Tag: ebooks

First quarter book saleswanking

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing7 Comments

Behold, the Spreadsheet of Doom!  Clicking to enlarge is basically your only option.

Screen Shot 2015-03-31 at 5.23.02 PMI’m borrowing the quarterly roundup idea from Gene’O here; I’m doing book sales today and will do site traffic sometime later this week.  As always, I’m not bragging (because tons of people do way, WAY better than this) or whining (because tons of people don’t do this well,) I’m presenting the information so that people who find it useful or interesting can look at it.  I figure that I would find this really interesting if someone else posted it, so surely someone will find it interesting when I do.

Note, as always, that I’m going to be using the word “sales” a lot; as far as I’m concerned any download of my books is a sale even if it’s a free book.  I have not made a lot of money this month, especially since a number of my Skylights sales were KOLL sales and I don’t even know the payout for that right now.  I’m not worried about it.

tl;dr version: I’m pretty pleased with myself at the moment.

Some things about March:

  • I’m currently three books shy of tying January’s sales.  As it is still March 31 for several hours it’s not unimaginable that I might tie it, but it doesn’t feel likely.  I’d have to have the best day of the month two days in a row to pull off a tie.
  • March featured my longest string of days without a no-sale day since I started paying attention, from the eighteenth to the 28th.  The 29th was a no-sale day, but the 30th was the best day of the month.
  • March also featured my longest string of multiple-sales days since I started paying attention, from the 21st to the 27th.
  • Probably related, March had the fewest 0-sale days since I started paying attention, at 7.

Skylights sales were a little disappointing this month; 7 ebooks and one print sale.  The story this month was Benevolence Archives, which clocked 45 downloads between Amazon, Smashwords and OpenBooks.com.  Actually, the real story of the month is OpenBooks.com– not only did BA 1 move 26 copies there in March after a total of four in January and February, it’s currently the top-selling science fiction book on the site and #10 in all fiction books.  Now, granted, the site’s new, but that’s still awesome.  Sales are down at Smashwords, but that’s probably because as I’ve noticed momentum over at OpenBooks I’ve been shifting my promotion over there accordingly.

Actually, this might be why Skylights is a bit down as well– with The Sanctum of the Sphere hitting next month, I’ve been pushing BA 1 harder than Skylights anyway.  Preorders will show up with first sales next month; I can’t really calibrate how I feel about pre-order numbers until I see first-day sales.  We’ll see what happens.

As far as the quarterly numbers:

  • In all of 2014, starting when BA 1 came out in May, I sold 477 copies of Benevolence Archives and 47 copies of Skylights.
  • In the first quarter of 2015 I’ve sold 119 copies of Benevolence Archives and 63 copies of Skylights, and those 119 copies of BA were without the benefit of any free promotions at Amazon.  Nearly half of the 477 downloads at Amazon were in a single day.
  • There have been 90 days in 2015 so far, meaning that I’m averaging nearly exactly 2 sales a day.  I was hoping to average one sale a day in 2015.  I’m quite happy with that number.
  • This means that, total, I’ve sold 596 copies of Benevolence Archives and 110 copies of Skylights.  I feel like that’s pretty damn good for someone who was a total unknown less than a year ago.  Could it be better?  Sure.  But once Sanctum comes out, I’m going to start doing signings.  So April and May are going to be real interesting.

Feel free to ask questions, if you’ve got them.

 

THE SANCTUM OF THE SPHERE comes out in a month!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing7 Comments

Sanctum_72dpiIt’s coming.

My new book, The Sanctum of the Sphere: The Benevolence Archives, Volume 2 releases one month from today, April 28th.  As of right now I am a tiny bit behind schedule in finalizing the manuscript and the print and ebook versions, but nothing I can’t overcome, especially since my Spring Break is the week after this one.  I’ve been (mostly passively) advertising the book around here for a bit now, and have had a couple of formal posts (like this one, the full print cover reveal) about it, but it’s time to start thinking about more “official” marketing efforts.

Specifically, I’m asking for help.

Two different kinds of help, in fact:

  • Day One Reviewers.  Or, at least, first-week reviewers, although the more reviews I can have up on Amazon on day one the better.  If you’re interested, drop a comment in the post and let me know.  I’ll send you a free ebook once the copy is finalized; it has to be done (the book, I mean, not your review) by the 17th but my current plan is to have it finalized a week earlier than that.  You read it and leave me an honest review: at least on Amazon, but a Goodreads review is also appreciated.  Folks who reviewed BA 1 or my alpha readers are automatically approved; if you don’t fit into either of those categories I’ll probably send you a book anyway if you interact with me here or on Twitter enough that I recognize your name.
  • Rebloggers, well-wishers and interviewers.  I’ve already got a couple of most excellent people who are planning on doing interview posts as promo around release date; anybody else who is interested, regardless of how much traffic your blog gets, is gratefully appreciated.  Consider it an Ask Me Anything, only without Reddit.  So long as you post sometime around release date and link to this blog and the Amazon page for Sanctum, you can literally ask me whatever you want.  Let me know you’re interested via comments here, send me an email with your questions, and I’ll answer ’em and get back to you as quickly as I can.   I’ll also link to the interview from this site once the post goes up.  Rebloggers and well-wishers can have at it as they see fit.  I have been known to return favors, too, by the way.  🙂

One note on the request for reviews: I do not, at least not officially, participate in review swaps, although there are examples out there of authors where we have mutually reviewed each other.  If you’re an indie author and your book comes to my attention, I may well review it anyway, but I won’t lock myself into reviewing something just because you review my book.  I will probably help you out with promo later if you do an interview, though.

