My First Month of Sales – Sharing My Experience

This is a copy/paste from over on the Writers Cafe:

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So one month ago today my first book, Oranje went live on Amazon and other places.

One of the things I love about the Writers Cafe is people sharing their experience and how things are going for them. In that vein, here is a report on my first month of sales and what I’ve already got planned going forward. I plan on doing a similar thread once I reach six months, I think it’ll be interesting to see how I’m doing then and compare it to now.

A few things to note

  • This is my first book
  • I am a debut author
  • I have no pre-existing fanbase

Sales

In my first month I’ve sold a grand total of 21 copies of Oranje. The breakdown is:

Amazon.com (ebook): 12
Amazon.co.uk (ebook): 4
Amazon.com (paperback): 3
Amazon.co.uk (paperback): 2

Book availability

The book can be bought on Amazon as both ebook and paperback, and iBook and Nook via Draft2Digital. I’m also waiting for it to go live on kobo as well through the same route.

Investment

I spent $1100 on a full copy edit and 2 proof reads from Red Adept Publishing.

The awesome cover is courtesy of the one and only Jason Gurley. It on it’s own cost $800, but the covers for the other 3 books in the series only cost $600 in total so I’m dividing the total cost of the covers over each book, so $350.

Pricing

The book started at $4.99/£2.99, but I dropped it to $2.99/£1.99 in the first week. I figure as a debut author with my first book, a lower price might help people take a gamble on me. Not noticed much difference from that so far though.

Reviews/ratings

No reviews so far, and the only rating I’ve had is a 2/5 on Goodreads. A bit disappointing but a quick look at the persons other reviews shows quite different tastes to mine so not surprising.

Marketing

I announced its release on my twitter and facebook (for friends and family recently). This got a few initial sales, most of which came in February, but since then have dropped off.

I’ve run it on StoryCartel, but had no reviews as a result.

Future Plans

I’m running a members giveaway on LibraryThing. It expires on the 29th, and 33 people have signed up so far.

I’ve also set one up on Goodreads, which has made 130 people add the book to their list (though I know that rarely translates into a read or sale), and 270+ people have signed up for the giveaway, which is to win one of two signed copies.

Later in April I’ve paid for a Book Discovery spot from KBoards for the 22nd April. I’m hoping I’ll have a few reviews by then and it’ll give me a nice boost.

In terms of the next book in the series, already 14k words through it and think it’ll be done a lot quicker than the first one was.

Overall feelings

I’m happy with how it’s going. I’ve had several people tell me they love the sample, and my wife and mother-in-law (not exactly sci-fi fans) and really enjoying it. Got bombarded with setting questions by both of them last weekend.

I’m an unknown author with no reviews on my book, so the sales are about what I’d expect. I’m hopeful they will pick up with what I’ve already got planned, but I also know the very best thing I can do is finish the next book and get it out there.

I hope this information is useful, and helps provide insight on my experience so far. I think it will be very interesting to do another one of these at six months and see how far I’ve got by then.

Thanks for reading :)