ebook sales 2016, all other series
Here’s some more details about ebook sales for 2016.
FROSTBORN was my bestselling series at 66% of the total, with THE GHOSTS/GHOST EXILE coming in at 12.2%. In a close third was the DEMONSOULED/MASK OF THE DEMONSOULED series at 11.7% of the total. Let’s look at my remaining series now:
Technical Nonfiction Books: 2.8%
CLOAK GAMES: 2.3%
THE THIRD SOUL: 1%
THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS: 0.05%
That’s actually pretty cool about THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS. I started working on what would become that series in 2002, and fifteen years later it is still selling copies. Can’t complain about that!
I’m also pleased THE THIRD SOUL is still selling. I suppose it was sheer luck that I started writing more in THE GHOSTS series instead of THE THIRD SOUL. When I discovered the Kindle in 2011, I had three GHOSTS novels ready to go, so I published those and wound up writing way more in the series.
I think the CLOAK GAMES percentage will go up in 2017, partly because I’m writing more CLOAK GAMES books in 2017, and partly because the first book is now free on all platforms. For example in November of 2016, CLOAK GAMES was 1.6% of the month’s book sales. After the 1st book went free in December, the total in December rose to 6.4%.
I have to admit that while I like doing technical nonfiction books, I don’t think I’m going to do any in 2017. For one, they’re a lot more work than novels, since they need to be researched and tested. For another, novels sell better (and therefore pay better). Six years on, and that STILL boggles my mind. When I started self-publishing in 2011, I thought there would be more money writing about Linux and computers than writing novels. Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong!
(Which is kind of funny, because I never talk about my writing in Real Life since it takes too long to explain the truth. If people figure out that I’m a writer, I usually tell them I’m a technical writer. Since I’ve written nine technical books, this is technically (heh) true, and it has the additional advantage of avoiding social awkwardness since no one wants to listen to me talk about Linux. 🙂 )
So instead of writing a technical nonfiction book, I think I’ll use that space in my schedule instead to work on a different series of novels. Hopefully I can have those out later this year!
I was going to say that I’m looking forward to publishing new books in 2017, but since I wrote this back in January I’ve published two new books and two new short stories, so instead I’ll say I’m looking forward to continuing to publish new books in 2017!
And thanks for reading (and buying copies)!
-JM
You had some sort of computer career once upon a time, didn’t you? Do you still do that, or do you just write for a living now?
I cringe to see that Cloak Games is generating so little revenue. I really hope you don’t give up on that series. The last 3 books have 19 outta 20 5-star reviews on amazon so at least some of us really enjoy the series and it may be picking up speed. For some reason, the first 2 books had 8 outta 19 5-star reviews and the 2nd book has your only below 4-star average ever (I think) and that’s due to 1 guy who’s review was basically “it’s not Frostborn so yuck.” It sounds like you’re gonna give it a few more books and I definitely appreciate that.
I read the Tower of Endless Worlds and I definitely liked it. The reason I read it? I loved the Ghosts series and decided to see what else you wrote. I imagine that’s where the rest of the sales come from as well.
I was on the fence with The Third Soul and when the main character transitioned (book 6 maybe?), I stopped reading. I’m very glad you switched to Ghosts.
Thank you for writing!
I do various computer consulting gigs from time to time. Writing’s too unreliable to rely upon it completely for income.
It does take time for a series to build up an audience. Even “Frostborn” was not always FROSTBORN! In 2014, I think FROSTBORN was only 20% of the total, and I had built in a stopping point at the end of book 9 in case it wasn’t selling and I wanted to do something else instead of the final 6 books. I’ve got something similar set up with CLOAK GAMES. I’m definitely going to do 5 more CLOAK GAMES books, and I’ll decide if I want to keep doing them after that. (In TOMB HOWL, Nadia is going to meet her new Big Bad. 🙂 )
I’m not sure why FROSTBORN sells better than CLOAK GAMES. (I don’t think anyone ever really knows.) I have a theory that at the moment there are more strong female protagonists than strong male protagonists in fantasy (more Cainas and Nadias than Conans and Aragorns, if you will), so FROSTBORN meets an otherwise unmet market demand, but I have no way to prove that.
You’ve written 80+ books while working? Wow!
Re: “I have a theory that at the moment there are more strong female protagonists than strong male protagonists in fantasy…”
Can you name a few? I’d like to check them out. Generally, I find female protagonists to be incredibly lame, yet when they’re strong, like Caina, I really, really like them. For example, a while back you posted “a review of CHILD OF THE GHOSTS” which posited two possible reactions of a female heroine when encountering a villain (which happened to be Maglarion). They mostly all seem to take the first approach while you take the second (“Make an excuse to the brooding hunk, duck into a corner, rip your dress to make a mask, steal a crossbow from a guard, shoot the villain in the head with a poisoned bolt from said crossbow, stab him repeatedly with your hidden daggers in various vital organs, then throw him off a balcony.”).
So do you know of any books like that (other than the ones you’ve written and Girl in the Box by Crane and Schooled in Magic by Nuttall)?
To be more precise, I think more fantasy books in general have female protagonists. Before I typed this comment, I took a quick look at the Amazon US Epic Fantasy list, and of the top 20 books, 12 of them had female main characters.
Whether they’re strong or “strong” I suppose depends on the individual reader and writer.
Oh sure, fantasy books certainly are far more likely to have a female protagonist. But, other than Caina, Nadia, and a few others, they’re completely lame, generally modeled after Bella in Twilight.
Thanks again for creating Caina and Nadia.
My pleasure! Glad you enjoyed the characters and their books. 🙂 We’re definitely having more books from both!
Wouldn’t it make sense that Frostborn Books make up a larger percentage of your sales simply due to the fact that you have published more books and short stories for that series than you have in say the cloak games series( I think it’s something like 26 vs 8 stories)? I think the rate at which you publish books in a series also affects sales; I might be wrong but it feels like you have been publishing/ writing the Frostborn series faster than you have the Ghost series or Cloak Games, and readers can lose interest if they have to wait too long for the next book in a series to come out. Sorry I’m super tired as I write this and have no idea if I’m making any sense… Please just keep writing about Caina and Nadia!
All that is entirely true. The number of books and the rate at which they are published does strongly affect the sales of a series.
We’ll have more from both Caina and Nadia this year!