From Rags to Riches on the Kindle? The fourth month.
By Mike Jastrzebski
It's hard to believe that it's been four months now since I published my first book, The Storm Killer,
as an Amazon e-book for the Kindle. At the time I had three other books completed and I felt that with some serious rewriting I could have a total of three books on Kindle by the end of the year.
I was hoping to sell about 50 of each title per month, which would give me an income by the end of the year of about $300.00 per month. Since Mary and I are planning to go cruising next year that $300.00 a month would be a nice supplement to the pension Mary will begin collecting in February and my Social Security check which I will begin receiving in July. Boy did I figure wrong.
This past month I sold 333 copies of The Storm Killer and 150 copies of Key Lime Blues
. My books are also available on Smashwords where I sold zero copies in October, and on the Nook, where I sold 2 copies of Key Lime Blues and zero copies of The Storm killer. Here's the link if you wish to buy one of my books for the Nook, http://tinyurl.com/3a4v5gx.
This means that my earnings for October will be approximately $950.00. This is a little more than my earnings for September ($826.72) and a little less than my earnings for August ($1059.57). A bit more than the $100.00 per book I hoped to earn when I started this endeavor.
For the record my total sales for the first four months as an Indie author are 1076 copies of The Storm Killer and 513 copies of Key Lime Blues. Although I did not go live with Key Lime Blues until August 10th, it obvious that The Storm Killer is selling better. I'm not quite sure what to attribute this to. I did do more advertising at the start for The Storm Killer, and I have 25 reviews for The Storm Killer but only 8 reviews for Key Lime Blues.
October is the first month that I did no advertising. However, in November I am planning to do a paid sponsorship for each book in Planet Ipad, a sister blog of The Kindle Nation. I have also scheduled a Kindle Nation short for Key Lime Blues for the week after Christmas. The Storm Killer is sponsoring the short so that both books will be advertised.
I'll keep you posted over the next two months about the sponsorships and my sales.
