Friday, March 13, 2015

One Month-iversary and Numbers

Hello, Everyone, and Happy Friday the 13th: Part 2.  Since I published Dying Embers on the first Friday the 13th, that makes this exactly 4 weeks since it went live and the book's One Month-iversary.  Yay!

Here are the hard numbers for that month from my handy-dandy Excel spreadsheet):

I moved 400 copies.  By moved, I mean 400 copies are now in some reader's hands available for them to read.

Of the 44 I'll get paid for:
22 of those were straight Kindle sales in the US.
2 were straight Kindle sales in the UK.
17 were Kindle Unlimited 'borrows' where the person read at least 10% of the book.
I sold 2 print books through Createspace, and one print copy by hand.


I gave away 356 free e-copies during that time. This makes for some interesting numbers:

315 copies went to US Kindle readers
25 copies went to UK readers
8 went to Canada
4 went to Germany
2 went to India
1 went to Japan
1 went to Brazil

I'm international!  Yay!

On the more soft numbers, I've had two people tell me they bought the book through B&N, but I won't see those numbers until the end of March report.  I've also heard from another person that they bought a hardcopy through Amazon UK, but that hasn't hit my reports yet.  Additionally, I have no way of knowing how many people borrowed the book through Kindle Unlimited - until they actually read the books they borrowed.  :shrug:

I have six 5-star reviews at Amazon.  Over at Goodreads, I have seven 5-star reviews, one 4-star review, one 3-star rating, and one 2-star rating - giving me an overall average of 4.4 stars.  

For a debut novelist that ain't bad.  And just so you don't thinking I'm sitting back on my laurels, waiting for the cash to roll in, I'll be sending my next book - Wrongful Termination - to the editor tonight.  (Or tomorrow morning if today gets away from me.)

I hope those numbers help anyone who might be thinking of getting into this self-publishing thing.  Like they say on the stock-trader commercials - yada yada not indicative of future earnings - and like on the car commercials - your mileage may vary.  For everyone else, I hope this was at least interesting.  

So anyway, thanks again for all your support.  It's really been a wild month and I couldn't have done it without you.  :hugs:

5 comments:

  1. Those figures seem like a really good start to me, well done. And keep up the good work as I'm looking forward to the next book.

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    1. Thanks, Fran! I hope you enjoy this next one, too. =o)

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  2. It's hard being a debut self-pubbed author. I think those are pretty good numbers, all things considered. Yeah, yeah. I hate that phrase, too. When I first self-published, I already had some books out. I'd built up at least some name recognition from commenting on lots of author blogs. I I was writing in a very popular romance sub-genre.

    I admire you hugely for jumping into the suspense/thriller/mystery genre as a self-publisher. It's a hard genre to make a splash in because you are competing with some REALLY big names. I happen to think you CAN compete with them. The quality of your writing will start to generate some word-of-mouth attention and with each new book, your fans will grow. Patience is the watch word. You've taken the first step. It's all good!

    And happy Friday 13th. :D

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    1. Would you believe I have a coffee cup from the old NPR show 'All Things Considered' sitting on my desk (It's full of sharpies)? I won it when I did fundraising for NPR in college. And yeah, for debuting in self-publishing instead of traditional, I'm really not doing too bad. I think all the blogging and connecting I did for the past 9 years helped a lot.

      Thanks, Silver! I guess I didn't think about which genre pool I jumped into before I did it. I just went with what I thought would sell best. There are a lot of big names floating around in here. I certainly hope you're right about my fan base growing. Time will tell. And patience is my watch word (even if we're rarely on speaking terms.)

      Happy Day After Friday the 13th! =o)

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  3. Thank you for sharing with us. This is definitely great info! :)

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