ebook sales for 2011 – the year in review
8,365 is the number of ebooks I sold in 2011. Most of that happened in the last four months. (Note that this is for paid ebooks, not the free books.)
First, thanks to the Lord, who has been unaccountably good to me this year.
Second, thank you to the, um, thousands of you who bought one.
Third, let’s look at the individual book sales.
DEMONSOULED (free downloads): 19,479
SOUL OF TYRANTS: 1,817
SOUL OF SERPENTS: 1,464
CHILD OF THE GHOSTS (free downloads): 15,021
GHOST IN THE FLAMES: 598
GHOST IN THE BLOOD: 465
THE TESTING (before it went free last week): 133
THE ASSASSINS: 191
THE BLOOD SHAMAN: 111
THE HIGH DEMON: 127
DRIVEN AND OTHER STORIES: 1
THE DEVIL’S AGENT: 11
ANGEL SWORD AND OTHER STORIES: 1
SHARE THE PAIN: 20
THE $0.99 UBUNTU BEGINNER’S GUIDE: 3,041
THE $0.99 WINDOWS COMMAND LINE BEGINNER’S GUIDE: 385
You’ll note that SOUL OF TYRANTS is almost at 2,000 copies, and (if all goes well) might very well get there by the end of January. I find it absolutely astonishing that a book I wrote seven years ago, and essentially forgot about six years ago, has sold almost 2,000 copies in four months, and made me almost $4,000. That is almost as much as the standard $5,000 advance from a traditional publisher – and SOUL OF TYRANTS has no need to earn out. Nor will it go out of print (unless the world economy collapses, of course).
I don’t want to take sides in the endless debate over traditional and self-publishing. Though in all candor, I have no longer have any wish to seek out either an agent or a traditional book publisher (save for those with whom I already have relationships). But if you’re a writer, I’m not going to tell you what to do. This is what I did, and here’s my data. Draw from it what conclusions you will.
Anyway. What’s next for 2012? SOUL OF DRAGONS, the next DEMONSOULED book, should be coming up, if all goes well, by the end of February. Then I’m going to write the next book in THE GHOSTS series, GHOST IN THE STORM. I’d also like to do another $0.99 BEGINNER’S GUIDE on a computer topic. They’re quick and easy to write (the Windows command line one took me all of three weeks, start to finish, in September), and generally have no trouble selling.
So. Two novels and a computer book. Those are my writing objectives for 2012. Once those are done, we’ll make new plans.
And, again, thank you to all of you who bought a book!
-JM
Big congrats Jon! And hopefully 2012 will be an even better year for you! Looking over the sales of the ebooks, some of them sell much, much better than others, just compare “Soul of Tyrants” to “Driven and other stories”, what are you thoughts on this? Do you think it’s just because certain series begin with a free book, or do you think it’s a genre thing?
And, of all your book series, do you have a favorite (series)? If so, which?
Thanks!
I suspect for genre books in ebook format, series sell way, way better than stand-alone books. So the second or third novel in a series is an easier sell than a stand-alone collection of short stories.