Category Archives: eBooks
I keep getting emails asking how sales are going, and decided a quick post was in order. In rapid-fire bullet form:
- In the first 5 days of June, I outsold April.
- I’ve sold 143 copies so far in June (it is now the evening of the 9th), almost equal to my May sales.
- I’ve spent most of the past two weeks in the hourly top 100 for police procedurals in the US (Amazon.com). At this moment in time, I sit at #89.
- I peaked at #72 on this list, and #96 on the overall police procedural list that includes printed books.
- I am selling anywhere from 6 to 25 copies a day. A bad day used to be none, a good day 5.
- I had thought this was related to the Memorial Day long weekend, but it has now stretched far beyond that. I think the sales could be coming from the fact that I am in the top 100, so I am getting “discovered” and sampled by people, who then buy later. If this is true, it would seem to confirm my theory that getting into the top 100 is key, and self-sustaining to a point.
- The Police Procedurals list is only about 1600 books, so it won’t generate a huge amount of sales unless I can get much higher.
- A few minutes ago the daily list was updated, and I went from 113 to 96th. The higher on this list I go, the more likely I am to be discovered, since I am now at the bottom of page 8, as opposed to the middle of page 10 (which again was up from last week).
- I found myself on the Suspense list as well (it took a lot of searching). This list is much larger, closer to 20k books.
- On the daily suspense list, I am #612. As sales are driven by the PP list, I hope to move up the suspense list (I’ve moved up over 150 spots on this list during the past few days, with only a 19 spot move on the PP list).
- The suspense list is big enough that if I could get near the top 100 on that, I think it would mean significant sales.
- Ego stroke: seeing my book outselling books by Grisham and Crichton, amongst many other big names in the industry, is too impossibly cool to describe!
So that’s the latest news from the book selling front.
Rob
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Lots happened in May. I’ve been extremely busy with non-writing things like life and the day job, so not as much on the writing front happened as I had hoped. Here’s a run down:
- I did manage to edit and release a new short story, To Be With You in Heaven.
- Smashwords is still not live. It’s back with them for I believe a fifth attempt. The last rejection was due to two hard carriage returns in the licensing message that was copied from their own website. They should rename themselves to Analwords, or better yet, AssWords. Here’s a suggestion from someone who has been in business for twenty years: do one review, identify all the reasons for rejections, then reject. That way, the author fixes everything, and your employee wastes his time only once. This would bring the process down to tops two weeks, rather than two weeks each round. We are now in month three of trying to go live on Smashwords. Amazon Kindle method: 1 day. Result: hundreds of sales and revenue for both parties.
- The print edition is live and selling slowly as I expected. Print books from unknowns don’t sell–this is more a vanity thing for friends and family (have you bought yours yet?!?!?)
- Sales are doing great in my opinion. Specifics below.
- I set up a Twitter account. Please follow me: @jrobertkennedy
- Amazon.com killed book tags (more in a separate post).
- Amazon.com moved all promotional discussions to a separate board which at first concerned me. My sales however have increased dramatically. Not sure if there is a correlation.
Sales Summary
Sales were great. In May I sold 161 digital copies of Depraved Difference, plus 5 copies of my short story, Loving the Ingredients. Considering LTI is a short story and the same price as a full-length novel, I think that’s a good indicator that if I were to have more books available, there would be significant spin-off sales.
Memorial Day long weekend saw huge sales, with several days in a row selling 15+ copies a day, which would be a 500 a month pace. I’m curious to see what happens in June since it is my assumption that it was holiday related. That being said, yesterday was a great day as well, with 16 sales and it wasn’t a holiday.
I peaked momentarilly it seems at #94 (I have the printouts to prove it!) on the best sellers list for Police Procedurals in the US. And I do mean brief. So brief it only showed on the book page, but none of the actual bestseller lists which I guess are updated on a different schedule. Since this was so brief, I wasn’t able to test out my theory of “top 100 generates its own sales to keep you in the top 100″. I am now at 206th which I still t hink is phenomenal. In the UK I keep floating between 28th and just out of the top 100.
