There are static links all over the place, but it’s been a long time since I actually talked directly about any of my books in the blog itself, so let me take a minute and port this over from Twitter real quick, because some of you may not know:
Tag: promotions
#Saleswanking for 2018 and more
This is going to be a very short post, considering the amount of work that went into it, because Amazon and Square don’t play nice with each other and neither of them makes it especially easy to get these numbers in a format that I like. HOWEVER! I haven’t looked at book sales in a systematic way in a while, so this kinda needed to happen. And, frankly, included some nice surprises.
Note that “Amazon” includes both paid sales and free downloads, and I’ve smushed together both physical and digital copies as well; nearly all of them are digital. The Square sales are sales in person; some of those are going to be free giveaways for one reason or another but all of them involve physical books given or sold to people by me. This is 2018 only:
Eight hundred and fifty-seven books seems like a lot, honestly. The little discrepancy you see with Click from 2018 to the total includes the 14 people who got free copies through Patreon, which is one of the only ways you can get the book (pledge more than $2 a month!) and the 9 on the Square set were sold in person at conventions, which is the other way to get it.
As of right now, my books are starting to drop off of KDP Select, which means I’m about to lose the ability to give them away on Amazon. I am either trying to get all six of them (Click isn’t on Amazon) on the same schedule or about to broaden back out and put my books on other sites again. I haven’t decided. As of January 2nd, everything will be off KDP select, so I’ve got a few more days to think about it.
The overall numbers really surprised me. I didn’t think I’d moved this many books.
So, basically, if you include the occasional sale that isn’t captured here (Barnes and Noble, Apple, non-convention personal sales that I didn’t bother recording in Square,) I’m probably at right around five thousand books sold or downloaded since I started doing this.
Which, on the one hand, is a larger number than I thought it was going to be, and on the other hand, if I look at actual money earned from this … yeesh. I’m not going to share that because Amazon accepts currencies from all over the world and I’m not about to start digging through my tax returns, but suffice it to say that I’ve absolutely lost money at playing author since 2014. Cons and hotel rooms and book printings and all that cost money, and again, a lot of those Amazon numbers are from giveaways, not sales.
The totals for in-person sales, which are included in the above– this is just a summation of the “Square” lines:
Which, again, this isn’t nothing. Every one of these represents an actual human standing in front of me who bought books from me. Am I J.K. Rowling? Hell no. But this is a lot larger of a number than zero, which is what it would have been when I started doing this.
I should probably set some hard and fast goals for 2019. Not yet; I need to absorb these numbers first. But maybe that post is coming. Tomorrow, the 10 best books of the year.
Holiday weekend Patreon promotion
Because I’m in “throw stuff at the wall and see if it sticks” mode…
Anyone joining my Patreon at $2/month or above or any current Patron increasing their pledge by literally any amount will be sent a free, signed print copy of Click. This deal is good through bedtime– mine, not yours– Monday night.
C’mon. You know you want in.
Click.
Mike Schafer, a grad student and aspiring writer, finds himself immersed in a strange world of barbarians and monsters after buying a metal puzzle in a local antique store. But are Midrodhel and Gunnbjorn the Bold of his own creation, or is something else going on? As this new world begins to terrifyingly intersect with his own, Mike and his girlfriend Ali must find a way to help Gunnbjorn and his niece Graeslyn the Mighty thwart the Sorceress-Queen Montega in her quest to own all of Midrodhel’s magic and conquer the worlds beyond.
In which I am charmingly incompetent
First, an oops moment: my book Balremesh and other stories has been free on Amazon since this morning, and will continue to be free until sometime late Monday night, and I, dedicated to my career as I am, completely forgot to mention it to anyone until just now. So, uh, there’s some cool stuff in there? And you should probably go snap it up, and then tell everyone you know to also go download it. I haven’t had a free giveaway in a while, so I’m sure you’ve made some new friends since then, right?
I am absurdly tired right now. It has not actually been a bad week by any objective standard; I’ve been busy, like I always am, but not to the point where I should be getting home at 4:45 seriously considering going straight to bed without dinner, which is what happened tonight. Of course, it’s 8:00 right now, because I had to spend a couple of hours working on a training I’m doing tomorrow (which I’ve known about for weeks and haven’t managed to have ready yet) and now I’m blogging and if I get really nuts it’s possible that I’ll finally get a Goodreads page up for Click tonight.
(There is no chance of that happening.)
I dunno, maybe I’ve got a low-grade flu or something. I had a flu shot, and I’m in Mainline Vitamin C All the Goddamn Time mode since it’s fall, but stuff sneaks through, y’know? But man, the last time I was this tired all the time was back when I was going on brain drugs for the first time. And I swear I am on no unorthodox medication of any kind at the moment. I’m just begging for sweet oblivion.
By which I mean sleep, of course, not death.
Anyway, like I said, go grab a free book.
It is cold and snowing like the wrath of God outside
…so you may be interested to learn that BENEVOLENCE ARCHIVES Vol. 1 and THE SANCTUM OF THE SPHERE are both free ebooks at Amazon through Sunday. It’s a good weekend to spend inside reading, yes?
More later, but I figured I’d make sure this was out there.
Want some free stuff?
I’ve not written anything in the last few days, mostly because my options were “paralyzing anger” and “more paralyzing anger.” Today upgraded everything to “so angry I can’t breathe,” and rather than indulge myself in that at the moment I’m just going to put a bunch of my books up for free. I’ve done a Star Wars Day promotion pretty much every year since my first book came out; I completely flaked on it this time. Let’s fix that.
Tomorrow and Saturday only, all four of my books will be free on Amazon. I don’t think I’ve done all four at the same time before. Check them out:
The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1
The Sanctum of the Sphere: Vol. 2 of the Benevolence Archives
Skylights
Searching for Malumba: Why Teaching is Terrible, and Why we Do It Anyway
This is probably a dumb idea
Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 is about 140 pages in print and costs me about $2.35 to print if I order copies for myself. It’s $7.99 at Amazon because I want to make a little profit on it and both ‘zon and Createspace take a chunk of their own.
If I was to do a “Prostetnic Publications Sampler”, something simple– white cover, the logo and some lettering, with, like, 20 pages from each of my books, at minimal print cost, say trying to hold it to $1 a book and really only make it exist to have it at cons, do you think something like that would sell or do me any good? I’d do a sample chapter or two from each book and maybe a couple of blog posts to promo the website, maybe a short story as a bonus, and call it a day. For, again, minimal cost to me to print and no more than $2 to buy.
My wife thinks this is a terrible idea and I see her point, but I want to get a couple more opinions. This will obviously never sell at Amazon, but I might be able to get somewhere with it at cons. Or maybe my wife is right (she often is) and I should drop the entire idea.
What say you, Internet?
It’s #SilerSaturday again! SKYLIGHTS free today!
My Mars novel Skylights is free all day today! Go download it!
I suspect that this one’s subgenres will be a trifle harder to crack than Benevolence Archives’ were, but this book has also never been free, so presumably I’ll get more people from my social networks downloading it. We’ll see.
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