End of year sales report

I’m an aspiring author with no print publishing credentials. Three months ago I published my first science fiction ebook, Dead Dwarves, Dirty Deeds, to Amazon Kindle. It is a short story trilogy about criminal scumbags in the 22^nd century. It’s hard-boiled, action-packed, violent, tech noir, cyberpunk. I published it as a test before my full length novel. I used it as to get accustomed to the publishing process.

I hoped to sell 30 copies in October. Alas, I only sold 12. And even fewer in November, only 9! I spent $643.34 to produce the book. In return, I had earned a whopping $7.35 in sales. In two months I had earned back 1.1% of my investment. This did not do much to buoy my spirits.

On November 22^nd, 2010, I published my first full-length novel, Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance, and things started to change. As you can see in the daily sales chart below, my sales increased when I had two books and started to advertise. (Click to view larger.)

The yellow areas indicate where I spent money on advertising. There are definitely upticks in sales. However, I cannot say with 100% surety that those sales were caused by the advertising. It’s only a correlation. But, I’m inclined to believe that a good portion of the upticks would not have happened if I had not advertised.

I have spent $205.34 on advertising, and earned a total of $199.59 on book sales. I’m almost breaking even. With some more experience running ads and vigilance of my ad campaigns, I’m betting I can start earning more than I spend on advertising.

I am not saying advertising is for everyone. But, I believe it definitely improves my numbers. And, since my numbers are so small, the improvement is significant. If you’re selling dozens of books a day, you probably won’t see much uptick in sales if you advertise as I did. (See my previous post for my earlier evaluation of advertising, with comparisons of Bing, Google, and Project Wonderful.) 

Finally, here are the total sales by book for my first 3 months (click to view larger):

My sales went from 13 in October, to 21 in November, to 122 in December. December’s 500% increase in sales is great to see but also very daunting. I do not expect to see January sales jump as much. But, I won’t complain if they do. ;)

My records
Best sales day = 10 books sold on December 31
3.93 books sold per day in December

What did I learn from the first 3 months? Two important things:

Sales will improve, even if they slump now and then. So, don’t lose hope.

Advertising helps, especially when you have low sales. If you can afford it, I’d definitely suggest that you advertise. Project Wonderful is where I had the most success with advertising. You should check them out.