So overall sales to date:
241 Depraved Differences
8 Loving the Ingredients
Am I still happy with these numbers? Very! My sales for May were almost double April’s with the only promotion being once-a-week postings on the Amazon discussion boards, and the occassional tweet or blog post.
Looking forward to seeing what June brings!
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To Be With You in Heaven
My latest short story is now live on Amazon Kindle for only 99 cents. Here’s the blurb:
What would you say if the one you loved most lay dying beside you?
To Be With You in Heaven is a heart-wrenching tear jerker about a couple’s final moments together after a horrendous car accident.
From the author: After writing the first draft of this story several years ago, I sent it to my parents to read. A few hours later I got this response from my father:
“You made your mother and grandmother cry.”
To Be With You in Heaven is a 1400 word short story, and also includes The Story Behind the Story and About the Author sections.
If you’re looking for a quick read, then grab a box of tissues and download To Be With You in Heaven for only 99 cents on Kindle.
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It’s not much, but it is a milestone, and doesn’t include the paperbacks which have been flying off the proverbial shelf here at my office. I only have one left so I’ll have to bring in a bunch more tomorrow. A later post will share how you too can order an autographed copy.
What’s the next goal?
I guess 200.
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So you’ve got your Kindle Edition live, you now have your CreateSpace (or other POD publisher) print edition live, so how do you link them like the pros?
Just send Amazon an email through their support links.
If you drill down properly, you’ll actually see an entry in the list for linking two editions. Give them the ASIN for your Kindle Edition, the ISBN for your print edition, and they’ll do the rest.
It took about 2 days for them to be linked, and about another week for the reviews to be linked (apparently–this part is still in progress as of this writing).
Now a single search for your book will show the reader that you have both available, and will look much more serious than those who haven’t bothered going to print.
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Another busy week. Here’s what happened:
- Depraved Difference managed to stay in the top 100 in the UK Police Procedurals for most of the week. It keeps dropping in and out each day. I had hoped to get it into the top 25, but never had time to do the promotion necessary.
- Sales were about the same as the previous week, but I decided to only promote on the Amazon discussion boards once a week, rather than almost every day, which saved me a lot of time, and seemed to have the same results as promoting every day.
- The print edition has been approved and the first batch has been shipped.
- The print edition is now live on Amazon.com.
- I think I might have finally got the SmashWords to work. I won’t really know for at least a week.
Here’s the sales figures:
Week 4: 29 new, total 91
Week 3: 27 new, total 62
Week 2: 16 new, total 35
Week 1: 12 new, total 19
Week 0 (partial): 7 (5 of which were friends/family/review copies)
This week will be another crazy week at my day job, so I don’t expect to get much done. This week I just want to try to get some things cleaned up on the Amazon site, so I can finally put that behind me and move forward.
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Fellow author L. David Hesler features Depraved Difference and me on his blog today. Check it out, follow him, tweet him, friend him, comment on the posting, and most importantly, buy both our books! I think he’s even donating his profits on April 30th to charity, making him a far better man than I.
Enjoy!
http://ldavidhesler.blogspot.com/2011/04/indie-author-showcase-10-j-robert.html
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This was a very cool find. All you need to do is visit Novelrank.com, enter the URL for your book on Amazon, then it will start polling Amazon every hour, on the hour, and show you charts of your ranking and sales. No historical data, so make sure you do this as early on in the process as you can. I for one will be trying to remember to do this with every book as soon as the link goes live on Amazon.
Another cool thing? You can track other books as well, so you can compare yourself to your fellow writers to see how you’re doing. Currently JA Konrath is whipping my ass in the US, and just spanking it in the UK.
Here’s the link to Depraved Difference:
http://www.novelrank.com/asin/B004UB8OJE
Enjoy!
