Amazon sales

Ordinarily I do not discuss royalties directly, but people keep asking me about my sales. The Amazon indie market is fairly new, and people are curious as to whether it might be a worthwhile market for them to explore. So I'm going to emulate J.A. Konrath and Lee Goldberg and talk about sales figures. And I'm posting the sales report from Amazon, because otherwise... well, you might not believe me.

I started on Amazon in February. The first book I put up, very early in the month, was In the Mood. At first it was priced at $1.50, but I moved it down to 99 cents eventually. It did okay, selling 25 downloads over the course of the month. Not bad, I thought, for a re-release from a small press author that (let's be honest) few people have ever heard of. Toward the end of the month I put up All I Ever Wanted. I had it priced at $1.99-- too high considering the aforementioned considerations-- and it only sold two copies. So, the first month I sold 27 downloads altogether.

When you write for a small press or a traditional publisher, you typically see your biggest sales when the book is released, and then a slide thereafter. I'd read on the Kindle boards that sometimes indie writing is the opposite-- you tend to start out small but build your numbers as people get to know you. It seemed to be true for me. By March 6, I'd sold as many books as I sold in all of February. By March 11, I'd sold twice as many. Of course, I had two books up now, but still, I was cheered by the thought that readers were starting to notice me. I reduced All I Ever Wanted to 99 cents as well.

On March 12 Books on the Knob had a brief blurb about my books, and sales took off massively. After a few days they died down again, but then (for no reason I could ever determine) they picked up again, and In the Mood and All I Ever Wanted remained on the Kindle contemporary romance list more or less for the rest of the month. I introduced Isn't It Romantic? toward the end of the month, but it hasn't made the acquaintance of the bestseller lists yet.

There are still a few hours left in the day, but my sales have really slacked off today for some reason, so I doubt the numbers will change much by midnight. Here are my figures for March:

So my sales went from 27 downloads to close to 900 in the space of a month. As a small press author who's never sold that many copies in a month (well, since my first book with Bantam, anyway), I am truly astounded by these numbers. Granted the actual amount earned isn't that much due to the low cover price. But I hope that romance readers are getting to know my writing, and that when most indies raise their prices in June, I might be able to make a decent number of sales at a higher cover price.

I am trying to keep my expectations low for the future-- I benefited from a happy confluence of factors that is unlikely to happen again any time soon, and I would certainly not count on selling this many books again any time soon. I'm not saying this means that you will necessarily have similar numbers if you Kindle your backlist, either. But the interesting thing to note is that you CAN sell this many books on Amazon. It would be great if I could figure out how to reproduce it, and do it again!

Think before you promo

Posted to the Amazon Romance board, on the "Have You Written a Romance Book?" thread: Yes, I have written a romance book. But it is a bit different than the average romance book - I like to call it a "Thinking Woman's Romance Book."

I don't mean to pick on this writer; she got the post on the right thread (although she forgot to leave a link, so I had to go look up her book via the search function, which is not the best way to make sales), and there are no spelling errors. But this is a good example of a post which could have been worded a little better. This is a romance thread, so presumably most people perusing it enjoy romance. Saying your book is different from the "average romance book" isn't terrible (though you need to back that up with something really interesting-- and the premise of this one is unusual, so we'll stipulate that she has done so). Romance is a very broad field, however, so it might be better to break that down... tell us it's different from the average contemporary romantic suspense, or Regency historical, or whatever. But the real crux of the issue is that by calling it a "thinking woman's romance book," and implying that is different from run-of-the-mill romance books... well, reflect on that, and you'll realize you're insulting the typical reader of that thread by implying most of the books she likes aren't for "thinking women."

The author finishes by concluding, "This one is a bit different than your average bodice ripper." That's also a bit of a diss, since no one writes "bodice rippers" any more-- it's an often derogatory term for older romances with nonconsensual sex in them. When it's applied to newer romances, it's usually by people who don't know much about modern romances. So this sentence isn't likely to do much to win new readers, either.

