Michael W. Lucas just posted his hard sales numbers from January and talked about them in a quick manner. It’s for a book that was too short for his regular traditional publisher.
The post is short and very clear. Worth the read. http://blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/1236
Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than one hundred popular novels and well over two hundred published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom. He writes under many pen names and has also ghosted for a number of top bestselling writers.
Dean has also written books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and has done scripts for Hollywood. One movie was actually made.
Over his career he has also been an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books. He is now an executive editor for Fiction River.
WMG Publishing Inc. is now my major publisher of all my coming novels, collections, and short stories.
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Interesting indeed. My *numbers* are nothing as yet, but my sales distribution across e-tailers is somewhat similar: 53% Amazon, 35% Smashwords, 12% B&N.
All available channels –
Dean,
I seem to remember that you have been posting that saying a lot lately.
Cyn
I’m not interested in the subject matter, but if I were, I’d have bought that book from Smashwords too. I’m not willing to make a financial bet on how the format wars will turn out, not yet anyway, so I only buy PDFs. Amazon and B&N don’t offer PDFs, so I don’t buy from either of them. The small presses that produce the e-books I read offer PDF, but I’m very glad that Smashwords is around and offers a PDF option for writers who indie publish.
Angie
Are you still planning to do your own post on pricing?
You mentioned that there are other outlets besides Smashwords B&N and Amazon. Other than places requiring ISBN #s and hence (as it seems to me) additional expenses, I haven’t found other outlets.
(re pricing: When I see so many self-pubbed novels priced at 4.99, I think of your sheep video. A little variety would probably help the self published novels blend better with the trade published novels)
Teri,
Yes, I have it mostly done, but am holding off for a week or so. The basic thrust is that prices are going up and writers should do their best to get out of the 99 cent range, and not be afraid of the $6.99-$7.99 range for novels and large collections.So in a week or so I’ll post that and let the screaming begin. (grin)
Dean, I’ll be very interested to hear your thoughts on the $6.99-$7.99 range. The novel I currently have available is 160,000 words and priced at $5.99. I suspect it’s under-priced, but I’m not sure. I need more clarity on pricing and hope I’ll have it after reading your blog on the subject!
I find that sales vary WIDELY depending on title. My best selling short story on B&N has only sold one or two copies at Amazon. I consistently find that my gay male erotica sells better at B&N than at Amazon.
The only place where my sales are incredibly consistent is Smashwords. After the initial release, I sell nothing through Smashwords itself, only through the subsidiaries.
@Teri K. I also sell on the following sites:
AllRomanceEbooks/Omnilit (Omni is the non-romance arm)
XinXii (European site – sales have been miniscule for me there)
DriveThru Fiction (Specializes in SF/F)
Goodreads (no sales, but hey, it’s an outlet)
Books on Board (lots of hoops to set up an account with them)
There are others cropping up all the time, too.
Thanks, Anthea, for the list. Much appreciated. Any others anyone?
Every day I ride the New York Subway. I often strike up conversations with mostly women commuters who I see with ebook readers. Some times I promote my books but most often I just ask what they are reading, what type of ereader they have and why they chose that particular ereader.
Some of my titles actually sell better on the nook, because a disproportionate number of my target audience owns nook readers. I used to hear that the reason was the nook’s color screen. But when it comes to reading, most text is in black and white.
I think the real reason was you could buy the nook in an actual book store.
On smashwords I can barely give my books away. I had a book free on smashwords and was selling it for .99 cents on amazon, and had about ten downloads, but sold over a thousand on amazon before I changed the smaswords price. Not only did amazon not match the price, but people seemed to rather buy it than download it for free.
Again, most of my target audience isn’t that computer savy and would rather just download it from one location to one device.
Yes, Anthea, thanks for the list.
The only thing I have for .99 is a short story. I do have an essay for 1.99. I’d love to justify 2.99 becaues the royalty rate is so much better. It’s not selling much at 1.99, so I can’t see that raising the price will hurt much.
My .99 short story though does well.
What I like best about self publishing (which I mostly do under a pen name) is that I find I really prefer the novella length of about 20,000 – 30,000 words. It feels like a very natural length for me. I never did well with short stories. I don’t really think in small increments. And I often feel like I’m padding to get my work up to novel length.
Novella length feels perfect. It’s nice to have the freedom to write the length which feels right because an ebook can be any length at all.
I’m not sure why this is the case with me, but I haven’t sold a single thing on B&N in two months. Smashwords, next to nothing. I’d guess 90 percent of sales come from Amazon, the rest from the outlets Smashwords distributes to.
It’s a small market, but Goodreads now allows you to sell through them as well–the rates are good and the process painless.
-Dan
Thank you for that list, Anthea!
I may be swaying off topic here, but it’s been really interesting watching the different sales from the vendors. I have two titles published right now and after giving away my first as a loss leader (yeah I know, I jumped the gun) I got nearly 200 downloads. (notice I don’t say sales like some of these strange people on other boards) Since then, I’ve sold a few on BN, and the surprise is Amazon. The books are just starting to sell there, and though I feel I need to do at least a little promo, I have done practically none, and people are starting to find them.
On a side note, I find it interesting that BN isn’t making an effort to make things more accessible. When I look at sales on pubit, it just says the number of units sold. When I go to KDP, it tells me how many sales of each title, not just the total.
I’ve also seen a lot that writers find BN less efficient at finding their titles. I don’t see the problem, but many do, so it must be a concern.
If BN is trying to lock horns with amazon, perhaps they might try a little harder?
Aside from the little details and things here and there, I’m finding this whole thing to be a lot of fun. I write the book, have the artist do the cover, (he is ridiculously reasonable) format, and publish. Then occasionally glance at my sales and get excited when people find my books!
Such a fun time.
What is that, a tsunami? A thundering herd of elephants? No, it’s a link from DWS!
Another hard number for you folks: apparently a link from Dean’s blog generates about an extra 2,000 visitors over two days. Thankfully, I upgraded my server last week.
Hope you folks found the info useful.
==ml
Interesting stuff – thanks Michael.
Last month I raised the price of a stand alone YA Fantasy to $6.99 as an experiment. I’m now wondering how long I should let the experiment go on. The sales, which were only occasional, (as most of my stuff is at this point) have dropped to zero.
Dean, how long do you let pricing experiments last and do you have a method to decide whether they worked or not? Thought you might want to address this in your pricing post.
Linda, I would let a price stick for at least a half year. That way it gets through the natural market downturns such as Feb lulls every year. If you did it for any shorter term, you might do it right into this Feb natural lull in sales and think it was your price that caused it. At least six months. But I tend to change a price and just leave it. Never switched prices back and forth and honestly think that’s a waste of time and energy that could be used to write the next story.
Hi Ramon,
Poke around with the B&N interface a little, and it will show you the discrete numbers of sales per title. Remember, too, that the sales of “yesterday” and “today” don’t aggregate into the total of sales shown. Yes, silly, but easy to get used to.