Wednesday, June 1, 2011

May 2011 sales report

May was my eighth month selling ebooks.



I sold 2406 units of 4 different titles in May. That is a decrease of 20% from April’s sales of 3009 units. Sales for my 3 biggest selling titles declined. :(

My average sales per day were 100.3 in April and 77.6 in May.

Well, that doesn’t sound good at all, does it? But that’s only one part of the story. The other part is my royalties, which increased dramatically:



My royalties increased from $1454 in April to $2913 in May. That’s an increase of 100%.

This was because of my price increase for Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance. On May 9th, I raised the price for this ebook from 99 cents to $2.99. This change reduced the sales of the novel, and I think also hurt the sales of my related anthology, Dead Dwarves, Dirty Deeds. The anthology rode the coattails of the novel on the way up in sales numbers, but also rode the coattails on the way down. Even so, total royalties increased for the month.

Thanks to the surge in royalties from Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance, I’ve now made more money than I’ve spent on epublishing. I’ve spent about $4100, but I’ve earned royalties of $6200. That’s about $2100 in profit!

If sales continue at a similar pace, I’m hoping to earn at least $15000 in gross royalties for 2012. That’s pretty good for my first year, and much more than the $3000 I was hoping to make when I started this adventure.

In the daily royalty chart below, you can really see the dramatic increase in royalties in May. For the last several days, though, there has been dramatic fluctuation. I’ll be interested to see if that calms down or continues.



I’ll keep the novel at the higher price throughout June to see how much sales continue to decline, or maybe they’ll level out. I don’t really have any guess about that yet. But, I’ll lower the price back down to 99 cents in July.
Stay tuned!

10 comments:

  1. That's great news, Derek. I stand by my prediction!

    http://johncerdos.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/self-publishing-fiction-can-a-person-actually-live-on-it/

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  2. I think it is fantastic news and wholeheartedly congratulate you.

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  3. Congratulations!

    I dropped my price in May to 99 cents and had the best month ever since releasing Lie Merchants in late November 2010. I only sold 40 books in May, but it is the momentum of a rising sales trend that has me encouraged that readers are buying Lie Merchants and reading it.

    For June, I think I will keep the 99 cent price point to hopefully maintain the volume and in anticipation of releasing the sequel in the Fall.

    Thank you for sharing your sales data, that is generous and helps us other authors out.

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  4. The fascinating journey copntinues! Seems that, having reached a critical mass, the $2.99 is a good price for earnings. Looking forward to June result.
    Cheers, Ruby

    http://rubybarnes.blogspot.com

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  5. Wow, Derek! That is pretty fantastic :) Sorry to see the volume drop, but if you're making better royalties, that's great!

    I'm glad to see you've gotten into the black! Pure profit from here, baby ;)

    YA: Cheat, Liar, Coward
    Adult: Shackled

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  6. Thanks, all!

    For some reason, blogspot won't let me sign in to leave comments! Anyone else having the problem? I can still sign in to my dashboard, though.

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  7. Nope, seems to be working fine for me. I have problems with it if I have a Gmail account open that isn't linked with my Blogger profile, though. Could that be the problem?

    YA: Cheat, Liar, Coward
    Adult: Shackled

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  8. It seems like you're carving out a nice niche, and you may have hit the balance in price point and volume that you're looking for. Plus, you're already doing the most important thing, which is writing and pubbing the next book. Sometimes the hardest part is just being patient and waiting for it all to happen.

    In the meanwhile, you're becoming profitable and that's huge. Every dollar you're making now is a dollar you wouldn't have had if those manuscripts were sitting in a drawer (or a slush pile).

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  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  10. Hi, Derek, I was having the same problems on a Chicago sports blog I was writing on Blogger. I can get to my dashboard but I can't post comments to my own blog and can't sign in but can get to my dashboard also. Did you solve the issue? Did you find out anything?

    Congrats on the sales numbers! It's encouraging! I will keep following here!

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