is always stranger than fiction...
Well a few posts ago I told you how I miraculously sold more books than Stephen King (in a 48 hour period)!
I apologize for the maudlin post but Dust has been out for ten years now. I launched the book on September 21st, 2001 in Saskatoon's Western Development Museum: 1910 Boomtown. It was the first time I'd launched in such a big and perfectly-themed venue (I wish I could find the pics but they are in storage somewhere). Here's a pic of the museum interior.
I honestly had no idea how successful the book would become and am still surprised by its reception. It went on to win several awards including:
*The 2001 Governor General's Award for Children's Literature *The 2001 Saskatchewan Book Award for Children's Literature *The 2002 Mr. Christie's Book Award (this came with $ and cookies. Mmm) *Nominated for a 2004 Edgar Award.
Here I am with Adrienne Clarkson, once the Governor General of Canada. She's presenting me with a leather-bound copy of DUST.
There are a few things you may not know about the novel. Here's the first draft of the Canadian cover:
The American version is about 5 pages longer. Because it came out in 2003 I was able to have one more crack at the book and I fine tuned it a bit more and added a few smaller scenes, including one at the end that helped explain the townspeople's reaction to their "forgetfulness" about their children disappearing. It's a particularly poignant scene.
There have now been 13 movie companies that have shown interest in the rights, including 4 major Hollywood studios. So far no one has come up with the money to make the movie (or pay off my mortgage).
Work on a graphic novel was started with Christopher Steininger but, as of yet, it has not been picked up by a publisher.
The book continues to be popular in Canada and I've received hundreds of emails and letters about it. It eventually went out of print in the U.S. and was never sold to any other countries.
With the advent of ebooks I was able to re-release the book in the US as an ebook (and in the U.K., too).
So it is good to have the book come back to life. It was briefly the #12 bestselling horror novel on Amazon U.S. and the #2 bestselling horror novel on Amazon UK. If only it would stay in those positions I could finance my own movie! : ) It has been rather fun for me to see the book gain a new readership.
So there you have it. A decade of Dust. Happy birthday! Here's to another ten years....
