Sales results – Month 1 as an indie author

Posted on October 1st, 2011

This is my first monthly report on how sales are going for my book.  Eventually I’ll include multiple books as I release them.

Why release my numbers publicly?

By sharing this publicly, I hope it helps other indie authors set expectations, plus it helps me maintain a monthly record of what I’ve done and what the results were.

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Book Title: The Caldarian Conflict (preview)
Current Rating: 4.5 stars with six reviews on Amazon
Pricing: $2.99 ebook, $10.95 paperback

Favorite quote from a review: “I was literally up all night because I couldn’t stop reading (if there are any typos in this review blame them on my blurry vision).” – Maxine McLister (Amazon)

This month’s goal: 100 books sold (ebook & physical)
Total sales: 124 books sold – 50 ebooks and 74 paperbacks
Promotional copies: 41 ebooks + 12 paperbacks (not included in sales)

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I’m pretty pleased with the results.  Exceeding my goal for first month’s sales is pretty awesome–especially since I had no measurements to guide my estimate.

My biggest surprise? That physical books outsold the ebooks this month.  With everything I’ve read, and the lower price point on the ebooks, I expected ebooks to far exceed paperbacks.

That said, it’s probably a result of the heavy marketing I did.  The single biggest day of sales was 43 paperbacks at my launch party.

At this point, I think it’s most effective for me to allow people time to read the book and (hopefully) write reviews.  With the exception of occasional tweets and Facebook posts, I plan to focus most of my spare time on writing additional material.

I’m also planning to point out that signed copies of The Caldarian Conflict make a great unique gift for fantasy fans. (hint hint: check the right-hand panel for ordering autographed copies, or buy from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, CreateSpace, or Smashwords)

In October, I plan to invest a lot of time working on my next two projects.  With luck, I’ll finish the first draft of at least one of them by year-end.

Next month’s goal: 50 books (ebook & physical), due to spending much less time marketing

What do you think?  Should I continue focusing on writing more material? Or are there other marketing avenues that I should pursue?