Twelve Days, Eleven Sales

I e-republished a short story, so I wasn't expecting as many sales. Still, the numbers might interest a few people.

iTunes, Amazon, and B&N -- unit sales vs. royalties as a percentage of the whole pie:


PubNumbers.002 by Deirdre Saoirse Moen, on Flickr


PubNumbers.003 by Deirdre Saoirse Moen, on Flickr

Various store links if anyone cares.

Sure, I'll update it for a few months, see what happens. I mostly post on LiveJournal because I've gotten lazy.

I have had a blog for quite a few years, but didn't really update it from 2007-2010, and I'm still not updating it frequently enough. Gave it a fluff and fold recently, then updated my sff.net site, which still isn't pretty enough.

Well, I did announce on iBooks first, but I followed up with Kindle and B&N the following day.

I have read more than one novel on my iPhone, but now that I've got an iPad, I consider the iPhone hardship duty for long reading.

Grady, it looks like you went through Smashwords, where I went directly through iBooks. I don't know if that's a significant difference, though.

Wow, I wasn't aware Smashwords premium was such a long process.

Norman: gotcha. I thought it seemed odd!

So -- I posted this because I don't consider the sales numbers impressive. Consider: for me to actually receive a check from iTunes, I'd need to earn $150 in royalties. For a 99c e-book, that means 217 copies.

As for promotion: nothing specific. I have links on my sites and I have mentioned it in blog posts. I have a Goodreads account and a Facebook author page.

Yes, they require bank account information. I think it's just that they expect a higher threshold than most other places. So, even though you may earn less per book through Smashwords [1], you may get that money faster as you'll reach the minimum check threshold quicker, if that makes sense.

Also note that this isn't per book: I'm free to upload other stuff and meet the $150 with other products, too.

When I was in grad school, I read Scalzi's Old Man's War on my iPhone (it was a required text), but now I'm really glad I have an iPad for reading. The only time I read on my phone these days is if I'm stranded somewhere without my iPad.

[1] Edited to add clarification: I meant selling on iBooks through Smashwords, not directly on Smashwords' own site.

Wow, I made the self-pub index and all. Go, me!

Yeah, well, haven't seen a lot of dough, but just got $0.49 and $1.11 for Amazon royalties for Germany and UK -- from 2011.

2-1/2 years of data. As far as quantity of money, let's just say it's gotten to the "an awkward number of lattes to carry" phase, but still well under $100. (This is a self-repubbed reprint, so I'd already expected that most of the market was tapped.)

Oh, and once I passed $5 in sales, I got a bank transfer from Apple, so I didn't have to wait for $150.


Link to original larger image.


Link to original larger image.