In short, be very careful what you put into a promo. It's fine to say your book is different from other books in the genre, but be aware of correct terminology for the genre, and take care not to imply that most other books in that genre aren't very good. You can't win over genre readers by suggesting their tastes in books are poor!

Real life

Our guinea pig passed away last night. I swear I am not having any more small animals. They don't live very long, relative to bigger animals like dogs and cats, and I'm always left wondering if we did something wrong and if I should have realized the little critter was ill. At any rate, it makes me sad to lose an animal, even a rodent. We still have our bunny, but I'm not having any more gerbils, piggies or hamsters. I mean it this time!

What sells on Amazon?

I've had a good month on Amazon this month (I'll report figures on the first, when the month is over). I've seen other authors reporting similar sales numbers to mine, and of course there are a few indie authors who are always way, way up on the bestseller list, and who are presumably kicking my ass, saleswise. So I'm doing well (at least in terms of copies sold), but I'm certainly not the only one.

So what makes an indie book sell well on Amazon? I don't know, but I can make some educated guesses. Putting aside luck, which clearly benefited me greatly this month *waves gratefully at Books on the Knob*, the better selling indie authors do seem to have some things in common:

1. A good sample. By "good" I do not mean Shakespeare. Some of the better-selling authors still have a slightly unpolished quality about their writing. Sometimes they have comma problems, or a choppy style, or issues along those lines. Some, of course, write wonderfully. But even those who have some distance left to go show a talent for storytelling and an ability to string words together. I read a lot of samples, and thus far, I haven't found an author who's selling well with one of those sheerly awful samples. Yes, there is plenty of crap on Amazon... and it sells exactly as well as you would expect crap to sell. So if you want to sell well on Amazon, you do need a decent product.

2. A nice cover. Again, by "nice" I do not mean that it looks like it was produced by a major publishing house. Few of us have the talent for that. I do not flatter myself that people are looking at my covers and thinking, "Oh, that looks just like an Avon cover!" Of course they're not. But the covers that are doing well generally look appealing and have eye-catching elements. For example, here's a nice-looking cover from an indie author who's regularly been in the top few hundred of the Kindle store since I started observing it:



3. Careful promotion. A simple fact of life: People don't know your book is out there unless you promote it. Your book is going to be lost amidst gazillions of other books unless you let people know it's there. So you do need to promote it on the appropriate threads. Getting obnoxious about it, however, or even being perceived as being obnoxious about it, will lose you sales. There's a fine line to be walked here, and I'm still figuring out exactly where it is.

4. To quote J.A. Konrath, who certainly knows what he's talking about: "Being on the Kindle genre bestseller lists." This is probably the biggest reason I've sold this well this month-- two of my books got onto the contemporary romance lists, and they remained on them much of the second half of the month, off and on. This is how casual browsers find you. Of course, you can't just wish your way onto those lists. Much of what got me there was luck. But I believe that what kept me there for the rest of the month was the fact that I...

5. Have a low list price. Yes, it is frustrating to practically give your book away. You spent a long time writing it, and it's worth as much as any mass market paperback in Barnes and Noble, darn it! I know how you feel, believe me. And maybe in June, when all the indie authors raise their prices to $2.99 en masse, you may not have to price it so low. But right now, the low list price is what's going to get you noticed. I currently have all my indie books priced at 99 cents. Go ahead and try $1.99, or even $2.99. It may work for you (and your success may depend on the genre you write in to a certain extent, too; I haven't quite figured that out yet). But just remember, there are well-known, bestselling authors Kindling their backlist. Are people going to shell out $1.99 on you, an indie author they never heard of, when they can spend the same amount and get a book by J.A. Konrath or Lee Goldberg? It's something to keep in mind, at any rate. At the least, you might want to have ONE book at 99 cents, to encourage readers to take a chance on your writing and get to know you.

