I’m a little bit behind the curve in reporting my numbers from last year. These things don’t really mean much to me yet, primarily because the numbers are so small. But hey, I managed to buy a replacement laptop with my earnings, so that’s pretty awesome.
I sold 624 ebooks last year. That’s spread out over four books, one anthology and around ten short stories offered in ebook format. Amazon continues to be my largest market, followed by Barnes and Noble. I didn’t start selling on Kobo until this year. Sales on Smashwords are a far distant third.
Near as I can tell, paperback sales for my Mystery novel were under five. Being completely unknown in that genre and only having the one book and a short story, meant dismal sales all around.
When it comes to advertising in general, I do as close to nothing as humanly possible. I don’t send my books to reviewers and I don’t bother people 24/7 on social media. In fact, unless you were paying really close attention to me, (read: a fan) you might not have noticed that I published a book late last year. In fact, I published two books the second being a Omnibus version of the Star Saga.
Most of my precious little time spent on writing, is spent writing. The reason I don’t bother advertising is because without about a dozen books or more on the market, there’s not really much point. The last time the Amazon Gods smiled on one of my books, all I had was one book and it lasted about three months. I’d rather be ready with a ton of books the next time that happens, rather than sitting on just one and riding the wave up onto the beach.
I have a decent day job and so I don’t write for a living. There’s no reason not to take my time, write one book a year and make it as good of a product as I can. Which is what I try to do. I like to think I’m in the middle of my ten to twenty years of tolling in solitude before the rest of the world takes note. Of course, at that rate I may be dead before anyone notices my work. So be it.
UPDATE:
Here are my sales totals for the past three years. The huge numbers in 2010 were the lightning strike on Starstrikers. The bump up last year is attributed to the KDP Select program. The only ebooks still enrolled in that are the short stories.
1,443 in 2010
279 in 2011
624 in 2012