Sales Report: Year End Review
Feb. 6th, 2014 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalJust got the last of my tax forms from Amazon KDP this week. Adding in what I made from Smashwords and Lulu, my total pre-tax profits from my books sales adds up to $697.43.
Bwuhuh...
I was kinda hoping to maybe top $500.00 for the first time this year. I've exceeded that by almost $200.00 with only about $35.00 in book cover expenses from publishing two stories in 2013. Which is all rather heartening.
I'm not exactly making a lot of money compared professionally dead tree published![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jimhines, seawasp or even ebook published writers such as haikujaguar or archangelbeth, but given the minimal outlay on my part, basically time spent writing, and practically no advertising aside from announcing new books here on LJ, FA, DA and Facebook, this is still a significant amount for me, almost equaling a month's house payment. [1] Which if you're familiar with all the money troubles my family was having in 2012, was a nice thing to have, even if in '13 we were on a much better footing.
One thing I have learned from crunching the numbers is that Smashwords represented 10% of my sales last year, and Lulu even less. The four hundred pound gorilla in the room is Amazon KDP, where the vast majority of my sales came from, especially the KDP exclusive stuff with that wonderful 70% royalty rate. Smashwords can't really compete with that, and Lulu is dying by inches as it tries to expand it's POD business with ebooks. Fortunately as gorillas go Amazon KDP is rather amiable, aside from some unfortunate missteps last year during the whole attempt to kill all the adult ebooks. So sticking with KDP makes financial sense, as is producing novellas priced to hit the magic $2.99 price tag, which is the minimum amount I can charge to get that 70% royalty, and still keep the price low enough to attract impulse buyers.
This year I think I'm going to try to produce at least two, perhaps even three more novellas to sell, and try to get at least one or two short stories in as well. Because if I can manage that, I might even top a $1,000 in 2014. And it's only going to up from there...
[1] $730. We bought our place almost twenty years ago for $90k before the housing bubble really got going, at a ridiculously low interest rate.
Bwuhuh...
I was kinda hoping to maybe top $500.00 for the first time this year. I've exceeded that by almost $200.00 with only about $35.00 in book cover expenses from publishing two stories in 2013. Which is all rather heartening.
I'm not exactly making a lot of money compared professionally dead tree published
jimhines, seawasp or even ebook published writers such as haikujaguar or archangelbeth, but given the minimal outlay on my part, basically time spent writing, and practically no advertising aside from announcing new books here on LJ, FA, DA and Facebook, this is still a significant amount for me, almost equaling a month's house payment. [1] Which if you're familiar with all the money troubles my family was having in 2012, was a nice thing to have, even if in '13 we were on a much better footing.One thing I have learned from crunching the numbers is that Smashwords represented 10% of my sales last year, and Lulu even less. The four hundred pound gorilla in the room is Amazon KDP, where the vast majority of my sales came from, especially the KDP exclusive stuff with that wonderful 70% royalty rate. Smashwords can't really compete with that, and Lulu is dying by inches as it tries to expand it's POD business with ebooks. Fortunately as gorillas go Amazon KDP is rather amiable, aside from some unfortunate missteps last year during the whole attempt to kill all the adult ebooks. So sticking with KDP makes financial sense, as is producing novellas priced to hit the magic $2.99 price tag, which is the minimum amount I can charge to get that 70% royalty, and still keep the price low enough to attract impulse buyers.
This year I think I'm going to try to produce at least two, perhaps even three more novellas to sell, and try to get at least one or two short stories in as well. Because if I can manage that, I might even top a $1,000 in 2014. And it's only going to up from there...
[1] $730. We bought our place almost twenty years ago for $90k before the housing bubble really got going, at a ridiculously low interest rate.
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no subject
Date: 2014-02-07 04:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-07 07:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-07 08:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-07 06:01 pm (UTC)I have three novels, a short story, and a non-fiction book up. I started publishing in 2011. I made about $200 in sales last year.
I suspect it's a genre thing, but I'd still like to know what you're doing that I'm not...
no subject
Date: 2014-02-07 07:15 pm (UTC)That and I'll admit that my furry stories sell the best, which is a relatively uncrowded genre. Not as much competition there to fight for viewer eyeballs.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-07 09:43 pm (UTC)The one that's about to go up is a romance, and I'm hoping to get it reviewed on at least one of the romance review sites, which I also hope will get more eyeballs on the other stuff (which has a lot of romance in it, too, but not as obviously so).
no subject
Date: 2014-02-07 06:27 pm (UTC)