Another indie author... sort of

J.A. Konrath is a traditionally published author who's putting some of his never-published works on Kindle (with great success; according to his blog he's sold over 30,000 Kindle downloads in a year). I have a limited tolerance for gore, and technothrillers are not my usual reading, but I looked through his books and found one with an interesting premise, so I gave it a try:

I enjoyed it. The basic premise of the book was actually a little hard to swallow, but once I accepted it, the storyline was enjoyable and nail-biting (and the gore was at a level I could comfortably cope with). I did see one major twist coming, but another near the end shocked me. Overall, it was tautly plotted and well written, and I had a hard time putting it down-- the sure sign of a good book!

Book cover

Here's my first effort at a cover for Never Love a Stranger:


Why yes, I have learned my lesson about using naked guys to sell books *smiles wryly*. But that aside, this book is much darker and more serious than the other books I've Kindled thus far. I wanted the tone of the cover to make that clear, hence the black and white.

An indie book

I want to support my fellow indie authors, but there is a lot of indie junk out there, as one might expect. Fortunately Amazon has a great "sample" function, and will send you a fairly substantial chunk of the book free. Of course, if the writing is truly terrible, you only need to read a page or two to realize that. I've gotten a few samples that were frankly atrocious. I've read several others that were decent, but with certain obvious flaws in the writing that made me think the entire book would probably be on the amateurish side. And I've seen a few samples that were very good.

One of the best-selling Kindle authors seems to be Karen McQuestion. I just read her book Easily Amused, which falls somewhere between the contemporary romance and chick lit genres. I enjoyed it. Her writing is strong, and the book had a fun, light quality to it. I like the cover, too:


I liked this one well enough that I'm putting her book A Scattered Life onto my list to read, too.

Real life

Yesterday my older son (eight) was diagnosed with Asperger's and type 3 Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. The Asperger's was expected; the other was not (in fact, I never heard of it before yesterday). I'm not sure how to feel about this; it's good to finally have a diagnosis, but I'm sorry that he has an issue that limits him physically (I'm told he should be kept out of competitive sports because of the likelihood of dislocated joints). Still, he is what he is, as VH would have said, and putting names to his difficulties at least allows me to learn more about them, and hopefully help him as much as possible.

Do naked men sell books?

Isn't It Romantic? has been up a couple of days now, and has only sold ten copies. I'm not concerned yet, because I've noticed that it often takes a little while for sales to get rolling. Furthermore, the description of the book isn't up yet (for some reason Amazon tends to be very slow about this), which does not encourage people to buy it. I am wondering, though, if the pretty, more romantic cover is perhaps contributing to the lack of sales. Obviously publishers think romance readers like naked male torsos, but do they really make a big difference in sales?

I don't know the answer yet. I'll give it at least a month before I mess around with the cover, but if it's still not selling well in a month, I may consider changing the cover to yet another half-nude guy. I'm not proud. If naked guys are what it takes to sell, then naked guys are what the reader gets!

Milestones and real life

I hit yet another milestone for the month, this one a biggie. My sales have really been great this month. I hope it continues *crosses fingers*. I don't want to only repackage my backlist, though, so I have three new projects I'm working on.

I'm going to see my dad today, as I do weekly. His pulse and blood pressure were up last week, so he got all checked out (EKG, had his pacemaker checked, and that kind of thing) and he seems to be fine. He's doing great for ninety-three!

Isn't It Romantic? available

Isn't It Romantic? is now available on Amazon, a lot sooner than I expected. The description isn't up, but the book is buyable. This was my first novella, and I'm quite fond of it. Hope people enjoy it!

Working and weather

I published Isn't It Romantic? on Amazon this morning. It takes a few days for it to go up, and then it might have conversion problems and require re-uploading, so I typically do it a bit before the end of the month. With any luck it will be live (and error-free) in two or three days. Hopefully Amazon readers will like it.

We are having beautiful weather here, finally. The daffodils are blooming, the Bradford pears are within a day or two of bursting into flower, and the sky is a clear sheet of sapphire. I love spring *sighs happily*. The dogs spend most of their time outside (voluntarily), and are hopefully getting into better condition. Without a back yard to run in they'd gotten a bit chunky!

