Riding the Scree - RaelWV's SelfPub Thread

Time for the May sales report and, I have to say, I feel like John Grisham - I sold a whopping 3 books last month, one each from D2D, Createspace, and KDP. And I'm reasonably certain none of them are from family members or loved ones.

That makes the totals so far:

D2D = 1
CS = 11 (plus 1 via local bookstore)
KDP = 8

Total = 21

Although I nabbed my first D2D sale last month, I'm going to drop out of its channels and go KDP select for the next little bit and see what happens. From what I've read, it seems to be the way to go for first books and I probably should have started there. Oh well.

Hey, things are trending up. Four sales for June, two via KDP and two paperbacks in person at an event last week. So that makes the running total:

D2D = 1
CS = 11
Other paperback = 3
KDP = 10

Total = 25

Today my second "book" - actually a short story - went live. I've limited "The Destiny Engine" to Amazon for now. I've found I have a hard time pitching The Last Ereph and Other Stories, if for no other reason that it's hard to answer the "what's the book about?" question when there are ten stories to talk about. Interested to see if one story reaches a little broader audience.

A wee bit early for the July sales report (wife's birthday weekend getaway = no Internet shenanigans for a few days), such as it is:

The Last Ereph and Other Stories - no sales this month, so still hanging at 25
"The Destiny Engine" - 2 sales, plus 2 pages read via KU (if I'm reading the graph right) in the half month it's been out

This morning I launched my first Kindle Countdown sale, dropping The Last Ereph and Other Stories down to $0.99 through the weekend. I've submitted the deal to several websites and I've tried to push the Twitter stuff. I'll be interested to see if anything develops.

Time for the monthly report:

The Destiny Engine: no sales for this month, so still 2 total
The Last Ereph and Other Stories: 3 for this month, 2 paperbacks (one via CS, one via local bookstore) and 1 KDP for a grand total of 28

The big sales event was a complete bust in terms of sales - didn't net me any. It did, however, lead to lots of exposure in various places and helped more than double my number of Twitter followers. Hope that'll pay off down the road.

Time to focus on the novel (Moore Hollow) that come out next month!

Thanks for the kind words!

Time for the September report. I didn't have high expectations for this month, since I've mostly been focused on pushing out Moore Hollow next Monday (!). I didn't disappoint.

Aside from Interfaced's KU read of "The Destiny Engine" (thank you, BTW), I didn't sell anything else last month. That boosts it's sales to a grand total of 3, with The Last Ereph . . . still at 28.

I ran giveaways on Goodreads and LibraryThing for Moore Hollow, which had pretty good responses. More than 1100 people entered the Goodreads giveaway (one person was in such a frenzy her finger slipped and gave the book a 5-star rating already!), with about 400 of those putting on their "to read" shelf. The turnout at LibraryThing wasn't as good as it was for The Last Ereph . . ., but a higher percentage of the winners actually got back to me so I could send them the right eBook format, so the actual number of units out was still higher. Still don't grok why people would enter to win a book, then not respond when someone tells them they're a winner.

On to October!

What Polenth said. At this point, if the pirates are reading, that's OK!

raelwv said:

Aside from Interfaced's KU read of "The Destiny Engine" (thank you, BTW), I didn't sell anything else last month. That boosts it's sales to a grand total of 3, with The Last Ereph . . . still at 28.

Click to expand...

Actually, I went to Empire Books today to drop off copies of Moore Hollow and found out they sold another copy of The Last Ereph . . ., so that's 29 total, which breaks down to:

D2D = 1
CS = 12
Other paperback = 5
KDP = 11

Total = 29

It's like finding a sale behind a couch cushion!

From your lips to readers' ears!

October was a big month, personally, as it saw the release of my first novel, Moore Hollow. I am still eagerly awaiting the fame and fortune that flows from such an achievement (snark!). I did a little bit of promo for this one and had a much bigger reach on social media than I did when I launched The Last Ereph . . . back in February. I also had a couple of appearances here at the end of the month that helped, including last weekend's reborn West Virginia Book Festival. The book festival was particularly good for boosting my mailing list. And I was particularly pleased that 2 of the 3 Moore Hollow sales from a bookstore appearance last night were complete and utter strangers.

