(Note: I’ll provide a free copy of the book of your choice to the first person who figures out the terribly clever joke I’m making with the picture on this post.)

I just took a few minutes to sit down and figure out exactly how my books have done this year.  I’m going to put the take-away right up at the beginning so you don’t have to wait for it: I have indisputably lost money playing at writer this year.  Lost a lot of money, actually.  Now, the good news is that most of the money that I’ve lost wasn’t actually mine, since the grant I got last year paid for everything, but that money would still be in my pocket had I not spent it on writing-related stuff.  (Well, actually, no, it wouldn’t, because I got the grant specifically so that I could play writer this year.)

Do I care?  Actually, no, I don’t, but I won’t be hiring professional artists to do book covers again anytime soon until I figure marketing out.  At any rate: here is all the data I can pull together on how my books did this year, and some musing on what works and what doesn’t.  The long and short of it is, I think I’m probably pretty good at getting people to download stuff for free.  I’m less good at getting people to spend money on my books.  That’s the part I ought to work on.

I released two books this year:  The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 released on Amazon on May 10th and everywhere else a couple of months later, and Skylights released everywhere on September 29th.  I have high hopes that the BA novel will release in the first quarter of 2015– I’m hoping for mid- to late March– or very early in the second quarter, and I have a fourth book in the works for later in 2015.  Vague plans exist for the next BA installment in early 2016, with a possible follow-up to Skylights coming after that.  So I’ve got plans.  We’ll see how they work out.

Anyway.  We’ll start with pure sales.  The Benevolence Archives has, as of today, sold 56 copies, all but two of which were through Amazon.  The other two were through the iTunes bookstore.  Skylights has sold 36 copies– two through iTunes, ten through Smashwords, and the remainder through Amazon.  It is possible that there are sales that I don’t know about through non-Smashwords or Amazon distributors, because of the way they report sales to Smashwords, but it’s unlikely that that amounts to more than one or two. If I include my payment from the story I sold to the World Unknown Review, I’ve made… wait for it… $215.89 from my book sales in 2014.  This, as I’ve already said, doesn’t come close to representing profit.  Nowhere near it.  I’m not telling you how much I’ve spent.  I might next year when I’m spending my own money.

Free downloads have been a bit more interesting.  I have given away four copies of Skylights, all through Smashwords, and 550 copies of The Benevolence Archives.  BA has done well at Smashwords; it’s responsible for 102 of those free downloads.  91 people have downloaded the free chapter of Skylights through Smashwords; that chapter is available just about everywhere but only Smashwords lets me know the number of downloads.  I really wish Amazon gave me access to that number but they don’t.  My books were downloaded, one way or another, 646 times in 2014.

People go back and forth on the value of having a free book out there.  As you can see (and this will surprise no one) my books move a lot more copies when they’re free.  It’s possible that BA is just that much better than Skylights, but I think it’s the price.  Very soon I will have the novel available, and my hope is that the free novella will drive sales to my other (non-free) books, especially the ones that are sequels.  I don’t know if this is a wise decision, but comparing sales of BA 2 to Skylights will be very interesting.  For now, I’ll take the exposure over the money– I feel like it’s more valuable in the long run at this time.  And considering that Skylights has had four and a half fewer months to sell and costs 166% of what Benevolence Archives does, I think there’s some evidence that I’m on the right track here.  It’s hardly conclusive, but it’s evidence.

Here’s my Amazon author rank, by the way.  My best day?  My first day on the market:

For those of you who don’t know this– a single sale can make the difference between an author rank of #650,000 and the high six figures.  Two sales in a day will usually break you into the top 100K.  A day of no sales will lose you 30-40K in ranking or so.  There’s an enormous amount of volatility built into those rankings, and I suspect most Amazon authors are selling no more than one or two books a week.  Remember something: I’ve never had a day of double-digit sales.  Not once.  Even the day BA launched.  And that day was good for #35,792.  My high day of free giveaways was 290 downloads, which had me briefly at #1 in the world for free science fiction books.

Here’s the thing: I can easily imagine someone looking at these numbers, particularly that $215.89, and thinking “Man.  That was not worth the effort.”  And… well, I can understand that.  My perspective, on the other hand, is that in April of 2014 I had never convinced anyone in the world ever to pay me money to write words and as of right now there have been ninety-three instances of human beings deliberately giving me their money for my writing.  And not at gunpoint or anything!  My mom can’t be all of those people. My books have been downloaded six hundred and forty-six times.  This is insane!  I don’t know 646 people!  I cannot pretend that this is bad news.  Now, do I hope I do better next year?  Yes, definitely.  But for my first seven months as an author?  I’m not complaining at all.

I was going to muse about marketing a bit, but this sentence is going to push this post over 1000 words already, so maybe I’ll save it for later this week and call it “How to Sell Books Online,” like I know what I’m doing.

Indie authors: how am I doing?  How are you doing?