The dogs ate my Kindle, and other stories

When I'm gone, I leave my dogs closed into the upstairs bathroom, because they hate being crated during the day, and because despite their advanced years (one-and-a-half and two) they can't seem to understand they aren't supposed to eat any toy they come across. Thus they are kept confined for their own safety, as well as my sanity. My younger daughter has the responsibility of putting them in there and making sure all doors are closed.

She's usually very good about it, but tonight she left the door open to the small toilet area, where I keep a basketful of books and magazines. We went out to dinner, and when I went up to let the dogs out I found to my horror that she'd left the door open... and to my worse horror, there lay my Kindle 2 (the smaller one) with its nice leather cover chewed to pieces. I picked it up and announced to the dogs that I would be murdering the kid (accustomed to my dramatic overstatements, they just wagged their stubby tails), then checked it over. Fortunately, although the cover was half gone, the Kindle itself was just fine. So it could have been a lot worse (my daughter is being required to pay me the thirty dollar cost of the cover to pay for her lapse in attention, which punishment she accepted meekly as reasonable justice). And in fact this unfortunate incident gives me a good excuse to go buy the Oberon cover I've been wanting:



I will of course be super careful not to let this one be consumed by canines!

Otherwise, my day was great. We hung out with my niece all day. The dogs loved her, and so did the five-year-old; they all battled for the privilege of being in her lap, which was rather amusing. Also, I hit yet another happy milestone on Amazon sales. I would like to think this is because people are becoming aware of me over there, but who really knows why my books are selling? I suppose it's enough that they are:-).

Sales and real life

Yesterday I had a sudden and substantial surge of sales on Amazon. I'm not sure why. I Googled myself and couldn't find anything, and Google alerts didn't turn up anything either. I would assume there was a reason for it, but what it is, I don't know. Of course, once you get on an Amazon bestseller list, that probably helps keep sales going for a while. All I Ever Wanted got down to #29 on their Kindle contemporary romance list, and #9 on their Hot New Releases list in the same category. Doubtless this helped, but I had a lot of sales before this happened. It would be nice to figure out what caused it so I could do it again, but I haven't managed it yet.

Today my twenty-two-year-old niece (my deceased sister's child) is coming to see us. I haven't seen this kid in forever and am really looking forward to it!

And yet more on promotions

When stepping into a new promo environment (and this goes for boards, Yahoogroups, or whatever) take a few days to study how other people there do it. Check out what's going on in that particular community. Read some of the threads. Post on a few threads and let people get to know you before you start promoting. In short, don't just barge in like a bull in a china shop and start pushing your book in people's faces.

Example: As I said, there's a backlash on Amazon right now against indie authors overpromoting. There are of course as many opinions as there are posters (or possibly more), but the big problem for most people seems to essentially be 1. excessive promotion (bumping your thread too much and posting too many threads) and 2. mislabeling your thread so people click on it without realizing it's a promo. These are easy things to avoid doing, right?

Apparently not. Because a new author strolled into town this morning and posted a new promo thread with a title that doesn't indicate it's a promo. And now, not surprisingly, he's being told "go away, spammer!" Sigh. Never mind a few days; a few minutes spent perusing the busiest threads would have helped him avoid this error.

Subtlety is your friend, people!

ETA: To give the guy credit, he looked at the responses, realized his error, and deleted the post with apologies. That's good. Hopefully he's learned from this to look before he leaps in the future!

Hero, happy dog

I took Hero to the vet today because he had a small "hot spot" on his foot (as any dog owner knows, a small hot spot can blow up into a big problem quite quickly), and it was almost time for his yearly checkup anyway. Hero didn't mind. He loves people and he loves new experiences. He's a "drink life to the lees" kind of dog. Even though this vet was new to him, he bounded into the vet's office as if he owned it, jumped up to greet the ladies behind the desk, fawned joyfully over the vet and the vet's assistant, and in general acted as if he was having the most wonderful time of his life. He did utter a small growl of protest when the vet tried to look at his foot, which was not surprising, since it obviously hurt a bit. But we distracted him with treats, and the vet patted him, and he was fine after that. He didn't even object to having the bordatella inoculation stuck up his nose-- in fact, he thanked the vet for doing it with sloppy kisses.

