What Happened to my Print & Kindle Book Sales When My Audiobook Was Released
I wrote a humorous guide to climbing the tallest mountain outside the Himalayas: Aconcagua. If you search Amazon for the word “Aconcagua,” you’ll see this:
That’s right. Fourth place for the keyword “Aconcagua,” after some jackets and Mr. Kikstra’s book. Look out, Krakauer. Watch your ass, Bryson. I’m a-comin’ for ya!
Even though my book was self published by me and gets zero promotion or advertisement, it occasionally swaps places with Mr. Kikstra’s book for the lead spot for keyword “Aconcagua.” It doesn’t ever, however, sell better than the jackets.
This success is despite one of my favorite reviews, shown here.
Let me point out: I never mentioned fisting myself anally. I may have referred to butt cracks in general as “nature’s pocket,” but that’s a Futurama reference and therefore above reproach.
Nevertheless, on the strength of glowing reviews like that one, last year I decided — hey, what the hell? — I’ll record an audio version (story on that here). I’ve got a couple of microphones. I can affect a sonorous, literary voice. Let’s do this.
My hunch was that the audiobook would steal readers away from print and kindle, because I personally “read” a ton of audiobooks a year; lots more than print and lots lots more than Kindle. But the numbers tell a different story.
As you can see, I am rich as shit and you should become an author immediately so you can get on this gravy train. Choo choooooo!
Though the audio version of HTMA has only been out for three months, you can see that so far it has had no appreciable effect on print book sales. Kindle sales, in fact, appear to be up. Maybe people are seeing my title on ACX and thinking, “Audio? Nah. That sounds like something I’d read on a giant calculator.”
The interesting part is I thought print sales would be down thanks to people reading the audiobook instead. My sales are a joke, of course, but not more a joke than they were six months ago.
If you’re an indie author like me, and you’re considering releasing an audiobook, you shouldn’t let fear of declining print sales hold you back (according to these figures). You should, however, let these figures dissuade you from becoming an author in the first place.
