Not a bad month

Getting my butt out on the boards and posting, now that I feel better, has made a noticeable difference in my sales. I sold over 300 copies of one book, over 200 of two others, and over a hundred of a fourth. All my books except Farthest Space sold more copies than last month, and many were significant increases. I had fourteen UK Amazon sales, a decent increase from the past two months (but none on B&N's PubIt). Love Remembered and Farthest Space still aren't doing well; I should probably consider changing the cover on Love Remembered and seeing if I can do a bit better. But overall, I'm pleased by my sales this month. The best way to improve them further would probably be to get another book out there, so I think I'll work on that next:-).

9000 sold!

I was pleased to tally up my totals sold since February and find that I've sold over 9000 downloads (indie books only, not counting all the extra Samhain books I've sold since becoming an indie). I knew I'd get there soon, but I wasn't sure I'd make it by the end of this month. That's an average of a thousand books a month, which isn't great, but take February out of it (in which I only sold 27 books) and the average improves a bit. I will say that my sales per month have sunk quite a bit lately, probably because I haven't had anything new out since July. I'm hoping to get something out soon, but we shall see:-).

At any rate, to me it seems like a pretty decent number for a small press romance author with nothing but re-releases, so I'm pleased.

Stephen King...

talks about why ebooks aren't scary, though he finds them to be a bit more "ephemeral." In passing, he mentions he's made $80,000 off Ur (his Kindle-only book).

Never Love a Stranger

Heather Massey blogs about my sci-fi/time travel romance novel, Never Love a Stranger. Spoiler alert!

The Nook Color...

has an LCD screen and WiFi. See it on B&N, here.

Winning friends and influencing people

Wow, there was a huge blowup on Amazon yesterday over an indie book. It actually improved the book's sales until the author got involved. Unfortunately, the author said some extremely rude things to some readers on the boards, which was not a good way to deal with the situation, and which has angered a lot of his former supporters.

Rule one of promo: Do not be rude to your readers. Ever. If you are angry, step back from the keyboard for a while. Never, ever, ever let yourself indulge in a public blowup. If you are calm and don't respond, people will admire your restraint. If you get rude, people will resent it... and remember it.

Breaking news- ebooks sell well on Amazon

According to Engadget, "Amazon's also boasting that, for its top 10 bestselling books, Kindle digital books are outselling print (both hardcover and paperback combined) at a rate 'great(er) than 2 to 1.'"

More on the possible color Nook

CNET grabbed a picture of an accessory labeled "Nook Color screen film kit" from the B&N site, before it was quickly removed. It shows an entirely different Nook, with no lower screen.

Meanwhile, Amazon has up a new stickied announcement thread extolling the virtues of e-ink over LCD screens, which tends to suggest that they expect B&N's new device (if it actually exists) to be an LCD screen.

Nooks in Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart will begin selling Nooks on Sunday, according to the NY Times.

Lending on the Kindle

Amazon has just announced they will be introducing lending on the Kindle, a feature similar to the Nook: "...later this year, we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users. Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period. Additionally, not all e-books will be lendable - this is solely up to the publisher or rights holder, who determines which titles are enabled for lending."

Color Nook?

Rumor has it that a color Nook will be unveiled next week. Whether it's an LCD screen or something else is unclear.

A bestseller

Christopher Smith's first indie novel Fifth Avenue is at #31 on the Kindle bestseller list.

Sigh

So if you're an author posting promos on thread after thread, to the point where Amazon starts to delete your posts, and then a "fan" starts posting about how great your books are, do you really think people aren't going to figure out who the fan is? Really?

Draculas

Draculas, which J.A. Konrath wrote about in the Huffington Post (link a few posts back), is now available on Kindle, and is currently ranked at #75. That's a good start!

2500 downloads sold

In the Mood made it to 2500 downloads today!

In the Mood...

...is seven copies away from 2500 downloads sold.

Konrath in the Huffington Post

J.A. Konrath writes about his latest self-publishing project in the Huffington Post.

Ebook sales continue to increase

An article pointed out on the Amazon boards: E-book sales nearly double in a year, trounce hardcovers in August. "Hardcovers tanked in August, down nearly 25 per cent year-over-year. There must have been a lot of Kindles at the beach: e-book sales for the same month were up 172 percent."

This is, of course, based on an Association of American Publishers report, which would not include small presses and indie books. But I like to think a rising tide lifts all boats:-).

Funny typo

I was reading reviews of a romance (not one of mine!) on Amazon, and came across this very amusing comment: "The heroine irked me from the gecko." Obviously the reviewer meant "get-go," but I really like "gecko" better. I think I'll use that phrase from now on:-).

Meg Harris

Erotic romance author Meg Harris has up her first story in quite a few years: Fantasia.

Go epublish, young man

Someone pointed this out on Kindleboards. Back in September, agent Lori Perkins quoted a response to one of her clients on her blog: "Print publishing is in turmoil right now. Leisure Books has effectively gone out of the print business, and B&N and Borders are having extreme financial difficulties. Mass market sales are suffering during the recession and horror is mass market. It's also summer. So, in all likelihood nothing is happening and nothing will be happening soon. I think it's almost impossible to place a first horror novel right now in print.