Hero is a sweet dog. Not a bright dog. But a sweet dog:-).

Tweet, tweet

Finally got on Twitter. Not sure exactly what I'll say... but I'm there:-).

Books and boards

I got two more four-star reviews on All I Ever Wanted from happy readers on Amazon. At the same time, my sales seem to have picked up a bit today, to the point where In the Mood actually got back on the Kindle contemporary romance list (and okay, yeah, it's #97, so it's not exactly burning up the charts, but still...) I don't know if the nice reviews are causing my small bump in sales, or if I've been mentioned somewhere again, or if it's just a random uptick. Having access to your sales figures 24/7 can cause you to obsess on them more than you really should:-). I did hit a nice milestone figure today, but I'm saving all talk about hard figures for the end of the month, so I won't share how many copies I've sold just yet.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to avoid all controversy and unpleasantness over on the Amazon boards. It does appear most people are okay with indie authors and promotion; they just don't like it when the promotion gets out of hand, which is understandable. I'm mostly avoiding the debate on the topic, just because it isn't in my best interest to tick anyone off, and we all know that internet debate=ticking people off.

And finally, I got a sort-of rejection on Never Love a Stranger; my editor at Samhain doesn't really want to take a look at a previously published book. So I guess that one will be going up on Amazon, too, which is fine. Thus far, I'm fairly happy with the Amazon experiment (though it'll be interesting to see what happens to sales when the iPad is released!). So that's one to add to the backlist queue!

More thoughts on Amazon promotion

The Amazon boards really blew up yesterday. A couple of authors had created several threads, unrelated or tangentially related to their books (an example of a tangential topic being asking about chick lit, and how much you were willing to pay for it, when chick lit is the author's genre). They got jumped on and accused of spamming by several people. They also got defended by a lot of people, so their sales may have actually improved as a result of the kerfluffle, I don't know. Even so, I would rather promote on the threads without ticking off people (any more than necessary; some people just don't like authors promoting, or indie authors, and it's always possible to get a nasty response on the internet anyway, as well all know by now). I don't like conflict, and strive to avoid it:-).

I really think www.kindleboards.com has the right idea-- it's best for authors not to create multiple threads. One per book is enough. Also, a thread about a book should be clearly marked as such; another author got jumped on for a thread title that didn't make it perfectly clear that it was promoting her book. So here are some more thoughts, sparked by all this, on how to promote without angering people:

1. One book, one thread. Don't spam a thread you create, either (and I'm not saying anyone has been doing this on Amazon, just offering a general rule of thumb); it's okay to respond to other people, but you don't want to be bumping it up all the time just for the hell of it. As I said yesterday, I try not to post too often on the threads devoted to promotion, either.

2. Promotional book threads should be clearly marked as such-- ie, IN THE MOOD, a contemporary romance, now available! Something like "Are you in the mood for love?", while more clever, may annoy people because they click on it to see what it's about, and some people just do not want to read promos.

3. If you create other threads, they should be entirely unrelated to your book, and you might want to avoid using a sig line so that you don't give the impression you're trying to promote. For example, it could be perceived as self-serving and promotional if I create a thread with the title, What do you consider the classics of contemporary romance? But probably no one's going to jump on me for posting, Help, I have an issue with my Kindle's screensaver, especially if I don't use a sig line.

4. It's fine to post in other threads if you have relevant stuff to say, and especially if you don't use a sig line. I've been posting up a storm in the romance section, because I have lots to say on the topic and I enjoy the conversation. I contributed to a thread about bodice rippers (Shirlee Busbee FTW!) and I've talked about my love for Elaine Fox and Rachel Gibson. But I'm not using a sig line, so hopefully no one is going to take that as blatant promotion. I also posted on kindleboards.com about science fiction a few times. The sig line is automatic there, but I contributed to the discussion, and it had nothing to do with my own genre, so again, I don't think that's spammy by anyone's measure.

