My Amazon Kindle Publishing Experience: January 2012

I’m a little late with this monthly report I have been doing on my Amazon Kindle Publishing Experience, the reason being I got kind of stressed out in the beginning of February at the sudden lack of sales my novels saw.  I really have no idea what could have caused a sudden ‘no one is buying any of my books’ scare for those first couple of days, but if I was forced to guess I would say it probably had something to do with the sudden and overwhelming availability of free books on Amazon.  Success, especially reported upon success, causes others to follow suit, and during the month of January many authors were reporting impressive sales figures following the limited time free listing of their kindle titles (something that Amazon has only recently allowed self published authors to do). I was not above testing this out, and sure enough, my titles saw a very impressive jump in sales following the free period.  Each title also spent quite a bit of time in several top 100 lists in the UK, and in the case of my novel TEXT MESSAGE, which has been struggling ever since its release, reached its all time best sales ranking in the US. 
  

On February first things changed.  I went from averaging between thirty to sixty sales a day to averaging zero sales a day, which is something that has never happened to me since the release of my first novel JIMMY back in July (unless I missed a no sale day when out of town for a week in August).  Looking at each Amazon page for my novels provided a clue as to why this might have been occurring – seventy five percent of the books listed in the ‘what other customers bought’ section had a price of $0.00.  Adding to my suspicion were the comments from readers all across the web expressing amazement at how many free books they had downloaded in recent days.  One reader actually claimed to have downloaded sixty books during their lunch break from work, which really startled me because even if he read one book a week all year, which is a lot for most people, he would never finish all the titles he had gotten.  Fortunately, my sales did return.  Even better, JIMMY has made it back onto several top 100 lists in the UK, and, for the most part, has stayed within the 10,000 sales ranking in the US.  Both have also continued to receive mostly positive reviews from Amazon customers, and from readers on various websites (here is one of my favorites posted on the Goodreads website for TEXT MESSAGE).  Needless to say seeing reviews like these makes my day.  I’m sure many other writers feel the same way. 

So, what are my thoughts on listing books for free?  My answer: I don’t know.  Early in January listing a book for free could have an amazing effect on sales.  Now, given the sheer volume of books that are being listed for free at any one time, who knows?  I for one have already made the decision that once my time in the Kindle Prime library thing is complete I will not allow my books to be listed in it again, thus I will not be able to list my books for free on Amazon.  My reason for this is simple, why limit myself to one avenue of sales?  In addition, I’m guessing there has been a huge drop in titles available on other e-book sites due to Amazon’s conditions for joining the library thing, so it would be silly for me to not take advantage of that.  Truth be told, I’m kicking myself for not thinking about this sooner (like before I signed up for the Kindle Prime thing).  Some of my business class professors would probably be sharing in the kicking if I told them about my failure to think about this before my decision.  Of course, this isn't to say I wouldn't have followed the same path, I just probably should have taken a little more time to think about it.      

Now, for those of you wondering how January actually went, let me just simply say it was my best month ever in the history of my writing career (which has spanned twelve years).  The only thing topping the excitement I felt during this month was the excitement I felt back in 2002 when I received my first ever acceptance letter from a magazine (Black Petals Magazine accepted my story ‘Red Pickup’ in April of 2002).  Nothing short of having a major book deal from a publisher will ever top that, though; and yes, even though I’ve gone the e-book route with some titles, I would still like to go the traditional route with other titles (maybe even these e-book ones if publishers are interested).  I know many in the self-publishing / independent publishing world says doing that would be stupid, but I frankly don’t share the same disgust of the traditional publishing world that they do (some publishers, yes, but the entire industry, no).  Until then, however, I will not shy away from making my titles available independently through the electronic marketplace.  One thing I’m still not sure about is whether or not I will make my titles available in print without the aid of a traditional publisher.  Many people have been asking me to do this, but I’m still undecided on it.  The reasons are many and a bit complicated, so I won’t get into it here. 

January was a good month.  Hopefully, I will be able to say the same in a few weeks as February comes to an end.  I also hope I will never again go through a period of no sales like I did during the first few days of February.  A drop in sales is one thing, I can handle and expect that from time to time, but no sales on any titles for several days . . . that is just scary.