The month's results

My sales improved quite a bit this month. In Amazon US sales, I had over 350 sales of one book, over 300 of another, almost 300 of another, and over 100 of two others. Love Remembered is not doing great; Farthest Space continues to suck very badly. I'm thinking about taking that one off Amazon and just giving it away for free!

In other sales, I had 55 Amazon UK sales and 52 PubIt sales (last month I had no PubIt sales, so that's nice to see). Overall, I'm past 10,500 sales and should easily hit 11,000 by the end of the year.

The Star Trek Kindle

I'm still working my way through Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with my oldest, and it's striking how much the "padd" the characters use for reading looks like a Kindle (DS9 was produced in the 1990s). Everyone in DS9 uses padds to read any sort of document, from novels to war reports. But what makes me chuckle is when they show us a character working hard, with four or five padds spread out on the desk in front of him. Did it never occur to them that you would probably be able to keep LOTS of documents on a small device in the future, and that as a result you wouldn't need to have five of the things cluttering up your desk at once?

NookColor again

I played with the settings on my Nook, turning the background to sepia (you can also turn it gray so it looks Kindle-like). I read about half a Susan Donovan novel yesterday. I still had some eyestrain, but it wasn't as bad as it was the first day, so I guess less contrast helps. I'm still not sure I'd want to read novels off the device all the time, though.

Also, I've gotten better at turning pages, but I still occasionally can't get the page to turn. I haven't frozen it up again, however.

Mediocrity sells, sometimes

I was wandering through the romance section on Amazon yesterday and came across an erotica with a rather silly title. I downloaded the sample, and it was really terrible-- the writing was like something a teenager might have written, if she'd never taken an English class. I mean, we're talking lack of commas, random capitalization, short, choppy sentences, telling rather than showing... pretty much bad writing all around.

Anyway, I looked it up on B&N today and noticed that it's in the high hundreds, rankingswise. Wow. Just... wow. I can't imagine taking a look at this sample and deciding to pay $2.99 for the book. I have to admit that when really, really terrible stuff does well, it annoys me-- I'd like to think that the good stuff rises to the top, but I guess sometimes the bad stuff rises, too. Maybe it's petty of me to be annoyed, but maybe it's a bit of self-interest, too; I honestly hate for people to think of books like this when they think of indie publishing.

I am intrigued to know why it's doing so well, though. I shall Google and try to figure out what the author's secret is. There must be some reason it sells!

NookColor first impressions

I registered my NookColor today, and played with it for about an hour at Barnes and Noble. (I was surprised to find I could use "read in the store" to read my own books there-- I thought that feature was only for actual paper books. My novellas are probably short enough to read in an hour if you're a quick reader, so I'm not sure I'm thrilled with that. But they do have a nice BUY NOW bar at the top, so that feature might just sell a few books, who knows?)

Anyway, overall I liked it. It's very pretty, to be sure. The colors are bright and everything is very clear and sharp. It's heavier than you would expect, but I'm used to the DX, so that wasn't really an issue for me (if you're used to the smaller Kindle you will probably have to adjust). The touchscreen is generally responsive, and the interface is easy to figure out (as opposed to the original Nook, which made me go huh??? every time I played with it in the store). I didn't have to consult with the little start-up guide to make it work-- it was user-friendly and more or less idiotproof:-).

I did have a recurring problem turning pages-- most of the time pages turned easily and rapidly, but every so often it would hang up, and I'd wonder if I hadn't hit it right, or if it just didn't like how quickly I turn pages. Once I managed to freeze up the entire device by tapping the screen too many times, but that was quickly solved by turning it off and on again. It could be I'm doing something wrong; more experience with the device may prevent this problem.

The big issue is that the LCD screen did give me a headache after an hour or so of playing around. I can't see myself reading heavily on this device-- I think my eyeballs would explode. But I never really intended to use it for that anyway-- I figured it for more of a newspaper/magazine reader. And I have middle-aged eyes that need bifocals, so this may not be an issue for others.

Decorating for Christmas...

I did a new banner for the holiday season. I thought about doing one for my website as well, but I don't think anyone actually visits my website, just my blog:-).