(Does that make me a dick? I hope not.)

It should go without saying, but: I genuinely appreciate anyone who is willing to help out here, despite that last paragraph.  Thank you in advance.

The Sanctum of the Sphere is available for digital pre-order from Amazon here.  You can also add it to your Goodreads shelves here.  If you haven’t read Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 yet, you can get it for free from Smashwords or Openbooks.com, or you can pay $1.99 to get it from Amazon.

Thank you!

THE SANCTUM OF THE SPHERE full cover reveal

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing16 Comments

Because why not?  It’s close enough to a month off.  🙂

You can pre-order the ebook of THE SANCTUM OF THE SPHERE from Amazon for $4.95.

Sanctum_Sphere2_72dpi_blanc Sanctum_Sphere_72dpiPretty, innit?

 

Some book odds and ends

On By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

network-marketing-opportunityFirst!  Skylights just got a really nice write-up over at Cat Lumb’s blog.  Go check it out, and look through her archives a bit while you’re at it– there’s some neat stuff over there.

Second!  We are thisclose to being within a month of the release of The Sanctum of the Sphere, the second Benevolence Archives book.  Expect to hear things about this!  Also, if anyone’s interested in helping out with promotion, keep an eye out this week, because I’ll be floating a couple of ideas out. Meanwhile, if you liked Benevolence Archives, vol. 1, you can pre-order the Sanctum ebook right now for just $4.95.  The print edition will be an omnibus of both BA books; I don’t have a price just yet.

Third!  If you follow me on Twitter you may have seen that I’ve been pushing BA 1 with a different site lately.  Openbooks.com just concluded their open beta period and is open to the world now, and you can pick up Benevolence Archives 1 over there for free.  The way the site is different: It’ll prompt you to pay once you finish the book, and you can literally pay whatever you want for it depending on how much you like what you’ve read.  The site also encourages sharing of the digital files.  You don’t have to pay, of course– which I genuinely don’t mind, because the book is free on other sites anyway.  Amazingly, Benevolence Archives 1 is currently the #1 science fiction book on the site.  There’s also an option to leave star ratings and reviews; if you’ve previously read BA through Amazon or whoever, I’d love it if you’d be willing to leave a star review at least.  Check the place out.

ANNOUNCEMENT: SANCTUM OF THE SPHERE available for pre-order!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing5 Comments

Sanctum_72dpi…well, the ebook version of it is, at least.  If you liked The Benevolence Archives and are interested in the sequel (and that’s absolutely everybody, right?) you can pre-order it from Amazon right here, for just $4.95.

A couple of important pieces of information:

  • The plan is for Sanctum of the Sphere to release in digital and print simultaneously.  I don’t have a final price for the print version yet, but I basically plan to take what they’re charging me and add somewhere in the range of $3-4 to it.  I will try and have print available for pre-order too; I’m not actually sure CreateSpace does that, though.  One way or another, the release date is April 28th for both versions.  If the print version becomes pre-orderable, I will obviously let everyone know immediately.
  • Also: the print version of the book will contain the entire text of The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1  as bonus material!  I don’t think BA 1 will ever see print on its own– at 30K words, it’s just too short– so if you’re interested, this is the best time to grab it.  The ebook version will be Sanctum only.  I figure ebook people have had ample opportunity to grab BA 1 for free by now, and since Amazon won’t let me perma-free it, I don’t like the idea of charging for the same story in two different packages.  Volume 1 will remain free essentially forever.  Sanctum, much like Skylights, will never be part of a free promotion, but it’ll go on sale now and again.
  • Remember, if you’re a Goodreads person (Goodreadser?  Goodreadsian?) you can add The Sanctum of the Sphere to your shelves here.

The next project in the Benevolence Archives universe is going to be another short story collection– at around the same cost as BA 1 but hopefully a bit longer.  I have at least one other book to get to before that happens, though.  Which… man, that’s a weird feeling.

