Self-publishing by the Gutter

PJanes

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Glad to hear things are moving along, here's hoping June will continue the trend.
 

Norman D Gutter

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Thanks Ann, Jazen, and PJ for the comments.

I'm making a mid-month report because I have news. First, a week ago I published a short story, "It Happened at the Burger Joint". This is a one-off story, modern literary is the best way I can describe it. Three sales so far, though I'm pretty sure I sold one at B&N, which will be reported later. It will only be an e-book until I gather some short stories into a collection.

I've finished another short story in my series on teenage grief, titled "Saturday Haircuts, Tuesday Funeral". It's simmering for a few days before I edit it then do the publishing thing with it. Also, our camera went kaput so I can't take the photo I want for the cover. Hopefully we'll get a replacement camera before long.

My completed novel, Headshots, is also simmering. I may take it off the stove this weekend and begin stirring and adding flavoring. I think the wife may want to beta-read it as well.

Then, this morning I pulled the trigger and the paperback version of my novella, The Gutter Chronicles: The Continuing Saga of Norman D. Gutter, Engineer, went live at CreateSpace; still waiting for it to make its way to Amazon proper. The e-book has been available since late 2012, and I've sold a grand total of 8 of it. However, so far yesterday and today I have 7 orders for this from people I work with, with little effort. Since it is a spoof of the civil engineering consulting business, and that's the type of company I work for, I was hoping for some sales. I think I'll sell about 20-25 locally. Here's the cover, which I did myself using G.I.M.P. I don't claim it's a great cover, but I think it will do the job.

Print-Cover-02-418x315.jpeg



With those pre-sales and e-book sales of all my items continuing at the pace they've been at for the last couple of months, June looks as if it will be a good month. I may top 20 sales. Especially if I can get that short story published. Now up to 15 items self-published.
 

Jazen

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You are rockin' and rollin' :) hope the momentum keeps up for you.
 

Norman D Gutter

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Reporting with June sales. Sold a total of 26 books, which is my second-best month ever. I released two short stories during the month, which only sold four copies total. I also released the paperback version of The Gutter Chronicles: The Continuing Saga of Norman D. Gutter, Engineer. Despite the title and the fact that you know me here as Norman D. Gutter, this is not a memoir. It a novella dealing with humorous situations in the workplace. It pokes fun at the civil engineering business.

Since the company Norman works for in the book is I.C.E., and I work for a company named C.E.I., people here in the office seem to think it shows people and circumstances that are real, even though I say on the copyright page "This is a work of fiction. No real people are depicted herein." And they're buying the paperback in a way they didn't buy the e-book. I presold 19, and 3 more after the books were in. Four of the pre-sales aren't delivered yet, so I'm not counting them in June.

I also sold a handful of other e-books, including another copy in Japan of my Thomas Carlyle public domain book. Six different titles had a sale in June, which continues an upward trend. I would hope so, with sixteen titles now available. I'll paste in the table below. To see it at a larger size, click to my blog and then click through to the table.

Now, back to my completed novel. The wife and I read it aloud the last three nights, and I have plenty of edits to type and write. Then on to formatting my poetry book for publication. And, this month I started research and writing on a new non-fiction book.

2014-06-Book-Sales-529x227.png
 

cwbrowning

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Congratulations on a great June!! Your spoof on your workplace sounds like fun. I had to chuckle because my father made his living as an electrical engineer and there is a running joke in my family regarding engineers in general. If Civil Engineers are anything like the rest, I'm sure your book is hysterical! ;-)

Here's hoping the momentum carries over into July for you!
 

PJanes

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Congrats on having another great month.

And a disclaimer like that is so standard that most people will probably read right over it/disregard it.
 

AgathaChristieFan

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Congrats on your sales, Norman!!! I'm excited for you. When I was looking at your Amazon page, there was a novel and short story I'm interested in buying. I hope you continue with your sales momentum!

If I was your co-worker I'd buy your book too, and look to see if a character was based off of me LOL. One of my co-workers (I work in an office) challenged me to write a story based off of her and everyone else, like a thriller. I hope she likes it--I couldn't resist.
 

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Thanks for sharing the numbers. Things are looking great for you! Wish you continued success!!!
 

Norman D Gutter

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I'm late posting July sales, as up until yesterday we were babysitting our three grandkids. Taking care of a 6, 3, and 1 year old tends to throw a 62 year old granddad for a loop. I figured I'd wait till I got back to work and do it from here, in the peace and quiet of a thousand things to do after a week off.

I sold 9 books in July, not including any that may post late via Smashwords. Looking for the best spin on that, that keeps up a better number than the absolutely dismal and deflating numbers in late 2013 and early 2014. Looking at it realistically, four of those sales were really in June, but I didn't deliver the books until July and received payment then, so I count them in July. So true July sales were only 5, which is back to almost dismal. August is starting out slowly as well, with no sales so far.

On the other hand, I added 2 sales to June, reported late via Smashwords.