Promotion for dummies

There is yet another outbreak on the Amazon romance board wherein the regulars are railing against newbie authors coming in and promoting. The romance board is perhaps the most strongly anti-promo Amazon board (at least in my limited experience), so this happens fairly frequently. Advice for newbie authors:

1. Always hang out on a forum and lurk for a week or so before you post. You really need to get the feel of a forum before you start posting. See how other authors promote, and what the response is.

2. Don't argue with the regulars and tell them they're wrong to be opposed to promotion. It's their forum, and they were there first, so when you come in and start telling them how they should do things, you are not going to make friends. In particular, do not whine about how hard it is to sell books, and how they just don't understand how hard authors have it. Here's the hard truth: They really don't give a flying leap about how hard it is for you to sell books. Why should they? It's not their problem. Whining about it just makes you look... you know... whiny.

3. Don't be insulting, to either a specific poster or the entire forum. If you don't like their attitude, you can go away and find another forum. You're not going to sell books by telling readers you don't like them.

In short, look before you leap, and then tread very, very carefully.

NookColor

I had to go into B&N today to get my NookColor (haven't plugged it in and charged it up yet, though). I would never voluntarily step into a store on Black Friday, but it came in late Wednesday, and because it's a hot item they could only hold it through today. Thanks so much, guys:-P. But I hung out with my dad in the morning and went over there about midafternoon, and it wasn't too insane. I bought a snazzy hot pink cover for it, too.

Anyway, the Nook guy told me he'd already sold forty NookColors today. There was a really big crowd around the Nook kiosk, so I could easily believe it was selling well. I guess a lot of people don't mind LCD screens. I still think I'll mostly use it for magazine reading, not book reading-- but honestly, I don't think too many people are hardcore novel readers anyway. So I have no problem believing there's a substantial market for it.

Kindleboards ad

I have a couple more hours, but so far I'd say my Kindleboards banner didn't do much good, at least in a direct way. I've sold seven copies of Unwrapped today-- this month, the average up to today has been nine per day-- and my ranking has dropped from #1910 before the ad went up last night to #3628 tonight. (#1910 is unusually good for the book, however, and I don't know what caused that little spike. I think it's at a more typical ranking now.)

So the KB ad had no effect that I could see. However, most of my books have been pretty limp today, saleswise, so it's possible people just are too busy today cooking or traveling to buy. And there's never any harm in getting your name out there in front of people... it might sell more books later, for all I know. Still, I thought I'd post my results, or lack thereof *g*, for those who are interested.

Yay for Google

I lost my recipe box with all my recipes, and despaired because I knew I couldn't accurately reproduce sweet potato casserole and curried fruit from memory.

I then Googled, and found more or less exact copies of the recipes in thirty seconds or so.

Google is a very handy thing to have:-).

Busy life

Dad's doing great at the rehab center-- they have him doing therapy two to three hours a day, even on Sunday! But the alternative to being busy is being bored, so he's thrilled to work out in the gym. I'm trying to go see him every two days so he isn't bored out of his skull, but this week my schedule will be slightly thrown off by Thanksgiving. (We're having Thanksgiving at the inlaws' house, but I'm bringing most of the side dishes.) I'm going to see him today, but I will spend tomorrow afternoon and Thursday morning cooking with the girls.

Banner ad

I'm signed up for a banner ad on Kindleboards on Wednesday, so I spent part of the afternoon making one (and considering how much time I spent on it, you'd think it would be better, but graphics are not my strong suit). I was lucky to get signed up quickly so I could promote Unwrapped. I figure I'm not going to sell any more copies of that one after the end of December, so it would be nice to get it going really strong into next month!

10,000 sold

Tonight I passed ten thousand downloads sold (across all my indie titles) since February. My deepest thanks to all you lovely readers:-).

NookColor

I've been wanting to check out the NookColor, so after I visited Dad at the rehab center today, I dropped by the local Barnes and Noble. There was someone already playing with the display NookColor, but the salesperson kindly broke out a second one for me to play with. I liked it. It's heavier than the original Nook and the K3, of course, but I'm used to the Kindle DX, so that doesn't bother me much. It had very good response, which was my main concern-- the first Nook was clearly rolled out slightly before it was ready for prime time, and didn't respond well before its software was upgraded, but this touch screen was responsive, and it pulled things up quickly.

