From Rags to Riches on the Kindle? The third month.

By Mike Jastrzebski

I have had my books on Kindle for three months now and I am beginning to see some patterns. The Storm Killer (261 sales in September) is outselling Key Lime Blues (197 sales in September) despite the fact that I ran a free book sponsorship for Key Lime Blues with the Kindle Nation Daily. To be fair, I did run a UK free book sponsorship for The Storm Killer, but for September I only sold 2 of each book in the UK.

So far in October The Storm Killer (27 sold) is again outselling Key Lime Blues (11 sold).

I believe that the reason for this is the reviews. Although the reviews for Key Lime Blues (6 reviews) have been mostly good, averaging 4.5 stars out of five. The reviews for The Storm Killer have been fantastic. There have been 20 reviews with an average of 5 stars. 16-5 star reviews and 4-4 star reviews.

I also received my first royalty check on September 30th for $189.15. This was for July ($185.15) and 3 days in June ($4.00). This was much better than I expected to earn when I put The Storm Killer on Kindle in June. My August check will be over $1000.00 dollars and my September check should be around $900.00. I will post the exact amounts when I receive them.

I am making these figures available for those of you who are considering releasing a book on Kindle. I believe there is money to be made by self-publishing in this manner, but if you are thinking about doing this you might want to go back and read my early Rags to Riches posts. I want to make it clear that I have been working hard at marketing my books. I believe that if you are unwilling to make a concerted effort to market your books, it's unlikely you will make a lot of money at it.