Transparency in Indie Publishing

One of the biggest questions a lot of authors have when it comes to indie publishing is "Can you really make any money at it?" We've all heard the stories about people like JA Konrath, who already had a mainstream publishing career prior to going indie. And we've heard about people like Amanda Hocking, who has shot up the charts and has sold more than a million books on Kindle in about a year (not to mention her sales on Smashwords and elsewhere). But can the average person make a decent living by indie publishing?

Well, I don't know. I have friends who have self-published and are making a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month. I have other friends who have self-published and are probably lucky to make a hundred dollars a month. A lot of it depends on how appealing your book is, and how hard you market it.

I'll say that so far, 19 days into self-publishing my first novella, sales are right about where I expected. There's still a few more days left in the month, and I have at least one more blog appearance lined up for this weekend, so here's to hoping that I get a nice little up-tick in sales this week and exceed my expectations! (If you want to help out with that, you can purchase Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris on Smashwords, Nook, and Kindle in both the US and UK.)

In an effort to help get more data out there, so that people can decide for themselves whether indie publishing is the right thing for them, I plan to publicize my sales numbers and marketing efforts each month. I'll include the number of books I've sold (including the outlets they sold through), as well as the blog appearances and other marketing I did during the month. I'll draw conclusions as I can, but I'll try to share as much raw data as possible.

On that note, is there anything in particular all of you would like to know in these monthly reports? Let me know in the comments, and I'll try to share the information that's important to you guys!