From Rags to Riches: November sales report

By Mike Jastrzebski

It's been five months now since I went live with my first book. My November sales are down from previous month's sales with 179 sales of The Storm Killer and 114 sales of Key Lime Blues. This will still earn me about $550.00 for the month, but this is substantially down from other months.

My August royalty check, which I received last week, was for $824.00 and my September check will be for a little over $900.00. I believe that there are several reasons for the slowdown in sales.

First, I have slowed down on the promotion of the books. There are a limited number of outlets available for promoting e-books and although I am always looking for a new promotional source, the pickings were not good for November.

The Kindle Nation Daily, which has proved to be the most effective advertising source to date has gone up in price and is now sold out months in advance. That's because it works. It's a great success story and all I can say is congratulations to Steven Windwalker who puts out the blog. He's done a great job of promoting indie writers, he's worked hard, and he deserves the success. I am running a Kindle short and sponsorship with The Kindle Nation on December 29th and I'll report on how my sales go at that time.

I did do a sponsorship for both books early in November with the Planet Ipad blog, which caters to Kindle sales on the Ipad. This sponsorship had very little if any impact on my Kindle sales, but my books are available through the Ipad bookstore and since I only receive states on those sales every 90 days I'll have to wait to see if it help sale in the Ipad store.

This month I will also be trying a new sponsorship ad with the Frugal eReader blog. I will be promoting both of my books on this blog between Dec. 18th and Dec. 24th, along with New Years day. I will post these sales results next month.

I have to admit that it's a little depressing to have sales fall, but this whole experience is a journey that I wouldn't miss. And let's face it; I started out hoping to sell 30-40 of each of my titles every month. Finally, the best promotion is word of mouth so if you've read Key Lime Blues or The Storm Killer and enjoyed the books, tell a friend. Better yet, you can now give Kindle books as a gift and Christmas is right around the corner.