To say that things picked up a little in March with regards to books sales would be a pretty significant understatement. I’m happy to say that my revenue rebounded from a dismal February, and that I blew through all hopes of my ebook sales for the month.
February was a good ebook sales month, seeing 88 total units sold, but a terrible revenue month, barely breaking $100 for the month overall. There are a couple of reasons for this – I dropped the price of Hard Day’s Knight to .99 halfway through the month, and I did no personal appearances/signings/cons during the month.
So in March I had high hopes for a 20% increase in units sold, which would be 106 ebooks (these are all Amazon-only numbers, because so far my sales on all other ebook sites are negligible). I chugged along through the month, steadily selling a couple of books each day, and when we got into last week I felt pretty good about my chances of getting there. My revenue also increased pretty strongly because I did a few trade shows and friends from the lighting world bought a few copies off me at those shows (I actually sold 16 books at the two shows, and two more at the Charlotte ComiCon, so 18 books sold face to face in a month is pretty damn good for me).
Then this week happened. And I have no idea what happened, but somewhere a switch got flipped and books started to sell. I had a strong sales night last Sunday night, with 4-5 overnight sales, and then proceeded to average about 10 sales per day for the rest of the week. Now these aren’t Joe Konrath numbers by any stretch, but they resulted in a whopping 43% increase in sales from month to month! That also equated to a minimum of $315 total revenue for the month, the first time I’ve cracked the $300 mark in a single month. I don’t expect for every month to be this good, but I would like to hope that I can get steady growth from month to month. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, according to everyone who sells more books than I do.
So I got started last night working on Book 3 of Black Knight Chronicles, with a hopeful release date of June (yeah, I can do that – write a book in April and release it in June – one of the nice freedoms of being indie). Because the best way for me to keep sales increasing is to keep adding to the list of stuff I have for sale. So there’s my quick update on March, sales like a lion, let’s hope April continues the upward trend!
I have to say, I bought three of your books this week. The Chosen I read first, and I liked it, even with the editing issues. The Black Knight books, on the other hand, I LOVELOVELOVE. They had none of the editing problems, but all of the great characters, wordplay and story that I liked in The Chosen.
You just keep getting better and better, John, and I am now pimping your books to my friends and eagerly awaiting the third book in the series.
Your work makes me happy that I own a Kindle.