a sales snapshot
Some writers hate, hate, hate the business side of self-publishing. I don’t! Because if you understand the business side, it can give you the freedom and control to write what you like, which is why I’m finishing up the nineteenth Caina book for release next month.
Nineteen! How many other book series go that long? Some do, but not that many.
(And thanks for reading all eighteen of the previous ones!)
Anyway, I write and publish a lot, but in April 2017 I didn’t publish anything because I spent the entirety of my writing time for the month finishing up FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON. So I was really curious to see how the ebook sales would break down without anything new in the mix, because (usually) a new book sells better than anything else.
So, here is how my ebook sales broke down by platform in April 2017:
Amazon US: 39.3%
Amazon UK: 29.8%
Google Play: 17.7%
Kobo: 8%
Amazon AU: 4%
Barnes & Noble: 3%
iTunes: 2.4%
Amazon All Other Countries: 1.7%
Occasionally other writers ask why I don’t have any books in Kindle Unlimited. Based on the percentages above, the answer is because 25% of my book sales are on non-Amazon platforms, and I highly doubt I would be able to generate enough page reads in Kindle Unlimited to make up for that.
Which of my series sold the best?
Frostborn: 58.2%
The Ghosts/Ghost Exile: 13.1%
Demonsouled/Mask of the Demonsouled: 12%
Cloak Games: 9.9%
The Third Soul/Tech Books: 6.8%
FROSTBORN is still the big fish, but what’s interesting is that CLOAK GAMES is now punching above its weight, much like Nadia Moran herself. Like, there are seventeen GHOSTS novels for sale, and nine DEMONSOULED (the first in both series are free), but only six CLOAK GAMES books for sale, and CLOAK GAMES is only a few percentage points behind the longer series. I think that shows that making the first book in a series permafree is still a good sales tactic.
Anyway, I think in June I’ll do another post like this for May, since FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON came out in May, and it sold really well. (Thanks everyone!) It will be interesting to compare April and May.
-JM
Have you considered it’s because of what you’ve recently released? That you are simply getting more popular and people read what you’ve come out with?
Well, that would be nice! 🙂 I suppose I can find out when I release GHOST IN THE RING and compare it to how GHOST IN THE WINDS did.
Your Cloak Games books are also your shortest books (i.e. fewest pages) by far, aren’t they? In which case they look even better as far as revenue per page goes (and I’d assume therefore revenue per writing time), right?
I did design them to be shorter from the get-go – most of them are about the length of a James Bond novel. They’re going to start creeping up in length as we get closer to #11, though.
Some writers can’t seem to see themselves as business people. Instead they are “artistes”.
Artiste is definitely not how I see myself. 🙂
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Two reasons I think Cloak Games is doing better for you. Your writing skills are improving. Part of that may be the the shortening mentioned above making for a more concise read, both on an individual book and series level. Both Frostborn and Ghosts meander a bit. Also I think “urban” / “contemporary” fantasy is currently a more popular genre. Thanks for all your work.
That’s funny – the most common complaint for CLOAK GAMES is that the books should be longer! 🙂
Two nice pieces of info in this thread: the length of the cloak games books will be creeping up and that there will be a total of 11 books in the series. For some reason I thought there was going to be 10. Hopefully the series will do well enough to justify a sequel. It would be a shame if too many of the plot lines were wrapped up in the next 4 books.
It will indeed be 11 books total. I haven’t decided what if anything to do with the setting after that, so the major plotlines will be wrapped up by Book 11.