I'm not saying anyone HAS been spamming the boards, or criticizing anyone for their posts. I'm just saying that it appears to my newbie eyes that the Amazon boards are a bit touchy on this topic (presumably because they've had some hardcore spammers in the past), so to me, erring on the side of caution and subtlety seems wise. A poster named Fred on Amazon puts it best:

"I wasn't here when the afore mentioned "rules of etiquette" were established but I think I can see how and why they evolved. If every Indie author in the world came here and started multiple threads each day in thinly veiled attempts to promote their work this forum would quickly become nothing but and you guys would end up trying to sell your books to each other because all the actual readers would flee. So it's not in anyone's best interest to see that happen... So please use some discretion when promoting your books on this message board. In the long run that's best for everyone IMO."

Thoughts on how to promote on Amazon

Amazon indie authors need to make themselves known to Amazon customers by hanging out on the threads there. (It's also helpful to post at www.kindleboards.com, but those are moderated, with helpful rules in place that stop authors from making pests of themselves by posting too much). It seems to be pretty much a given that you need to post on the Amazon boards (unless you're a well-known author who's Kindling his or her backlist, anyway). But based on my few weeks of observation, there seems to be a right way and a wrong way to go about it.

The right way, as far as I can tell (and again, I'm a newb, so I may not have grasped all the subtleties of correct Amazon behavior), is to post important stuff about your releases (first release, bestseller status, good reviews) on the threads that are dedicated to this. There are a ton of threads like this-- Self-published authors, help me find you!, March 2010 Indie Authors thread, Have you written a romance book?- come tell us about it! and so forth. It isn't hard to find these threads; they stay on the front page and are heavily trafficked by indie authors and readers. You can overdo the self-promotion here too (posting every day for no reason strikes me as a bit annoying; I try never to post about myself without some valid reason to toot my own horn), but since the threads are dedicated to promotion, it's harder to tick people off.

Where authors tend to become a bit obnoxious is the threads asking for recommendations. I admit I have posted a couple of times about my own books on these threads. In one case, the OP asking for romances featuring nerdy heroes, and hey, I specialize in those. The other was asking for dark heroes, and my first hero is a perfect example of this-- and mentioning The Light in the Darkness doesn't earn me a penny, anyway, since it's out of print. I'm still apologetic and self-effacing when I post in a rec thread, though, no matter how much my books fit the OP's request.

The big no-no is authors who post their books in too many recommendation threads. You say you're looking for paranormals like J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood series? Try my romantic comedy In the Mood! You need more serious and heartbreaking historicals like those by Lisa Kleypas? Hey, try In the Mood! You want science fiction romance like Susan Squires? Well, why not try... You get the picture. It's annoying, it's off topic, and if you do it enough, it's going to actively turn people OFF your books, which is not what you want to do.

Another thing that seems to help is stepping off the self-promotion train and just posting on the boards-- joining in the conversation, and chatting in a friendly and nonpromotional way. I do this fairly frequently, but not excessively, often without adding a sig line. I don't want to do it all the time, because then I become annoying, and always using a sig line makes it look like you're just trying to sell books. But chiming in every so often on a topic that interests me, when I have something useful to contribute to the discussion, is a good way to get my name out there. Moreover, it's fun:-).

New new cover

I decided my Isn't It Romantic? cover was a little too dark (it's important to remember it'll mostly be seen as a thumbnail), so I brightened it up by taking off the filter I'd applied, adding some sunlight, and changing the color and angle of the title lettering a bit:

I also put up a page with some info about the book here. I'll try to get up some review quotes and an excerpt tomorrow.