My completed novel is out with five beta readers. One has reported back with some edits. Mainly she doesn't like my use of commas and beginning sentences with "And". The others have had it three weeks and only two have reported back that they're even reading it. That's normal in my experience, as beta readers almost always fail me. Not sure why I use them. It's a baseball novel, a sequel to my previous baseball novel, and I sure wanted it out this summer. I may just have to go ahead without any more beta reader feedback.

I also started on my next non-fiction book, Documenting America: Civil War Edition. I'm about 1/5th of the way into that.

Here's the table, and a link to the full size one.

2014-07-Book-Sales-Table-504x209.png
 
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Norman D Gutter

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The sequel to my baseball novel, Headshots, is done, and available for pre-order at Amazon and Smashwords. It's been available for pre-order at Amazon since Aug 20; I have 2 pre-orders as of this morning. Publication date is tomorrow, August 28.

It is the sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, which, because of the sequel coming out, I put on sale for $0.99. So far three people have jumped on the sale. [ETA]: Now five sales.
 
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Norman D Gutter

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[9 Sept: Edited to correct the number of sales from 10 to 12]
August was a mixed bag. I had a total of 12 sales, which doesn't look too bad, and is in line with April through July sales. I also had some late reports at Smashwords, and added a sale or two to June and July. Hopefully I'll have some to add to August as well.

However, 7 of those 12 sales came from my reducing the price on my baseball novel from $3.99 to $0.99 in advance of issuing the sequel in August, and making two Facebook posts about it. Except for that, I've had exactly 2 Kindle sales since July 26. They've completely dried up since Kindle Unlimited started. The new novel has one sale. One. It had two pre-orders, but apparently one person couldn't come up with the $3.99 so the book didn't ship. My promotion was limited to Facebook posts and a few e-mails. A friend asked me when the third book in the series will be out. I told him probably never, as it doesn't make a lot of sense to put months of time into writing a sequel when the first book sells 17 books in two years and its sequel can't sell more than 1 copy at its debut. I actually didn't have a third planned.

Discouraged doesn't begin to describe it. I guess I'll finish my non-fiction w-i-p, but will rethink everything after that.

I'm not going to mess with posting a sales table this month.
 
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Celeste Carrara

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So sorry to hear this Norman! But, perhaps a new marketing strategy is in order? I would hate to see you give up what you enjoy doing. We all have down moments with lackluster sales and times when we get discouraged by things with our writing. But try to look at the positive. You have had sales. You have great reviews. Maybe you just haven't found your audience yet?
 

Norman D Gutter

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4 Years of Self-Publishing

Today marks the fourth anniversary of my first self-published item going live on Amazon. I wrote a blog post about it here. It's not a profound post, just a simple report. I last posted to this thread with August 2014 sales. The summary of the statistics since then and for the four years is:

17 items published
345 total sales in 48 months
2014 Sept - 2 sales
2014 Oct - 2 sales
2014 Nov - 0 sales
2014 Dec - 0 sales
2015 Jan - 7 sales

These are net sales. I've had some purchases and returns in addition to these. The January sales come mainly from a couple of people at church who learned of my baseball novels and purchased the e-books. No feedback yet. Also, two surprising paperback sales of my first novel, on the same day.

The main thing I've learned is that I just can't promote myself. To make a post on social media about my books just about kills me; I hate it. Consequently I limit my promotion to about one post per month. I'll blame that on my parents, if a man 63 years old can still blame his parents for anything.

Meanwhile, some things in life have come crashing in on me, causing what I call The Great Time Crunch. In Aug-Sept I learned I have a previously unknown half-sister. Meeting and getting to know her, along with a new niece, nephew, and five grand-nephews, has taken time. Possibly there's a future book in that. My wife's home-based business is failing, and in October we began a serious effort to right that ship. As of now things are worse. It takes all my free evening time, and most of the weekends.

Hence, I'm not writing. I have four started works that lay abandoned, with no hopes of coming back to any of them soon. About the only good news is I found an artist to do a cover for my completed poetry book. She might finish it by the end of this week. If she does finish it, I'll publish it as a paperback, and maybe an e-book. Of course, given that poetry doesn't sell.... Beyond that, I have nothing at all scheduled for writing for the next year.

"It's always darkest before dawn." Isn't that what they always say? If so, dawn must be just around the corner.
 
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M. H. Lee

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Norman,

So sorry to hear that things have been so rough for you. I admire your sticking with this and writing what you love for the past four years and hope you do find time to get that poetry book out and that your wife's business turns itself around. And congrats on the new family members? (My grandma had something similar happen to her when she was in her early 50s.)

I realize you're focused on a number of issues right now, but I just wanted to say that I am horrible at promotion, too. Horrible at it. But what I've found gives me a nice little bump is using Bknights promos on Fiverr. They're only $5 and I pretty consistently have had 300-500 downloads when I run a free book and a handful of KU borrows. Sometimes I see follow-through sales to other books, sometimes not. And if I run a 99 cent promo I've had anywhere from 5 sales to 30 on a title itself with some follow through sales to related titles. So, may be worth giving it a shot? For me it makes me feel like I'm trying something to attract readers.

