The 8 1/2 Years in Publishing Report
It is time once again for the semi-annual report of my publishing venture. As an author/publisher I wear two hats. As an author, I consider myself an amateur, which is to say that I write for the joy of creating. I don't need to be paid for this effort, it's its own reward. However, I take a more business-like approach in my role as a publisher.
As a publisher, my "mission statement" would read something like this; Cealanda Press's goal is to sell as many C Litka books as possible, as efficiently as possible, without loosing money in doing so. Since C Litka books are not mainstream Amazon ebooks, the likelihood of making enough money to make a financial difference in my life is nil. Thus, making money is not a priority in my publishing business. That said, not losing money is a priority, even if it could be justified as "spending" money on my "hobby." My business model is designed to meet these criteria.
With the exception of beta reading by outside volunteers, the production of my ebooks, paper books, and audiobooks is done inhouse, and as such, it involves only a minimum amount of expenditures, namely author copies of my paper books for my beta readers and postage to send it to them. This minor expense is covered by my non-free sales on Amazon. In order to achieve the widest possible sales, with the greatest efficiency, which is to say, with the least amount of effort on my part, I price my books at my cost and let their low price do all my promotional work.
In the chart below, you can see how my publishing business is doing. The first two columns compare my sales for the first half of this fiscal year year, May thru October 2023-24 to the same period last year, the last column reports total sales of each of my books to date.
I sell my ebooks for free via Smashwords, whose sales totals includes sales from Apple. Sales on Barnes & Noble (via Smashwords) is a rounding error, that I just add to the total number of books sold to the sales total. Kobo (also via Smashwords) does not report free book sales, so they are not included in these totals. I also sell ebooks and paper books via Amazon. Most, but not all, of my ebooks on Amazon.com are free, most, but not all of my ebooks are full price on Amazon stores outside of the U.S. Those sales, and the odd paper book sold account for all my revenue. In addition, I sell ebooks and audiobooks via the Google Play Store, both are sold for free. My books also are available from several other non-U.S. bookstores and libraries via Draft2Digital.
For reference, my last report, my full 8th Year report can be found here.
The Sales Chart of the first half 2022-2023 vs 2023-2024
Book Title / Release Date
1H 2022 Sales
1 H 2023
Sales
Total Sales To date ebook & audiobooks total sales
A Summer in Amber
23 April 2015
244
244 Audio
289
231 Audio
Total 9,683
Some Day Days
9 July 2015
221
331 Audio
321
201 Audio
Total 6,199
The Bright Black Sea
17 Sept 2015
925
520 Audio
397
306 Audio
Total 17,753
Castaways of the Lost Star
4 Aug 2016
Withdrawn
Withdrawn
Total 2,176
The Lost Star’s Sea
13 July 2017
423
433 Audio
371
306 Audio
Total 10,156
Beneath the Lanterns
13 Sept 2018
299
377Audio
296
215 Audio
Total 5,160
Sailing to Redoubt
15 March 2019
344
299 Audio
304
196 Audio
Total 4,858
Prisoner of Cimlye
2 April 2020
310
359 Audio
286
230 Audio
Total 3,380
Lines in the Lawn
8 June 2020
17
24
Total 169
Keiree
18 Sept 2020
331
349 Audio
339
234 Audio
Total 2,987
The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon
11 Nov 2020
428
255 Audio
357
214 Audio
Total 4,143
The Secrets of Valsummer House
18 March 2021
290
382 Audio
265
251 Audio
Total 3,225
Shadows of an Iron Kingdom
15 July 2021
409
989 Audio
351
301 Audio
Total 3,933
A Night on Isvalar
15 July 2021
(Amazon only @.$.99 & Kindle Unlimited)
9 Star Nebula. Mystery Omnibus ($.99)
Lost Star Omnibus ($.99)
19
6
8
2
Total 46
Total 8
Total 2
The Aerie of a Pirate Prince
29 Sept 2022
154
36 Audio
344
222 Audio
Total 1,594
The Girl on the Kerb
6 April 2023
Total Six Month Sales
(#)B & N Sales
n/a
4,414 + 66#
4,480 ebooks
4,574 Audio-books
Sales Total this Half:
9,054
2,024
223 Audio
5, 986 + 63#
6,049 ebooks
3,130 Audio books
Sales Total this Half
9,177
Total 5,037
Year 8 total: 71,396 + 9,177
Grand total to date: 80,572
Grand total as of this date; 2022: 60,879
2021: 47,550
Last year's sales for this period via venue; ebooks only/(%) including audiobooks
Amazon 19.5% (9%)
Smashwords (Apple & B & N) 24.7% (11.3%)
Google 55.8% (79.7%)
Sales for 2023 period via venue for ebooks/(%) including audio books
Amazon 41% (25.5%)
Smashwords (Apple, B & N) 12% (7.5%)
Google 47% (67%)
Revenue this half; $61.96 Expenses; $0 Net profit; $61.96
It was a good first half of the year, thanks to the continued exceptional sales (for me) of The Girl on the Kerb. Sales of that book alone, especially with a sales spike in September of 866 copies, accounted for being able to keep pace with last year's first half total, back when my audio books were a new thing. Without that book, sales would be down across the board, though I am impressed by the consistency of sales across all of the books. While sales numbers are slowly falling, I am still seeing continued significant growth in readership with no effort on my part.
My experiment with cheap omnibus editions aimed at non-US markets where my books are full price has not proven to be very popular. Discovery, as always is the key. If they don't see it, they won't buy it. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. In this case $3.50 in revenue gained so far.
As for sales venues, Google continues it's dominance. Amazon is only up on the breakout sales of The Girl on the Kerb. Smashwords itself is a total bust these days. Of the 728 books I sold through Smashwords, only 219 came from the Smashwords store, Apple accounted for 446 and B & N for 63 of the total. In the last several months Apple has been outselling Smashwords almost 3 to 1. Draft2Digital brought in 12 sales in Europe to date - !2 more than I expected.
Audiobooks sales have continued to supply more than half of Google's sales. For sales across all venues, the split between ebooks and audio books is 64.5% ebooks, 35.5% audio books.
Reaching 80,572 copies sold to date is a pretty darn good total, no matter how I cheated to reach it. As far as I'm concerned, my publishing company is doing its job.
I expect sales to continue slowly taper off going forward, since I can't count on The Girl on the Kerb to continue to sell as well as it has been. That, and the fact there will likely be no new book released until the summer of 2024 to spike sales. That book is not written at this time, so that next book is very much a bird in the bush. There is no guarantee that I will be able to produce one.
In the past I've made predictions as to the conditions of the market and how they affect my sales. I won't bother this time. I don't see anything on the horizon that will have any significant effect on my sales. Thus, I'm just going to stay the course for now, and see what comes along.
Questions, as always are welcomed.
