One Month

Numbers fascinate me. I like to figure out ways to manipulate them to tell stories, much as I try to do with words. I am a compulsive user of spreadsheets for this reason.

As such, it makes perfect sense that I’d try to track as much numerical data about this self-publishing adventure as I possibly could, with the hope that I could spot trends. Did a specific activity I performed lead to a direct spike in sales — preferably of a permanent nature — such that I could repeat it and see similar spikes?

After collecting a month of data and looking through the numbers and the activities, I’ve come to the same conclusion others have reached after far longer journeys on this path. The road to great sales is paved with luck. I say that because I have only one activity I can correlate to an incredible surge in sales over the past two weeks, but I’m not exactly certain I can track everything back to that, and I’ll explain why.

So, we’ll look at numbers. I’ll go week-by-week with average sales per day, and you’ll perhaps see why I’m both confused and thrilled at the same time.

On October 1, I had no sales but one return. On October 2, I had one sale. Thankfully, this has been by far my worst 48 hours stretch since publishing. If you take that two-day blip out, I was running 5-7 copies/day for the first three weeks, with some dips as low as 3-4 and spikes up as high as 9. In those three weeks, the only double-digit sales day was my first, which came in at an even 10. I did very little face-to-face promotion, but did post the book on sites like GoodReads, LibraryThing, and KindleBoards. I also set up a Facebook page and Twitter account. I don’t think I did anything out of the ordinary of other first-time indie authors. I sent out Tweets, wrote Facebook posts, and talked about my book on GoodReads. Others (hi, family!) did a lot of word-of-mouth advertising for me, once they’d read the book. I probably directly initiated a discussion about the book with 3-4 people. I got some Tweet campaigns and retweets on Twitter from various accounts.

In the midst of this, the most notable thing I did was join Amazon’s KDP Select.

For those not familiar with the terms, KDP is Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program, which enables anyone to upload a specially formatted book file and a separate cover file, answer a few questions (such as: price of book, minimum $0.99), and have the eBook available for sale within about 12 hours. Select is an optional program within KDP, in which authors get some additional promotional options, including up to five days in which you are allowed to set your book’s price to free. In exchange, your eBook must be available only on Amazon for 90 days. (If you’re looking for my book at Barnes and Noble, or Kobo, or on iTunes, you won’t find it; this is why.)

In general, new and independently published authors suffer for a lack of exposure and the lack of an existing audience. The ability to set your book to no cost is often the only way readers will take a chance on an author they don’t know. Authors can set dates for this, notify a number of promotional sites, and hope to get hundreds or thousands of downloads of people who might enjoy their writing and look for more.

While that option was certainly interesting, I opted for KDP Select for a different (primary) reason. I wanted to focus on writing, not on trying to navigate the hurdles to publish on other platforms. Don’t get me wrong: I would like my books available for sale on every possible site and platform. The reality is, though, that Amazon’s sales dwarf those of the others, and they make the process of getting a book on their site far easier. By putting my book in Select, I forced myself to write, rather than work on the conversions, formatting, and uploading hurdles I’d otherwise face. (For those interested, I’m planning to get the two Aliomenti Saga books listed in the trackers to the right side of the web site done and on Amazon, and then take a break from writing new material while I get all three publications into paperback and, eventually, on the remaining sites.)

I haven’t run any free promotions yet, and my term in Select is due to expire early in January. Therefore, I don’t know how the “free promotion” approach would work with this specific book. Others have had tremendous success. If you are a writer, I’d recommend reading about as many author experiences with the program as possible before making the decision that’s best for you. Some put everything in Select and stay, perfectly happy. Others don’t like the exclusivity requirement and the risk of putting all sales in the hands of one vendor. Your mileage will vary.

On the morning of October 13^th, I got my first review on Amazon. By the end of that day, I’d sold 21 copies, or triple my average. I’ve only been below 20 sales in a day twice since then, and the worst of those was still 15 sales. Over the past seven days, I’m averaging 29 sales a day.

Can I tie it all back to that one review? There’s nothing else that I can directly point to that might explain it. Perhaps I was getting plenty of visibility on the book’s page before that, and that single review was sufficient to turn lookers into buyers. I have no way of knowing; unique page views and clickthrough rates aren’t statistics I can get. Regardless, that boost in sales on the 13^th (lucky day) also got the book into the Top 100 lists in several categories, and even into the Top 20s in some of the categories. I suspect the continued brisk sales pace comes from that visibility.

Here’s the table with numbers:

As may be apparent by now, this has far exceeded my expectations. My hope was to sell one book a day, on average, because everything I’ve read suggested that was optimistic-but-reasonable. I’m actually at a pace right now of just over one book per hour.

I will continue to be amazed and thankful and will write the sequels as quickly as I possibly can for all of the readers who have made this crazy dream such a rewarding experience. If you’re reading this, please accept my thanks and my gratitude for being a part of this.

EDIT: Since this post, I’ve gotten two more ratings for the book, which have pulled the average rating down to 3.7 from a 5.0. I’m told in “Amazon-speak” that anything under 4.0 translates to “move along, nothing worth reading here.” The numbers bears that out, with sales per day dropping in half and trending down. While it’s not a large sample size, statistically speaking, it does bear out that the best way to help an author whose work you enjoy is to leave a positive rating and review.