I broke even!

Posted without fanfare, in which I spew publishing numbers that may mean something but probably do not—except that I broke even and there is new art, which is cool:

Last Monday, I self-published an Iron Druid short story called “The Chapel Perilous” for Kindle and Nook. (I also tried to upload it to iBooks and Kobo but thus far my efforts have failed. iBooks said YAY YOU DID IT three days ago but it still hasn’t shown up online and Kobo said it couldn’t upload the same epub file that worked fine for Kindle and Nook, so I gave up.)

I did this because A) it was an excuse to get some spiffy art done for the story, B) I wanted to see what exactly was involved in the self-publishing thing, and C) I could.

Caveat One: The story actually went up on Saturday Jan 24, but I didn’t say anything until Monday Jan 26, so I’m calling Monday through Super Bowl Sunday the first week o’ sales. Copies sold over the first weekend without my “giant publicity machine”: 1.

Caveat Two: This short story was previously published about eight months ago in the Unfettered anthology, so it wasn’t exactly new; some people had already read it and would of course have little interest in buying it again. The editor, Shawn Speakman, returned digital rights to me on New Year’s, so I took this as an opportunity to play around.

MY COSTS

The story was a huge geekout for me and I had a specific image in my mind I wanted to get “out there,” so I approached artist Galen Dara about it and she painted this beautiful cover. She asked for $300 but I paid her $400 because I was really happy, she deserved it, and quite honestly I don’t think she charges enough. I paid someone else $100 to make an epub file because I would have screwed it up if I tried to do it myself. I know that I could have paid less for the cover and formatting but whatever—my costs were $500. The story had already been edited and copy edited for the anthology, so there were no costs associated with those vital services.

VAST MARKETING

Not so vast, really. Last Monday I tweeted about the story five times over the course of the day and included a link to my blog post on it, which contained “buy links” to the Kindle and Nook pages for the story. I also posted a link to my blog post on my Facebook author page. My blog got reposted on Goodreads and Amazon and to whoever’s subscribing to it, I guess. On Wednesday I remembered to tweet one more time. Oh, and I put the story, along with buy links, on the top of my Short Stories page. And Kristin at MyBookishWays was kind enough to review it. That was the sum of my huge media blitz. I know some folks retweeted my tweets and shared the Facebook post (for which I’m turbo grateful!) but I can’t quantify those. I might have sold more if I had flogged the Internet a bit more, but then I would have felt like a dick for spamming my followers and I do try to follow Wheaton’s Law (Don’t Be a Dick).

ONE WEEK O’ SALES

I guess it’s not a full week, because I just checked before the Super Lopsided Bowl and called it good enough. If there was a giant spike in sales during that noncompetitive event, damn. I missed it. But here we go:

1106 copies sold on Kindle

281 copies sold on Nook

1387 copies total

Kindle pays 35 cents and Nook pays 40 cents per copy on a 99-cent story. SO:

1106 x .35 = $387.10 from Amazon

281 x .40 = $112.40 from Barnes & Noble

That means a total of $499.50 for the first week!

WOOHOO! I BROKE EVEN! Or at least got super close!

Ain’t gonna be gettin’ rich over here, but I’m still completely jazzed about this, and here’s why: Some of my readers are happy with me (which I know because they sent me a kind email or tweeted or facebooked something nice about the story) and there is new art in the world that I love—art that never would have been made if I didn’t have a platform to share it.

I know there are people who are fair-to-middling rabid about self-publishing or being a hybrid author or GO BIG SIX or more accurately GO RANDOM PENGUIN AND FOUR OTHERS, but I’m not disposed to be much of a cheerleader for any business model. I’m quite disposed to celebrating beautiful things, however, and I’m glad that self-publishing gives us another way to bring art into the world. Del Rey has made some absolutely awesome covers for my series and I dig ‘em muy mucho—a photographic aesthetic is appropriate for urban fantasy. But I have stories to tell about Atticus’s past outside the current series chronology that might be better served by conventional illustration, and this experience has taught me that A) thanks to my readers, I can keep an artist from starving for a week or two every time I publish a short story, and B) I get to geek the hell out. More art is good! YAY ART!

Whew! I think I need to rest after making such a controversial statement. ;)

Self-publishing won’t put much food on my table and I won’t do it often, but I’m very glad the opportunity exists for me to indulge myself with wee side projects should the spirit move me. As always, thank you very much for reading.