My experiences in e-publishing - the hard data

Inspired by JA Konrath's ebook sales through Amazon, I started making a bunch of my work available for the Amazon Kindle in May, with 3 short story collections, 1 omnibus of all three of collections in one, and 1 novel - Death Rhythm (for a total of five offerings.) Konrath was (and still is) making thousands of dollars a month - in fact, he's in the TENS of thousands per month now. That first month, I made just shy of $35. I'm certainly happy for Joe's success, and I wasn't under any illusions that I would make anywhere near his amounts, I'd just like to let people know that he's much more the exception than the rule.

In June, I added a stand-alone short story, 'Taking Care of Katrina,' and also made the same works available through Smashwords, which offers them in various formats for the other types of ereaders out there. In June I made $48 on Amazon.

In July, Amazon changed their royalty structure a bit, increasing authors' royalties from 35% to 70% for items priced between 2.99 and 9.99 (otherwise the royalty amount remained at 35%.) I added my novel Northwoods Deep, and my books in Smashwords started being distributed to B&N, Kobo, Sony and Apple (another benefit of Smashwords, along with being able to manage coupons through them). In July, I sold an even 100 books through Amazon and made $109. August I made $123 on Amazon, Sept $144. I also added my YA novel Snow Burn in Sept (although this has hardly sold at all). Oct and Nov saw a decrease ($108 and $101 respectively) but Dec has had a decent start. Since Smashwords' distribution channels report quarterly, I only know my sales though them thru September, which was around $60.

So - so far, I'm closing in on $800 total thru today for ebook sales. I'm very happy with this - the extra cash is certainly nice and I can certainly use it. It puts gas in the car.

I know a few folks who started close to the same time as me and are making much more on fewer offerings. The very talented David Dalglish is selling thousands of ebooks/month, as is Dave McKafee (and they both deserve it) but I think my experience may be a little more typical. There are also those only selling a couple books a month.

I'll talk more about my thoughts on this experience in my next post.