Monday, August 15, 2011

Self-Publishing--Showing the Money ll

I've had many people tell me they appreciated my prior blog (July 17) about my self-published sales of my two sweet historical Westerns, Wild Montana Sky (.99) and Starry Montana Sky (2.99). They also asked that I'd keep posting information about sales and money.

To recap, I published the two books on the evening of April 28th on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords. I'm going to continue to only discuss Kindle because my sales on Nook and Smashwords are under $100.

Today, I received my sales report for July from Amazon.

Wild Montana Sky :
5026 US sales $1759.53
8 UK sales 2.08
1 Germany .30
Total $1761.91

Starry Montana Sky:
1777 US sales $3613.89
4 UK 5.08
1 Germany 1.40
47 (outside) 49.35
Total $3669.72

Total $ 5431.63

On July 31, I published the first in my fantasy romance series, Sower of Dreams.

3 US sales $1.05

This brings my Kindle income (three months and a couple of days) to date:

$7955.66

So far my sales for August on Amazon are:

Wild Montana Sky: 2227
Starry Montana Sky: 993
Sower of Dreams: 35
Reaper of Dreams: 20

I'm SO very glad I decided to self-publish. As you can see, my results have been (in my opinion) amazing! I'm so grateful to everyone who's supported me in this process, especially my readers!

18 comments:

  1. Congrats on your numbers. You're doing great!

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  2. Awesome numbers! Thanks for the posting.

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  3. Awesome numbers! Are you willing to share with us what kind of promotions you've done?

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  4. Really intesting article. Particularly interesting to see how the much lower sales of the 2nd story are still more lucrative than the 1st.

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  5. Congratulations! Fabulous numbers. Thanks for sharing.

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  6. Go, Debra! Love these numbers and thanks for sharing. Keep up the good work.

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  7. Thanks for the congrats, everyone.

    Elysa, I've had several people ask me about promotion since I posted this. I'll write a detailed blog to answer that question. Not today, though, so look back in a couple of days.

    Jdfield, yes, Starry Montana's higher price has definitely made me more money, especially since those sales have crept up considerably. Yesterday, I had my highest ever with 97. However, the lower price point of Wild Montana Sky has drawn people in and made the bigger numbers of both books possible.

    Theresa, you were the first person I know personally to blog about your numbers and money. Thanks for leading the way!

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  8. I guest blogged today on Paty Jager's site: http://patyjager.blogspot.com

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  9. Debra, your Montana books are wonderful, but your promotion platform far exceeds the norm. Most of us who self-pub on Amazon are not so fortunate, and although my sales are climbing, they fall far short of yours. Hope your good fortune keeps up and mine increaes.

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  10. Without much promotion at all, I've made over $5,000 on Amazon US alone so far this month. And the month isn't over yet. I'm amazed. I just posted a new book and it's selling already, and I have another one ready to go. I never could have made this much going through an epublisher or even a traditional print publisher.

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  11. Congratulations Deb!

    Maria Seager

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  12. Yes, yes, yes!!! Awesome sales! I love self-publishing:-)

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  13. Caroline,

    It's not that my promotion platform exceeds the norm, it's that my sales exceed the norm. I'm actually not doing that much to promote. I'm lucky or blessed or both when it comes to sales. Like I said above, I'll write a blog about what I do.

    Yes, everyone is going to have different results. I pointed that out in an earlier blog. The important thing is to have patience. Your books are going to be there for a long, long time, and your sales will accumulate over time. So look at the big picture. People's good luck breaks will also come at different times in their self-publishing career.

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  14. My friend, Norah Wilson, just blogged about her self-published numbers. She will give you a different, yet also positive picture.

    http://norahwilsonwrites.com/wordpress/?p=156

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  15. I've heard from some people privately that blogger isn't playing nice and won't let them comment on this post. So I'm attempting to see if I can comment on my own blog!

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  16. Debra, I'm going to give it another try! Someone gave me a tip to uncheck the "stay signed in" box. Fingers crossed!

    Just wanted to thank you for the shout out and the link to my blog. My story certain is very different from yours. I haven't had an meteoric rises, but have just plodded away. Whereas you've had fantastic sales on a few books, I've had modest sales on a lot of books, in a lot of venues. And whereas you are making your bread and butter with Amazon, I'm doing much better currently with Smashwords' distributors (particularly Apple). I'm starting to see some gratifying movement on Amazon, but I've made that my focus in recent months. I posted my numbers to show that even plodding slowly can bring success. I've earned over $20K in my first year, which far surpasses any expectations I might have had when I started out.

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  17. Norah,

    Thanks for sharing and paving the way for me. I owe a lot of my success to you, Delle Jacobs, Theresa Regan, and Colleen Gleason for sharing and supporting.

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