Self-publishing: my experience so far

I'm a midlist author of science fiction, science-fantasy, and crime fiction. After selling 17 novels to trade publishers of various sizes and almost 60 stories to pro markets, earlier this year I launched a self-publishing venture. I epubbed some of my backlist novels and put together collections of short stories that had run in F&SF, Asimov's, and other venues.

I started in February with two novels and gradually added to the list until I had nine titles out, including one trunk book. Results were not bad, I thought. I was selling 9 or 10 ebooks a day, and the add-on of four POD paperback titles added 20 or 30 sales a month.

Over the past three months, however, sales tailed off. I'm now selling two to three ebooks a day and only a dozen ppbks this month. So I reduced the price of one of my epubbed story collections to zero on Smashwords and Kobo, which led to Amazon price-matching the freebie (Amazon won't let you set a book at $0.00; pricing is at their discretion).

I also paid BookBub $80 for a promotion. Yesterday, they sent out an email to their 240,000 (they say) subscribers in the sf category. They'll also advertise the free download on their website untill December 4.

At the time of posting, it is 16 hours since I received the email advertising the freebie. I'm assuming everyone else on BookBub's sf list got it at the same time. Right now, Amazon is reporting 12,888 downloads of the collection, and Smashwords and Kobo show a few hundred more. The book is ranked number one in Amazon's free Kindle store, in the sf category.

So I would say the BookBub promotion is a success. The thing to be decided is how many of the free-takers of the story collection will come back and buy a $2.99 ebook. The MC in the stories is also the hero of three novels (originally published by Nightshade Books), so I'm hoping that those who like the stories will want to follow the hero's later adventures in long form.

I'll report as information accumulates.

Spell-it-out said:

Hi Matthew.

I think you've done the right thing here with offering the first book free. I'm assuming that your free period is ended as from where I'm sitting it costs $3.10, but the rank still displays #10 in Kindle Free store.

Click to expand...

It's probably limited to Amazon.com and Amazon.ca. It's up to Amazon how and where and when they price-match.

Spell-it-out said:

Did you consider running another bookbub advert for a 99c piece?

Click to expand...

No. My research tells me that $2.99 is the best price point, while free brings in the most new readers. But considering the success of this one, I may offer another short story collection as a freebie down the road.

Spell-it-out said:

Oh, on a side note. Did the print rights with your publisher expire after a certain amount of time, or how does that work?

Click to expand...

The rights situation varies from title to title. The short story collections consist of stories I've sold first North American serial or first world rights to. After publication in the mags, I hold all the other rights, so I can publish them as ebooks and POD paperbacks.

With the novels, some have gone out of print and all rights have reverted to me, while for others I retained erights from the beginning. And one title, Paroxysm, was a trunk book.

Ann Joyce said:

Thanks for sharing your self-publishing journey with us. It's interesting to read about the kind of success you're having. Will be looking forward to your updates.

Click to expand...

I think I may turn out to be occupying a different part of the bell curve from the kind of self-pubbers who are selling thousands of vampire romances a day.

But that's okay. Finding a market for collections of already-published short stories, even at $2.99 a collection, is a new definition of the metaphor: money for old rope.