The upshot is that I went ahead and bought one (I won't get it till early December, which is fine, since it's my Christmas present to myself). I don't expect it to replace my beloved eInk device; I got this more for newspaper and magazine reading, and will probably continue reading novels on my Kindle. I think it will be fun to have both.

New markets

We're halfway through the month, so I took a look at how I'm doing in my new markets. The UK Amazon sales are increasing-- I've had 32 sales overall there for the month, a lot more than I've had previously. All I Ever Wanted is my best seller there (probably because it got a five-star review). Meanwhile, on PubIt (where I have three books available), I have 17 sales-- 12 of those being for Unwrapped. I hope another book will catch on with B&N readers, as Unwrapped's sales probably won't last into January:-).

Obviously neither of these numbers will pay my mortgage, but it's always nice to see a trend upward!

Personal stuff

Dad's been in the hospital since Wednesday night (he fell and was on the floor a long time, which is not good for the elderly, and then it turned out he had an infection, which is probably what caused him to fall). I've spent most of my waking hours since then with him at the hospital. Today I think he's heading off for rehab-- he lives alone, and we have to get him able to get around on his own again before he can be entirely discharged. He's a stubborn old coot, and will probably do just fine with his physical therapy despite his advanced years. I do hope so, anyway!

A few bits of random ebook news

A few interesting links from the Amazon boards:

E Ink introduces its new color "Triton" e-paper screen

Grisham's latest sells 70,000 ebooks in a week (about one-third of hardcover sales)

Amazon's top 100 customer favorite Kindle ebooks includes four indies (two Karen McQuestion books, plus Vicki Tyley and D.B. Henson)

Cool!

IndieKindle reposted Joe Konrath's "friends" post in its entirety, links and all. Many thanks to the awesome Steve... I bet I get a nice bump in sales from this, and that others do too:-).

Zoe Winters' new book

Heh heh. Look what I just got off Amazon (click the cover for linkage):
Haven't read it yet, of course, but I would venture to say it's well worth a read!

Ads

Over on Kindleboards, they do a lot of sharing of sales figures, which is very helpful. I had terrific results from my Kindle Nation Daily (it more than paid for itself, which is what I want an ad to do), but I'm not seeing as good results reported from ads on other sites. I'm not sure KND ads are doing as well as they were, either-- could be the novelty has worn off, or it could just depend on the book. Of course you can gain a lot from an ad that isn't obvious. Exposure over the long term is valuable, and specific sales for the day or week the ad is live don't always tell the whole story.

Nevertheless, if I buy an expensive ad, I personally want to see a significant bump in sales that more or less pays for the ad. If you're thinking of purchasing an ad, I would suggest watching the books that use that space for a while, checking the rankings of each book, and seeing how many of the books make it into the top thousand or the top five hundred. Top hundred in any given category doesn't mean much-- being in the top hundred of, say, contemporary romance isn't going to pay for an ad. You only start selling a lot of copies once you start moving up through the top thousand books in the entire Kindle store.

Wow

All I Ever Wanted had several sales in the UK store in a short amount of time, and now check out its rankings:

PubIt

I had no sales through B&N's PubIt in October, but once November started up people seem to have found me over there. Already I've had five sales, which is nice. I only have two books up; clearly I need to get some more posted!

Konrath pays it forward

J.A. Konrath/Jack Kilborn has a nice list of indie authors in today's blog entry. Check them all out and support your local indie author:-).

Why?

Why does In the Mood continue to steadily sell over ten books a day, and Isn't It Romantic? continues to sell close to that pace, when my other books (a couple of which are very similar in cover and tone) don't sell nearly that many?

I feel like if I understood the answer to this question, I would understand the secrets of the universe, or at least the secrets of selling Kindle books effectively. To quote Commander Data, more study is clearly indicated.

In the meantime, I'll be writing another short, fluffy novella. If that's what the readers like, that's what the readers get!