I can refer you to one of the other agents in house (go to our website) after Labor Day, but I do think epub is probably the way to go for horror right now."

Notice that this advice is specific to horror, which took a serious hit from Leisure's problems. Nevertheless, it's interesting.

Also, Jordan Summers has a nice rundown of current contractual issues discussed at the Novelists Inc conference in this post.

Unwrapped

Unwrapped is now available on Barnes and Noble in ePub format.

My first PubIt book

Isn't It Romantic? is now available in ePub on the Barnes and Noble site.

iPad helps Kindle sales

From the Amazon boards, here's an interesting article that states Amazon currently has 76% of the ebooks market (and encouragingly for authors, "digital book sales via the Kindle store are on track to grow 195% to $701 million in 2010"). One in five people buying Kindle books don't own a Kindle device. The article suggest that the iPad and iPhone apps are helping to drive sales of Amazon's ebooks.

Work, work

I got my pen named book up on Amazon today. Hopefully it will be up in a day or two.

Also, for those of you who want to see my books in ePub (and I know at least one person has been asking!), I just put up Isn't It Romantic? on Barnes and Noble, via their new PubIt program. I'll work on getting the rest of them loaded up over the next couple of days. I am using HTML, so I don't know that they'll format quite right. But it looked good in the preview, so fingers are crossed...

How many times do I have to say this???

If you're an indie author who feels attacked by readers on the Amazon threads, do not engage them. Do not call them names. Do not whine that you've been picked upon. And for heaven's sake, do not bring them up and call them names on another author's thread, thus dragging her into your battles. Just don't. Be polite and grateful to the readers who love you, and ignore the others with dignity. Please. The Amazon threads will be a calmer, happier place if you do, and you'll make indie authors as a whole look classier, besides.

Jean Auel

Jean Auel's first five books are now available on Kindle, although as of yet they are difficult to find on Amazon. The first is only $1.59 right now!

Reading

Last night I read Mini Shopaholic on my Kindle. Fun, even if it didn't break any new ground in the series (I mean, Becky is still Becky, and always will be, apparently). I found myself staying up till midnight to finish it, so I guess it amused me.

Today I've decided to download Room: A Novel, a very different sort of book. I'm almost certain it was over fourteen dollars yesterday, but today it costs $11.99. Glad I didn't buy it yesterday! That's still more than I like to pay for an ebook, but it sounds like a very interesting novel, so I'm going to go ahead and download it.

What's so special about In the Mood?

I continue to be baffled (albeit pleased) by In the Mood's steady sales. It's still selling about ten copies a day-- my best seller at present. It's a cute story, I think, but I never considered it my best romance by any means. It's just a bit of fluff, really. And yet it keeps marching along, selling quite consistently. I don't know if it's the cover or the reviews or what, but I'm glad people are continuing to buy it!

How much am I worth?

I blogged a while back about finding a paperback edition of my historical Love Remembered on eBay for almost a hundred dollars (it unsurprisingly remained unpurchased). The other day I saw a copy of my book Never Love a Stranger sell on eBay for three dollars. Now here's someone trying to sell a paperback copy of the same book for thirty dollars.

I guess I appreciate the compliment, but really, just go buy the 99 cent Kindle edition, guys. I'm not worth thirty bucks!

Also, I was pleased to see myself mentioned in this interview with Ruth Francisco as an "established author." Sounds more impressive than I believe I really am:-). Still, nice to be mentioned!

To-do list for the week

1. Finish cleaning my house today

2. Get new book up on Amazon

3. Start getting old books up on B&N via PubIt

Sales

I reduced my $2.99 books to 99 cents because I've been too sick for promotion, and my sales were suffering. It seems to have been a good idea. All I Ever Wanted and Never Love a Stranger aren't exactly blazing up the charts, but they are selling. They had pretty much come to a dead stop previously, so this is an improvement. Again, I don't blame this on the price itself as much as on my failure to promote. It's a bit harder to sell books at a higher price if you don't make yourself visible.

In the Mood and Isn't It Romantic? continue to zoom along as my best sellers, selling at a quite respectable rate, but Unwrapped is also doing well. I imagine that one may pick up a bit in the next couple of months, as Christmas approaches. Love Remembered isn't selling much (I think I established myself too firmly as a contemporary romance author on Kindle before introducing it), and poor little Farthest Space is hardly selling at all, which is ironic, considering it's my only professional cover. I think a sci-fi romance spoof is just a really hard sell:-).

Overall, it seems that what sells best on Kindle for me is light, fun contemporary novellas, and that might be a smart place for me to focus at this point.

Weirdness

A long list of indie books that were free on Smashwords were reduced to free on Amazon last week. That's not surprising-- Amazon has busy spiders that catch that kind of thing. Nor is it surprising that many of these authors have "sold" a thousand free copies or more, and popped up at the top of the bestselling free list, thus getting themselves some very useful exposure. It's cool for them, and I wish I were among them, and am slightly jealous:-).

But here's the weird part-- people are apparently getting paid royalties for the free books by Amazon. I don't quite get that. Amazon must be losing a bundle on this, and it makes no sense to reward authors for putting up books for free elsewhere. I wonder if it's all an error, and will be corrected later.