Sales update and other stuff

After two days of remarkably brisk sales, my sales are finally slowing down and my books are dropping in the rankings (In the Mood once got all the way down to 454 in the Kindle store, which is awesome). But I have clearly discovered the key to Kindle success-- being featured on Books on the Knob. Unfortunately this is not something I can intentionally replicate:-). But perhaps the lesson here is simply (and obviously) that exposure sells books.

I got my first Amazon review on All I Ever Wanted, a four-star review that called it "cute and fun" and "entertaining." Since people are more likely to buy a book with a few decent reviews (which is probably why In the Mood is still outselling AIEW, because up until last night the latter had no reviews), this is a good thing.

The kids and I drove up to our old area yesterday and drove around and went to familiar landmarks. We stayed in the usual hotel, and all was fairly peaceful and pleasant. At three in the morning, the younger boy woke me up howling that he couldn't find his stuffed bear. I finally found it cuddled in the arms of his brother, who'd apparently curled up with it in his sleep. I extricated it and restored all stuffed animals to their proper owners, and everyone went back to sleep with no difficulty.

And finally, I planted morning glory seeds in planter boxes on Friday night. We returned this afternoon to discover they're already putting up shoots. They really are weeds, aren't they? But they're such pretty weeds!

Wow

Yesterday was... intriguing. My indie romances sold at a very brisk pace, getting as low as #27 and #29 in the Kindle contemporary romance store. I didn't quite crack the top 500 of the entire Kindle store, but I came very close-- #511. Right now my books are still sitting at #28 and #33 in the Kindle contemp romance bestseller list (and #55 and #66 on the contemporary romance books list), which may give me visibility enough to keep my sales going to some degree. Or it may not:-). Still, I've sold a lot more copies in the past day than I expected to sell all month (more than quintupling my February sales), so I am very pleased.

The moral here seems to be that getting exposure in the right places can make you known to a whole lot of Kindle readers, who may then consider purchasing your books. The problem is that I don't know exactly what the right places are, or how to get exposure (except by happy accident, heh). More study is clearly indicated.

A little exposure is a wonderful thing

This afternoon I went out for a little while. When I got back, I checked my stats on Amazon and found that I'd sold ten books. This was startling, as I've only been selling a few copies a day. I watched with amazement as my indie books continued to sell. As of this writing, In the Mood is down to around the #1200 mark and is #71 in the Kindle contemporary romance category. All I Ever Wanted has sold quite a few and is down around #2000, but isn't showing up as a hot seller in the contemporary romance category as of yet.

I posted on the Amazon boards about it, and someone let me know my books had been featured in this blog, which probably accounts for the sudden rush of sales. Not much was said about the books themselves that isn't on Amazon, except for the comment that they have "eye-catching covers" (thanks for that!), but clearly a lot of Kindle readers read this blog.

There's nothing like exposure to get people to check out your books, I guess!

More on sales

By yesterday's end, I'd sold twice as many books on Amazon in March as I'd sold in the whole of Feburary. Still not massive quantities, but sales do seem to be accelerating. It's interesting to note that lowering the price on All I Ever Wanted apparently encouraged people to go look at my books, but more of them still chose In the Mood. Perhaps the description or cover is more attractive, or perhaps people would prefer to read a novella by an unknown, rather than spend all that time reading a full novel that might turn out to suck:-). Still, All I Ever Wanted dropped to its lowest ranking ever, #2.514 in the Kindle store, so people are buying it too.

In other news, tomorrow is the third anniversary of VH's death (hard to believe that much time has passed!) and the kids and I are heading up to our old environs to hang out, because that's what they wanted to do to commemorate him.

Buy me

I reduced All I Ever Wanted to ninety-nine cents on Amazon, for a limited time. It's really not easy to get people to take a chance on indie authors for anything over that figure. It'll be interesting to see what happens when Amazon's new rules go into effect in June or July, whereupon they will pay 70% royalties (double what they pay now) if your book is priced at $2.99 or above. Will all the indie authors raise their prices to that amount? Will the readers who are willing to gamble on indie authors go that high? I'm curious to know how it shakes out.