Rob
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EDIT: This is late because WordPress lost everything despite saving the drafts. Thanks, WordPress!
It’s been another busy week, but not very productive on the writing front with my day job getting in the way. But a fair amount has happened:
- Most exciting is that I spent the entire week in the top 100 Best Selling Police Procedurals in the UK. It seems 1-2 sales a day allows you to accomplish that, so not a very big deal, but it still looks good. I don’t think the UK has anywhere near the Kindle penetration that the US market has, so my top 100 theory in any category = success theory only applies to the US.
- My latest proof for the print edition has been shipped, but the Easter Bunny made off with it since he likes to read while shitting out eggs apparently. Hopefully I’ll have it Tuesday.
- I updated the SmashWords version, but new problems were introduced. What a terrible process they have! You have to submit an MS Word document, from which they build all the different formats. Sounds convenient, but it isn’t. Half the formats they generate are useless (who reads a plain text, HTML or PDF?). Let us upload our HTML file directly to you, so you can then convert it straight to the MOBI or ePUB formats that most eReaders use. This is how Kindle does it, and I had it done properly in one evening. SmashWords in now going on two weeks.
- I did a few minor changes to the Kindle Edition as previously posted, and they all turned out perfect (unlike SmashWords–have I mentioned how I don’t like their process?).
- My sales of Depraved Difference resulted in a short story sale in the US. That’s two people out of the 62 that have bought that purchased the short story, despite it being 99 cents (the same price as the full length novel), and one person has purchased the $7.99 traditionally ePubbed book. This proves to me that the more product I have available, at a reasonable price, the more money I will make. I really need to find time to start writing again!
- I had wanted to get more copies out to reviewers. I was so busy this didn’t happen until Saturday, when I submitted to one of the most popular sites, Red Adept Reviews. If they decide to review it, and I get at least three stars, then I could see a significant boost in sales.
The all important sales figures:
Week 3: 27 new, total 62
Week 2: 16 new, total 35
Week 1: 12 new, total 19
Week 0 (partial): 7 (5 of which were friends/family/review copies)
This week I hope to:
- Try and get Depraved Difference in the top 25 of Police Procedurals in the UK
- Fix SmashWords
- Review and approve the Print Edition
- Get at least one more review in the pipe
- Try and get my bio linked to my UK and German book listings
- Cancel half my Rogers Cable so I can cut back on that damned couch-potatoeing (that’s a word–I’m a writer so I have official permission to invent new ones as needed) and write more
- Do some set-up on my GoodReads author account
Yup, another busy week!
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- Depraved Difference
Depraved Difference peaked at #27 mid-week. I didn’t do any marketing in the UK once I hit the top 100. Sales seemed to have sustained themselves, but are trending towards the bottom half of the top 100, rather than the top half like it was. I just started another push on the discussion groups with the goal to get into the top 25 to see if that helps. It currently stands at 42.
So what does it take to get to #27? Three (3) sales in one day. That’s it, that’s all. So now it doesn’t sound as impressive, but I’m still extremely happy with this. With the UK not having the Kindle penetration, I don’t think it means the same thing as getting into the top 100 of a category in the US (my theory: Top 100 Category = Self-Sustaining, fairly significant, sales, that help drive you up on other lists). Perhaps Top 25 in the UK will be the equivalent, who knows?
So, if you’re looking for what I consider a good great read, check out my novel Depraved Difference on Amazon for only 99 cents (that’s not even a coffee!).
Here are the links:
US/Canada: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004UB8OJE
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004UB8OJE
Germany: http://www.amazon.de/dp/B004UB8OJE
Note about Kindle eBooks
You don’t need a Kindle to read a Kindle eBook! There are Kindle apps for the iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, PC, Mac, Android, your toaster and more, so don’t let the fact you don’t have the physical device stop you!
Thanks in advance to those who shell out the 99 cents!
Rob
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