Trending Sales (i.e. It's WORKING)

When I launched my first eBook Got Ghosts? Real Stories of Paranormal Activity - I had no idea what to expect. It was my first "test" and I pushed really hard to get it out so it would be there in time for Halloween. It sat for the whole month of October and it did pretty good.

I made $54 bucks for just having one book out with little marketing. After October, I figured the roller coaster ride would come to a stop and I would have little to no sales. I was wrong. I made about $75 bucks in November. Okay, still not convinced it's a trend. In December, I decided to be nice and give my book away for FREE on all days - CHRISTMAS & NEW YEARS.

Wait, WHA?

I know, I know. Believe it or not, even with me giving it away, I made $105 bucks in December.!!! I'm like WOW. So I decided to launch the follow up book - Got Ghosts 2 - More Stories of Real Paranormal Activity and now that it's almost the end of January, I can safely say I'm already at $214 bucks!!! Crazy huh?

However, my fantasy book - Anica Storm & The Wand of Time is stagnant. It's not moving at all. Nix, Nada. It's not that it sucks... it's just not attracting people to buy it. I've tweaked the description, the cover, the title, and the categories and it's just sitting there like an Anvil.

The target audience I'm aiming at (Teens) ~ the beta readers all LOVED it so this is teaching me a valuable lesson, even though I don't want to be learning this lesson (I want to be selling because I think this book has a lot of potential.) The lesson is...

PATIENCE.

I'm 5 months into this journey with 4 books out (soon to be 5) and my two Got Ghosts are on FIRE and my fantasy book is idle. I've read that some books will sit and collect dust until one day *BOOM* straight to the moon in sales. I've seen it with others so it maybe possible. I'm going to look into maybe hiring a professional cover artist for that book and maybe hire professional book description writers too. We'll see.

But the point of this blog is that this journey I'm on is starting to become a reality. It's working but I need to keep at it. I'm still dependent on my day job but hopefully I'll sell enough books that I can stay home and write for a living. Wouldn't that be nice.  :-)

If you're a fellow writer, like me, hang in there. It's going to take a lot of work. Keep chipping away at it, one day at a time. It's going to happen. I see the numbers. It's working. Every year, 80 MILLION people are born on this planet. There's enough demand for our books for all of us to share in the piece of the pie. Let my numbers inspire you.  :-)

Steven W.

One of the greatest feelings...

Is to see people buying your book, almost on a daily basis. Amazon gives you a means to keep track of your sales whenever you want. It's been almost 3 months since I first launched my book Got Ghosts and for some reason people are buying it like crazy, even long after Halloween. I figured once Halloween came and went the sales would plummet. Instead, they are rocketing upwards. To put it into perspective...

I launched my book on Sept 19th, 2012 so there was about 2 weeks left in the month. Amazon gave me a check for $16 bucks for 8 sales.

Readers Note: Amazon pays you 2 months from the end of the month. Since I started late September, my first check for $16 bucks got deposited at the end of November, my October sales ~ I get paid end of Dec, etc. I sell my book at $2.99 ~ Amazon keeps .99 cents for every sale so I make about $2 bucks per sale. (Woo Hoo!)

For all the books I sold in October - Amazon will give me a check for $54 bucks

For all the books I sold in November - Amazon will give me a check for $104 bucks!

See a trend here?

I'm already at $50 bucks on the 15th of December.

I was debating if a book like that would sell and it looks like people like it. One way I can tell is that the Refunds section is left alone (no one asked Amazon for a refund - Yay!) Since I have a bunch of other emails that weren't released, I'm going to put them in a follow up book called Got Ghosts 2 - More stories of real paranormal activity. Since I'm a digital artist and photographer I can design my own book covers so this is going to be the official cover:

Pretty spiffy huh? I'm saving $200 to $500 bucks by doing it myself. However, unless your pretty good like me, a book cover can make or break your sales. For example, I have my second book out - The Journey of Anica Storm and it's not selling like I had hoped. It's either the description or the eBook cover that isn't sealing the deal so I went on www.fiverr.com and hired someone who has a BA in writing to write up a description for me. That will help. 

I'm also going to go do a specific photo shoot with my best friend so I can make a new cover for my Anica Storm book. The nice thing about eBooks is that you can tweak and change things all you want. So I'm not doing so hot on sales, I'm going to tweak a few things and guess what? If I'm right, I'm going to start noticing results. Right now, I'm at 5 sales for the month of December. So next time we speak, I hope to have some news for you. Until then...

Stay Crunchy, even in milk.

Steven W.