Sales

In the Mood just hit the same number of sales on Amazon it had for the full month of February-- and this is only the eighth of the month. All I Ever Wanted (which is still priced at fifty cents more) is lagging behind, but it's nevertheless selling. Whether my overall sales will remain steady, accelerate, or drop off over the remainder of the month, I decline to speculate. I'll let you know how sales are at the end of the month:-).

Work, but no writing

Today I clipped bushes. Every single solitary bush in the yard except the azaleas, which haven't bloomed yet. Most of them weren't too bad, although I had to take a pruning saw to a few branches on three holly bushes. Now I have a terrible rash on my arms, thanks to the fact that I am allergic to evergreens.

I also purchased a bunch of bulbs for planting this week, and worked with the dogs on the invisible fence line. So it was a busy day, but not on the writing front!

Yay!

In the first six days of this month I have officially made more in Amazon sales than I made in all of February. We're still not talking vast riches here *snickers*, but hey, an upward trend is a good thing.

I got my Amazon author page all set up, but Amazon annoyed me by taking down my author picture right away. I figured they might, as it specified a picture of me only-- no pets. Problem is, I don't have a decent photo of me by myself; I just look better with a dog in my lap. Can I help it if my dogs are cuter than I am? Anyway, I guess I'll get my photographer (my fourteen-year-old daughter) to take a couple of shots of me by myself tomorrow, and see if we can get one in which I don't look like a giant dork *smiles wryly*.

Amazon

Today I updated my Author Page at Amazon (it had exactly one book in my bibliography, and that was the long out-of-print The Light in the Darkness). I got all my books listed (even the out-of-print paperbacks) and I'm trying to figure out how to do an RSS feed from this blog. So far no luck, but I shall persevere:-).

Cover

Did a cover for Isn't It Romantic?, which will be my next backlist release on Amazon. I figured all my books couldn't feature bare chests:

More sales

So in the first three days of March I've already sold over half as many Kindle editions on Amazon as I did in the whole of February. I hope that means I'm succeeding in getting my name out there on the boards. I also had the pleasure of seeing In the Mood rise to #3336 in the Kindle store (no, it's not the top hundred by any means, but it's much higher than ever before) and received a lovely second five-star review in which the reader called it "wonderful and touching" and "superb." So, all well and good. Now I just have to get people buying All I Ever Wanted too!

And on another, more solemn topic, I can't post without mentioning that today would have been VH's forty-third birthday.

Sales

My Amazon sales for March, while not even remotely spectacular, seem to be on an upward swing. This could be a temporary phenomenon, or it could be a sign that people are starting to notice my name on the boards and buy my books. More data is required:-).

One thing I do notice is that so far, the sales of my "indie" books are not spilling over to my Samhain titles (judging from the lack of movement on the sales rankings). I hope that if people buy my indie books, read them, and like them, they'll go buy my Samhain titles too. So far that isn't happening, which suggests to me that while people are buying my titles, they haven't gotten around to reading them yet. Hopefully once people start reading them, they will like them!

In real life news, I visited my dad today. I missed last week due to the little guy having a cough and a fever, so my dad was feeling particularly chatty. He obviously really enjoys having us in the area.

Writing and real life

Observations from my first month on Amazon: People like ninety-nine cent books. They will gladly take a chance on an unknown "indie" author at that price. It is less clear if they read the ninety-nine cent books they accumulate, but they will certainly buy them. But people seem less inclined to take a risk on $1.99 (which to me still seems like a very low cover price). All I Ever Wanted has been up for a couple of days now, with not many buyers. Presumably there are so many ninety-nine cent books on Amazon that people just don't see the point in paying twice that on an indie author they don't know. And perhaps more to the point, if they want to give ME a try they're more likely to choose the cheaper book first.

In real life news, we spent the weekend cleaning (after two weekends of not feeling very good, the house was a mess) and then had the belated birthday party for the five-year-old. The family came and we had a good time.