One more announcement coming today, not as big of a deal as this one, but I’m gonna give this a few hours to own the front page by itself.  The site’s gonna get reskinned later today too, but I won’t start really trying to push pre-orders until a couple weeks before launch, so don’t worry that the blog’s gonna get eaten by advertising again.  I just found out yesterday you can make books available 90 days before release and don’t need a finalized manuscript, and figured I had no reason to wait.  The overall plan hasn’t changed.  🙂

Briefly, on the sale

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing6 Comments

Screen Shot 2015-01-12 at 22.14.14Not going into my usual numberwanking on this, just a few bullet points, mostly because I was teaching again today and I’m kinda tired and crabby and shot for other stuff to talk about.  I’d like to promise I won’t mention writing again for a week or so around here but who the hell knows if I’ll hold to that.  You got a poop post yesterday; quit whining.  🙂

  • In general: that went well.  Sales every day, a couple of days down from others (the second and third day of the sale in particular) but it went well.
  • Interestingly, while I haven’t sold a copy of Benevolence Archives in a while, I had seventeen free downloads of that book from Smashwords during the sale.  That’s impressive for that time period, so I’m going to say it was because of the countdown deal.
  • Amazon marketing appears to be literally and entirely useless, but more on this later.
  • Skylights also picked up a new five-star review during the sale, which was gratifying.
  • I also had my first day of more than ten actual sales.  Even my launch days haven’t hit double-digit sales yet, although I’m fairly certain BA 2 will.
  • What did work?  Twitter, believe it or not, and Facebook.  A larger-than-expected number of my sales came about through good old-fashioned schmoozing.  The other interesting thing is that while casting out sales Tweets generally doesn’t get you anywhere, people seem to notice and respond when they’re part of a narrative.  My clickthroughs on my sales Tweets closely track with my actual sales.  I had thought Twitter mostly useless for this; I may have to refine that viewpoint.
  • And, finally, I’ve made some sales today, so the end of the sale didn’t kill my momentum dead for a week, which I’d suspected might happen.  The last day where at least one person didn’t download at least one of my books was January 26th, which is awesome.  Also awesome: one more sale in February will make February a better month than January was, and it’s only the 10th.
  • I will moooostly be going quiet on the marketing front until April, at which point I’ll start ramping up for The Sanctum of the Sphere.  So if you’ve grown tired of my yammering over the last week, I’ll be giving you a break for a while.  🙂

So, yeah.  All told?  I’m pretty pleased with that.  My deepest thanks to anyone who downloaded, shared, RTed, or helped out in any way during the sale.

OH MAN GUYS (cover reveal!)

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing11 Comments

So, the cover to The Sanctum of the Sphere: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 2 is getting rrreal close to being done, to the point where my artist has given me permission to post this:

unnamedPretty, innit?  That’s by Yvonne Less, the same artist who created the awesome cover for Benevolence Archives 1.  The main difference is that when she did the BA 1 cover she didn’t know she was doing it, and this cover was her making my ideas look way awesomer than they had any right to be.

This is just the ebook cover.  I’ll post the whole thing when it’s done.  I love what is happening on the back side so I’m enjoying the idea of getting to do two separate reveals.  🙂

You can’t pre-order the book just yet (ebook will be $4.95; paper price is still undetermined) but you can tell Goodreads you want to read it here.

Review: DARKNESS CONCEALED, by D. Emery Bunn

On By Luther M. SilerIn ReviewsLeave a comment

Darkness_Concealed_cover-1500x940As I said a couple of days ago, I am a terrible friend to my fellow independent authors.  However, I’ve been doing my best to curtail that tendency lately and making myself read on my Kindle.  Surprisingly, it hasn’t had the same weird sleep-preventing effects on my wife that it was having when I first bought it.  So maybe I can keep this up for a while.  At any rate, the second book that I’ll be reviewing (of at least three; there will likely be one more review this weekend) is of D. Emery Bunn’s Darkness Concealed.  You’ll have heard Emery’s name around here once or twice before; he’s a Twitter buddy and I interviewed him here when the book first came out.

Bunn bills Darkness Concealed as a dark fantasy, and… well, yeah.  Right on the nose, that.  This is not for the faint of heart, kids; the book starts with a family being massacred by demons in their house, and while the violence is never gratuitous, at least by my standards, that event sorta sets a bit of a tone for the rest of the book.  And seeing as the rest of the book revolves around the four main characters trying to find a) a reason for and b) a way to prevent a recurring near-apocalypse that regularly slaughters a fair chunk of the human populace… so yeah, it’s a bit on the dark side.

Darkness Concealed is book one of a trilogy, and it shows; there are a number of weird little bits here and there that are never explained (one of the characters has somebody else living in her head, for example) and there are plenty of questions and plot points left dangling for the sequels.  That would be a weakness in the hands of a less skilled author; here it just makes the world look bigger and avoids the dodge of “self-contained first book then a duology makes a trilogy,” a phenomenon I’ve kinda gotten tired of.  There are clearly more answers coming and more story here, so if you’re the type who wants everything tied up nice and neat with a bow on it when you close the book (or, uh, exit the Kindle app?) this may not be the book for you.

Why is this a book for you?  Worldbuilding.  Bunn has big ideas for how the word of Telthan works, and some of the settings that the characters visit, including a ruined city, a magical library tower and a damn-near-literal castle at the end of the world, really made the book for me.  These characters are searching for answers, and they’ll go wherever they need to to get them; the author clearly has no shortage of cool locales for them to visit along the way, and one of the joys of the book for me was seeing what they would encounter next.

Three dolla ninety-nine cent at the Amazon.  Check it out, you shall.