Transparency in Indie Publishing Month 3
It's been just about three months since I first published Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris, and a little over a month since The Great Healion Race was released (both are novellas in The Steam and Steel Chronicles, which has six novellas planned in total). And this is the first month that I've exceeded my (admittedly low) sales goals.
I had a minor freakout earlier in the month when it looked like someone on Goodreads had given The Great Healion Race a 1-star rating, but then found out that was actually a glitch in their system which has since been fixed. So the lowest rating for either book has remained as 3 stars (out of 5). I'm okay with that, and I'm happy that a few people have given it 5-star ratings. My average is holding steadily at around 4 stars on each book.
As far as marketing this month, I've done next to nothing. A few tweets, a few updates on the Facebook page, and that's about it. I gave away five copies of ATUAF through Smashwords on my birthday. I sent out no review requests, I had no new reviews, and I was generally slacking the whole month. So the fact that my sales increased despite all that makes me really happy, and gives me hope that when I can start actively promoting again I'll see a bigger jump in sales.
I reached a high of around 75 on the Historical Fantasy list on the Kindle US site (with ATUAF), which was pretty cool. I'm also showing up around the 3rd page of results if you search for "steampunk" in the Kindle Store (again with ATUAF). So my rankings are steadily increasing on Amazon. Sales on Barnes & Noble went up a little bit, and Smashwords stayed exactly the same as last month.
So, here are the numbers for this month:
Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris
Amazon US: 32
Amazon UK: 5
Barnes & Noble: 9
Smashwords: 3
TOTAL: 49
The Great Healion Race
Amazon US: 15
Amazon UK: 1
Barnes & Noble: 3
Smashwords: 0
TOTAL: 19
So that means 68 books sold during the month, which is higher than my goal of 60. I had a couple of days where nothing sold, and a couple of days were I sold upwards of 7-8 books. My goal from this point on is to double my sales each month. The third book should be out by the first week in July, so hopefully I'll see another big jump then.