Or you could set the first baseball novel to permafree and let it ride while you're dealing with everything at home. See if it leads to sales of book #2?

Just some ideas. You've kept with this for so long I'd hate to see you give up on it now.
 

MartinD

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Norman, sorry life is hitting you hard about now. Maybe I'm alone in this but I think it's pretty cool that over 300 people have read the words you've written. More will read those words in the future.

Good luck with whatever happens in the future.
 

Norman D Gutter

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I haven't made a sales report since mid-February. That's in part because, as usual, I don't have a lot of sales to report. But, it's not all bad. I've decided to report results quarterly, rather than monthly. Seeing those small numbers every month is depressing. At least most quarters are in double digits. I'm still tracking them monthly, but will only post results quarterly. Here's a record of my sales by the quarter, not including any late reports that might come via Smashwords.

.........1Q.....2Q.....3Q.....4Q
2011....2.......7......11.....15
2012...16.....73......45.....22
2013...14.....22......16.....13
2014.....7.....48......27......2
2015...11......25

I don't know how well that table will line up.

My 2015 sales are mainly of my two new books, both of which are paperback only. One is my long-completed but just published poetry book. The other is a family history book I wrote in advance of my wife's family reunion coming up in a few weeks. Actually, I only sold one of those in June, but so far in July have sold 11. It's listed on Amazon, but really just for the cousins in the extended family. My goal is to sell 20, and that looks achievable. If my sales can just hold up at this rate, at least I'll beat last year's sales.

I have many tasks on my writing to-do list. Most days I wonder if it's folly to keep on, but I do. I'll see where I stand at the end of the year.

Best Regards,
NDG
 
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Norman D Gutter

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Time for my quarterly report. I sold 37 books in the third quarter of 2015. Here's the table:

.........1Q.....2Q.....3Q.....4Q
2011....2.......7......11.....15
2012...16.....73......45.....22
2013...14.....22......16.....13
2014.....7.....48......27......2
2015...11.....25......37

While that looks better, they were mostly paperback sales of the family history book I wrote prior to my wife's family reunion (which I organized, go figure). I was hoping to sell 20 books, but sold 27, to the cousins mostly through Amazon. I took my inventory of all my paperbacks with me and sold a few of the family book and one each of two others to cousins. I also sold one copy of the family book later, via Amazon. Don't know if that was a cousin buying it late, or if it came from a notice I put on a genealogy website for the family name. It would be nice to see a few sales from that.

Sales tapered off in September, which does not bode well for the fourth quarter. I'm on track to sell just a few more books than last year, but just barely. In August and September I published two more short stories, neither of which has seen a sale yet. Now up to 21 total publications, and still waiting for that long tail to twitch.
 

Norman D Gutter

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So, time for the 2015 report. First, I'll add 4th quarter 2015 sales to my word processed table:

.........1Q.....2Q.....3Q.....4Q
2011....2.......7......11.....15
2012...16.....73......45.....22
2013...14.....22......16.....13
2014.....7.....48......27......2
2015...11.....25......38......9

That adds to 83 sales in 2015, up one from 2014. Most likely all sales have been reported. Since I had set a condition that I had to increase sales in 2015 or I would put my writing "career" on the shelf, I guess I'll go on.

My blog post here gives a breakdown. 51 of those sales were of titles published in 2015, 63 were print books, and 24 were personal sales.

Despite not having great sales, I guess I'm not disappointed either. Given what life threw at me this year, and the limited time I had to write and essentially zero time or money to promote, I could expect nothing more and might have expected a lot less. My best selling book was a family history that my wife's cousins bought prior to and at the family reunion.

I'm having trouble with the image uploader, so can't insert my sales table. My blog has a full-size version of it.

Best regards,
NDG
 

FionnJameson

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Wow, Norman! You hit your goal, so please don't stop! :) Here's hoping 2016 gets you even more sales!
 

Norman D Gutter

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I'm rather late with this report, but here's how the first quarter went.

.........1Q.....2Q.....3Q.....4Q
2011....2.......7......11.....15
2012...16.....73......45.....22
2013...14.....22......16.....13
2014.....7.....48......27......2
2015...11.....25......38......9
2016.... 9

So not a great quarter, though better than some. That's with almost no promotion. In March I had a radio interview on one of my books. Did a couple of pre-broadcast posts on Facebook and had 5 sales. Didn't get a single sale after the interview aired.
 

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wow, I've been making do with 10 dollars worth of Fiverr promotions. It hasn't gotten me anything besides 18 pages read. (I sold 9 before I ever when KU and those were before the promos anyway.) I don't feel quite so bad now. If you can't get anything after a radio broadcast, I sure shouldn't expect much after my two five dollar promos.

I wish you well. Thanks for sharing.