Here's the numbers:

For Moore Hollow: 12 paperbacks (11 in the flesh, 1 via CS) & 3 eBooks via Amazon (none via D2D)
For The Last Ereph: 2 paperbacks (both in the flesh)

Which makes the totals:

Moore Hollow: 15 (12 paperback, 3 eBook)
The Last Ereph: 31 (19 paperback, 12 eBook)

Now on to NaNoWriMo!

Time for the good (?) news for November. All sales were ebooks via Amazon this month:

Moore Hollow - 7
"The Destiny Engine" - 1
The Last Ereph . . . - 233 (free downloads)

I did a promo with BKnights running Moore Hollow for 99 cents and TLE for free. The free promo actually pushed The Last Ereph . . . to #2 in its little ecosystem, which was kind of neat. Aside from that, I was pleasantly surprised that both my Goodreads giveaway winners for Moore Hollow left reviews (brief, but good). And NaNoWriMo went very well!

So the running totals:

Moore Hollow - 22 (12 paperbacks, 10 eBooks)
"The Destiny Engine" - 4
The Last Ereph - 31 (19 paperback, 12 eBook) sales, 233 freebies

I usually wait until the first of the month to do an update, but since tomorrow's a holiday . . .

December sales were . . . nonexistent. Thankfully, I had some page reads in KU for Moore Hollow (202), but nothing otherwise, at least electronically (I haven't checked my brick and mortar retailers). Which means my totals for the year are:

Moore Hollow - 22 (12 paperbacks, 10 eBooks) + 202 KU pages
"The Destiny Engine" - 4 + 20 KU pages
The Last Ereph - 31 (19 paperback, 12 eBook) sales, 233 freebies

On a more positive note, Moore Hollow has been accepted for sale at Tamarack, the WV arts & crafts center. It's a jurired thing, so I'm happy about that.

And my lovely wife is bringing me a brownie and wine. So that helps.

Happy New Year, everybody!

A new year! Surprisingly, similar numbers.

I did a promo via BKnights at the beginning of the month, which prompted all of my Amazon sales. Bottom line appears to be that when I do promo, people buy the books. The numbers

Moore Hollow - 4 eBooks, 6 paperbacks (via Tamarack), 263 KU pages
"The Destiny Engine" - 1 eBook

TOTALS
Moore Hollow - 32 (18 paperbacks, 14 eBooks) + 465 KU pages
"The Destiny Engine" - 5 + 20 KU pages
The Last Ereph - 31 (19 paperback, 12 eBook) sales, 233 freebies

raelwv said:

TOTALS
Moore Hollow - 32 (18 paperbacks, 14 eBooks) + 465 KU pages
"The Destiny Engine" - 5 + 20 KU pages
The Last Ereph - 31 (19 paperback, 12 eBook) sales, 233 freebies

Click to expand...

Had a meeting with a new writers' group tonight at a local coffee shop/bookstore and found that they'd sold all 5 copies of Moore Hollow I left them and 1 copy of The Last Ereph . . .. So, yet again revised totals:

Moore Hollow - 37 (23 paperbacks, 14 eBooks) + 465 KU pages
"The Destiny Engine" - 5 + 20 KU pages
The Last Ereph - 32 (20 paperback, 12 eBook) sales, 233 freebies

No promos in January (although I did drop prices mid month), which meant, of course, no sales. All I had was 152 KU pages for The Last Ereph (about a whole book). Work continues on The Water Road trilogy.

Running totals:

Moore Hollow - 37 (23 paperbacks, 14 eBooks) + 465 KU pages
"The Destiny Engine" - 5 + 20 KU pages
The Last Ereph - 32 (20 paperback, 12 eBook) sales, 233 freebies + 152 KU pages